# Ciskei **Ciskei** was one of the "homelands," or Bantustans, that [[Apartheid]] [[South Africa]] created to strip Black South Africans of their citizenship. It was assigned to Xhosa-speaking people, declared "independent" on December 4, 1981, and recognized by no other country. Its residents lost their South African citizenship that day. It was dissolved back into South Africa on April 27, 1994. ## The libertarian Bantustan Under its ruler Lennox Sebe, who had made Ciskei a one-party state, the territory became an experiment in free-market policy. In 1984 Sebe appointed an economic commission headed by the South African libertarian Leon Louw, who drew on [[Hong Kong]], [[Milton Friedman]] and [[Friedrich Hayek]]. The result was an export-processing zone pitched as an "African Hong Kong": no corporate tax, few regulations and very low wages, with South Africa subsidizing factory rents and payrolls. Investors came from Taiwan and Hong Kong, mostly to make textiles with a largely female workforce. Labor organizing was put down by the security forces. Sebe was overthrown in a 1990 coup. In 1992 Ciskei's soldiers fired on a march demanding reunion with South Africa and killed 28 people at Bisho. ## Why it's on the map Ciskei is the hardest case in the history of the zone. It shows free-market reformers building their model inside a territory whose whole purpose was racial exclusion, and treating the absence of democracy as a feature. Historian Quinn Slobodian gives it a chapter of *[[Crack-Up Capitalism]]*, "Libertarian Bantustan." For the South African roots of today's tech right, see [[Fortress Futurism]]. ## See Also - [[Apartheid]] - [[Special Economic Zone]] - [[Muskism]]