Unlikely. This is like the EU. The leap is pretty significant even if you can gradually move towards more integration. The biggest hurdle is the ability to leave at will.
The Anglo-Saxon Social Model
- Thread starter Rattigan
- Start date
Unlikely. This is like the EU. The leap is pretty significant even if you can gradually move towards more integration. The biggest hurdle is the ability to leave at will.
The only question I have concerns how that mega-Utah-Colorado-Nevada state come about. In OTL, a big factor in how those three states were carved up was the Mormon population, and a desire by the US government to marginalize them in order to minimize their influence. The Mormons arrived in the Salt Lake Valley before the PoD, but not too far before; many people still saw them as a fringe cult. (Then again, this mega-state could've had the same aim, but with the opposite method: marginalize them by putting them in a vast state where they wouldn't be able to dominate political and cultural life, while also carving off their colonies in Idaho and Arizona, while also giving them something loosely resembling the proposed State of Deseret so that, in the short term, they think they've won. Wait, did I just answer my own question?) It doesn't make much geographical sense, either; it runs from the High Plains across the Rockies and the Great Basin all the way to the Sierra Nevada, which is pretty extreme even by the standards of OTL's arbitrary straight lines.
That mega-Dakota-Montana-Wyoming also looks pretty weird with the smaller "South Dakota" carved out of it, but I can see there being some justification in the form of better Indian relations, namely the US abiding by its treaty obligations rather than going back on them when they found gold in the Black Hills. A US government more committed to civil rights and finishing the job of Reconstruction might be more amenable to conciliatory relations with the Indian tribes, seen here with the Sioux getting their own US state. (I've noticed that you haven't really talked about Indian relations.)
Mega-Washington-Oregon-Idaho, however, does make sense geographically. The three states make up most of the Columbia River basin in the US as well as its slice of the Oregon country, and their combined population in the present day would be only 13.5 million, pretty big but not a mega-state like OTL's California is (and OTL's Texas is turning into).
One positive side-effect of the different state borders in the West, I feel, is that they lead to a lot fewer states with tons of mostly empty land yet very few people. I wonder if the changes to the Senate and the Electoral College might have affected this, with the party in power feeling less pressure to grant statehood to a bunch of little states that would be guaranteed to swing their way every four years.
Also, you said earlier that there were 47 states, yet I only counted 43.
All good thoughts. Just quickly on the number of states, the map doesn't include the states of Dominica and Samoa (OTL Dominican Republic and American Samoa) so it should total 45 rather than 43. When I did my update on the US leaders I had in mind that the giant Utah would be divided into three states as in OTL. I'm afraid that just reflects that I'm still tinkering with it. The number of states isn't going to ever be terribly important tbh so this layout might change.
As a general theory of the case, the guiding ideas was, as you suspected, the circumstances of Reconstruction and instituting a second constitution means that the GOP doesn't need to create a load of western states to help pass loads of amendments. This is then combined with better relations with the Native Americans: the smaller South Dakota is more or less the boundaries of the original Great Sioux Reservation and is called Lakota; the combined New Mexico and Arizona is called Comancheria; and Oklahoma is called Sequoyah and never had the Oklahoma Territory and neutral strip as part of it. All of those three states are majority Native American.
In defence of my Mega-Dakota-Wymoning-Montana (just called 'Dakota' in my head but I'm always on the look out for better names), I think quite a lot of OTL US states are pretty weirdly shaped (Idaho, Maryland anyone?) but we're just used to it.
My idea with thicc Utah is that the federal government tried to demographically overwhelm the Mormons, as you suggested. There might also have been a more serious second Utah War in the 1870s and 1880s to bring them into line against a more assertive federal government, I've not decided.
Anyway, this is all provisional and I might play around with it again at some point.
Not yet, as of c1990 it’s still a Crown Colony as in OTL. But the Sino-Commonwealth Declaration stipulated that it would become an independent state and full Commonwealth member on 30 June 1997, the same date that the Commonwealth would buy out the New Territories. I’ll cover this in more detail (including bits on Hong Kong political developments 1984-97) in a few weeks.
