AHC: More White South Africans

[Marius]

Another possibility is you can balkanize South Africa and have the successor state be in a more white region.

Well, just have South Africa not become a Union in 1910.

Natal was pretty ambivalent about joining the Union to start, and might not take that much to make the Union a non-starter.

This will totally change the dynamics of the region, especially immigration policy, and it will not be that difficult to let the Cape have a non-black majority. Already the present-day Northern and Western Cape provinces have coloured majorities or pluaralities at least.

 

[El Pip]

If you're talking just relative to the black population one grim possibility is a worse AIDS pandemic.

But how much worse could it get? South Africa already has more people with AIDS than any other country on earth, has one of the worst infection rates and something like 1 in 2 deaths is due to HIV/AIDs.

There isn't even an obvious POD, look at the last three South African Presidents; Mandela denied it existed while in power, Mbeki denied HIV and AIDs were linked for years and Zuma had unprotected sex with a woman he knew had HIV but stated in court he believed showering afterwords would stop him getting the disease. At the time he was head of the national AIDS council. Honestly if you tried writing something that bad that you'd risk being accused of a South Africa-screw.

I suppose you could try for a true Dystopian horror like Swaziland (25% of the population infected, 50% for people in their 20s, life expectancy - 32) but that would probably take some fairly large cultural changes as well as complete political failure.

 

[Julius Vogel]

Remember, there was also a lot of Black migration into South Africa, principally for labour. All the colonies that later became frontline states supplied labour in large quantities from the diamond rush onwards, right through Apartheid etc. Some of whom settled down in South Africa permanently (although perhaps not a lot.

Now I don't see that this is easy to change, as the labour was in high demand from Industry. However, if the front line states/ex colonies became more developed industrially/agriculturally etc, then their willingness to supply labour to South Africa would diminish.

Alternatively, you could look to undermine the SA OTL resistance to migration / labour from China and say India. If somehow this was more acceptable than OTL, there might be less demand for black labour. However then you would exchange one racial problem for another.

Here is an interesting UNCHR report from a few years ago on current Black migration to South Africa

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,GCIM,,ZAF,456d621e2,42ce48124,0.html

 

[Devolved]

Have a swifter British victory in the Boer War and avoid the concentration camps. An estimated 15% of the Boer population died in them.

 

[Theodoric]

Just after the war 1945-1948 South Africa had a net of European immigrants higher than Australia. However, the National government wanted Afrikaners to maintain their status as the largest European group. The only immigrants they really wanted were Dutch immigrants and those never exceeded 5,000 per year.

That's not too hard to fix. If South Africans (6th Division?) were to take the place of some Canadians in the liberation of the Netherlands during WW2 (causing a lot of goodwill), there'd be a lot more people going to South Africa after the war, instead of Canada like OTL. Easily tens of thousands of young Dutch people, not just a few thousand war brides.

 

[Marius]

That's not too hard to fix. If South Africans (6th Division?) were to take the place of some Canadians in the liberation of the Netherlands during WW2 (causing a lot of goodwill), there'd be a lot more people going to South Africa after the war, instead of Canada like OTL. Easily tens of thousands of young Dutch people, not just a few thousand war brides.

Yeah, that's interesting.

And perhaps even more than in OTL, because the Afrikaners may be considered as long lost ethnic brethren.

 

[TheMann]

I think one other thing that could be considered is simply a slower growth rate for the black population, which doesn't change the white population but it does allow the percentage of the total being white to be considerably higher - the percentage of the population being white fell from 19.3% in 1960 to 11.6% in 1996. If you slow the black population growth and/or reduce emigration of whites, you get that 11.6% being a lot higher. Add in the white immigration rates seen above, you can drive the white population to probably 25% by 1960 and, should economic growth keep coming, to perhaps 28-30% by 1970.

How do you do both of these? Economic growth, and growing wages for the black population. What ultimately caused South Africa's economic stagnation (before the sanctions really started biting by the mid-1980s) was the fact that South Africa's unemployment rate (among all races) sank into the single digits by the early 1960s. At that point, you have to raise the wages of all people, and the apartheid government was unwilling to do this. Make them willing to do this and you get major changes to all of the history of the RSA.

