AHC: Most Successful Post-Apartheid South Africa Possible

[Marius]

For a post-apartheid SA to be more successful (it is not a failure to be fair, the economy is much bigger than it was in 1994, people are richer, and basic services have been rolled out to millions of people, but that progress has stalled since 2010) a POD earlier than the 1990s is probably needed.

You need the ANC to not do the 'People's War' where it basically destroyed all black opposition in the 1980s and early 1990s, then you don't have the one-party dominance that we've had in SA since the end of apartheid (although this is now rapidly coming to an end).

An ANC without 50% of seats in Parliament will firstly not be able to govern how it has and it will not have the air of invincibility it had for most of the post-apartheid era (this air of invincibility is now also disappearing).

 

[Marius]

I'm not sure you could make that work, honestly, and even if you could, the presence of the likes of the EFF would make a lot of such deals untenable. What might work better is if you have the 1993 agreement that specified a position in government decision making for all parties with more than 5% support be part of the permanent constitution, and have 15% be the threshold for a Vice-President position. This would keep the DA, IFP and NNP in the government after 1996, and the 15% threshold would also mean Helen Zille would be a Vice-President with actual power in Zuma's cabinet. If you force the ANC to share power, if the events of 2006-2008 still happen you have a legitimate possibility of the DA and COPE forcing the ANC to back down from some of its positions.

You needed 20%, not 15% for the DP role.

Also, not sure it would have made that much difference if we kept that clause, while you were entitled to a DP role if you got more than 20%, it doesn't mean that you would have any real power. See the frustration that De Klerk and the other Nats expressed when they were part of the GNU between 1994 and 1996. Their prescence, and that of the IFP, was more for show than anything else.

Also, the DA has never been in national government, and it only formed in 2000. You may be thinking of the DP, whose leader, Tony Leon, turned down a Cabinet post in the 1990s (something history will remember him kindly for I think).

 

[odieluck]

For a post-apartheid SA to be more successful (it is not a failure to be fair, the economy is much bigger than it was in 1994, people are richer, and basic services have been rolled out to millions of people, but that progress has stalled since 2010) a POD earlier than the 1990s is probably needed.

You need the ANC to not do the 'People's War' where it basically destroyed all black opposition in the 1980s and early 1990s, then you don't have the one-party dominance that we've had in SA since the end of apartheid (although this is now rapidly coming to an end).

An ANC without 50% of seats in Parliament will firstly not be able to govern how it has and it will not have the air of invincibility it had for most of the post-apartheid era (this air of invincibility is now also disappearing).

What were the black opposition parties that existed before this?

Also, what other provisions do you think should have been added to the 1996 constitution?

 

[Warthog]

Counterintuitively, there were quite a lot of black people from neighbouring countries who came to South Africa, even during apartheid. SA had a much bigger economy and for all the restrictions and awfulness of apartheid a black person would probably still have a higher wage in SA than in most jobs in SA's neighbours. Grace Mugabe's parents were working in SA when she was born, some sources actually have her having being born in my hometown.

There was also lots of white Zimbo migration to SA, especially post-1980.

It was also very heavily encouraged. There was the Witwatersrand Native Labour Administration which was very active across Southern Africa, had recruiting centres in quite remote corners of many countries. They, and others, would pay a handsome cash bonus to recruited mineworkers, which was traditionally left with the worker's family. My wife's uncle did that in the 60s. He also never came back, WNLA and their like wouldn't repatriate bodies.

WNLA started work long back, even before the Pretoria Maputo railway was built. It entered Zimbabwean lingo as a verb, wenera , which is still used today to mean going to work in a foreign country and sending money home.

 

[Warthog]

the DP role

I'm reminder of Turtledove's view on this.

Kid: Uncle, what's it like being Vice President
Blackford: Imagine a machine, the greatest ever built, very complex, and there's one part at the centre that it can't work without.
Kid: You're that part, Uncle?
Blackford: No, I'm the spare they keep in the shed.

