WI: Apartheid in South Africa Continues

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There are a number of PODs here.

A violent end to apartheid is relatively easy to get I think.

Let Constand Viljoen's violent coup go ahead; let the Shell House massacre spiral out of control; let the tensions around the Boipatong or Bisho massacres explode; let Chris Hani's death be a flashpoint for war.

Those who think it would be a short war are sorely mistaken though.

The Rhodesian War went on for 15 years, and that was with less than whites and a less well-armed military than South Africa.

And partition is an option, but remember, most of South Africa's mineral wealth is in the north, the white government would be desperate to hold onto that. Under a partition agreement, perhaps the two sides would be sensible enough to share the revenue from the mines, but I'm not too sure about that.

If war had erupted, South Africa's white population would be far smaller than it is now, perhaps 2 million rather than 4.5 million. This may have some interesting butterflies for other countries. A South African Civil War would also have some serious implications for the Southern African region. Expect (worse) instability in Zimbabwe and Mozambique and lower economic growth for Botswana and Namibia. These countries will also be the home to a large number of refugees in all likelihood.
 
I think it really depends on how far Pretoria is willing to push it. Its great weakness always was that it was (on paper) democratically accountable to the white community. This made South Africa uniquely vulnerable to sanctions, because its white citizens expected a certain standard of living.

If Pretoria decided to play hard-ball, however, it could arguably play North Korea's current role as a nuclear-armed crazy. There is scope for self-sufficiency programmes in South Africa too: it really depends on how much whites want to punish themselves just to spite blacks.
 
Apartheid Africa I would say could probably survive without foreign support. More difficult to deal with is that the the guerrillas will keep receiving foreign support. Eventually the Soviet Union will fall if they could last another decade, course that just floods the black market with cheap surplus armaments, so maybe that just makes things worse. South Africa's glory days of manipulating other African nations for allies and buffers is far gone, and a lot of those nationalist African states are pretty tight with China and North Korea. Even America might decide to help grease the regime change along, but that's probably much less likely. Oh and the Arabs aren't welcoming because South Africa already chose to cooperate with Israel instead.

So they're looking pretty short in terms of foreign friends in between those who are merely apathetic and those who are actively enemies of apartheid.

More problematic even is internal issues. In a straight up fightthe SADF and white population are pretty strong on paper and could do some serious damage in holding out for a siege. Taking Rhodesia as a test case though, white flight will be the death of the war effort. And once you're trying to keep both the blacks locked out and the whites locked in simultaneously, there's no purpose in even fighting anymore.
 
More problematic even is internal issues. In a straight up fightthe SADF and white population are pretty strong on paper and could do some serious damage in holding out for a siege. Taking Rhodesia as a test case though, white flight will be the death of the war effort. And once you're trying to keep both the blacks locked out and the whites locked in simultaneously, there's no purpose in even fighting anymore.

The other difference between Rhodesia and South Africa is the white population of Rhodesia was far more homogenous than that of South Africa. The Rhodesian Front was, even at the end of the war, getting close to 80% of the popular vote. In the last whites-only election in South Africa, the NP's popular vote share had dropped below 50%, for the first time since 1953.

Going forward it would have to govern in coalition, most likely with the liberal DP. If they govern with them you will start seeing reforms. However, if they govern with the Conservatives, expect a brake on reforms and a return to hard apartheid. That said, the Nats saw the writing on the wall, and a coalition with the DP is more likely.
 
I think it really depends on how far Pretoria is willing to push it. Its great weakness always was that it was (on paper) democratically accountable to the white community. This made South Africa uniquely vulnerable to sanctions, because its white citizens expected a certain standard of living.

If Pretoria decided to play hard-ball, however, it could arguably play North Korea's current role as a nuclear-armed crazy. There is scope for self-sufficiency programmes in South Africa too: it really depends on how much whites want to punish themselves just to spite blacks.

South African whites aren't North Koreans, or even Germans during the Nazi period. It will be very difficult for that to happen. The regime will collapse before South Africa gets anywhere to the level of crazy of the Kims.
 