Climate Change (1981-1991)
A Green and Pleasant Land: Bill Rodgers, Robert Kennedy and the Forging of Global Climate Policy
Vice President Martin Luther King Jr. addresses crowds protesting the Big Five's oil embargo, August 1985
Aside from its legacy of substantial domestic and Commonwealth reform, Rodgers’ ministries were also significant in pursuing global action on climate change. In this, the British government found a very welcoming international environment. Key to this was the figure of the American scientist Gordon J.F. MacDonald, who had served in various capacities in the American academic-government nexus since the 1950s and was, since 1965, a member of the President's Science Advisory Board. His authorship of the 1979 MacDonald Report and testimony before Congress the following year (in both cases reflecting a general consensus on the issue in the scientific community that had obtained for a number of years) catapulted the debate to the forefront of the public consciousness. During the presidential campaign of 1980 and following his inauguration in January 1981, President Robert F. Kennedy took up the cause himself.
With the Commonwealth as a whole generally committed to environmentalism (which is not to say that every member state was individually), this was a cause of a notable rapprochement between the two powers, after two decades of coolness. With Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan having been elected to the position of General Secretary of the UN in February 1981, there was also a friendly voice in that organisation. Working together, the Commonwealth, the United States and the United Nations were able to build a consensus on climate change and the need to take action.
The first breakthrough came at the first UN Conference on Development and the Environment, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1982. This resulted in the Framework Convention on Climate Change and was followed up by another conference in Munich in 1985, which sought to outline specific targets. At the same time, the United States was going through a dramatic energy showdown that fundamentally changed the political calculus for the Kennedy Administration.
For eleven months from March 1985, the cartel of ‘Big Five’ oil producers in America instituted an embargo on oil for the domestic American market. Angry at the Kennedy Administration’s plan to introduce carbon taxes, the cartel of oil barons hoped to bring the American economy to its knees in a demonstration of its power and reach. However, following the threat of such a boycott made in 1982, the EPA, chaired by Ed Muskie, had stockpiled significant oil and coal reserves and agreed secret deals with foreign countries (particularly the Commonwealth) to provide emergency supplies, if needed. While there was significant disruption, the US economy thus managed to ride out the crisis. In February 1986, a federal anti-trust case found the cartel’s actions to be illegal price manipulation and, under the threat of prison for the big CEOs, oil production had resumed in full within a month. The boycott was a defining moment in American corporate relations, with the Big Five’s defeat significantly weakening the power of corporate America. It was also a major victory for Kennedy and the Progressives. Kennedy had skilfully managed to keep most of the trades unions - including those in the fossil fuel industries - on-side for the duration of the crisis and was thus able to consolidate his environmentalist programme.
In a significant victory for David Attenborough, continuing his work as the Commonwealth Commissioner for the Environment, the vast majority of UN member countries joined together to agree the Shanghai Protocol in 1987. This set dramatic targets to cut fossil fuel emissions in developed countries and set non-binding targets for developing ones. In July 1987, the UK Environment Minister James Goldsmith announced a plan to phase out all petrol and diesel vehicles in the UK by 2010. Goldsmith also announced the end of fossil fuel production for domestic use by 2000 (although he was notably more circumspect about the future of the SWF) and plans to transition the UK rail network entirely to wind and solar energy over the same period.
Vice President Martin Luther King Jr. addresses crowds protesting the Big Five's oil embargo, August 1985
Aside from its legacy of substantial domestic and Commonwealth reform, Rodgers’ ministries were also significant in pursuing global action on climate change. In this, the British government found a very welcoming international environment. Key to this was the figure of the American scientist Gordon J.F. MacDonald, who had served in various capacities in the American academic-government nexus since the 1950s and was, since 1965, a member of the President's Science Advisory Board. His authorship of the 1979 MacDonald Report and testimony before Congress the following year (in both cases reflecting a general consensus on the issue in the scientific community that had obtained for a number of years) catapulted the debate to the forefront of the public consciousness. During the presidential campaign of 1980 and following his inauguration in January 1981, President Robert F. Kennedy took up the cause himself.
