Federal potentialities in the South African government's constitutional plans are dis cussed in terms of territorial arrangements regarding the homelands, and the consociation of corporate groups in white South Africa. While the notion of total independence for the homelands is now discredited, their underdeveloped condition makes any confederal or federal scheme highly problematic unless the regions are to be redrawn to incorporate metropolitian areas, rendering them multiracial. In the white Republic, coloureds and Indians are being brought into a consociational frame, albeit one which is controversial and seriously flawed. Urban Africans still have no adequately defined place in these plans. Despite such manifest shortcomings there are constitutional potentialities that might suit South Africa's plural character better than a unitary state. However, any acceptable scheme would have to be based on self-defined groups, not official racial categories, and must permit a real reallocation of resources. At best, present arrangements are transitional.
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