More Europeans immigrate to South Africa

Hunter W.

Banned
Lets say hundreds of thousands immigrate and overtake the African population, would apartheid come into existence? and how would a modern South Africa as I described look?
 
It can't. The African majority was too dominant unless implausible amounts migrate. From an earlier age, this might be plausible assuming South African internal politics align, but that's for the Before 1900 subforum.

But after a certain point, Apartheid was inevitable since the whites had no desire to share power, it's just whether it would look like Jim Crow in the US (more whites and no National Party victory in 1948 might cause this) or become what it became OTL. The former would see an easier fight to repeal it, no doubt, with less bloodshed and less international repercussions on South Africa, which wouldn't strangle economic growth.

If a less-bad Apartheid gets repealed, then you also won't see the mass migration from South Africa that happened OTL. Some whites will emigrate, but less of them. Huge affects for modern South Africa.
 
If South Africa came to look like Brazil, a middle-income country with very high levels of inequality that just happened to correspond to racial divides, then white emigration might be substantially less.

A post-1900 POD is far too late for a white-majority South Africa, or even a white-plurality South Africa. For these, you would need much earlier PODs, perhaps as early as the Dutch period.
 
It's next to impossible to get enough immigrants in the 20th century to make a White majority South Africa. But you really don't need that many to keep White stable at 25% of the population, 2-3 million immigrants between 1945-1990 would have resulted in that. Of course for internal political reasons in South Africa I doubt they would take so many White immigrants.
 
It's next to impossible to get enough immigrants in the 20th century to make a White majority South Africa. But you really don't need that many to keep White stable at 25% of the population, 2-3 million immigrants between 1945-1990 would have resulted in that. Of course for internal political reasons in South Africa I doubt they would take so many White immigrants.

there was a ridiculously high level of immigration in the first half of the 20th century. I can see South Africa getting millions in immigration after WW2 as well if they proverbially open the floodgates to east asian immigration to create a plurality
 
there was a ridiculously high level of immigration in the first half of the 20th century.

How high, exactly?

I can see South Africa getting millions in immigration after WW2 as well

Why? What would make South Africa so much more attractive than, say, New Zealand? Would the Afrikaners not feel threatened by the risk of becoming a minority of the white population?

if they proverbially open the floodgates to east asian immigration to create a plurality

Why on Earth would South Africa do this?
 
How high, exactly?



Why? What would make South Africa so much more attractive than, say, New Zealand? Would the Afrikaners not feel threatened by the risk of becoming a minority of the white population?



Why on Earth would South Africa do this?

1. the figures from migrationpolicy.org are suggesting roughly 600k per year before the 1924 quota act.

2. It's closer to europe than New Zealand, and what the Afrikaners want won't really matter as long as the Crown still has some control over them. The British would also like this as these immigrants would be much more loyal than the Afrikaners and if the Afrikaners are intelligent enough they'll do everything they can to assimilate the white population. Look at the white population of America, it is most definitely not WASP based but they all speak english and participate in a overtly anglo based culture why couldn't the same outcome happen to south africa? If a intelligent group of Afrikaners realize this they can seriously bolster their position in the country alongside making the threat of black-majority rule less terrifying

3. In a TL I'm writing the Prime Minister that comes to power after a ridiculously controversial National Government will make it so anyone can immigrate to South Africa as long as they have the necessary funds to support themselves for 6 months/have a job lined up. The reason for this is because he's a big libertarian and a believer in that ideological strain and thinks anyone who can afford and is willing to work should be able to migrate to South Africa.

Take the number of there being around 5 million white south africans right now in 2016

Assume that South Africa after 1924 does what it can to be a attractive place for immigrants and gets roughly say 2 million people over several years. This growth calc that says the rate of growth on average from 1930s to 2016 is on average would hypothetically be 1.3% this brand new population in this Alt south africa would have an extra 6 million white people essentially making it so the white population is 11 million instead of 5 million. White South Africans would go from being around 8% to 18%. That's not accounting for the high amount of post WW2 migration which could possible take the white population from 18% to around 30%. Add in the post soviet diaspora and the scenario and whites will form a very large minority in the country and in many regions be the majority.

To answer the OP in the TL I'm writing South Africa would be a mostly stable and economically successful pluralistic society where no one race reaches above 40% of the population, Apartheid would never develop but the greatest problem would end up being Far-Left African Nationalistic Terrorism and Far-Right White Nationalist Terror. A scenario similar to Italy's Years of Lead. Another problem would be income inequality and the fact the far left and far right are capitalizing on increasing stratification between classes.

I've been doing a lot of research for this TL so if anyone wants to hit me up and tell me something I'm saying is just so obviously wrong please pm me cause I don't want to post absolute dogshit to the site.
 