 

[altamiro]

How high was the birth rate in the "homelands" during apartheid?

What about an utopian scenario with the black population being modestly well off as well - instead of the crushing poverty in the "homelands" OTL - resulting in dropping birth rate among the black population? I presume that the birth rate among the white population has roughly followed the general postwar Western trends?

Edit: According to Wikipedia, the fertility rate around 1970 was 3,1 for whites and around 6-6,5 for blacks. Meanwhile it is 1,8 for whites and 2,4 overall. Getting birth rate of the black population into closer alignment with that of the whites (and with the same reason) would accomplish the challenge in a quite unspectacular and probably bloodless way.

 

[CanKiwi]

Apparently one of the first actions of the National Party Government in 1948 was to dispose of the fleet of passenger ships the Smuts Goverent had intended to transport immigrants from Europe. The NP didn't like anyone who wasn't an Afrikaaner, this meant they didn't try and attract Europeans the way Canada, Australia and other countries did, so if you can stop them coming to power there'll be more "European South Africans" not just British but probably significant migration of Italians, Poles, Irish and other nationalities. It's never going to be a non black majority with this OP but there could be a significantly higher population of Europeans.

(1) Adjust the electoral system in favour of rural afrikaners (make sure they held on to control despite large scale immigration)

(2) and at the same time, post-WW2, sponsor the immigration of large numbers of refugees from Europe, of whom there were millions floating round at the time, including millions of German refugees from eastern Europe who were being deported. Language wise they would probably find Afrikaans easier to pick up. And South Africa in 1947-48 would look far better than Germany at that time.....

(3) Balkanize the country, again in the immediate post-WW2 years - ie right away while there would be no opposition from ex-colonies worth speaking of. Lesotho and Swaziland were a precedent of sorts, set up KwaZulu in northern Natal without trying to make the borders to wriggly, and do the same thing for the !Xhosa - and make them truely independent, not sham Homelands. Then make all the blacks citizens of whereever it was they came from. Then issue work permits (the way that happened for workers from Mozambique) for the mines or whatever, altho with large scale european refugee influx you could probably use them for labour, albeit at a higher wage. Mandela could then do whatever he liked in the Transkei, he would no longer be South African.

Not sure what you'd do with South-West tho. More white immigrants there?

 

[Wolfpaw]

Can you explain this post?

Does it really need explaining? I'm pretty sure my response post to Norton shed what light was still required.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Maybe if the Afrikaners kept the ships, but staffed them with Reformed missionaries and Afrikaans language teachers?

Not sure how practical that would be. Maybe someone who opposes the scrapping of the ships suggests that as a desperate attempt to split the opposition.

"Get on the ship a papist Pole, get off as a good Afrikaner."

 

[Viriato]

Do you have a source for that?

Just because from my experience, I would be very surprised if there are only 20 000 Portuguese in South Africa.

Do you have a source for that?

Just because from my experience, I would be very surprised if there are only 20 000 Portuguese in South Africa.

That's only the number of Portuguese immigrants admitted from 1974-1976 according to the statistical yearbook of South Africa. There already was a substantial Portuguese community in the country beforehand (mostly from the island of Madeira). The current Portuguese community probably numbers from around 150,000 to 175,000 as many have returned to Portugal in recent years.

According to the Portuguese statistics bureau (INE), emigration from continental Portugal, Madeira and the Azores was as follows:
1950-1959 6,193
1960-1969 25,793
1970-1979 22,547
1980-1989 11,051

 

[TheMann]

Maybe if the Afrikaners kept the ships, but staffed them with Reformed missionaries and Afrikaans language teachers?

Not sure how practical that would be. Maybe someone who opposes the scrapping of the ships suggests that as a desperate attempt to split the opposition.

"Get on the ship a papist Pole, get off as a good Afrikaner."

I rather suspect that would not work, but it might be worth a shot.

