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Literally: The Ghetto, the Worst of Urban Decay, the hardest of the hard hood. A bantustan (also known as black African homeland or simply homeland) was a territory set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as part of the policy of apartheid. Ten bantustans were established in South Africa, and ten in neighbouring South-West Africa (then under South African [administration]), for the purpose of concentrating the members of designated ethnic groups, thus making each of those territories ethnically homogeneous as the basis for creating "autonomous" [nation states] for South Africa's different black ethnic groups.

The term was first used in the late 1940s, and was coined from 'Bantu' (meaning 'people' in some of the Bantu languages) and '-stan' (a suffix meaning 'land of' in Persian). It was regarded as a disparaging term by some critics of the apartheid-era government's 'homelands' (from Afrikaans tuisland). The word 'bantustan', today, is often used in a pejorative sense when describing a country or region that lacks any real [legitimacy] or power, consists of several unconnected enclaves, and/or emerges from national or [international] gerrymandering.

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