ABSTRACT
A significant number of changes have taken place since 1994. With the deproclamation of separate territorial and administrative units based on racial lines and the reunification of South Africa, the Bantustans no longer exist, at least not officially. The complex interplay of separation and integration, which I see as the dualism of apartheid, took on some of their most thoroughgoing and painful forms in the political and geographical context of the former Bantustans. These areas, therefore, serve as an important yardstick of the nature and extent of subsequent changes arising out of democratization. In what ways has democracy succeeded in re-integrating the Bantustans into the South African political economy and in reversing the marginalized position of these areas? Are these areas still among the least developed, most poorly resourced and least productive parts of the country? Are the households in these areas still overwhelmingly dependent upon state grants and migrant labour, as they were under apartheid? To what extent has democracy succeeded in abolishing the legacy of the Bantustans in the life experience of the people who live in these areas? Keiskammahoek magisterial district in the Eastern Cape (see Map 3) in many ways epitomizes the processes which characterized the formation of the South African state that was based on segregation, with its implications for the way the reserves/Bantustans became both peripheralized and integrated into the broader South African political economy. It is also one of the better documented areas of the Eastern Cape, from the time of its establishment as a military post in 1853 when the Xhosa were driven out of the area by the British forces and Mfengu settlers were brought in from the Peddie area together with settlers of British and German descent (Mills and Wilson 1952). The history of the various ‘native locations’ established in the magisterial district of Keiskammahoek is well documented in both the archival record and, in more detail, in the Keiskammahoek Rural Survey (KRS), an extensive empirical research project focusing on six of the rural locations from 1948 to 1950. The KRS provides us with a detailed socio-economic picture of Life in the Ciskei (Houghton 1955) at the onset of the apartheid era. Subsequent research by Manona and me in the late 1970s and the 1980s led to an interdisciplinary team project which provided a detailed account of the district at the close of the apartheid era. This resulted in the publication of the volume, From Reserve to Region: Apartheid and Social Change in the Keiskammahoek District of (former) Ciskei: 1950 to 1990 (de Wet and Whisson 1997). Chatha is probably the most intensively studied of the rural villages in the Keiskammahoek district. It was studied as part of the KRS. I then spent some 16 months there in the late 1970s and early 1980s, looking at changes since the KRS, and the impact of the implementation of betterment planning in the village, in particular (see de Wet 1985, 1995). Detailed household and economic surveys were done as part of the From Reserve to Region follow-up study (see Leibbrandt and Sperber 1997, as well as 38 questionnaires administered by Flint Sperber in 1991). In 2006, I moved back to Chatha in order to monitor the processes of change that had developed since the advent of democracy in the country and the implementation of land restitution in the village. These changes have involved ongoing development activity supported by the
Border Rural Committee (a development NGO), which has implemented survey and monitoring exercises of its own. This chapter examines the question of whether, and in which ways, the years of democracy have impacted on the lives of people based in rural settlements such as Chatha in the former Bantustans. In assessing what has changed in their daily circumstances for the people of Chatha, I also reflect on the broader question of whether they are becoming more functionally and more sustainably integrated into the broader South African political economy. To address these questions I adopted two approaches:
1 I used the same research survey instrument that was applied in 1991, as part of Sperber’s From Reserve to Region research project. I have access to the original questionnaires. I reproduced an identical set of questions but added a few additional ones, which had subsequently become appropriate. It was possible in 2006 to conduct interviews with members of 30 of the original 38 households interviewed in 1991. In 11 cases, the individuals were the same as those interviewed in 1991. This enabled me to compare changes over time (admittedly taken from two synchronic snapshots at particular moments) with regard to factors such as household demography, migration patterns, education levels, income patterns, agricultural activity, possessions, access to services, aspirations and perceptions of change.
