FROM 'NATIONHOOD' TO REGIONALISM TO THE NORTH WEST PROVINCE: 'BOPHUTHATSWANANESS' AND THE BIRTH OF THE 'NEW' SOUTH AFRICA

Although majority rule has been achieved in South Africa, thefinal years of one ‘independent’ bantustan, namelyBophuthatswana, and their aftermath, illustrate the problemsof creating a unified identity. Ironically, in the death throesof apartheid, a Pandora's box of ethnic and regionalist claimswas opened. Although these claims were tied to the maintenanceof privileges gained by a tiny minority created through apartheidpolicy, Bophuthatswana had also been sustained by an ideologywhich, although at times highly contradictory, was also indicativeof the space given to twenty years of bantustan nation-building.This article provides a reinterpretation of these complex territoriesby showing how, in the 1990s, in the wake of fundamental politicalchanges in South Africa, the Bophuthatswana regime reshapedits nation-building discourse into a distinctive regionalistcoalition based upon socio-economic and ethnic criteria. Moreover,unlike previous approaches to the region, it shows how contestedterritorial claims were integral to this regionalist movement.Whilst the Bophuthatswana regime finally imploded and its regionalistcoalition was absorbed into South Africa's North West Province,the legacy of the bantustans for South Africa is replete withambiguity. In the post-apartheid era of transition to the NorthWest Province, some of these fault lines, termed ‘Bophuthatswananess’,are discussed. The continuing influence of their core of ‘Batswanaarbiters’ raises pertinent questions concerning the obstaclesto inclusive nation-building.