With the Commonwealth as a whole generally committed to environmentalism (which is not to say that every member state was individually), this was a cause of a notable rapprochement between the two powers, after two decades of coolness. With Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan having been elected to the position of General Secretary of the UN in February 1981, there was also a friendly voice in that organisation. Working together, the Commonwealth, the United States and the United Nations were able to build a consensus on climate change and the need to take action.
The first breakthrough came at the first UN Conference on Development and the Environment, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1982. This resulted in the Framework Convention on Climate Change and was followed up by another conference in Munich in 1985, which sought to outline specific targets. At the same time, the United States was going through a dramatic energy showdown that fundamentally changed the political calculus for the Kennedy Administration.
For eleven months from March 1985, the cartel of ‘Big Five’ oil producers in America instituted an embargo on oil for the domestic American market. Angry at the Kennedy Administration’s plan to introduce carbon taxes, the cartel of oil barons hoped to bring the American economy to its knees in a demonstration of its power and reach. However, following the threat of such a boycott made in 1982, the EPA, chaired by Ed Muskie, had stockpiled significant oil and coal reserves and agreed secret deals with foreign countries (particularly the Commonwealth) to provide emergency supplies, if needed. While there was significant disruption, the US economy thus managed to ride out the crisis. In February 1986, a federal anti-trust case found the cartel’s actions to be illegal price manipulation and, under the threat of prison for the big CEOs, oil production had resumed in full within a month. The boycott was a defining moment in American corporate relations, with the Big Five’s defeat significantly weakening the power of corporate America. It was also a major victory for Kennedy and the Progressives. Kennedy had skilfully managed to keep most of the trades unions - including those in the fossil fuel industries - on-side for the duration of the crisis and was thus able to consolidate his environmentalist programme.
In a significant victory for David Attenborough, continuing his work as the Commonwealth Commissioner for the Environment, the vast majority of UN member countries joined together to agree the Shanghai Protocol in 1987. This set dramatic targets to cut fossil fuel emissions in developed countries and set non-binding targets for developing ones. In July 1987, the UK Environment Minister James Goldsmith announced a plan to phase out all petrol and diesel vehicles in the UK by 2010. Goldsmith also announced the end of fossil fuel production for domestic use by 2000 (although he was notably more circumspect about the future of the SWF) and plans to transition the UK rail network entirely to wind and solar energy over the same period.
I am envisaging the billowing sails of the 4.30 from Croydon
Turns out this was a thing... http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/sail/sail.htm
I wonder how Lyndon LaRouche is doing ITTL?
No, seriously. A big part of his OTL agenda was conspiracy theories about the British, claiming that, while they had shed their geographic empire, they still ruled a vast financial empire that LaRouche called the "Anglo-Dutch liberal system", one that he compared to the mercantile empire of medieval Venice on a global scale. The British were his "globalists", the shadowy elites he blamed for everything wrong with the world. In real life, his views were hard to take seriously as the US eclipsed the UK, between the Suez Crisis and the strife of the '70s. Here, however, the Commonwealth as a whole is still one of the world's three superpowers, and moreover, a lot of its power comes down to finance (the Sovereign Wealth Fund especially), trade, and resource exports (its dominant position in TTL's OPEC). And in the postwar era, at least before the '80s, relations between the US and the Commonwealth were chilly -- and in the '80s and after, I can see quite a few people on the nationalist, anti-communist fringes viewing rapprochement with the UK as America selling out to a foreign power, with the unions as useful idiots. Anti-Commonwealth sentiment is probably going to get a lot of airplay on the American right, resembling a goulash stew of OTL's LaRouche and '80s Japan-bashing and ranging from the more moderate position of "the Commonwealth is an economic and strategic rival that we shouldn't get too close with" to the more extreme position of "they're plotting to take over the country and undo everything the Founding Fathers fought for, unless we give them a new 1776". The little stunt pulled by the American oil companies in the mid-'80s has likely soured many Americans on that kind of economic nationalism, at least for a time, but eventually, memories will fade and you'll start to see the emergence of a nationalist counter-narrative: that the oil barons did nothing wrong except stand up for American industry against Washington's environmental policy, and that Kennedy and the Progressives sold out to foreigners by importing Commonwealth oil to break the oil strike.