Jokes aside though, in a timeline with an expectation of enforced coalitions, the Deputy President would probably have a much broader role

 

[Marius]

What were the black opposition parties that existed before this?

Also, what other provisions do you think should have been added to the 1996 constitution?

In the first 1994 Parliament the other 'black' parties were the PAC and IFP. But these kind of labels are fairly meaningless, the IFP had quite a few white and Indian supporters and some of its senior officials (eg. Walter Felgate, Peter Miller) were white. Even today it has MPs like Liezl van der Merwe and Narend Singh. The ACDP's leader is black (it's had the same leader since its founding in the early 1990s) so does that mean it's a 'black' party.

There were also other parties such as Azapo, which didn't make it into Parliament.

 

[Warthog]

How about border control? I've read that there's something like 8-15 million undocumented immigrants in South Africa. For a country with an official population of only 58 million that's uh that's a lot.

Immigration is an issue, as with many countries that have larger economies than their neighbours, but the numbers are exaggerated.

Statistics South Africa, the government agency, puts the figure at 4 million in 2022.

AFRICA CHECK: No ActionSA, no evidence that 15 million undocumented immigrants live in South Africa

Africa Check finds that there is still no evidence that there are 15 million undocumented immigrants living in South Africa despite ActionSA continuing to encourage this narrative.

www.dailymaverick.co.za

The 15 million is undocumented people, including South Africans, per a World Bank study.

 

[TheMann]

@Marius I remember that the building I lived in when I was working in SA (in Germiston, for the record) was filled with those who had skills who had come from other parts of the continent. It was quite an experience, I have to say, but the guy who lived in the unit across from me, who was a skilled machinist originally from Tanzania, is somebody I have kept in touch with since then. Great fellow. 🙂 I know a lot of Black Africans went to work in the mines and farms even before apartheid, but when I mention people I meant those who were planning on living there. You're not wrong on that front though.

I don't disagree on the ANC's going after the other black opposition groups being a bad thing for SA in the long run, but I do have one comment to make on that front: If there are multiple black opposition groups, the odds of the apartheid state turning them against one another is basically 100%. (They tried that IOTL.) This would present a real problem for the negotiations to end apartheid.

 

[Jürgen]

I'm not sure about that. One of my university lecturers used to call subjects like philosophy, politics, and economics "the dangerous subjects". He pointed out that repressive regimes were often okay with their people going abroad to study science or engineering or something, but not the humanities. My understanding of his point is that engineering etc may teach you how to do something, but the humanities will teach you why you should or shouldn't do it. These repressive regimes don't want their people to learn that other forms of society are possible or desirable. Perhaps the old South African regime had similar thoughts.

And, as an aside, isn't it interesting how anglosphere education increasingly prioritises the STEM subjects and deprecates humanities, while many governments are suffering legitimacy crises and discontent with current social structures continues to grow..?

The STEM subject gives you value know how you can bring home with you, the humanities are a whole lot of different things, but they’re mostly transferees of culture and ideology, as such a authoritarian regime have more interest in people studying humanities at home, so they can decide what culture and which ideology should be transferred. You also see this in USA with all STEM education being seen as useful no matter what university, while studying the humanities or social sciences in a non-high prestige university very much limits your job opportunities.

 

[Typho]

The STEM subject gives you value know how you can bring home with you, the humanities are a whole lot of different things, but they’re mostly transferees of culture and ideology, as such a authoritarian regime have more interest in people studying humanities at home, so they can decide what culture and which ideology should be transferred. You also see this in USA with all STEM education being seen as useful no matter what university, while studying the humanities or social sciences in a non-high prestige university very much limits your job opportunities.

Humanities have the highest social prestige in the US/western clients since WW2. US influence runs on soft power (humanities), Rock & hip hop, Burgers n Fries, Jeans, short skirts , Hollywood.

