Is it possible? South Africa like this

abc123

Banned
I'm sorry, but this is silly.

Blacks didn't have the vote, but before apartheid they had a number of basic civil rights. If you go back to 1910, they could vote; even as late as 1948, on the eve of apartheid, they could attend white schools and universities, work in offices with whites, own land in cities, and marry outside their race. They could travel freely around the country.

They didn't have the vote, but they were citizens. If arrested, they had (at least in theory) a full set of legal rights, including habeus corpus and the right to a fair and speedy trial. They could petition for redress of grievances and the appeal of unjust laws. They could form their own labor unions. They could peacefully assemble. By WWII there was a growing black press; it was reasonably free.

Apartheid ended all those things, and many more. Blacks lost *all* their rights. They could only own land in tribal lands. Black urban neighborhoods were bulldozed and their inhabitants chased off at gunpoint. Blacks were forced out of white universities and schools. Everything from buses to beaches became super-segregated; where before a hospital might have a white floor and a black floor, now it became an all-white hospital. Black-white marriages (and even sex) were criminalized.

Blacks were forbidden to assemble or to protest, even in writing, the passage of laws. As "aliens", they no longer had legal rights such as habeas corpus. The black press was silenced.

So, "blacks had no rights before apartheid" -- I'm sorry, but this is ignorance. And it's not like this is a particularly obscure topic.

If you say "explain this for me, I'm ignorant" that's okay up to a point. But beyond that point, I'm sorry, it's just laziness.

(Laziness at best. A less charitable explanation would be that you love the idea of a white-dominated South Africa. But since apartheid South Africa was a deeply stupid, cruel, and generally assholic regime, I'm not jumping to that conclusion.)

Go away and read some stuff, hey? Seriously, it won't take you long. And then the conversation will be more interesting for everyone.


Doug M.


OK, thanks for the explanation.
I still don't understand how you can be a citizen of countra, but not have right to vote?
 
You're going to need a POD of waaaaay before 1948 to produce a white majority South Africa of any type.
 
Short of genocide, no. Most of the white immigrants to South Africa were scum of the earth types who only went there as gold prospectors and got out once they could; most of the white population growth came from them having children and that was it.

Couldn't that be made to lead to Genocide with the right circumatances?
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Couldn't that be made to lead to Genocide with the right circumatances?

No because a) there was never enough immigration and b) as pointed out already earlier in the thread, the inland whites were mainly dutch-descended afrikaner who liked the gold prospecting newcomers only slightly more than the natives. The local economy was dependent on black labour at all levels to a degree where slavery in the Americas doesn't even begin to compare.
 
OK, thanks for the explanation.
I still don't understand how you can be a citizen of countra, but not have right to vote?

The prison population of the United States mostly have no right to vote, and in some cases (Virginia) they can't vote after they get out. Yet they're considered citizens. Children are citizens, but they can't vote. African-Americans in the South before the '60s had practically no voting rights (only 1 in 50 African-Americans fulfilled the franchise qualifications of their respective state), yet they were in theory American citizens.

When you look at it in that context, yes, you can be a citizen without franchise. A second-class citizen, sure - but a citizen.
 
Maybe were looking at the wrong country

I dont see whats wrong with South West Africa (nambia) Percentage wise it has more whites than south africa. Why not you create something like this...A successful Boer rebellion, British farmers flee to nearby German Southwest africa, Germans seeing the influx of new europeans offer them land so they will stay, natives land.

The Great War would be a problem though, Maybe they declare independence from Germany to save themselves?
 
I dont see whats wrong with South West Africa (nambia) Percentage wise it has more whites than south africa. Why not you create something like this...A successful Boer rebellion, British farmers flee to nearby German Southwest africa, Germans seeing the influx of new europeans offer them land so they will stay, natives land.

The Great War would be a problem though, Maybe they declare independence from Germany to save themselves?

Um no it doesn't.

Whites make up about ten percent of the population in SA, but about 7% in Nam.
 
