1977 — Bophuthatswana's "Independence"

On December 6, 1977, apartheid South Africa declared Bophuthatswana "independent" — a patchwork of seven scattered homelands under Lucas Mangope. It was the second Black "state" so declared, after Transkei, presented to the world as a new nation but born directly out of the apartheid system itself.

No government recognized the new nation. The UN General Assembly denounced the declaration as totally invalid, an outgrowth of apartheid. The experiment lasted until 1994, when democratic South Africa's first all-race elections reabsorbed the territory. Bophuthatswana's story shows how independence can be proclaimed on paper while the world refuses the word — and how the arrangement ended only when South Africa itself became democratic.