AHC/WI: Modernized and Properous South Africa

The POD is 1945 or sometime post WW2, how would it be possible to make South Africa more modernized and prosperous with say, a GDP per capita of $25-30k USD with a fairly minor racial pay gap and about 0.700 HDI index score by the modern day (with/without apartheid.)

Would it possibly work if Britain invested more time and energy into South Africa maybe?
 
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Smuts wins in 1948, allows millions more European migrants

Desegregation and majority rule comes in early 80s and is less chaotic, more people of colour with government experience.

That’s most plausible idea off the top of my head
 
Avoid National Party and later ANC corruption. I think this is the most important, Corruption kills.

Better education for blacks and other non whites during apartheid. Meaning no Bantu education. Also instead of allowing whites to slack and live well on subject populations expense, have them be more educated and trained. No cushy jobs given to whites as bribes.

South Africa could probably get to similar development level as Trinidad and Tobago, if South Africa had been better run.

Trinidad and Tobago
Per Capita GDP: 32520 US Dollars
Human Development Index: 0,780
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_and_Tobago

Republic of South Africa
Per Capita GDP: 13591 US Dollars
Human Development Index: 0,666
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa
 
What policies would Smuts implement to make South Africa richer place than the National Party did OTL?

How will immigration of Europeans make South Africa and South Africans richer?

Expanded work force, expanded consumer base, pretty much all the economic benefits you get from immigration.

More competition within job markets that had previously used colour barriers to stop competition.

Demand for European style quality of living and a higher educated workforce that arrives than much of the African population.

Probably most important is that it halts anything like the sort of stringent apartheid laws that were put in place.

Black, coloured and Asian middle classes could grow during the 60s and 70s, without apartheid’s strict delineation of economic position based on race.
 

kernals12

Banned
Botswana has lower GDP pr Capita than South Africa but higher HDI.

Botswana
GDP per Capita: 7543 US Dollars
Human Development Index: 0,701
If you adjust for purchasing power, their GDP per capita is higher. More importantly, it was once a lot lower.
 

kernals12

Banned
Expanded work force, expanded consumer base, pretty much all the economic benefits you get from immigration.

More competition within job markets that had previously used colour barriers to stop competition.

Demand for European style quality of living and a higher educated workforce that arrives than much of the African population.

Probably most important is that it halts anything like the sort of stringent apartheid laws that were put in place.

Black, coloured and Asian middle classes could grow during the 60s and 70s, without apartheid’s strict delineation of economic position based on race.
Those things don't increase GDP per person, which is what matters.
 
What if Apartheid South Africa had been more urbanised, especially black residents? Would a more urban South Africa be richer?
 

apollo11

Banned
Is there any way to make apartheid suck less? Can apartheid work without the black homeland bit? Could you have an alternate South Africa in which blacks are second class citizens but still *citizens*? So more or less South African Blacks have an experience closer to American Jim Crow with more or less freedom of movement and property rights and all that jazz?
 
Is there any way to make apartheid suck less? Can apartheid work without the black homeland bit? Could you have an alternate South Africa in which blacks are second class citizens but still *citizens*? So more or less South African Blacks have an experience closer to American Jim Crow with more or less freedom of movement and property rights and all that jazz?

Just prevent apartheid from being implemented in 1948 and this is what you would get but more restrictive than him crow for sure.

The United party would be forced to turn more multi racial/liberal because there would be more non white voters to appeal to. the national party would become the party for more general white discontentment (like the Rhodesian front) not the horrific blend of naziism and Afrikaner nationalism that it was in 48
 

apollo11

Banned
Just prevent apartheid from being implemented in 1948 and this is what you would get but more restrictive than him crow for sure.

The United party would be forced to turn more multi racial/liberal because there would be more non white voters to appeal to. the national party would become the party for more general white discontentment (like the Rhodesian front) not the horrific blend of naziism and Afrikaner nationalism that it was in 48
Well then this should do it right? Having a government from 1948 to whenever the transition happens to full equality in the ATL if it does, invest in black South Africans as citizens should do the trick.
 
They weren’t integrationists but they wanted inclusion for mixed raced, colored and initially eight Bantu representatives. They wanted to get rid of the pass laws in 1960! It could have made the democratic progress, go faster.
 
Maybe South Africa's homeland policy artificially slowed down urbanization?
Not really. Most nominal citizens of the bantustans lived in "white" cities anyway. They were the urban proletariat.

The problem was the color bar, where how much you could advance depended on what race you were, explicitly. A system where you systematically force to make 80% of your population be less productive is not conducive to growth over the long term, and SA only kept it up for so long because of its natural resources.
 
*Southwest Africa to South Africa
*No homelands policy - let Smuts get in the millions more Europeans
*Or give the Afrikkaners their own 'republic'
 
They have a 0.66 HDI now. It wouldn't be hard.

More rural development in general keeps the wage gap low (i'd say the income in the cities is around 25-30k as is).
 
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