Lesotho and Eswatini (then called Swaziland) are two very small countries surrounded almost entirely by South Africa, each ruled by an indigenous African kingdom. Did South Africa envision any of their bantustans to become countries like Lesotho and Swaziland? I know South Africa claimed some of the bantustans were independent countries, although no other country in the world recognized them as sovereign states.
I'm moving, so I just packed away most of my books, but Ill try to answer your question as best as I can!
To answer your question in brief, yes and no. In this case of Lesotho, the state's geographic position meant that it was surrounded by South Africa, and thus very vulnerable to South African strong arming. Moreover, Lesotho's sovereignty was repeatedly violated throughout the Apartheid regime's tenure in power, as SADF soldiers and policemen would regularly cross the border to assassinate suspected members of the ANC; operations which generally devolved into vicious slaughter of innocents. As a result, Lesotho was seen as a model for what a Bantustans' foreign policy would be: pliant. Yet, the South African government, owing to its avowed white supremacist views, never wanted Basotho immigration into SA, even as cheap labour, as they felt that they had more than enough within South Africa. This is because the ultimate goal of the Bantustans was to keep the black populations of South Africa politically fragmented and underdeveloped, and also out of the major cities. The National Party wanted to make the major cities and significant towns white only bastions, with the black labourers commuting in and out everyday. Additionally, the Bantustans were supposed to give the South African regime some good PR, as if the black population no longer lived in SA, there would be no need for any Apartheid policies, as well as skew the demography of South Africa enough that the Afrikaners and White South Africans were no longer such a tiny minority.
In contrast, Eswatini would not have been in any way a model for the South African Bantustans. Although South Africa could pressure Eswatini, and also repeatedly violated its sovereignty in cross border raids, its border with Mozambique afforded it a degree of freedom and flexibility that Lesotho simply lacked, meaning it was not so completely under the thumb of the South African government. Furthermore, the same answer above applies for Eswatini: the goal of the bantustans was to keep black africans out of "white" South Africa.
Hope this answers your question!