South Africa's Bantustans and the dynamics of ‘decolonisation’: reflections on writing histories of the homelands

From the late 1950s, as independent African polities replaced formal colonial rule in Africa, South Africa's white minority regime set about its own policy of mimicry in the promotion of self-governing homelands, which were to be guided to full ‘independence’. Scholarly study of South Africa's homelands has remained largely apart from accounts of decolonisation in Africa. An interpretation of South Africa's exceptional political path in the era of African decolonisation that has dominated the literature has meant that important debates in African history, which might helpfully illuminate the South African case, have been neglected. In seeking inspiration for new histories of the homelands, this article looks beyond South Africa's borders to processes of and debates on decolonisation in Africa. Historical accounts of African decolonisation, particularly the work of Frederick Cooper, provide inspiration for ways of thinking about the making of bantustan states, the production of power, the differentiated responses with which the bantustan project was met across localities, classes, genders and generations and the range of alliances that this process forged.