IMO Apartheid surviving requires the Soviet Union (and Cold War) to continue. The white regime heavily linked its struggle against the blacks with the struggle against Communism, and there is a slim but real chance that a continued Cold War (and continuing Soviet support for anti-Apartheid groups) would make it impossible to reach the peaceful resolution that occurred in OTL.
However, if that happens, things get real, real bad in SA. And they were already pretty bad in OTL (which we don't hear so much about in the US or UK since our countries were allies of the Apartheid regime for most of its existence). It becomes hard for anyone to avoid admitting that South Africa is in a state of civil war if Apartheid lasts longer. That's gonna hit the foreign relations.
My bet is that if Apartheid survives, it is with strong support by the US and probably UK government, much to the discontent of the citizens of the US/UK.
What I did mean is that two decades of ANC rule probably haven't been the best for South Africa, what with the crime and corruption and all. Meant to imply that maybe different circumstances meant that someone else winds up in power in post-Apartheid South Africa.
Let's be honest, the ANC had to clean up a massive mess. They're not anywhere close to being done and that's not surprising. Other regimes have indulged in similar misbehavior to that of the Apartheid government earlier in history, and the legacy is centuries of persistent inequality, violence and poverty.
It's hard to see any party doing much better in South Africa after you've read through what the white regime actually did in the Bantustans.
Also, for a surviving Apartheid South Africa, perhaps the white government actually put a real effort into the homeland idea (which in reality was a farce). If they were to give each African ethnicity its own nation (and actual large swathes of decent instead of the worst land possible), Black Africans would be content?
The problem is, the Bantustans are based on a flawed premise right from the start - people were ripped away from their communities, their families, their jobs and their familiar environment and dumped in barren wastes with no jobs and lots of strangers based on an "ethnic identity" which was close to irrelevant. Even if the regime didn't make the Bantustans giant prison camps and subsidize civil wars inside the Bantustans, there was no way they were going to turn out well.
White minority rule was a brutal, damaging aspect of South African history that continues to leave deep and lasting wounds that last to this day in South Africa. The "mess" you are speaking of owes a large part of its existence to Apartheid: inequality of wealth, economic underdevelopment, shortcomings in education, infrastructure, and housing. There are issues beyond counting in contemporary South Africa that are the way they are because of the Apartheid Era. Because hardliners imposed a system that elevated their interests above those of all others and time and again proved willing to use violence to keep this system in place.
And let's not forget the way the white regime encouraged divisions and political murders (while engaging in their own political murders) between the Apartheid opposition groups.
And people wonder why SA has a high murder rate now?
fasquardon