Another way of getting more migrants is not having the NP win in 1948. The Smuts government was very keen to get large numbers of Europeans to migrate to South Africa after the war, but the Nats torpedoed that plan, because they were worried that they would become a minority among white South Africans with large-scale migration.
 
If South Africa came to look like Brazil, a middle-income country with very high levels of inequality that just happened to correspond to racial divides, then white emigration might be substantially less.

A post-1900 POD is far too late for a white-majority South Africa, or even a white-plurality South Africa. For these, you would need much earlier PODs, perhaps as early as the Dutch period.

That's pretty much South Africa now.
 
Yes. This is in marked contrast to South Africa during apartheid, IMHO, when the South African state was actively doing its best to make non-whites poor. Laissez-faire in this domain is less terrible.
 
Assume that South Africa after 1924 does what it can to be a attractive place for immigrants and gets roughly say 2 million people over several years. This growth calc that says the rate of growth on average from 1930s to 2016 is on average would hypothetically be 1.3% this brand new population in this Alt south africa would have an extra 6 million white people essentially making it so the white population is 11 million instead of 5 million. White South Africans would go from being around 8% to 18%. That's not accounting for the high amount of post WW2 migration which could possible take the white population from 18% to around 30%. Add in the post soviet diaspora and the scenario and whites will form a very large minority in the country and in many regions be the majority.

To answer the OP in the TL I'm writing South Africa would be a mostly stable and economically successful pluralistic society where no one race reaches above 40% of the population, Apartheid would never develop but the greatest problem would end up being Far-Left African Nationalistic Terrorism and Far-Right White Nationalist Terror. A scenario similar to Italy's Years of Lead. Another problem would be income inequality and the fact the far left and far right are capitalizing on increasing stratification between classes.

I've been doing a lot of research for this TL so if anyone wants to hit me up and tell me something I'm saying is just so obviously wrong please pm me cause I don't want to post absolute dogshit to the site.

How will South Africa draw immigrants from Argentina and Brazil in this time period? Especially post-WWII, where once again, South America was a winner, as well as Australia, IIRC.

Apartheid is gonna be there, as I said, it's just with a more white South Africa, it'll look like Jim Crow instead of the utter monstrosity it was OTL. The seeds had long since been laid for it.
 
1. the figures from migrationpolicy.org are suggesting roughly 600k per year before the 1924 quota act.

Linked, please.

2. It's closer to europe than New Zealand,

That's pretty irrelevant. Algeria is much closer to Europe than either country, and perhaps as early as the 1930s that colony was losing migrants to metropolitan France.

and what the Afrikaners want won't really matter as long as the Crown still has some control over them. The British would also like this as these immigrants would be much more loyal than the Afrikaners and if the Afrikaners are intelligent enough they'll do everything they can to assimilate the white population. Look at the white population of America, it is most definitely not WASP based but they all speak english and participate in a overtly anglo based culture why couldn't the same outcome happen to south africa? If a intelligent group of Afrikaners realize this they can seriously bolster their position in the country alongside making the threat of black-majority rule less terrifying

This presumes a radically different British policy in South Africa, one that keeps Britain in a position of dominance over the South African colonies for rather longer and in a more direct way. Moreover, the last also assumes that Afrikaners will abandon their interest in survival as a distinctive ethnic group in a position of relative power. Why do these two separate things change?

3. In a TL I'm writing the Prime Minister that comes to power after a ridiculously controversial National Government will make it so anyone can immigrate to South Africa as long as they have the necessary funds to support themselves for 6 months/have a job lined up. The reason for this is because he's a big libertarian and a believer in that ideological strain and thinks anyone who can afford and is willing to work should be able to migrate to South Africa.

How does this libertarian become elected? Thinking offhand, I don't know that libertarianism, at least in the sense of open borders, was ever that popular.

Assume that South Africa after 1924 does what it can to be a attractive place for immigrants and gets roughly say 2 million people over several years. This growth calc that says the rate of growth on average from 1930s to 2016 is on average would hypothetically be 1.3% this brand new population in this Alt south africa would have an extra 6 million white people essentially making it so the white population is 11 million instead of 5 million. White South Africans would go from being around 8% to 18%. That's not accounting for the high amount of post WW2 migration which could possible take the white population from 18% to around 30%. Add in the post soviet diaspora and the scenario and whites will form a very large minority in the country and in many regions be the majority.

I see a lot of assumptions here: Why will all these people head to South Africa? Will they be migrants diverted from other destinations, or will they be people who would not have been migrants but were attracted to South Africa? Why will they be attracted to South Africa specifically? How will the proportion of whites become so high in the face of rapid African population growth?

These are not necessarily deal-breakers. These are things that need to be examined.
 
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