South Africa Without de Klerk

IMHO, the end of Apartheid in South Africa owes as much to F.W. de Klerk as it does to Mandela. Here was a white leader leading a reform that nobody in the National Party saw coming, working with the ANC to bring about a free and fair democracy. Yet, de Klerk's appointment as President seems, at first glance, to be something of a fluke. If Botha doesn't have a stroke, or the NP picks somebody else, how much longer does apartheid drag out before somebody ends it? And what of South Africa's budding nuclear program?
 

Cook

Banned
IMHO, the end of Apartheid in South Africa owes as much to F.W. de Klerk as it does to Mandela.
Since the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to de Klerk and Mandela you are hardly the first to think so. ;)

South Africa’s nuclear program was completely irrelevant to counterinsurgency operations and quite useless for them. It seems to have been prompted by the fear that large Soviet/Cuban conventional forces could be used in Southern Africa.
 
it can drag on for as long as the White population wants, ANC's use of terrorism was... lacking shall we say, in the 30 years they were "at war" with South Africa they only killed 63 people, so the ANC wasn't really making South Africa ungovernable, and likely never would, the end of the Cold War meant the US no lower cared about the White Government or feared the ANC's Communist links, so the embargo was the main factor to lead to whites being willing to give up power, the embargo was biting into their first world life style, plus world media (and South African) coverage of ANC attacks made them seem bigger than they were, in short I see no reason that South Africa couldn't have lasted as an Apartheid through to today, white standard of living would have dropped (maybe 1980s East German levels?) and ANC terrorism would be bigger (First Palestinian intifada?)
 
This my opinion.

But I would go further to basically state they were heading towards the disolutionment of apartheid already after the Angolan conflict and the civil unrest that broke out from it along with strengthening existing struggle. Its iminence was self evident once South Africa agreed to withdraw from what is now Nambia.

It was the straw that finally broke the camel's back of many NP supporters that apartheid was not holding the country together.
 
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South Africa’s nuclear program was completely irrelevant to counterinsurgency operations and quite useless for them. It seems to have been prompted by the fear that large Soviet/Cuban conventional forces could be used in Southern Africa.
My curiosity about the nuke program was more along the lines of how far they run with it if there's no de Klerk to strangle it in its crib. If we get to the point where South Africa has fallen into the second or high-third world because of embargoes, could we see an NK-like situation where they point their toys at their neighbors to extort aid from the West? Or do African nukes become just another national vanity project like every other nuclear program that wasn't Russia's or America's?
 
PW Botha actually laid much of the groundwork to dismantle apartheid. Some have argued that without him De Klerk wouldn't have been able to do what he did.

Botha offered Mandela conditional release in about '87, but he said no, he would only accept unconditional release.
 
it can drag on for as long as the White population wants, ANC's use of terrorism was... lacking shall we say, in the 30 years they were "at war" with South Africa they only killed 63 people, so the ANC wasn't really making South Africa ungovernable, and likely never would, the end of the Cold War meant the US no lower cared about the White Government or feared the ANC's Communist links, so the embargo was the main factor to lead to whites being willing to give up power, the embargo was biting into their first world life style, plus world media (and South African) coverage of ANC attacks made them seem bigger than they were, in short I see no reason that South Africa couldn't have lasted as an Apartheid through to today, white standard of living would have dropped (maybe 1980s East German levels?) and ANC terrorism would be bigger (First Palestinian intifada?)

Yeah, our next door neighbour got home from a haircut, got out of his car, and vomited. He had just walked past the Wimpy bomb blast in 1986 in Benoni.

And SA was pretty ungovernable, not the white areas, but many townships were effectively no go areas for the security forces.

All I can say is, thank God it ended when it did.
 
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