The Making of the Lebowa Civil Service: Class Formation and Bantustan Administration

Monday, 6 April, 2020 - 16:00

Presented by : 

Laura
Phillips

This seminar will be held on-line as an experimental Zoom seminar :  register here.

As the apartheid state’s Bantustan policy developed, ten ethnically defined pseudo-states were established across rural South Africa. In keeping with the policy to present these ‘states’ as legitimate expressions of African self-governance, control was decentralised from Pretoria to the ten new rural capitals and local administrations began to grow. As local departments of education, health and public works were established, a civil service urgently was needed to replace the white administrators who had previously governed the territory. Using the Northern Sotho Bantustan, Lebowa, as a case study, this paper examines how Bantustan state employment shaped and stratified society. Though not all state jobs were created equal, those who could secure a regular salary, pension benefits and, importantly, a housing subsidy were in a far better position than most of the Lebowa population who lived in dire poverty or relied on – increasingly diminishing - migrant remittances. In an otherwise depressed economy, government employment made a radical difference to households in Lebowa, accelerating a process of stratification with important implications for the regional political economy.

General seminar arrangements

  • The WISH seminar is hosted on-line every Monday afternoon at 16:00 - 17:00 SA during the teaching semester.
  • A printable version of the seminar schedule for the current year is available here.
  • For the details of the Zoom meetings, please sign up for email notices at https://wiser.wits.ac.za/mail.
  • Participants must read the paper prior to the seminar, which is typically available by the Friday preceding the seminar.
  • The WISH seminar archive is available here