Chickens and Eggs in Ciskei

A dirt-poor, despotically ruled homeland pursues lavish plans

The first time the blue (for freedom) and white (for peace) flag was hoisted in public, the flagpole snapped in two. Ciskei may not be paradise, but it is undoubtedly persistent. When the black "homeland" threw itself a raucous second-birthday party, the flagpole stood firm. As motorcycle teams, tribal dancers and drum majorettes performed in the local stadium, President Lennox Leslie Wongoma Sebe, 57, Homburg-hatted and morning-suited, cruised through the streets of Bisho, his capital city, in a black Cadillac. Then, guarded by a gang of security men in ill-fitting suits and sunglasses, Sebe led a flag-waving crowd through a spirited rendition of Lord Bless Africa, the national anthem. "The golden egg of development has been laid," Sebe is fond of saying. "It is now up to Ciskei and its people to see that the chicken of prosperity is raised with loving care."

To many outsiders, a more suitable bird would be the ostrich. Ciskei (pop. 2 million), carved out of unwanted land on South Africa's southeastern coast, is the most ambitious of the four resettlement areas that South Africa has created as "national states" and used as a dumping ground for 6 million blacks. Like the others (Bophuthatswana, Transkei and Venda), Ciskei is recognized as a state only by South Africa. The rest of the world regards it as just another offshoot of South Africa's 25-year-old policy of whittling away its non-white majority (80% of the country's 30 million people) by forcing black residents to become citizens of the underdeveloped and highly impoverished homelands.

Yet Sebe has seized upon the dubious gift with ebullience. Although unemployment in Ciskei has been running at 50%, its leader remains recklessly spendthrift. Just two weeks ago he announced a lavish scheme to furnish his dirt-poor homeland with an international airport, a harbor and an air force. Such tragicomic aspirations and the tyrannical rule that enforces them have made Sebe's fief something of an embarrassment even to its stepmother. Said the moderate Johannesburg Star: "Ciskei has become a byword for all the worst excesses of banana republics."

Over the past year, at least 90 citizens lave been killed by police and armed vigilantes; others have simply disappeared. The jails in Mdantsane, Ciskei's largest settlement (pop. 250,000), are often woefully overcrowded. During one state crackdown, police were reduced to holding 80 inmates inside a small room, beneath the stands of the central stadium, without food, water or toilets. Many detainees have also, it is said, been tortured or raped. Late last year the U.S. State Department warned Americans not to visit Ciskei because "public order appears to have broken down."