WI a coalition of African nations invaded Apartheid South Africa?
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Chris Nation
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Their economies would be in free fall the next day, and the Western anti-apartheid movement would dwindle to irrelevance. Botha flies to Washington and is photographed with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, following a quick military victory.
Unless they've got Soviet help the invasion forces get hammered flat assuming they don't get nuked.
They could. The problem, of course, is that none of bordering states could even dream of matching up to South Africa's military, be it in equipment, training, or logistical support. Despite sanctions, South Africa was easily the top player in sub-Saharan Africa. Most African military forces of the era were mainly "regime protection forces" designed to keep the current "President for Life" in power (this is also why the coups were generally by field grade officers in the same army). South Africa had an actual solid defensive army, with limited offensive capability.
I think that by the 1980s apartheid was disreputable enough that Reagan and Thatcher would still want to keep their distance from Botha, even if they were giving him back channel support via Israel or the World Anti-Communist Whatever.
But if Inkatha signs up to fight against the invasion, they'd probably be happy to do photo-ops with Buthelezi as the acceptable face of the coalition.
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It strikes me that the distances involved would be far greater than the logistical means, such as they were, of sub-Saharan nations could support.
Agreed. I assume this sort of circumstance was the reason South Africa developed and stockpiled a handful of basic atomic weapons? They could blow a Little Boy-sized hole in the capital of any nearby invading country.
Chris Nation
Banned
On reflection, I think you're probably right. However, I do think an invasion would serve as a validation of the Afrikaners' arguments at the time that they needed to use measures that were appalling to Western eyes to ensure their survival. Certainly, British and American sanctions don't happen in the 80s.
In many ways, I think that OTL is the best case scenario for dismantling racial segregation in South Africa, post-1953 at least. Prior to 1953, you could engineer a plausible course of events which leads either to no National victory in 1948 or United retaking the country in the 1953 general election, and therefore following the Fagan Commission's recommendations and gradually removed petty discrimination, and gradually widened the franchise. However, once National Party rule is cemented in the mid-60s, the fact that each Parliament led to more and more National verligtes sowed implicit doubt about their own policies. The 1960 Republic is what reconciled Afrikaners to the idea that English South Africans were no longer a threat to them, and led to a blunted Afrikaner nationalism in the following decades. People often underestimate the example that this had on a certain postwar Baby Boomer Afrikaner man. The very people who led the negotiations to end apartheid in the 1990s.
An invasion derails that and leads the harder Afrikaner nationalists to take the reigns. Especially with a more sympathetic ear in Britain and the U.S., a real laager would have formed. Of course, this sympathetic Western ear has a quick expiration, dated definitely 9 November 1989. In such a situation, "bittereinders" would have taken a whole new meaning.
Riain
Banned
As others have said, South Africa has a world class military within the limits of its embargoed resources and would likely kick the arse of any invasion attempts regardless of Soviet and Cuban support.
This is EXACTLY what the SA nukes were for, if everything was going horribly wrong they'd do a nuke test and then announce to the world the next one is going to be a warshot unless they get help. IIUC the first weapons only used 80% HEU rather than the over 90% usually used because the purpose was to make a underground bang rather than a deliverable weapon.
This is EXACTLY what the SA nukes were for, if everything was going horribly wrong they'd do a nuke test and then announce to the world the next one is going to be a warshot unless they get help. IIUC the first weapons only used 80% HEU rather than the over 90% usually used because the purpose was to make a underground bang rather than a deliverable weapon.
Who would make up this coalition, who would command it, where would they invade from, and how does this alleged coalition get an armed force with the strength and capacity to invade SA to the invasion front. Sir John Hackett had this happen in "The Third World War" but it required an earlier POD that had all of the black majority southern African countries as part of a Marxist confederation. In OTL I think this is almost as ASB as a certain sea mammal.
