Lucas Mangope, a leader of one of South Africa’s tribal homelands who resisted the end of apartheid, died on Thursday at the age of 94.
Mangope was president from 1977 to 1994 of Bophuthatswana, one of South Africa’s “self-governing” homelands, or bantustans – fragmented islands of rural poverty where most black South Africans were literally confined under white rule.
During the often-tense negotiations that paved the way to majority rule in 1994, Mangope maintained that Bophuthatswana would remain independent. He was ousted in a coup weeks before the elections that brought Nelson Mandela to power. What a ripe age to die!
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