Nobody is listening to Bop

Press, 4 December 1985, Page 20

Nobody is listening to Bop

Bophuthatswana, in Southern Africa, struggles against unfounded prejudice to persuade the world of its independence, says HELEN GIBSON, of the “Daily Telegraph,” London.

First we had Band Aid, then Live Aid and now we have Sun City — a superstars’ record that hopes to hurt the South African Government as much as Bob Geldof has helped the Ethiopian starv-

ing. Ironically, the rock stars’ antiapartheid song is targeted at a place where there is no apartheid, and where the victims will be, not white South Africans, but the pov-erty-stricken Batswanan people. ,r We’re stabbing our brothers and sisters in the back,” sings megastar Bruce Springsteen, “I ain’t gonna play Sun City.” By boycotting this mini Las Vegas holiday complex, Springsteen is doing exactly that. For Sun City, three hours by road from Johannesburg, sits in Bophuthatswana and makes millions for this now independent black State. It is a State with a popularly elected Parliament and President, and meticulously drawn-up Constitution that bans all forms of racism.

In Sun City, blacks and whites drink, gamble and sleep together if they want to, just as they do in the rest of what is sometimes affectionately known as “Bop.” Bophuthatswana’s problem is that in the eyes of Springsteen and the rest of the world, it simply does not exist. Even Britain, who

in the final analysis is responsible for creating Bophuthatswana, regards it as part of South Africa, and its people’s bitter protestations to the contrary fall on deaf ears.

Historically, no one has ever listened to the Botswanans — a people who have tended to shun violence and provide a refuge for the persecuted instead. When the Zulu king, Shaka, and other warrior chiefs scourged their way through southern Africa, the fleeing refugees usually ended up in Batswana lands. And today Bophuthatswana still has a serious influx problem. With the British and the Boers joining the aggressive tribes of southern Africa in the nineteenth century, the Batswanans didn’t stand a chance. Some 100 years ago Britain decided to turn Batswana's northern lands into a Protectorate — now the independent nation of Botswana. The southern half, in spite of vehement opposition from all the tribal chiefs who called desperately on the “Great Queen” to intervene, was incorporated into the Britishruled Cape Colony. As the decades rolled by, this piece of Batswanan territory became part of South Africa, then a “homeland” and finally, in 1977, independent Bophuthatswana.

It was too late for the Bophuthatswanans where world opinion was concerned. For, internationally, Bophuthatswana was decreed a devious creation of South Africa, part of the apartheid system, a puppet manipulated and subsidised by Pretoria.

“We were always here, we exist in our own right as a nation. No one created us,” protests Solomon Rathebe, Minister of Manpower. “Trying to survive in a hostile world,” as Leslie Young, Bophuthatswana’s British-born Minister of Finance, puts it, is a way of life here. Hung with the tags of “apartheid” and “homeland,” the Bophuthatswanans have been forced to creep around the world. When their Government officials travel to Britain they must sign documents saying they won’t embarrass the British Government. A talking tour in the United States brought furious American accusations that the officials were working in the country without labour permits. President Lucas Mangope, a much-revered tribal chief * and former schoolmaster, cannot understand why the Commonwealth won’t even consider his country for membership. “When South Africa broke away from the Commonwealth in 1961, of course the blacks were not consulted. We want to belong and believe we could lay claim to membership,” he says. On top of everything else, the Bophuthatswanans have to watch

their step with South Africa. At present their country consists of seven separate pieces surrounded by South African territory. They are desperately seeking to consolidate the six northern chunks of land by incorporating the South African corridors in between — consisting mostly of farms — but the negotiations are slow. Like Swaziland, Lesotho and Botswana, Bophuthatswana is part of a customs union with South Africa and is also part of the rand monetary area. Thus although it receives only 4 per cent of its budget as a subsidy from South Africa, its finances are deeply entwined with those of its powerful neighbour.

Bophuthatswana cannot really afford to anger Pretoria, although* it has already caused some irritation in the south with its television service.

Bop TV, which is run by an American and his British deputy, Robin Welch of Bristol, proved so successful that South Africans were scrambling to put up Bop aerials. The values of houses capable of receiving Bop TV immediately rose.

The political implications of a popular black TV station free from Pretoria’s censors unnerved the South African authorities, and advertising revenue on their own channels slumped. Bop TV was very quickly blocked from most reception areas in South Africa, but it’s still a story of which the

Bophuthatswanans are gleefully proud. In spite of being shunned by almost everyone in the outside world, the Bophuthatswanans say they are not prepared to be pushed around any longer. \ ’ “We will never forgo our independence,” says the President. And, whatever happens in southern Africa, an independently-governed Bophuthatswana certainly has the look of being firmly rooted and set to stay. '■* Small planes can zip from Johannesburg’s Jan Sifiuts, airport to Mmabatho, the capital, in about an hour. There, like something in a science fiction film, a small ultrar modern city is mushrooming on the dry, treeless grassland.. A few miles away lies the peaceful, tree-lined town of Mafikeng — once Mafeking of : seige fame. In 1980, the town was incorporated into Bophuthatswana in a major political coup. The switch to black rule provoked about a third of the town’s white population into moving, but about half that number has now returned.

Seen as a pariah nation, Bophuthatswana gets little aid. What it needs it must pay for, and white expertise comes expensive; but the Bophuthatswanan Government would delight Mrs Thatcher, whom they fervently admire. Apart from being gung-ho capitalists, the Government seem proud of having had to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. “I don’t really believe in aid as such,” says President Mangope. "My feeling is that it kills initiative.” \

It’s not a feeling shared by the other independent homelands in South Africa, whose policies are generally to let Pretoria pay for everything; but then Bophuthatswana is also lucky in that it is an economically viable territory.

It produces 30 per cent of the world’s platinum, and mines chromium, vanadium, asbestos and manganese. It has also become self-sufficient in maize, the staple food, in spite of the long drought. Sun City, the main source of tourist income, pays the Government more than half of its profits, providing a substantial piece of the one billion rand a year budget. In an effort to enhance national income, the Government also has managed to attract a group of dedicated expatriate professionals who are as proud of the place as their employers. “Why should we care if no-one recognises us?” said, one young American. “It took the United States 27 years to be recognised and Jesus Christ a lot longer.”