(On that note, I noticed a lot of similarities between the US' oil strike and the OTL coal miners' strike in '80s Britain, in terms of the goals of the strikers, the government's response, and what the ultimate outcome was, only with the politics flipped: the miners' strike broke the unions, the oil strike broke Big Business. They even started in March and lasted a similar amount of time, which can't be a coincidence.)
And you did mention earlier that the Oklahoma City bombers would figure as characters in the story... I smell something nasty in the works. Possibly a domestic terrorist attack against a British/Commonwealth (or SWF-owned) company in the United States? Something involving militia goons heading to the US-Canada border?
No, seriously. A big part of his OTL agenda was conspiracy theories about the British, claiming that, while they had shed their geographic empire, they still ruled a vast financial empire that LaRouche called the "Anglo-Dutch liberal system", one that he compared to the mercantile empire of medieval Venice on a global scale. The British were his "globalists", the shadowy elites he blamed for everything wrong with the world. In real life, his views were hard to take seriously as the US eclipsed the UK, between the Suez Crisis and the strife of the '70s. Here, however, the Commonwealth as a whole is still one of the world's three superpowers, and moreover, a lot of its power comes down to finance (the Sovereign Wealth Fund especially), trade, and resource exports (its dominant position in TTL's OPEC). And in the postwar era, at least before the '80s, relations between the US and the Commonwealth were chilly -- and in the '80s and after, I can see quite a few people on the nationalist, anti-communist fringes viewing rapprochement with the UK as America selling out to a foreign power, with the unions as useful idiots. Anti-Commonwealth sentiment is probably going to get a lot of airplay on the American right, resembling a goulash stew of OTL's LaRouche and '80s Japan-bashing and ranging from the more moderate position of "the Commonwealth is an economic and strategic rival that we shouldn't get too close with" to the more extreme position of "they're plotting to take over the country and undo everything the Founding Fathers fought for, unless we give them a new 1776". The little stunt pulled by the American oil companies in the mid-'80s has likely soured many Americans on that kind of economic nationalism, at least for a time, but eventually, memories will fade and you'll start to see the emergence of a nationalist counter-narrative: that the oil barons did nothing wrong except stand up for American industry against Washington's environmental policy, and that Kennedy and the Progressives sold out to foreigners by importing Commonwealth oil to break the oil strike.
(On that note, I noticed a lot of similarities between the US' oil strike and the OTL coal miners' strike in '80s Britain, in terms of the goals of the strikers, the government's response, and what the ultimate outcome was, only with the politics flipped: the miners' strike broke the unions, the oil strike broke Big Business. They even started in March and lasted a similar amount of time, which can't be a coincidence.)
And you did mention earlier that the Oklahoma City bombers would figure as characters in the story... I smell something nasty in the works. Possibly a domestic terrorist attack against a British/Commonwealth (or SWF-owned) company in the United States? Something involving militia goons heading to the US-Canada border?
I'm feeling excited, I'm anticipatory, I'm feeling hyped up, I'm feeling determined, I'm feeling horny...
Yes, the translation from the miners' strike to the oil strike was a bit crude - my apologies go out to the storytelling gods. I got the idea because I love a good JFK conspiracy theory and was reading about how the oil industry hated the Kennedys so much and I thought 'oh, I know how I could use that.'
I actually have plans for Lyndon LaRouche in this TL, funnily enough, but it'll be when he's in his old age. As of the late 1980s TTL he's teaching in Petrograd.
