Wednesday/ stamps from Ciskei ✉️

I have expanded my South African stamp collection to include the four Bantustans (homelands) that had issued postage stamps from 1976 to 1994. Technically these are not stamps from South Africa.
Although these stamps were denominated in South African Rand, they were not valid for mail that was sent from outside the homelands.

Below is a sampler of pages from my collection for Ciskei.

First, a little history. This is what South Africa looked like before the first democratic election of 1994. The four main provinces were established in 1910, and the Bantustans (homelands) were established by the South African apartheid government.
After the 1994 election, the Bantustans ceased to exist, and were reincorporated into South Africa.
Nine new provinces were established: Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, North West, and Western Cape.

[More from Wikipedia: Bantustan]- 
A Bantustan (also known as a Bantu homeland, a black homeland, a black state or simply known as a homeland) was a territory that the National Party administration of the Union of South Africa (1910–1961) and later the Republic of South Africa (1961–1994) set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as a part of its policy of apartheid.
The government of South Africa declared that four of the South African Bantustans were independent—Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (the so-called “TBVC States”), but this declaration was never recognized by anti-apartheid forces in South Africa or by any international government. Other Bantustans (like KwaZulu, Lebowa, and QwaQwa) were assigned “autonomy” but never granted “independence”.

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