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Dear all,

This little thread is a consequence of the discussion Armchair started with his "coup on South Africa in the 70's".

After long discussions with people on the forum and a lot of refresher reading, I tried to put this together.

I am new here, so please don't hurl sticks at me.

I have only changed some very few things from the facts. In essence, I think it could have happened.

Here goes:

Nuclear war in Southern Africa in 1986

Setting the scene:

It is 1976. South Africa is starting to come into the world as the oil crises of 1973 also impacted the South African consumer.

The golden days of perpetual summer was coming to an end, everybody felt. The government could not really protect the voters anymore, and everyone could feel something simmering.

ANC was a new word and the new ANC leadership was starting to establish a presence outside of the country.

The propaganda also said that ANC was just as good as communists and everyone knew where that would lead.

Suddenly, one morning, it broke. The schools in Soweto were marching against Afrikaans as the medium of instruction. Slogans like ‘Afrikaans is a tribal language’ and ‘To hell with bantu education’ were all over.

The government was caught by surprise and the reactions were not coordinated. Treurnicht said that the government would be as accommodating as possible, but negated the whole thing by following up with :”in the white areas of South Africa where the government erects the buildings, grants the subsidies and pays the teachers, it is our right to decide on language policy”.

Justice minister Kruger spoke about the fact that the students were marching with raised fists “surely this is a sign of the communist party”.

Finally, next day, 18 June 1976, Prime minister Vorster came out with his usual comments: “The government shall not be intimidated”.

Days on end, Soweto burning, the international press having a field day. It could not be contained.

The roots of the problem were of course not the language. The root cause was the bantu education, where blacks where trained to be manual labour only.

ANC started to climb on the band wagon, and the government started to see the consequences of not doing something.

The police and the army stopped the riots, putting it down hard and brutal.

However the big question remained in many people minds: Is it the end of apartheid? Can we carry on as we have in the past? Is it over?

The cabinet met in July 1976 and started to discuss what to do.

It got down to a few options:

Negotiate:
Admit that the outside world is tired of SA and start to invite ANC to discuss a new SA.

Soften apartheid
Try to pull the Indians and the coloured into the NP sphere via some advisory parliament of their own.
Try to get the outside world to look at SA as modernizing.
Scrap some laws

Total Onslaught
No to reforms
Crush ANC within SA and especially within the SADC countries
Clamp down on white dissidents and liberals

Nobody wants to deal with ANC as that will entail that the voters will kick them out. The time is not right.

Vorster is looking hard at giving apartheid a ‘human look’ somehow and is encouraged by Pik Botha who claims that the US and UK do not like ANC and especially not Oliver Tambo, claiming he is a communist and a terrorist.

Now Vorster asks his defense minister, PW Botha, if the army is loyal and can be relied upon. PW is more than happy especially as his chief of staff is Magnus Malan.

No decision is really taken as everyone would like to see which way the economy is going.

1977 -79 is dawning
Mozambique and Angola are no more Portuguese colonies. Civil war is raging and UNITA is getting formed.

SA is not happy to see Angola going communists and is getting involved by default, trying to at least get UNITA into government of unity. It fails.

SA is suddenly an aggressor in Angola but is not pulling out.

Mozambique is too close to the republic and ANC is starting to have bases there.

SWAPO in Namibia is starting to align themselves with MPLA in Angola.

What is worse is that the Shaw is out of Iran and that means no more oil from Iran.

The Cubans are arriving in Angola to help and assists, but in essence it is to get at SA. Brezhnev is still in charge and there is no way that he will surrender communism in Angola, nor in Mozambique. If the Cubans can fight their way into Namibia, tht could change the outlook, especially if SA could get infiltrated via ANC.

Angola discovers oil in abundance, both on land and off-shore. It is huge and will impact the entire world economy. Even as a bonus diamonds, gold and uranium is found. Angola is a treasure throve.

Soviet Russia wants it. Their economy would look so much better.

SA has got no oil from Iran now. They want it.

Something has to be done.

A decision has to be made.

The decision
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