The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Bill is Passed: Attempts at Keeping South Africa White
“There are no grounds in history or in reality for the Nationalists to claim any part of South Africa exclusively for whites … Africans live in every part of our country; their labour has gone to develop its farmlands and its cities, its mines and industries, its railways and harbours; they claim every inch of South Africa as their homeland.” – The Road to South African Freedom (1962 Programme of the SACP)
On 26 February 1970, the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Bill was passed, whereby every African was to be issued with a certificate of citizenship of his/her respective ‘homeland’. The homelands or Bantustans in question at that time were Transkei, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, Gazankulu, KwaZulu, Lebowa, QwaQwa, KwaNgwane and Venda. In 1974 the establishment of a tenth Bantustan, KwaNdebele, was envisaged. Two years later, in 1976, the first Bantustan, Transkei, became “independent”. After 1976 three black Bantustans were granted “independence” by apartheid South Africa, which included Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei.
Under the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, the Government stripped black South Africans of their citizenship, which deprived them of their few remaining political and civil rights in South Africa, and declared them to be citizens of these Bantustans. A Bantustan (also known as a Bantu homeland, black homeland, black state or simply homeland, in A