To be brutal honest if every African country south of the Sahara joined in one grand coalition to invade Apartheid South Africa, South Africa would have crushed them with ease. Even the best African armies were primarily defensive armies made to fight a war of attrition against invaders, but most were made for oppressing unarmed civilians and tended to do fall part against any kind of force fighting back.
Even today we can see it, what African forces have a lot of trouble against rebel forces, which a few hundred or thousand French Foreign Legionaries simply walk over often with zero losses.
Even today we can see it, what African forces have a lot of trouble against rebel forces, which a few hundred or thousand French Foreign Legionaries simply walk over often with zero losses.
OK, I'm new at this... I've figured out POD and OTL are, but what does "ASB" mean? Following up on Comte's comment, in the OTL ,the southern African states were politically diverse actors. Botswana has always been a fairly stable free-market, democracy that didn't have a military until the apartheid regime was on its way out. As such the ANC occassionally used Botswana as a route to infiltrate the RSA, and the RSA operated freely in Botswana disrupting ANC operations. Angola and Mozambique were Marxist states embroiled in their own bloody civil wars (with rebels often actively supported by the RSA military). Further, both Marxist governments were utterly dependent on scores of Cuban military "advisors" to stay in power. Lesotho was a tribal kingdom, but it was also economically dependent on the RSA, so it toed the Pretoria-line. Ditto for Swaziland. As another commentor observed, Namibia was outright occupied by the RSA. And Rhodesia/Zimbabwe was during the majority of South Africa's apartheid years, another apartheid state and RSA ally. Then it became, and continues to be, an absolute basket case of a nation-state.
Amore significant issue was the fact that the ANC, PAC and other anti-apartheid groups fought amongst themselves just as much as they fought against the RSA. Those leaderships were never able to unify for a common-objective inasmuch as their objectives were mostly to acquire power for their own respective group to the exclusion of the other groups. Sure the groups cooperated from time to time, but (I don't think) ever as a unified front or for very long.
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That is, some external force with superpowers, whose intervention is required to bring about the suggested situation or event.
Chris Nation
Banned
Zimbabwe in the 80s was actually still fairly prosperous. He was also the darling of the West in this period, precisely because he had pretended to be so moderate. He flew to the UK regularly and got on well with Margaret Thatcher. He constantly fought out photo ops with the British royal family - especially Prince Charles (he once attended a meeting with the Pope solely to shake Prince Charles' hand and to be photographed doing it). He played nice with the whites, allowing them to keep their reserved seats in Parliament until 1987, as per the Lancaster House Agreement, and right up until the late 80s he had regular meetings with Ian Smith and had whites in government. It's easy to forget now, but for the entirety of that decade he was viewed in the West as basically the pre-Mandela Mandela.
He also played nice with South Africa, behind the scenes, precisely because Zimbabwe's continued economic prosperity was entirely dependent on South Africa, despite putting on a show for the black African states of playing the victim. He never allowed the ANC to operate within Zimbabwe, and entertained South African trade delegations at State House throughout the 80s. In fact, Zimbabwean intelligence (which, in the 80s, was still largely staffed by the same people who had run Rhodesia's intelligence services, by design - Mugabe begged Ken Flower to remain at his post after 1980) cooperated fully with South African intelligence to ensure that Zimbabwe wouldn't become a safe haven for the ANC. He called for Western sanctions on South Africa, but obviously never thought to limit Zimbabwean trade with South Africa. He enjoyed being viewed by other black leaders as the principled anti-apartheid crusader, but he never actually acted like one.
Oh, and also I've just remembered, there was the historically beautiful irony that he was rolled out consistently in the early 90s to "reassure" white South Africans that black majority rule in South Africa would be good for them.
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in one aspect however by mid 1980s the angolan AF was a superb force by sub saharan standard with 60 x mig-23 and similar number of late model mig-21.They cannot invade south africa but could give a good account of themselves [ with WP help] on the home ground.
Part of the problem of comparing it with israeli-arab issue is the difference in size of the battlefield and the logistics involved
Part of the problem of comparing it with israeli-arab issue is the difference in size of the battlefield and the logistics involved