South African whites aren't North Koreans, or even Germans during the Nazi period. It will be very difficult for that to happen. The regime will collapse before South Africa gets anywhere to the level of crazy of the Kims.

Do the imagined 'threats' from the black enough to keep them together?
 
Do the imagined 'threats' from the black enough to keep them together?

They weren't enough during apartheid, so I doubt they would be under some hypothetical regime.

And remember, lots of whites, despite the black 'threat', still knew apartheid was wrong and wanted it to end.
 
They weren't enough during apartheid, so I doubt they would be under some hypothetical regime.

And remember, lots of whites, despite the black 'threat', still knew apartheid was wrong and wanted it to end.
This is precisely the reason I'd think a violent end wouldn't drag out into a decade-plus long war.
Rhodesia lasted as long as it did because there was a conscious belief that they were fighting against communism, and for democracy. Likewise, the policy of disenfranchisement used by Salsbury was very different than the apartheid system in SA. As such, it was far easier to morally justify by the whites.
In SA though, there was little moral cover to hid behind once the communist threat was truly over (i.e. post '91).
On the other hand, if the whites are indeed unable to hold up a unified front (as may very well be the case given the ethnic and political divisions present), then things could indeed get ugly, and end up lasting a very long time.
I'm no expert, but I'd say that if (and it may be a big "if) the whites are able to actually get behind a unifying cause in a post-aparthied civil war, then the war could indeed be over relatively quickly through agreements on relocation, division of resources, etc.
On the other hand, if they are unable to get their act together, and it turns into an all out whites-vs-black mess, then yes: things will last a very long, ugly time. One argument against this though, is exactly a point that you brought up as well: that the SADF was capable of vastly more damage than the Rhodies ever were. As such, the possibility for large-scale, short-term damage (against and by both sides) is much greater. As such, the possibility for a quick, but extremely brutal and very devastating war would be there.
 

Realpolitik

Banned
If there was no Mandela or a figure like him, it would probably be a LOT nastier as it would escalate both sides, which will spiral into more and more violence-both black/white and communal/tribal. If a more militant wing leads the anti-apartheid struggle and is radical, it means that the hardliners in the regime will get more power and the whites will be more and more willing to support them-damn what the world thinks. Which in turn would make the blacks more radical. Tit for tat warfare would break out, and eventually the whole mess blows up, horrifically.



As for the morals of it all, knowing the system is not morally right will not mean a lot for the Afrikaners if they think they and their families will be tortured to death or something if the regime falls. Having someone like Mandela was crucial.
 
If there was no Mandela or a figure like him, it would probably be a LOT nastier as it would escalate both sides, which will spiral into more and more violence-both black/white and communal/tribal. If a more militant wing leads the anti-apartheid struggle and is radical, it means that the hardliners in the regime will get more power and the whites will be more and more willing to support them-damn what the world thinks. Which in turn would make the blacks more radical. Tit for tat warfare would break out, and eventually the whole mess blows up, horrifically.



As for the morals of it all, knowing the system is not morally right will not mean a lot for the Afrikaners if they think they and their families will be tortured to death or something if the regime falls. Having someone like Mandela was crucial.
Afrikaners were/are a majority of whites, but not overwhelmingly so. Something in the neighborhood of 60% IIRC.
And even among them, there would have been major rifts on how to respond to a fall of Apartheid, and resultant violence (should that course have played out).
Sure, someone willing to take the moderate stance like Mandela was indeed crucial to avoid violence; but how the whites would have responded to that violence would be very different among different groups, and very different even within those groups.
And just how bad/organized/systematic/etc the violence turned out to be would likewise result in very different outcomes/responses/etc.
 

Redhand

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Inkatha is a Zulu nationalist organisation.

That is true. I think I meant to say that they wanted the Zulus in power and the ANC out and got mixed up. But the likelihood of them allying with a White Rump state based out of the cape as a way of carrying on an anti-ANC guerilla struggle is quite possible.

