The nation is characterized as the most prosperous and powerful among all the other ethnic homelands, followed closely by the Transkei. The Bophuthatswana Defense Force (BDF) has a comparatively large military of 8,000 active personnel and 3,000 further reserves. The BDF and much of Bophuthatswana's civil service is heavily subsidized by the South African government, although this expense has been winding down in effort to make the nation more politically independent, and by extension, further legitimize Separate Development. The former regime of Lucas Mangope, who governed Bophuthatswana from its creation in 1972, was ousted in the 1994 coup d'etat. This ran parallel to internal strife in South Africa, where moderate elements of the then-ruling National Party were driving South Africa tow