First off, the mandatory disclaimer: I am vehemently opposed to apartheid in all its forms.
What I do not understand is why, as the international community spoke out against apartheid, no one proposed redrawing the national borders of South Africa. I would imagine right-wing Afrikaaners, frightened of their future falling into indigenous African hands, would want to withdraw to a Afrikaaner-majority state and simply "cut their losses" by giving away majority-black areas. I would also imagine that indigenous Africans would agree to ditch majority-white areas to avoid sharing a state and government with their oppressors.
Yet (to my admittedly limited knowledge) all activists and politicians at the time seemed to take South Africa's current borders as a given, and insist on either a continued apartheid state or a new rainbow nation.
Is there any particular reason why this was the case?
Thanks in advance
Apartheid's advocates went nine better and envisaged an eleven-state "solution".
Partition was the ultimate goal of "grand apartheid" (the term indeed means "separation") as it developed from the 1950s, with the black majority (73% of the population) to be consigned politically to ten "tribal homelands" or "bantustans" (initially covering 13% of the country, later slightly more, and excluding the most productive areas).
Not surprisingly, Africans found this an unappealing proposition. The best farmland, the mineral resources and the wealthiest cities were to remain in white hands. Nor did most want any kind of division, the ANC insisting throughout that the country was one, to be shared by its inhabitants.
Any partition scheme was doomed to founder over the key resources, white-controlled but exploited with largely African labour. And ultimately apartheid's opponents - black, brown and white - meant what they said: they just didn't want any such division.
This was exactly the rationale behind the Bantustans or homelands - the only difference is that there wound up being a lot more than two states.
Under this plan, every ethnicity had its own homeland, so that, in essence, even if you'd been born in Johannesburg, if you spoke Zulu at home, you'd be legally a citizen of KwaZulu (which had a really crazy map, by the way), and would be considered a resident alien... and would have to carry around papers granting you permission to travel in Johannesburg.
It was kind of a big deal - an extension of the same policies that led to the Pass Laws protests and the Sharpeville Massacre. The "passes" were basically internal passports.
Ultimately, the homelands were meant to be self-governing, though of course entirely economically dependent on South Africa.
Note: KwaZulu never became fully independent, but Ciskei, Transkei, Venda and Bophutatswana did - legally, at least. Bophutatswana was where "Sun City" was located - the casino & resort complex that anti-apartheid musicians declared they "ain't gonna play." Gambling was illegal in South Africa, but fine across the border.
Also I'm not sure "giving away majority-black areas" would even be possible, really - nearly all areas were "majority-black." The way the economics of the country had developed, there'd be neighborhoods side by side, just about, with relatively prosperous white home and business owners in one and an awful lot of employees and potential employees in the other.
That's basically what a township was - a settlement next to a city where Africans were allowed to live to be able to get to work.
Reading about the Group Areas Act might help illuminate the structure of apartheid a little better... the "apartness" was geographical from the beginning.