The reason STEM is useful, is because it's useful, that is who pilots the jets, runs nuclear power plants and builds the infrastructure.

As for authoritarian regimes, they will want History, English and philosophy directly under their control by being taught in the universities, because they can see what's happening, and use social pressure to conform, expel or even better discourage from applying.

Social pressure/conformity as soft power > arresting/expelling as hard power.

This is how the US defeated Apartheid. Not through better F-18s (STEM), but through rock n roll (humanities).

 

[politicalnomad]

You needed 20%, not 15% for the DP role.

Also, not sure it would have made that much difference if we kept that clause, while you were entitled to a DP role if you got more than 20%, it doesn't mean that you would have any real power. See the frustration that De Klerk and the other Nats expressed when they were part of the GNU between 1994 and 1996. Their prescence, and that of the IFP, was more for show than anything else.

Also, the DA has never been in national government, and it only formed in 2000. You may be thinking of the DP, whose leader, Tony Leon, turned down a Cabinet post in the 1990s (something history will remember him kindly for I think).

How about requiring a 2/3 vote for the President and Deputy President from Parliament? Only in 2004 did the ANC get above that on their own. It won't affect someone like Mandela (or even Ramaphosa), but it might give the ANC pause about putting someone like Zuma forward.

 

[TheMann]

How about requiring a 2/3 vote for the President and Deputy President from Parliament? Only in 2004 did the ANC get above that on their own. It won't affect someone like Mandela (or even Ramaphosa), but it might give the ANC pause about putting someone like Zuma forward.

They would only have to get a small party to agree with their pick to make it happen, so I doubt that would make that much difference. It wouldn't be all that difficult to get the Independent Democrats or Freedom Front Plus (or worse, somebody like the Economic Freedom Fighters....yikes) to back them inexchsnge for some concessions.

And if we go by the OTL numbers in 2019 for Ramaphosa, the only way you get a two-thirds majority for them is if you get either the DA or EFF to go for him, as ANC+other opposition parties would be almost impossible to get 2/3 from.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

South Africa going the swiss confederation type route with a relatively free market like Leon Louw proposed in "South Africa: the Solution" would probably help boost things. I doubt things would anywhere near as rosy as the book proposes but I could see it beating OTL's outcomes by alot.

 

[Dan1988]

South Africa going the swiss confederation type route with a relatively free market like Leon Louw proposed [. . .] would probably help boost things

Problem - much like how "federalism" is a dirty word in Spanish politics because of its association with that country's left-wing, it's an equally dirty word in South Africa because that was how the apartheid regime justified their local government arrangements, in part. Hence alternative euphemisms like "cooperative governance," for example. Not only that, but the National Party (as well as Buthelezi and Inkatha) were more amenable to federalism while the ANC - probably figuring that federalism would be another way to kneecap the government before it took power - felt a centralist unitary state would be more suitable. In reality, much like Spain, South Africa ultimately chose a compromise, although without the "cafe para todos" approach Spain ultimately took - it's significant how Western Cape, alone among South Africa's provinces, has a Constitution while, say, KwaZulu-Natal does not (and hasn't brought it back for discussion). So a more explicitly federalist approach is a non-starter unless it's proposed using completely different terminology that doesn't focus too heavily on language perceived as being pro-apartheid.

 

[TheMann]

South Africa going the swiss confederation type route with a relatively free market like Leon Louw proposed in "South Africa: the Solution" would probably help boost things. I doubt things would anywhere near as rosy as the book proposes but I could see it beating OTL's outcomes by alot.

I read that book in the 90s and immediately thought "Yeah, this has zero chance of ever working." I think even more than way today. One of the Central premises of that book is the dividing of South Africa into cantons that would each have the right to deny citizenship to people if they choose to. That in the context of late-apartheid South Africa would make full-on ethnic cleansing unavoidable and result in a bunch of tiny, impoverished countries as a direct result. And the idea of the central government having no taxation powers is utterly ridiculous.