Chickens and Eggs in Ciskei

By Pico Iyer

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."

But Ciskei has never enjoyed much in the way of public order. When the South African government proposed in 1980 that the area be given independence, a seven-member international commission formed at Chief Minister Sebe's instigation strongly argued that the orphan state would not be able to support itself. But Sebe, a onetime lay preacher, lobbied successfully for a referendum on the question. With freelance vigilante squads intimidating voters, he produced a 99% vote in favor of independence. The United Nations Security Council dismissed the result as "totally invalid."

Undeterred, the lantern-jawed, bespectacled Sebe set to work. He had a brass statue of himself erected in Bisho. He assembled a fleet of expensive cars and bought a $2.4 million Israeli-built Westwing jet, which he had to keep across the border in South Africa because Ciskei has no runway long enough to accommodate it. After naming himself President for Life last year, he had himself awarded the Ciskei Order of the Indwe (a blue crane that serves as the national bird) and hailed as a man "graced with genius ... whose glance penetrates and sees reality." Sebe installed his brother Charles as security chief and his brother Namba as Minister of Transport. Last July the President abruptly imprisoned both brothers and four of their sons on suspicion of plotting a coup.

Sebe has also hatched a rash ot schemes to provide his land with all the amenities of a full-fledged state. Last month he launched a study into the creation of an $80 million port and ordered that construction begin immediately on a $20 million airport big enough to house Boeing 747s. No matter that the South African city of East London, 25 miles away, already has a large harbor and an international airport. An additional $4 million is going to a private Israeli company to train 18 Ciskei pilots, who are to serve as the nucleus of the homeland's air force.

Israel, in fact, has been one of Ciskei's firmest financial friends. That nation's Gur Corp. is constructing a $13 million hospital in the homeland, while 13 other Israeli industrialists have applied for permission to join countrymen like former Finance Minister Yoram Aridor in running factories in Ciskei. Says a South African industrialist: "As long as Sebe survives--and with his South African connections, it seems a guarantee-- business is prepared to bend the rules." South Africa gave Ciskei $300 million at its christening for road construction, telecommunications and other projects, and has promised $250 million more during the fiscal year ending in February of 1985. With the help of those funds, Sebe hopes to turn Bisho into a showplace capital with a population of 100,000 by the year 2000. At present the capital's 4,550 inhabitants are outnumbered by goats.

But Sebe and his unrecognized country are not about to relinquish their pie-in-the-Ciskei optimism. Next to the newly completed Supreme Court building, where the President's brother was standing trial last week, a dirt road runs into a vacant field. Above the road a signboard hopefully announces EMBASSIES. --By Pico Iyer. Reported by Marsh Clark/ Johannesburg and Peter Hawthorne /Bisho

With reporting by Marsh Clark, Peter Hawthorne