Was there a theoretical endgame to Apartheid in South Africa from the perspective of White South Africans?

by mystical-me
SammyGreen

Kind of. The establishments of homelands/Bantustans were implemented in the mid twentieth century, and the "endgame" was to eventually push Blacks out of what was considered as White South Africa. The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 (a postlude of the Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959), allowed Blacks living throughout South Africa to become legal citizens in the homeland designated for their particular ethnic group (the same act which incidentally desinated all Blacks as homeland citizens regardless if they lived in "White" South Africa or otherwise). Bantustans were self governed but they did not enjoy independent rights, however in the long term they were still expected to become self sufficient. It is also worth mentioning that many Blacks (over 3 million) were forcibly relocated to Bantustans from the 1960s-1980s.

So the idea was that, after a while, White South Africa and Black populations would be completely segregated. In reality, homeland economies were not at all developed (e.g. agriculture was poor due to overgrazing and soil erosion) so even after the establishment of Bantustans, a lot of Blacks were still dependent on White ownership of businesses that relied on cheap labor (mines, gardening, domestic work i.e. house work, nannying, etc). In essence, Blacks in Bantustans were basically reservoirs for labor.

//WARNING The next paragraph is my own opinion/speculation// As I already established, the long term strategy was to completely segregate Blacks from Whites in the form of Bantustans and White South Africa. However, White South Africa depended heavily on cheap labor from the Black community, and I cannot see how the Nasionale Party government would have been able to completely segregate the White and Black populations due to this reliance. It was very much a "having your cake and eating it too" situation. Especially considering how Bantustans were never granted independent rights to begin with so were still considered part of South Africa.

EDIT It should also be mentioned that even though Bantustans were still part of South Africa, the long term goal was to make them independent and therefore not eligible for voting rights nor citizenship in ZA and that the argument for Bantustans was that it was an "enlightened" ideal in that Bantustans were the "original homes" of said ethnic groups.