Bigger South Africa.

I've been browsing randomly through boredom most of southern Africa's Wikipedia pages, and I find a lot of mention of the British colonies in the area being proposed for joining South Africa at one time for another, or in Namibia's case, being ruled as a more-or-less province till 1991.

What if South Africa took in Namibia proper and all the other proposed additions-Lesthoso, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mawali, Botswana, and Swaziland as formal provinces/incorporated into South Africa proper? How likely would it be to get all this into one state? Or at least parts?

I'm interested in Arpethied's various butterflies with an even greater black population and in turn how this Greater South Africa would deal with more whites, as well as how much more economically powerful it may be with South Africa's economic strength having a much larger territory to deal with.
 

Germaniac

Donor
If they add the Rhodesia's before 48', when the national party takes over, goodbye apartied. With the Influx of British Settlers the United Party of Smuts will likely remain in power.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I've been browsing randomly through boredom most of southern Africa's Wikipedia pages, and I find a lot of mention of the British colonies in the area being proposed for joining South Africa at one time for another, or in Namibia's case, being ruled as a more-or-less province till 1991.

What if South Africa took in Namibia proper and all the other proposed additions-Lesthoso, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mawali, Botswana, and Swaziland as formal provinces/incorporated into South Africa proper? How likely would it be to get all this into one state? Or at least parts?

I'm interested in Arpethied's various butterflies with an even greater black population and in turn how this Greater South Africa would deal with more whites, as well as how much more economically powerful it may be with South Africa's economic strength having a much larger territory to deal with.

I don't know if Namibia was really that close to being part of the country. They were fighting a guerilla war there for a while. Sure, it's more likely than..say...Zambia, but I don't know.

As far as economic strength, I'm not sure. It might even be weaker. What really took South Africa down economically was that it fought a 20-odd year war in South West Africa Territory (Namibia) against the Angolans and SWAPO, then when that finally started to reach it's zenith the problems in the townships began getting larger. The economy just couldn't handle staying on a war footing for so long.

I think what you're pitching is basically just putting more strain on an already stressed out system.
 
I don't know if Namibia was really that close to being part of the country. They were fighting a guerilla war there for a while. Sure, it's more likely than..say...Zambia, but I don't know.

As far as economic strength, I'm not sure. It might even be weaker. What really took South Africa down economically was that it fought a 20-odd year war in South West Africa Territory (Namibia) against the Angolans and SWAPO, then when that finally started to reach it's zenith the problems in the townships began getting larger. The economy just couldn't handle staying on a war footing for so long.

I think what you're pitching is basically just putting more strain on an already stressed out system.

Ah, true! I was dumb enough to assume that perhaps the whole-the uber-expanded whole in this case-might overtake such an issue and perhaps intergrate Namibia in the long run. Can you see how pathetic my southern African history is? :eek:

I was seeing these additions as being a sort of West Indies federation that didn't even get to the 'entire unification THEN promptly falls apart' part-I was getting a very vague vibe Britain wished to unite almost every colony in southern Africa just for geographical purposes ala the WIF and British North America. Some of the pages on the proposed additions make it seem like it was sheer luck that they did not get added to South Africa.

Incidentally, Germaniac, I got hints a lot of the reasons the other proposed areas didn't join up was due to arpetheid, and Britain dropped unification stuff ON PURPOSE due to that. I wonder how SA'd be had maybe Britain and the orher colonies forced SA proper to drop it for uniting purposes...
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I don't know if Namibia was really that close to being part of the country. They were fighting a guerilla war there for a while. Sure, it's more likely than..say...Zambia, but I don't know.

IIRC, the whites in SouthWest Africa/Namibia were represented in the South African Parliament, as if it were one of South Africa's constituent states.
 
IIRC, the whites in SouthWest Africa/Namibia were represented in the South African Parliament, as if it were one of South Africa's constituent states.

That was the case for a while, it ended though in the early 1980s when South Africa established a parliament in Namibia, as well as removing most of the apartheid laws from the country. Apartheid was dead by mid-1982 in Namibia, but the RSA held onto it because they didn't want to have SWAPO giving and the ANC or anybody else a direct shot at South Africa's northern border. It's the same reason they backed up Rhodesia (and undermined Mugabe's regime post-independence) and supported RENAMO in Mozambique, to keep the militants as far away from South Africa as possible. The apartheid state didn't care all that much if the ANC was in Angola in Zambia.
 
If they add the Rhodesia's before 48', when the national party takes over, goodbye apartied. With the Influx of British Settlers the United Party of Smuts will likely remain in power.

That would stand to reason, but it relies on the idea that the United Party, which fractured to bits in the 1950s and 1960s and eventually dissolved in 1974, fights for the same things the settlers in Rhodesia want. Adding Rhodesia to the RSA also adds a number of different tribes to the RSA, most notably the Shona in Zimbabwe and Zambia. Adding more land also adds greater numbers of the black tribes, which is not gonna help retain white rule, regardless of whether its the National Party that does it or the United Party.
 
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