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Trouble is, the reserves are nothing more than a patchwork of 260 vaguely associated tribal areas, most of them tiny and widely separated from each other. They are backward and primitive, with few natural resources, and far from the centers of industry. And together they contain less than 14% of South Africa's total land. The remaining 86% is for white occupation only, and the millions of Africans now living there are officially classified as "temporary sojourners"—even though many of them are third-generation city dwellers who have never set eyes on their "homelands."
Both Worlds. Verwoerd accepts the responsibility for helping the Bantustans get on their feet. He has already spent millions of dollars to develop their agriculture and improve their roads. He is also encouraging white industrialists to build factories on their borders. That way, he explains, African workers can work for the whites by day, return to their homelands at night, and have the best of both possible worlds.
His border-industries scheme was doomed before it started. Even though the Bantustans are an obvious source of cheap labor, they are so remote from both market and raw materials that most white capitalists want nothing to do with them. In the 18 years since he first propounded the scheme, only 94 small factories employing 20,000 Africans have been erected on the borders.
So far, the only homeland that has been turned into an official Bantustan is the Transkei, a region of 16,500 square miles and 1.5 million Xhosa tribesmen in the state of Natal. With an elected Parliament of 45 members and Para mount Chief Kaiser Matanzima as Chief, the Transkei was granted semi-autonomy last year, and Verwoerd talks with apparent sincerity of eventual, full independence.
Today the Transkei is anything but independent. The South African government furnishes most of its civil servants and most of its budget. It is virtually without industry, its soil is eroded and impoverished, its roads little more than tracks for the oxcarts that travel them. Its women wear blankets redder than the dusty earth, its old men sit on the ground in front of their huts smoking long-stemmed pipes. And its young men leave as soon as they can to seek work in the white cities.
Passbook Joy. However nobly its theories are portrayed, apartheid is nothing less than mass intimidation. It is, says Novelist Alan Paton (Cry, the Beloved Country), "the finest blend of cruelty and idealism ever devised by man."
The intimidation reaches everywhere. African political parties are banned, their leaders in prison or isolation. The regime can hold anyone for 180 days without charge, indefinitely prolong the sentence of any political prisoner. It can also order anyone too critical of its policies confined to his home for years, forbid newspapers to quote him on any subject. Backing up the laws is a tough, efficient police force, plus a military and paramilitary organization specifically trained to put down insurrection. Top cop is Justice Minister Johannes Balthazar Vorster, 50, a devout Nationalist whose background includes two years in a South African internment camp for pro-Nazi activities.
To a non-European, happiness