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This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

1971. Bantu Homelands Constitution Act No 21

Dugard (1978: 426) refers to this as the HOMELANDS CONSTITUTION ACT, Barber & Barratt (1990: 109) refer to it as the BLACK STATES CONSTITUTIONAL ACT, Dyzenhaus (1991: 41, note 20) refers to it as the BLACK HOMELANDS CONSTITUTION ACT, while Schutte (1995: 77) refers to a NATIONAL STATES CONSTITUTION ACT 27 of 1970 which is probably the same is this.

This "empowered the government to grant independence to any Homeland" (Thompson 1990: 191). In accordance with this act, independence was eventually granted to Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981.

The granting of independence had been prepared by two earlier acts: first by the establishment of tribal, territorial and regional authorities in accordance with the BANTU AUTHORITIES ACT of 1951, and then by the creation of self.

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