No because a) there was never enough immigration and b) as pointed out already earlier in the thread, the inland whites were mainly dutch-descended afrikaner who liked the gold prospecting newcomers only slightly more than the natives. The local economy was dependent on black labour at all levels to a degree where slavery in the Americas doesn't even begin to compare.

That makes sense.
 
I would think that the meaning of citizen, franchise or similar terms might have had quite different meanings to someone in South Africa pre Grand Apartheid. Besides of which, merely being a citizen does not mean that one gets a vote or right to participate in government. In certainly does seem to mean that in many modern democracies, but we are talking about pre War Union of South Africa.

Perhaps the term 'subject' might be better, as it doesn't have any of the confusing assumptions. A subject could vote, but does not necessarily have any inherent right to do so
 

abc123

Banned
The prison population of the United States mostly have no right to vote, and in some cases (Virginia) they can't vote after they get out. Yet they're considered citizens. Children are citizens, but they can't vote. African-Americans in the South before the '60s had practically no voting rights (only 1 in 50 African-Americans fulfilled the franchise qualifications of their respective state), yet they were in theory American citizens.

When you look at it in that context, yes, you can be a citizen without franchise. A second-class citizen, sure - but a citizen.


Yes, I know about these cases, but segregation is, AFIK today condemned by all, so segregation in SA before 1948., what was the way to deny coloured their right to vote before 1948.? And could that system be continued after 1948. and be tolerated by West?
 
Franchise in South Africa is complicated, for many reasons and if I remember rightly, was at least for a period based on the rules in the precursor states even after the union was declared in 1910. So what might be the rule for the Cape might not be the rule for Natal or the other two provinces. I would note at this point in time the Franchise was defined to be universal for White males over a certain age but restricted by property and qualification for non Whites in the Cape and Natal.

Cape Province had the most liberal of the rules, where non Whites had some rights to vote, however even these rules were pretty restricted and became progressively tighter, even before Grand Apartheid. I think there were changes in 1930 as well, about the time White women got the vote. Then there were further negative changes later in the decade

A brief search on Google revealed that in 1909, just before Union, Natal had 24 000 voters of which 150 Indians and six Africans qualified to vote. In the Cape about the same time 15% of the Electoral Roll was non White.

The Union negotiations did put a super majority requirement to amend the franchise rules of the non Whites, but that only acted as a partial brake on the restrictions that the various (not just National Party) Union governments passed into law


I suggest you read the following links if you want to learn more about the above

1. Briefer on the Franchise
2. General briefer from the same site
3. A briefer that looks at the wider struggle pre WW2
4. Timeline of notable pre War South African political events
 
Um no it doesn't.

Whites make up about ten percent of the population in SA, but about 7% in Nam.

Ok sorry, Nambia at the Most has 12% to South Africas 11% Max, i think because there are less natives there it would be easier to obtain a majority
 
Yes, I know about these cases, but segregation is, AFIK today condemned by all, so segregation in SA before 1948., what was the way to deny coloured their right to vote before 1948.? And could that system be continued after 1948. and be tolerated by West?

Sure. Some people in the West thought that kind of thing was a great idea. A lot of South Africa's Nationalist program was clearly patterned on US Jim Crow. Heck, until the Supreme Court ruled against it in Loving v Virginia in the late 1960s, interracial marriage was against the law in a great many US states, by no means all of them in the South. My understanding is that the day before the court struck down anti-miscegenation laws, it would have been impossible for an interracial couple legally married in a less benighted state to cross the country by road or railroad without becoming felons along the way. No clear route anywhere. When the Nationalists began enacting their program I don't think they did anything that was not the de facto rule, if not strictly the letter of the law, in many states in the USA. It wasn't OK for an American state to simply state that no residents of African descent could vote, for instance, because the Radical Republicans had foreseen (or rather, observed, with the Black Codes of the newly reclaimed Southern states) that and provided against it with laws and Amendments. But a number of indirect methods (plus good old all-American mob terror, more or less judiciously applied) achieved the "desired" results de facto, and the Feds didn't say boo about it for nearly a century.

