Around about midwinter in 1978, Kaiser Matanzima, the prime minister of an “independent” Transkei, called my father to his office in what was then Umtata. My dad was a building contractor in the town and had occasional cause to speak to Matanzima.
The prime minister had heard that my parents were planning to fly to London, where my sister and her husband and five children were struggling to settle, having fled South Africa a few months earlier. He had an extraordinary request. He produced a map which he said had been drawn on the orders of Cecil John Rhodes when he was prime minister of the Cape Colony in the 1890s.
No country had yet recognised any of the Bantustans, but the map purported to show that, along with Swaziland and Basutoland, Rhodes had also drawn Natal and Transkei in as separate future colonies. Matanzima asked my dad if he could get the map to the UK Foreign Office and try to begin a discussion about British recognition of Transkei as a genuinely independent state. Transkei, like the others on the map, would be keen to become a member of the Commonwealth.
A version of Rhodes’s mystery map is coming to a province near you sooner rather than later — and it’s something to look forward to
He had my mom and dad quickly issued (weirdly) with passports. My dad, no longer alive, remembered going, soon after his arrival, to the Foreign Office with his son-in-law, who had good connections there. He met a senior but highly sceptical official who said he would get back to him, and who kept the map. That was the last my dad saw of it, and he didn’t get another meeting.
I don’t know if a copy exists, but I was reading some of my father’s notes recently and they set me thinking about how ideas have long lives. As the ANC increasingly quickly fragments and fails, is a version of Rhodes’s federation of South African colonies — provinces or perhaps even large metros in the modern day — perhaps a part of our future?
While there is a tiny movement for independence in the Western Cape, I’ve always thought the most likely pressure for succession, or at least greater devolution of power, would come from today’s KwaZulu-Natal — from deep inside the ANC itself.
As the central government of a unitary state, the ANC has made an absolute mess of the country it inherited, and if it does as badly in the local government elections — late next year or early in 2027 — as the polls suggest, it faces the prospect of losing big metros like Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay which, with Cape Town already under DA control, would leave a centre isolated and besieged.
Devolution can happen by design or default. Cape Town had largely to defend itself against a crippling water shortage in 2018, and the failure of bulk water supplies controlled by the central government (it’s happening now in Johannesburg despite abundant rain). The Western Cape has also invested its own resources and time in supplanting Eskom’s supply of electricity to Cape Town and surrounds. A decision in principle has already been secured to devolve authority over some rail services in the province to the metro.
Now imagine a Durban or its metro, eThekwini, falling to Jacob Zuma’s MK Party next year. It’s not impossible. They missed controlling the province by just one seat last year. They may not be the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but they know their politics. Metros are potentially more powerful than their provinces. They have big budgets, levy local taxes (rates) and can act across a range of issues close to voters. And the political heart that beats loudest in that province is Zulu nationalism.
Durban would quickly begin to act like Cape Town does — to call, in the face of an incompetent centre, for more devolution of political power. Over rail, energy, policing, the incentives they can offer potential investors, and more. And to keep the province on-side, the centre would comply.
People aren’t stupid and poverty takes great skill to survive; the more power is devolved to cities and provinces the more people will find they can make a measurable difference to the quality of their lives by going out to vote.
As centrist control falters we could get to the point where metros and even smaller municipalities begin to compete with each other for investment. They do in China. The Spanish do devolution brilliantly. Its 17 autonomous regions have asymmetrical powers — Catalonia and the Basque Country raise their own taxes while poorer ones need to pass a means test if they want to run their own schools, police or hospitals.
A version of Rhodes’s mystery map may be coming to a city near you sooner rather than later — and it’s something to look forward to.
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