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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The 'Dogs of the Boers': The Rise and Fall of Mangope in Bophuthatswana |
Authors: | Lawrence, Michael Manson, Andrew |
Year: | 1994 |
Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies |
Volume: | 20 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 447-461 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Bophuthatswana |
Subjects: | politicians Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/2636938 |
Abstract: | Between 3 and 12 May 1994, South Africa witnessed the fall of Lucas Mangope's regime in the homeland of Bophuthatswana. A first attempt to oust him, in 1988, failed partly because the South African Defence Force (SADF) intervened. By 1994, the National Party had decided not to prop up Mangope but to oversee his departure from the political arena. This article traces the rise and fall of Mangope. The authors suggest that Mangope and his close allies redefined the ideological basis of the homeland several times in the period since the 1950s. Five phases are discernible in this process: the years of Bantustan formation in the 1950s and 1960s; the flirtation with 'liberal democracy' from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s; the call for Pan-Tswanaism in the late 1980s; the intense assertion of 'go it alone' nationalism, prompted by the dissolution of the USSR; and the final flirtation with regionalism and ethnic alliances, manifest in the Southern Africa Tswana Forum (Satswa) option in 1991, and, subsequently, in the formation of the Concerned South Africans Group (Cosag). The authors conclude that it was Mangope's flirtation with right-wing politics that made him lose control of the process he was engaged in. Notes, ref. |