As for the relationship between the Commonwealth and the US on a cultural level: while on a political level there's a bit of a love-hate relationship going on, things are generally a bit warmer on an inter-personal level. Things like the British Invasion still happened TTL (more or less) and Hollywood films remain hugely popular in Anglophone markets overseas (although the Commonwealth film industry is generally stronger than the individual countries' TTL - I have an update on this for later on). A shared language has been the basis of a large academic and tourist interchange. New York and London are also two of the world's major finance centres (the other is Paris, with Shanghai on its heels) so there's considerable corporate movement there too, not necessarily in terms of mergers and multinational corporations but in terms of something like a young man in the City doing a couple of years in New York to prove himself before coming back, and vice versa.
But you're right that the further away you get from the political centre the more Anglophobia you're likely to encounter and the SWF is central to that. The acquisition of the Dodgers, in particular, generated a degree of nationalistic (not to say anti-semitic) backlash against foreign ownership in baseball that became a proxy for a whole bunch of arguments about a wider variety of things. TTL's Donald Trump makes a name for himself in the 1980s attacking America's 'selling out to the British' (the Commonwealth is always referred to as 'Britain' or 'the British' in the US whenever somebody is saying negative things about it). That being said, it's going to take a long time for the memories of the oil strike to fade.
On the far left people certainly are concerned about the financial reach of the SWF and the City, with many arguing that the SWF's expanded investment directives are basically an imperialist attempt to cripple other countries by buying up a mix of countries' government bonds and shares (which, as is the way with all of these things, isn't 100% wrong). There is also a degree of disquiet amongst some in the union movement about the direction of Kennedy's climate agenda, especially if this leads to the loss of coaling mining and oil drilling jobs: the unions were onside during the oil strike because it meant that they could fuck over the bosses but it's going to be a bit more of a balancing act going forwards.
Whatever floats your boat, my guy, happy to help.
Since the commonwealth is spread across a variety of languages I'm assuming language education is a big deal, I was thinking the commonwealth as a whole might have adopted something similar to India OTL with a three language education that being native language, English Language as commonwealth common language and a third language likely to be a nearby or economically important country like mandarin for example. I assuming the governments hope is to have the majority of the population be bilingual by the 2000's to help increase cohesion and belonging.
That's pretty much it, although I would say that English is much more of a lingua franca than that might suggest. By the late 1980s/early 1990s there would be very few people (perhaps in the remotest communities in somewhere like Papua New Guinea (not counting uncontacted tribes ofc) or the Pacific Islands) who wouldn't be able to at least hold a conversation in English. This is helped by the broadcast reach of the CBC, which is dominated by English-language programming. The most common third languages to learn are Russian, Mandarin and Spanish.
* * *
This is for no particular reason other than I was at home today and thinking about some of the discussion in the wake of the US map I posted the other day.
Sure, absolutely no problem with that. Please PM me about it and we can discuss our ideas before you post. Just to let you know that there's something planned about space that will be a plot point in an update in two weeks time so anything you write will have to be cleared by then. Hope that's okay for you.
I think i’ll just wait for the update before I begin posting,but I should have some ideas by the weekend. I’ve already got a beginning post mapped out in my head.
South Africa (1961-1986)
The Oranje Nation: South Africa after Independence
The "Prince's Flag" from the Dutch Revolt of the 16th Century, resurrected as the flag of the South African Republic in 1961
In the years since it had been expelled from the Commonwealth, South Africa had rapidly attained the status of a pariah state. The Commonwealth wanted nothing to do with its former member, the United States had too vocal and influential an African-American minority and the Soviet Union was run according to an ideology that was, at least notionally, liberationary. Shorn of superpower support, the South African government then turned to the next best thing: China and France. Both nations were a good deal more cynical about their choice of allies. With support from the French government, the South African government is believed to have built up a substantial stockpile of chemical weapons over the course of the 1960s. Meanwhile, Chinese military advisors were deployed to aid the pacification of Swaziland, Basutoland and South West Africa. Both countries successfully blocked any moves by the UN Security Council to further sanction South Africa.
