The birth of any new nation is usually accompanied by labor pains and blood-letting. In sharp contrast was the quiet and painless birth last month of a new African country called the Transkei.
In an era when black majority rule is accepted as the wave of the future for all of Africa, the people in the Transkei have it here and now. It is a totally black government.
At the United Nations, however, the Transkei is treated like an illegitimate child. Nobody loves it but its parent. The UN, which boasts of its universality and nonexclusivity, and which has welcomed many illegitimate governments, voted unanimously to bar the Transkei, with the United States abstaining.
If the Transkei had fought its way out of South Africa in a bloody revolution, it probably would have been acceptable to the UN club of peace-loving nations. But because it seceded peaceably by mutual agreement, it is denied membership.
The historical argument in favor of the independence of the Transkei is strong. Three other nations have been carved out of South Africa and have become members of the UN: Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana.
It is claimed that the Transkei’s independence is illusory because it remains militarily and economically dependent on South Africa. Such a relationship is a fact of life all over the world for most small nations that are situated close to large nations.
This paternalism, however, has a welcome side. The Transkei doesn’t have to spend any resources at all. to defend itself against external aggression. That burden is totally assumed by South Africa. Just think how our taxes could be reduced if we didn’t have to spend any money for national defense!
Compared with many African countries, the Transkei’s economic potential is great. It has some of the most fertile agricultural land on the entire Continent.
The biggest handicap of the Transkei is not the policies of South Africa but the social customs that stand in the way of using land as an economic asset to generate capital. By Western standards, the present small-plot subsistence farming should be shifted to a market-crop system. This would make maximum use of the fertile soil and improve the standard of Living.
The tribal chiefs who govern the Transkei, however, have a different scale of values. They distribute the land and assign the cattle as prestige rewards. Cattle are not eaten or sold, but accumulated like a bank account. Observers report that children may be undernourished for lack of milk in a family that owns 30 cows. When the father needs money, he prefers to werk temporarily in the mines of South Africa, rather than part with his land or cattle.
By Western standards, what the Transkei needs most is technical assistance to adopt twentieth century agriculture and harvest the riches of the soil. But do others have the right to force or induce a people to adopt our value system with its heavy emphasis on what we call a higher standard of material comforts, at the cost of upsetting the social structure of a whole nation?
By taking the route of independence, the Transkei has chosen to work out its own future. This new nation deserves the chance to seek its own destiny.
