SA before the 70's was hardline. The hardliners were basically the guys who wanted to go back to the 60's when apartheid was at its height. The minor reforms of the 70's and 80's was too much for the hardliners. Basically the hardliners would never allow the tricameral parliment and may even be opposed to giving the bantustans more autonomy
Would the UDF be capable of launching a coup and/or preventing civil war?Precisely.
Have President Botha assassinated by a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, and that may strengthen hardliners who wish to revert back to 1960s Apartheid. However, if that assassination chronologically coincides with the ANC/MK's strategy of making the country ungovernable and UDF campaigning...could be much worse than our timeline.
Would the UDF be capable of launching a coup and/or preventing civil war?
Couldn't a very radical Apartheid system persisting hypothetical into the post could war 90es with dark tendencies trigger even a Kosovo like response and even pressure NATO/UN to intervene even militarily ?You could have a massacre of whites in SA or the neighboring countries leading to harding of attitudes.
The US could decide that South African development of long range ballistic missiles is a red line. Alt SA does it anyways, and the US bombs their missile sites (SA nukes in the early 1990s were air dropped bombs, the US likely isn't going to countenance them developing nuclear warheads for ballistic missiles). Things escalate from there.Couldn't a very radical Apartheid system persisting hypothetical into the post could war 90es with dark tendencies trigger even a Kosovo like response and even pressure NATO/UN to intervene even militarily ?
It'd have to reform earlier as a wealthier and more educated black populace (along with all the other non-whites) push harder for political reforms.Although an interesting premise, I think a "softer" apartheid would make a more complext ATL, as it was pointed out, it was already quite hardline on OTL, to the point not even for whites it might have considered a democratic regime.
Would a "softer" apartheid (e.g. keeping only the political part of it) last a bit longer or would have collapsed/reformed earlier?
The United Party wanted a softer regime. Economic integration, and social separation, no homelands but no integration either. 8 white representatives for civilized bantu, Botha style reforms twenty years earlier. Like Rhodesia, that might have lasted longer.Although an interesting premise, I think a "softer" apartheid would make a more complext ATL, as it was pointed out, it was already quite hardline on OTL, to the point not even for whites it might have considered a democratic regime.
Would a "softer" apartheid (e.g. keeping only the political part of it) last a bit longer or would have collapsed/reformed earlier?
It would be interesting to see what would've happened if the Apartheid government had actually developed the Bantustans and given them independence.Although an interesting premise, I think a "softer" apartheid would make a more complex ATL, as it was pointed out, it was already quite hardline on OTL, to the point not even for whites it might have considered a democratic regime.
Would a "softer" apartheid (e.g. keeping only the political part of it) last a bit longer or would have collapsed/reformed earlier?
Did the UP ever want to create ethnic homelands such as the Bantustans at any point?United Party was called White Leadership with Justice. The colored mixed population was to be given far more of a stake, and an elite African group was to be created as a assimilated overseer class, with 8 white representatives in parliament, Africans themselves could serve on a federal council and on the provincial level.