Anglo-Zulus: There's only two things we hate in this world. - People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.
The Anglo-Saxon Social Model
- Thread starter Rattigan
- Start date
Indeed, but a net exporter of gold, diamonds and platinum so France and China are probably being well paid for their support. Much severer demographic pressure on the white minority than OTL though where it must have been between 33 and 40% Anglo.
I suppose that it's being kept afloat (barely, just not to collapse) by France and China who buy South African raw materials at firesale prices, being the sole major buyers.
BTW, speaking of China, was it eventually granted a permanent seat at the UNSC or it's just a slip?
No one trying to interdict shipping? France and China's naval capacity should be pitiful compared to the likes of the Commonwealth and US.
Sorry, should have mentioned this: Brazil and China were added as permanent members in 1971 as part of an agreement over the reappointment of Gabriel Valdes as General Secretary. Brazil, with its *complicated* racial history was also a qualified ally of South Africa, although nothing like to the extent France and China were.
The Anglo population had been encouraged by the National Party to emigrate since the 1940s so it was a bit lower than that. Many Anglos will have left the country voluntarily, often to East Africa or Rhodesia.
Yeah, it's not going well from a macroeconomic POV. If you're an Afrikaner it's probably still pretty good but that's kind of tenuous by this point.
This would probably be seen as an act of war. Whatever the disparity between the respective navies, no one expects France and China to fold in a few days. The sanctions in place are most probably against the businesses trading with SA, not the states, so expect a whole lot of stuff moving through offshore companies chartered in some microstates.
Yeah fair, without an international mandate with the deadlocked UN, you can't really enforce a blockade.
Still, the whole commonwealth deciding not to trade with you is probably going to hurt.
Another thought: is there emigration? I could see Anglos trying to get back to the commonwealth, and the commonwealth welcoming that.
Give it more time to rot, and even the life of a common Afrikaner will be pretty miserable, too. Something tells me that the Nationalist Party leadership is more ruthless TTL than it was OTL, they'd rather go full totalitarian than seek some new ways to buy the Afrikaner votes or (gasp) play along with the international community in order to get the sanctions lifted.
Or they could squeeze the black people even harder to fund handouts to their base. I could see them going full forced labour camps.
Can the Commonwealth do anything though? With it being removed, it is now a matter for the UN. The most the Commonwealth can do is offer troops IF the UN decides to do something.
Now that would be interesting, would it be Commonwealth troops under UN command, or member countries, individually under a greater Commonwealth command, then under UN command?
Now that would be interesting, would it be Commonwealth troops under UN command, or member countries, individually under a greater Commonwealth command, then under UN command?
Last edited:
Why not both? A right-wing regime that has taken Nineteen Eighty-Four and turned it into a user manual, with the Black South Africans treated like the proles (or the natives of the disputed lands), and the Afrikaners, like the Outer Party.
I imagine that the reason we're seeing this repression of the Anglo population is because of the different relationship with the Commonwealth, right? Here, the Commonwealth is still a great power that sits right on their doorstep, and South Africa's secession from it was far more rancorous. My guess is that the Afrikaners see the Anglo South Africans as a potential fifth column, ready to put South Africa back under the British yoke.
And I'm willing to bet that a lot of the newly-disenfranchised Anglos were middle-class and educated (at least to a primary school level) before the repressions began. Something tells me that's not gonna end well for Pretoria, once those Anglos start opening "free schools" among the Zulus they're forging a political alliance with, to say nothing of how Anglo exiles will shape international opinion.
On a different note, the sight of South Africa oppressing not only non-whites, but even "impure" whites will likely have repercussions on the rest of Africa. Alliances between native Africans and the European powers, the Commonwealth in particular, will likely be warmer now that white Europeans in general aren't tarred with the brush of neo-colonialism, with some likely even seeing a cozy relationship with London as a check against neo-colonialist attitudes; after all, look what happened in South Africa when they left the Commonwealth. OTOH, I doubt that supporting South Africa is doing France any favors when it comes to holding the French Union together. In the short term, they have an ally, but in the long term, anti-French rebels have propaganda.
And I'm willing to bet that a lot of the newly-disenfranchised Anglos were middle-class and educated (at least to a primary school level) before the repressions began. Something tells me that's not gonna end well for Pretoria, once those Anglos start opening "free schools" among the Zulus they're forging a political alliance with, to say nothing of how Anglo exiles will shape international opinion.
On a different note, the sight of South Africa oppressing not only non-whites, but even "impure" whites will likely have repercussions on the rest of Africa. Alliances between native Africans and the European powers, the Commonwealth in particular, will likely be warmer now that white Europeans in general aren't tarred with the brush of neo-colonialism, with some likely even seeing a cozy relationship with London as a check against neo-colonialist attitudes; after all, look what happened in South Africa when they left the Commonwealth. OTOH, I doubt that supporting South Africa is doing France any favors when it comes to holding the French Union together. In the short term, they have an ally, but in the long term, anti-French rebels have propaganda.
I'd not thought about this but it seems like a pretty good analogy to me.
I think that's the right way of thinking about it. The analogy I was thinking of was how the Ulster Protestants thought about the Catholics in Northern Ireland OTL: disloyal and needing to be kept in their place. The leadership of the National Party don't exactly go to sleep worrying about the threat of a widespread Anglo uprising (and don't totally bar them from office - Clive Derby-Lewis is an MP - if they're ideologically sound) like they do with blacks but they don't trust them and feel they need to keep them in their place.
This is exactly the case as regards African attitudes towards the Commonwealth, at least in the south of the continent. Botswana, Katanga and Mozambique, in particular, are all friendly with the Commonwealth (as a former member of the Empire, Botswana has a particularly close relationship with the country hosting Commonwealth military bases and an intelligence-sharing relationship with the Five Eyes Agency). As for the relationship between the countries of the French Union, most of the African members are a mess of plutocratic and autocratic regimes not all that different from OTL, so it's not like them providing aid to the Afrikaners is a sign of hypocrisy. Afro-French relations are going to get interesting in about a decade or so...
Just once, I'd like one TL where the smart imperialists aren't the British
French colonial policy in Africa was always going to be an issue. They waited way too long before trying to imitate the commonwealth here.
Not great, I'd imagine. But, to my knowledge, there's not much they can do about it.
Just once, I'd like one TL where the smart imperialists aren't the British
Sorry about that. Perils of being an English-language forum, I suspect. If it helps, the Dutch were much better TTL basically as a result of adopting the Ethical Policy about 15 years earlier than they did and pursuing it more thoroughly. The Benelux now is a highly successful multi-racial and multi-continental federation.
More seriously, what I've tried to do with both the British and the Dutch is make them live up to their self-professed aims with the colonies. One of the fascinating things about so many British and Dutch colonial officials is that they do genuinely seem to have believed that they were holding these territories in trust for the people and would return them when a sufficient level of 'advancement' had been achieved. (Of course, many were a good deal more cynical than this and where the people who held this view were stationed matters - it seems to have been more common in British African colonies than in India (post the 1857 rebellion), for example.) But then they never undertook the required developmental policies which would have made a reality of these beliefs, which, again, I tend to think are more genuine than some others do. So what happened TTL in places like Sarawak, East Africa, Rhodesia and Papua New Guinea is that the colonial government genuinely believes in its trust relationship and acts on that. The TTL French, on the other hand, don't act materially different.
