Nations and Homeland Desires         South Africa, a state of  many nations, speaks a variety of  languages.  The 1996 Constitution's Chapter 1, titled Founding Provisions, list eleven official languages; the following are listed: Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga (Constitution 1996).
   The major groups or tribes are the Zulus, the Xhosa, the Tsonga, the Venda, the Sotho tribes, the Afrikaners, and the English-speaking whites.  Besides these people, there are the Coloureds who speak Afrikaans, and Indians who ancestors came as servants from British India to work on the sugar  plantations in Natal (Ethnologue: South Africa 1996).
    Some of the nations desire a more automonous relationship with the new South African government.  These include the Afrikaner and Zulu tribes.  The Afrikaners believe they have a right to self-determination according to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Rights and are concern with their rights as a free people (Universal Declaration of Human Rights). This includes the right to a homeland for their people.
    The Zulus and their party, the IFP want to keep the traditions of the Zulus alive, control the land of the Zulu people, and have much autonomy within a Federal South Africa (Buthelezi 1998).
    On February 16, 1994, Mandela gave the following assurances to the Afrikaner and Zulu people "Six good faith concessions, [which consisted of a] constitutional provision on the notion of an Afrikaner homeland," a two-ballot voting system (national and provincial), "stipulations on financial self-management, provisions  allowing each province to structure its own system of governance, guarantees thaat provincial powers would not be substantially reduced in the future and permission to change the name of Natal province tto KwaZulu/Natal (Rothchild 1997:  208)."
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