The Germans being kicked out of Eastern Europe idea and the Theodoric's idea of the South Africans helping to liberate the Netherlands (they never had the forces in WWII in any theatre to do it on their own) are both good ones. On the latter, I can see South African troops are part of the liberation of the Netherlands alongside the Canadian and British troops who also did the job. If one wants to kick this up a notch, have the South Africans push the Canadians and British into attacking sooner, and have them justify it by pointing out the famine that existed in the Netherlands in the spring of 1945, and have lots of Allied propaganda about how the Afrikaners, descents of the Dutch, were liberating their long-separated cousins. One could do a lot with that. In addition to this, being that Western Europe was a mess in 1945 I can see a very big immigration boom to South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s, and if the NP is unable to stop this (King George VI doesn't visit and Smuts is victorious in 1948, perhaps?) then you'll undoubtedly grow the number of whites in SA.

If the NP was to be farsighted, they could see a big benefit out of this. Even beyond a potential wave of Dutch arrivals to SA, I would wager that Germans arriving in South Africa would be a lot more likely to take up aspects of Afrikaner culture than that of English South Africans. The NP also could be able to see that Europe, as devastated as it was, would be unlikely to be able to hang on to its colonies for economic reasons. All of these factors would be, if done properly, a massive reinforcement of the Afrikaners' hand in terms of their position within South African society and government. MP's idea would probably be more workable once many of these people were on the ground in South Africa, mind you....

 

[Emperor Norton I]

Is there any realistic way for the existing South African native Whites to increase their birth rates? I don't mean something like "Yes, South African Whites can have more babies"; we always run into that thing where an idea is proposed which, if it went into effect, then the wanted result would happen, but I don't think the plausibility and realistic ways of making it come about are dealt with enough. In short, the idea of it can happen, but how can it happen. For example, yes, if the National Party did this and this, then this could happen. But, keeping with that example, was there anyone in it that would have done it? Were there any trends that could have led to it? Was anyone that would or could have done it in a position to ever get the ability to make it occur? Would outside trends allow it? And so on, and so on.

Plausibly could, could the birth rate of South Africa Whites increase and plausibly could policy to help promote it be put in place, or just policy such as economic policy that would help increase White birthrate as a result if not a focus?

 

[Marius]

Is there any realistic way for the existing South African native Whites to increase their birth rates? I don't mean something like "Yes, South African Whites can have more babies"; we always run into that thing where an idea is proposed which, if it went into effect, then the wanted result would happen, but I don't think the plausibility and realistic ways of making it come about are dealt with enough. In short, the idea of it can happen, but how can it happen. For example, yes, if the National Party did this and this, then this could happen. But, keeping with that example, was there anyone in it that would have done it? Were there any trends that could have led to it? Was anyone that would or could have done it in a position to ever get the ability to make it occur? Would outside trends allow it? And so on, and so on.

Plausibly could, could the birth rate of South Africa Whites increase and plausibly could policy to help promote it be put in place, or just policy such as economic policy that would help increase White birthrate as a result if not a focus?

The white birthrate was already pretty high in the 1950s and 1960s and I believe there were government initiatives to try increase it. I think your best shot is getting more immigration.

 

[Marius]

That's only the number of Portuguese immigrants admitted from 1974-1976 according to the statistical yearbook of South Africa. There already was a substantial Portuguese community in the country beforehand (mostly from the island of Madeira). The current Portuguese community probably numbers from around 150,000 to 175,000 as many have returned to Portugal in recent years.

According to the Portuguese statistics bureau (INE), emigration from continental Portugal, Madeira and the Azores was as follows:
1950-1959 6,193
1960-1969 25,793
1970-1979 22,547
1980-1989 11,051

I don't know how many have gone back to Portugal.

Anecdotally most Portuguese that have emigrated have gone to the destinations that are popular with white Saffas in general, Australia, UK and the like.

Although I do know someone who lives in Hong Kong now.

 

[Marius]

Does it really need explaining? I'm pretty sure my response post to Norton shed what light was still required.

So, you are saying that there was a lot of sex across the colour line?