When South Africa was expelled from the Commonwealth in May 1961, the ruling National Party hurriedly organised a referendum three weeks later on whether to adopt a republican constitution. The referendum was won 67-33 by the pro-republican side, after a campaign marked by violence and repression not only of the few black and coloured voters who had not been purged from the electoral roll but also of Anglo settlers. Although the tricameral parliament (one for whites, one for coloureds, one for indians - all blacks were disenfranchised) notionally enshrined ‘power sharing’ between the races, in practice the white chamber had a power of veto over the other chambers, the sole power to initiate legislation and the power to pass legislation without the approval of the other chambers in matters of education, defence, finance, foreign policy, law and order, transport and commerce. (As many political scientists pointed out, it wasn’t entirely clear what the other two chambers were there for in a legislative sense.) The State President was to be the new head of state, elected by a white suffrage, and invested with sweeping powers.
The election for the State Presidency and the new parliament took place a day later and was marred by the same voter suppression seen in the referendum. The end result marked a major shift to the right for South Africa, even in a country which had previously been imposing a policy of apartheid. On the back of extremist pro-Afrikaans voters, the former Axis-sympathiser Hans van Rensburg won the office at the head of the ‘purist’ faction of apartheid. Van Rensburg favoured as much separation of the races as possible and immediately set out clearing cities and the countryside of non-white populations to out of the way settlements designated their ‘homelands.’ Only given passports to leave these homelands for work purposes, this process was completed by around 1967. During the course of these deportations, an estimated 19,000 people are believed to have died and there were notable clashes between South African police and soldiers and resistors in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Over the course of the deportations, the Anglo minority was a consistent, if qualified, opponent of both the deportations and the National Party more generally, something which, in turn, meant that they incurred ever-increasing hostility from van Rensburg. In 1964, English was removed as an official language in the country and the use of it in schools was banned in 1965. The strict laws that governed eligibility to vote for the white chamber were tightened even further, dramatically cutting down the number of Anglos eligible to vote.
In 1966 the National Party and certain leaders of the Anglophone community brokered an agreement. This agreement would open up the areas of Natal province not already set aside for ethnic Zulu settlement for Anglo use. English would remain one of the official languages of the province alongside Afrikaans. However, no actual land would be set aside for the supposed influx of Anglo settlers (Afrikaaner settlers would not be required to give up their often-vast estates), ethnic Anglos would continue to have their civil rights removed across the country’s other provinces and Natal itself would continue to be governed by an Afrikaaner minority. With few Anglos taking up the offer to move to their new ‘homeland,’ in about 1968 the South African police and army began to round them up and force them to move. The most notable example was what was known as the ‘Great Trek’ in 1969; the forced march of approximately 250,000 settlers across the country from Cape Town to Natal.
Matters in Natal swiftly reached boiling point as, contrary to the hopes of many Afrikaaners, the Anglos and the Zulus were not played off against one another and instead made common cause. Over the 1970s, Natal became increasingly polarised between the Anglo-Zulu majority and the Afrkaaner minority. From an Afrikaaner perspective, the Anglos and Zulus were inherently disloyal and determined to force the Afrkaaners into majority rule. This threat was seen as justifying the continuation of Afrkaaner governance of the territory. In practice, this resulted in preferential treatment for ethnic Afrikaaners for housing, employment and other fields in a region that was supposed to be an Anglo homeland.
In 1970, van Rensburg was assassinated by a disgruntled Anglo farmer. He was replaced on an interim basis by B.J. Vorster before H.F. Verwoerd won the subsequent 1971 election. Although many outside observers confidently predicted that Verwoerd would be a (relative) moderate, he was nothing if not an old-fashioned Afrikaaner nationalist and soon proved that he had no intention of making substantive changes to van Rensburg’s policies. In 1972, black and Anglo activists concluded the Declaration of Faith, a statement of core principles regarding the desirability of a multi-racial, peaceful South Africa. Beginning that year, radicals in the black and Anglo camps commenced a campaign of violence but one which lacked popular support amongst the majority of those communities and was called off in 1978.