Stuff like this seemed like a good idea to Hitler and company too.

The thing is, do you want to associate with these particular Westerners?

Don't be surprised if people draw certain conclusions about your mindset from these questions of yours. If they are correct conclusions, then I guess that's all right then. If you don't think of yourself as a white supremacist, though, I think you'd better figure out why people are getting that impression!

Ok sorry, Nambia at the Most has 12% to South Africas 11% Max, i think because there are less natives there it would be easier to obtain a majority

Um, I think the reason there are less natives is that Namibia is a desert. People, white or black or any color you like, want to live somewhere that is, you know, habitable.

The Germans got South West Africa because no prior colonial power wanted it. It turned out later there was a beach where you could pick diamonds out of a handful of random sand. Who knew? The diamonds make it possible for people to live there by buying everything they need. Actually it makes it possible for DeBeers, who now own the beach, to make huge profits and bring in food and water to dole out grudgingly to the workers on the beach. Who are watched very closely lest they sneak anything out in their pockets.

OK, I went to the Wikipedia and I am exaggerating a little. Over 2 million people do live in Namibia.

But not much. Namibia has the second lowest population density in the world, after Mongolia. On a planet that contains nations like Saudi Arabia, largely covered with what everyone knows is harsh desert, that is sort of a negative accomplishment.

Reading more there is even more depressing.

I don't mean to speak ill of the people who manage to make some sort of a living in this challenging environment. (Actually I was just thinking of Namibia on another thread, about a dry Mediterranean--I figure there would be a fog belt there and remembered there is this plant that lives on the coast in Namibia that gets all its moisture from fog. It isn't a very impressive plant--except that it manages to live at all there!) Just pointing out, this is the sort of extreme white supremacy leads one to--lording it over people too desperately close to the edge of survival to try and stop you, because everyone else in the world has had quite enough of it.

About that family in the picture--no way would I characterize them as "white." Some do look Latino or vaguely Asian (Filipino say) to me rather than African.

I would like to know them; they seem like fine people. But not white, by the American standards I was raised with. By those standards, they are definitely brown.

Funny thing; I believed growing up I was raised to be not racist, and was proud of that. Nowadays I recognize both that I was raised--not by my parents particularly, but by the whole society I lived in--to categorize people by "race" and to make judgements accordingly, and also not to realize I was doing this. Recognizing I have been taught to do this and not deny it makes it easier for me not to do the judgements, or at least to question them.
 
Also didn't the french have like 33% of Alegerians being european? Maybe we could see a failed rebellion of algeria and the area becoming french
 
Genocide the only way

Short of genocide, no. Most of the white immigrants to South Africa were scum of the earth types who only went there as gold prospectors and got out once they could; most of the white population growth came from them having children and that was it.
You have an annoying obsession with white majorities in southern Africa...

This is a dreadfully ignorant statement. Virtually all the immigrants from Europe arrived before the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand and were mainly farmers. Very few miners were brought from Europe to work in the mines as it was much cheaper to exploit the local black labour.

Answering the question at the start of the thread. To get a majority white population in the area shaded is only possible if from a fairly early point in the European colonisation of South Africa there was a deliberate and well resourced campaign of genocide. Something anologous to the genocide conducted by the Americans on the Native Americans. This would have had to be done without the benefits of epidemics as the native population in South Africa already had resistance to the diseases Eurpoean brought with them.There were insufficient people amongst the Voortrekkers to achieve this and there would have had to have been significant army intervention; but the Brits had no interest in providing any support to the Voortrekkers.

If you are looking at getting a 'White' dominated state in Southern Africa a possible (but remotely so) way would be for the Brits to have pulled out of the Cape once the Napoleonic Wars were over and remove the impetus for the Great Trek. Even with this the way of life of the Dutch settlers was very dependent on cheap labour, either using slaves or immigrant Bantus. Its likely that so many 'migrant' workers would have been imported that Whites woulfd have ended up a minority even in an independent Cape Province
 
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