AFRICA'S SOCIALIST BANNER

Further to our previous report on South Africa we have now veterans of the anti - apartheid movement making comparisons of present-day South Africa with "Bantustans" .

From a Fort Hare University seminar

Poet and activist Professor Dennis Brutus , who worked in the same chain gang with Mandela on Robben Island, labelled the country’s new elite “Bantustanis”.

The country met three conditions to qualify as such an entity:

“You set up a bunch of leaders who become your political stooges;
You have large reserves of cheap labour; and
You create your own elite who are beneficiaries of the system.”

Brutus continued by saying that the majority of South Africans were living under worse conditions than those experienced during apartheid. “The whole process of transformation is meaningless,” he said.

Outspoken East London doctor Costa Gazi, sitting in the audience, said “Our government is acting like a Bantustan government because they are protecting the rights of the privileged.”