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HOMELAND A THROWBACK TO THE OLD S. AFRICA

When apartheid’s planners sat down to figure out ways of keeping blacks away from whites, they dreamed up a fiction known as the Republic of Bophuthatswana and gave it a toy-town capital, Mmbatho.

While thousands of blacks from the surrounding areas of South Africa were being herded forcibly into this so-called “independent” black homeland, the authorities spent hundreds of millions of dollars erecting the trappings of nationhood.

They built a 60,000-seat international sports stadium that is never used and an international airport where international flights have never landed.

They added a gleaming convention center where conventions are never held and an array of fancy government buildings to house the bureaucrats hired to “run” the supposedly independent country-using money donated by Pretoria and senior advisers on temporary transfer from the white South African government.

“It’s a fairyland. It’s Alice in Wonderland,” said Colin Campion, a former Bophuthatswana official. “But it has a grim side to it, unfortunately.”

Now that democracy beckons, and Bophuthatswana’s founders are in the process of negotiating apartheid away, it is far from certain whether the monster they created is going to acquiesce quietly in its own destruction.

“We are a sovereign independent state and we’re going to keep our independence as long as we possibly can,” insisted Gen. Jack Turner, a former South African army general who now heads Bophuthatswana’s army.

The rest of the country is preparing for democratic elections, but here the old South Africa of banned political activity and detention without trial is alive and thriving.

The African National Congress, which is convinced it has the support of a majority of Bophuthatswana residents, has been trying in vain to campaign here for the elections scheduled to be held throughout South Africa in April.

But senior Bophuthatswana officials say they have no intention of participating in the elections. Given that Bophuthatswana is an independent country, they argue, why should it call elections just because South Africa is holding them?

“We don’t need to join in. It will be a case of watching what happens in a neighboring country,” said Martin Van den Berg, Bophuthatswana’s minister of finance, who is also a South African.

Efforts by the ANC to establish a foothold are dealt with firmly. A law preventing political gatherings of two or more people is used routinely to round up government opponents. The mayor of Mmbatho, Calvin Suping, was arrested for possession of ANC voter education pamphlets, which were judged to be “subversive documents.”

Rallies and marches are not permitted. “This government has the police force and the army and it is prepared to use them,” warned Van den Berg.

Other political parties also are not allowed to campaign, but the ANC is the only group with an obvious support base and therefore an interest in making sure South Africa’s reforms are extended to Bophuthatswana.

“I’m worried about this place,” said Tshepiso Ramphele, a local ANC activist. “I’m worried that even if change comes to South Africa, this place will not change. It’s a forgotten place.”

No one seriously believes Bophuthatswana could go it alone for long. Bophuthatswana officially admits to receiving 22 percent of its budget directly from the South African government.

But a recent study suggested that Bophuthatswana depends on South Africa for 60 percent of its income, including loans and other transfers.

Bophuthatswana does not even comprise a single territory, but a loose collection of seven small blobs of land scattered across “white” South Africa.

There are no border or customs posts. Bophuthatswana does not even produce its own electricity.

If the South African government decided to pull the economic plug, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for Bophuthatswana to hold out. Bophuthatswana’s own officials acknowledge that their country would crumble in a day if South Africa used military force.

But this make-believe nation, whose existence never has been recognized by any other country in the world apart from South Africa, appears to be developing some potentially dangerous delusions of its own.

Defense Minister Rowan Cronje says Bophuthatswana is prepared to survive an economic blockade by Pretoria.

“We’ll have to tighten our belts,” he said.

Unlike the three other homelands created in the name of apartheid, all of which are wholly dependent on South Africa, Bophuthatswana does have resources of its own, he pointed out. These include chromium and platinum mines as well as Sun City, a Las Vegas-style leisure complex.

More crucially, Bophuthatswana’s President Lucas Mangope, who has ruled the country since “independence” in 1977, has formed an alliance with white right-wing farmers in the areas surrounding his territory.

Bophuthatswana also has aligned itself with the right wing in the negotiations on the future of South Africa. Along with the white Conservative Party and Inkatha Freedom Party leader Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Bophuthatswana is opposing next year’s elections unless it receives guarantees of continued regional autonomy.

If a new government tries to force Bophuthatswana to rejoin South Africa, Bophuthatswana would call on its allies to defend it.

“It would be the beginning of civil war in South Africa,” warned Cronje, a South African who is Mangope’s closest aide and was formerly chief adviser to the white government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).