I think the SADF could keep a lid on the ANC breaching a perimeter near the Cape and maybe even allow all the upcountry whites to get out while they can to safety if they want to, which I am sure some of them would have rather stayed and fought for their farms, in which case they would be exterminated, much like Inkatha supporters would have been long term.

While I think it would be a near run thing, I think the ability of the SADF, which was actually not at all bad seeing as they performed decent in the Bush wars considering they were working against some pretty stacked odds in terms of numbers and air support, would allow for things in South Africa to eventually come to a partition rather than an outright genocide of whites. The system of Apartheid would likely become irrelevant and disappear if such a partition occurred.
 
That is true. I think I meant to say that they wanted the Zulus in power and the ANC out and got mixed up. But the likelihood of them allying with a White Rump state based out of the cape as a way of carrying on an anti-ANC guerilla struggle is quite possible.

I think the SADF could keep a lid on the ANC breaching a perimeter near the Cape and maybe even allow all the upcountry whites to get out while they can to safety if they want to, which I am sure some of them would have rather stayed and fought for their farms, in which case they would be exterminated, much like Inkatha supporters would have been long term.

Remember, the Zulus are also not homogenous.

Although during apartheid and the immediate period after 1994 Inkatha was the most popular party among Zulus, this soon changed, so much so, that KwaZulu-Natal is one of the few places where ANC support has increaed over the past few elections.

Lots of Zulus would have seen themselves as 'black' before Zulu, meaning they would throw their lot in with the broader black nationalist movement.

Even in OTL there was much violence in KwaZulu-Natal between Inkatha and ANC supporters, as well as among Zulu migrant workers in Johannesburg. The Zulus will certainly not be a homogenous bloc in this scenario.
 
The whites don't need to uniformly support the Nats. If just the Afrikaners do it's enough to give the regime a solid demographic of support.
 
The whites don't need to uniformly support the Nats. If just the Afrikaners do it's enough to give the regime a solid demographic of support.

But they weren't.

By the late 1980s, the Nats had probably lost about half of its Afrikaner support to the Conservatives (especially blue-collar Afrikaners), and were kept in power by support from conservative English-speaking whites.
 
What are the odds in the event of South Africa collapsing of neighboring nations getting involved? I understand Angola and Mozambique were busy waging civil wars but what about Zimbabwe and Botswana?
 
Apartheid Survives in South Africa

blacks and whites would live segregated lives.

The country would have much worse racial issues than they do today.
 
I would firstly suggest a POD involving Southern Rhodesia voting in favour of joining the Union of South Africa, this in turn would eventually mean that the High Commission Territories*, Northern Rhodesia and South West Africa eventually join the Union of South Africa.

This would mean that South Africa is more economically stronger than OTL and more able to withstand economic sanctions, on the other hand it might prevent the National Party from entering power and thus Apartheid itself might be butterflied. However I doubt there would be full racial equality for quite some time yet sadly although it depends on what future governments do.

Whatever happens it would be strongly involved in regional wars in areas such as Angola.

Secondly you need to have some continuing Cold War to take place, either the OTL one or an ITTL one. One could be a continuing USSR or No Sino-Soviet Split for example...

*Now Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland
 
I read a book from years back called the War in 2020 by military author Ralph Peters that was published back in 1990. The author visioned the Soviet Union still around in the early 21st century and the Cold War in our history came to an end back in 1989 and a new democratic European Union in our real history but South Africa is still ruled by a white Dutch apartheid government going into the 21st century. What happens in this book is South Africa invades the southern provinces of Congo ( Zaire ) seizing their mineral minds that prompts the USA to react in a military police action response to South Africa's illegal invasion of Congo to the UN like Saddam's Iraq illegal invasion of Kuwait during the first Persian Gulf War of 1991. Problem is in this future alternate history South Africa is just not Israeli military armed with tanks and assault rifles but Japanese military armed with the state of the art helicopter gunships and fighter jets to take on the US armed forces and their allies in Congo. Not going to say anything further but excellent read for a book if apartheid South Africa lasted into the 21st century
 
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