In August 1979, the Anglo populations of Durban and Pietermaritzburg began peaceful protests, leading to the deployment of the South African army. However, the failure of the army to enter Anglo areas angered hardline Afrikaaner opinion and loyalist riots broke out on the evening of 9 September, leading to a pogrom through Anglo areas that destroyed thousands of pounds worth of property but thankfully left nobody dead. Over the next three years, South African soldiers were increasingly deployed to the two cities and expanded their operations to include much of the urban and rural areas of Natal and Zululand. Between 1980 and 1982, political violence increased dramatically. It peaked in 1982 with over 500 people, over two-thirds of them civilians, dying, including a dramatic event on 30 January in which the South African army opened fire on an unarmed protest, killing 82.
Amidst the continued unrest, and with the local Afrikaaners seemingly incapable of controlling events, Pretoria took matters into its own hands in 1983, abolishing all separate government across Zululand and Natal and subjecting the provinces to military rule. Under the military command of Magnus Malan, greater oppression forced black and Anglo elites to take ever more extreme action. The Anglo-Zulu Liberation Union (“AZLU”) was formed in 1983 and began a bombing campaign against Afrikaaner offices and military barracks. When this had no obvious effect, moderates on the Anglo and Zulu side were forced to take matters further. In August 1986, a coalition of Anglo and Zulu community leaders, led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Helen Zuzman met in Durban’s City Hall to sign the Zulu-Natal Declaration of Faith, effectively declaring their secession from South Africa. The meeting was broken up violently by South African troops but the story got out and the stage was set for a greater international showdown for South Africa.
State Presidents of the South African Republic
The "Prince's Flag" from the Dutch Revolt of the 16th Century, resurrected as the flag of the South African Republic in 1961
In the years since it had been expelled from the Commonwealth, South Africa had rapidly attained the status of a pariah state. The Commonwealth wanted nothing to do with its former member, the United States had too vocal and influential an African-American minority and the Soviet Union was run according to an ideology that was, at least notionally, liberationary. Shorn of superpower support, the South African government then turned to the next best thing: China and France. Both nations were a good deal more cynical about their choice of allies. With support from the French government, the South African government is believed to have built up a substantial stockpile of chemical weapons over the course of the 1960s. Meanwhile, Chinese military advisors were deployed to aid the pacification of Swaziland, Basutoland and South West Africa. Both countries successfully blocked any moves by the UN Security Council to further sanction South Africa.
When South Africa was expelled from the Commonwealth in May 1961, the ruling National Party hurriedly organised a referendum three weeks later on whether to adopt a republican constitution. The referendum was won 67-33 by the pro-republican side, after a campaign marked by violence and repression not only of the few black and coloured voters who had not been purged from the electoral roll but also of Anglo settlers. Although the tricameral parliament (one for whites, one for coloureds, one for indians - all blacks were disenfranchised) notionally enshrined ‘power sharing’ between the races, in practice the white chamber had a power of veto over the other chambers, the sole power to initiate legislation and the power to pass legislation without the approval of the other chambers in matters of education, defence, finance, foreign policy, law and order, transport and commerce. (As many political scientists pointed out, it wasn’t entirely clear what the other two chambers were there for in a legislative sense.) The State President was to be the new head of state, elected by a white suffrage, and invested with sweeping powers.
The election for the State Presidency and the new parliament took place a day later and was marred by the same voter suppression seen in the referendum. The end result marked a major shift to the right for South Africa, even in a country which had previously been imposing a policy of apartheid. On the back of extremist pro-Afrikaans voters, the former Axis-sympathiser Hans van Rensburg won the office at the head of the ‘purist’ faction of apartheid. Van Rensburg favoured as much separation of the races as possible and immediately set out clearing cities and the countryside of non-white populations to out of the way settlements designated their ‘homelands.’ Only given passports to leave these homelands for work purposes, this process was completed by around 1967. During the course of these deportations, an estimated 19,000 people are believed to have died and there were notable clashes between South African police and soldiers and resistors in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Over the course of the deportations, the Anglo minority was a consistent, if qualified, opponent of both the deportations and the National Party more generally, something which, in turn, meant that they incurred ever-increasing hostility from van Rensburg. In 1964, English was removed as an official language in the country and the use of it in schools was banned in 1965. The strict laws that governed eligibility to vote for the white chamber were tightened even further, dramatically cutting down the number of Anglos eligible to vote.
