Why Africa Should Dismiss Moscow’s Bantustans

At the height of ‘grand apartheid’, the South African government under Hendrik Verwoerd produced a diabolical scheme to grant independence to 10 ‘homelands’ – Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Venda, Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu, Lebowa and QwaQwa. 

Most readers will probably have never heard of these territories. That is because they disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared, even through the damage done still lingers even today. 

Known also as ‘Bantustans’, the homelands were established under South African law as the centrepiece of a policy of ‘separate development’, the idea being to establish states where black South Africans were forced to take citizenship. Each of these areas was supposedly tribally or linguistically based: KwaZulu for the Zulus, Transkei for the Xhosa, Bophutatswana for the Tswana nation, QwaQwa for the Basotho, Venda for the Venda, Lebowa for the Pedi speakers, and so on. Not only would this scheme thus supposedly link with a nationalistic urge for self-determination, but these homelands would conveniently excuse the racist character of rule in apartheid South Africa. 

It was never going to work, and of course it didn’t. 

Only four of the 10 ever became nominally independent: the Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981.

No other country, save South Africa, recognised these Potemkin states, despite their possession of the symbols of statehood in flags, armies and uniforms, various levels of administration and their elaborate trappings, and even their own stamps – not to mention unrecognised ‘embassies’ all over the world. Set up on parcels of land – sometimes discontinguous for a single Bantustan, Bophuthatswana being the most notable example – no matter the vast amounts of money South Africa threw at them and the development of so-called ‘border industries’ to create employment in these territories, they remained development backwaters and sources of instability, with frequent coups in Transkei, Ciskei and Venda and weak governance. 

While a few ex-Rhodesian military desperados established the army in Transkei and it attracted a sprinkling of Ghanaian emigres fleeing serial instability in their West African country, no African country diplomatically touched these Bantustans. In a resolution from its 27th ordinary session in June-July 1976 , the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) – the predecessor of today’s African Union – condemned and rejected ‘the Bantustan policy’ and urged its member states ‘to refrain from establishing contact with the emissaries of the so-called Bantu Homelands’, inviting ‘all states and in particular member states of the OAU in their totality not to accord recognition to any Bantustan’.

Instead of taking off economically, these Bantustans proved an economic drag on South Africa – one of the key reasons why apartheid eventually became as unaffordable as it was morally indefensible. 

It was thus with some obvious lack of irony that this past December the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) unhesitatingly dispatched a 17-strong delegation to the unrecognised Donetsk People's Republic, carved out of Ukrainian territory in the east and occupied by Russia in contravention of international law. Headed by the Second Vice President of the PAP, Ashebir Woldegiorgis Gayo, the members of this delegation included Don Manuel Doria Bochoboto from Equatorial Guinea, lcome Siyabonga Dlamini from Eswatini, Mohamed Ahamada Baco from Comoros, Victoria Kingstone from Malawi, André Joaquim Magibire from Mozambique, Emmanuel Lowilla from South Sudan, Patrick Nsamba Oshabe from Uganda, Anatropia Lwehikila Theonest from Tanzania, and three representatives from Zambia – Newton Samakayi, Menyani Zulu and Miles Sampa – along with citizens of Djibouti and Somalia.

On 21 February 2022, just three days before he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree recognising the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic. To date, they have also been ‘recognised’ by the South Ossetian and Abkhazian authorities (themselves unrecognised internationally), Ba'athist Syria and North Korea in an alliance of demagogues.

At the end of the visit, on 20 December 2024, Putin said, ‘I recently spoke with [Denis] Pushilin, the leader of the Donetsk People's Republic. He told me about how he received a delegation from Africa. I am delighted to have our friends and guests. And I am planning to go to Africa myself. This is very good and right. We must maintain relations’. Earlier, Dr Gayo, in an interview with the Russian press, said that the ‘legislative body would invite the head of the Donetsk People's Republic Denis Pushilin, to the South African city of Johannesburg’. 

Miles Sampa, a Zambian parliamentarian, has defended the trip, whose purpose – he says – ‘was fact finding and ways [sic] how as Africa MPs we can then advocate or influence for the end of war given the negative economic impact it's having on Africa due to the trade embargo … [with] cheaper fertilizer, grain, oil etc into Africa’. Sampa added, correctly, that ‘as MPs who represent Africa we can't afford to be mute and do nothing about that war’.

Yet this is precisely not the way to help bring about a peaceful outcome to this war. Exactly how this group were going to do this by tacitly providing recognition to what is effectively a terrorist pseudo-state is unclear, particularly in the light of subsequent statements. As the Ukrainian government observed, ‘The statements made by them during this visit about opposing colonialism, made on Ukrainian land illegally seized by Russia during the neo-colonial war of aggression against Ukraine, are entirely absurd’. 

This trip and the support lent as a consequence to Russia’s imperial ambitions is akin to a visit by leading Africans to the Bantustans in the 1980s premised on the argument that this would have helped to end apartheid. It’s pure political fantasy and egregious expediency. 

Even if one forgave these parliamentarians for their motives and hapless understanding of international and Ukrainian law, they display a recklessness with their own circumstances. Dr Gayo might like, for a moment, to consider the implications of his words and deeds for his own country, Ethiopia, currently embroiled in a series of regional conflicts. Breaking off bits of African states to satisfy imperial ambitions would create havoc, stitched together as the continent’s states are across a tapestry of peoples, tribes and religions.

There are differences, of course, between these Russian creations and the Bantustans. Ethnic criteria form no legal basis, however flimsy, for their creation by Putin, no matter his attempted justification around freedom to use the Russian language. Unlike the Bantustans, which formed part of South African territory, the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’ were the product of a violent military annexation. If this trip was not paid for by Russia – which is problematic in itself – African taxpayers should ask for their money back from their PAP contribution. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the PAP delegation are from countries commonly judged as authoritarian. Equatorial Guinea, for example, scores a lowly 5/100 on Freedom House’s index of political rights and civil liberties, where 100 is judged as perfectly free; Eswatini 17/100; Ethiopia 20/100; Uganda 34/100; and South Sudan is at the bottom of the pile on 1/100. Russia is also – no surprise – scored at 13/100, below Burundi, Venezuela and Nicaragua. 

Presumably the citizens of Tanzania, Comoros, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia, which all make Freedom House’s ‘partly free’ roster, might have something to say at their next ballots about the manner of this use of their hard-earned tax dollars.  

With the advent of democracy, South Africa’s Bantustans ceased to exist on 27 April 1994, and were reincorporated into the country’s nine provinces. Inevitably, the same fate will befall Russia’s version of the Bantustan in Ukraine’s east. 

History will remember the names of Moscow’s supporters and opportunistic fellow-travellers. 

© Oleksandr Merezhko and Greg Mills, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the author

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

For terms of use, see Website Ts&Cs of Use.

Have an idea for a Commentary you’d like to write for us? Send a short pitch to commentaries@rusi.org and we’ll get back to you if it fits into our research interests. Full guidelines for contributors can be found here.