In 1966 the National Party and certain leaders of the Anglophone community brokered an agreement. This agreement would open up the areas of Natal province not already set aside for ethnic Zulu settlement for Anglo use. English would remain one of the official languages of the province alongside Afrikaans. However, no actual land would be set aside for the supposed influx of Anglo settlers (Afrikaaner settlers would not be required to give up their often-vast estates), ethnic Anglos would continue to have their civil rights removed across the country’s other provinces and Natal itself would continue to be governed by an Afrikaaner minority. With few Anglos taking up the offer to move to their new ‘homeland,’ in about 1968 the South African police and army began to round them up and force them to move. The most notable example was what was known as the ‘Great Trek’ in 1969; the forced march of approximately 250,000 settlers across the country from Cape Town to Natal.
Matters in Natal swiftly reached boiling point as, contrary to the hopes of many Afrikaaners, the Anglos and the Zulus were not played off against one another and instead made common cause. Over the 1970s, Natal became increasingly polarised between the Anglo-Zulu majority and the Afrkaaner minority. From an Afrikaaner perspective, the Anglos and Zulus were inherently disloyal and determined to force the Afrkaaners into majority rule. This threat was seen as justifying the continuation of Afrkaaner governance of the territory. In practice, this resulted in preferential treatment for ethnic Afrikaaners for housing, employment and other fields in a region that was supposed to be an Anglo homeland.
In 1970, van Rensburg was assassinated by a disgruntled Anglo farmer. He was replaced on an interim basis by B.J. Vorster before H.F. Verwoerd won the subsequent 1971 election. Although many outside observers confidently predicted that Verwoerd would be a (relative) moderate, he was nothing if not an old-fashioned Afrikaaner nationalist and soon proved that he had no intention of making substantive changes to van Rensburg’s policies. In 1972, black and Anglo activists concluded the Declaration of Faith, a statement of core principles regarding the desirability of a multi-racial, peaceful South Africa. Beginning that year, radicals in the black and Anglo camps commenced a campaign of violence but one which lacked popular support amongst the majority of those communities and was called off in 1978.
In August 1979, the Anglo populations of Durban and Pietermaritzburg began peaceful protests, leading to the deployment of the South African army. However, the failure of the army to enter Anglo areas angered hardline Afrikaaner opinion and loyalist riots broke out on the evening of 9 September, leading to a pogrom through Anglo areas that destroyed thousands of pounds worth of property but thankfully left nobody dead. Over the next three years, South African soldiers were increasingly deployed to the two cities and expanded their operations to include much of the urban and rural areas of Natal and Zululand. Between 1980 and 1982, political violence increased dramatically. It peaked in 1982 with over 500 people, over two-thirds of them civilians, dying, including a dramatic event on 30 January in which the South African army opened fire on an unarmed protest, killing 82.
Amidst the continued unrest, and with the local Afrikaaners seemingly incapable of controlling events, Pretoria took matters into its own hands in 1983, abolishing all separate government across Zululand and Natal and subjecting the provinces to military rule. Under the military command of Magnus Malan, greater oppression forced black and Anglo elites to take ever more extreme action. The Anglo-Zulu Liberation Union (“AZLU”) was formed in 1983 and began a bombing campaign against Afrikaaner offices and military barracks. When this had no obvious effect, moderates on the Anglo and Zulu side were forced to take matters further. In August 1986, a coalition of Anglo and Zulu community leaders, led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Helen Zuzman met in Durban’s City Hall to sign the Zulu-Natal Declaration of Faith, effectively declaring their secession from South Africa. The meeting was broken up violently by South African troops but the story got out and the stage was set for a greater international showdown for South Africa.
State Presidents of the South African Republic
- Hans van Rensburg; National Party; October 1961 - September 1970*
- John Vorster; National Party; September 1970 - October 1971
- Hendrik Verwoerd; National Party; October 1971 -
