alternatehistory.com

Hello all--

I'm a newbie here and this is my first thread. :) So, kindly pardon me if this is a done-to-death subject like The Forbidden Mammal (I haven't read back all that far here, but haven't seen anything like it).

Anyhow, I have wondered about this for years and years: what if there is a military coup d'etat in apartheid South Africa in the 1970s? I don't think that having one was terribly unlikely or required a significant PoD at any point. Here is a rough proposed timeline for it:

--Significant segments of conservative Afrikaner society and the Broederbond increasingly resent the "reforms" beginning after the assassination of Verwoerd (true in OTL too).

--General Viljoen is heartened by what happened in Chile and Argentina in OTL and begins to see emulating Pinochet and the Proceso junta leaders as an effective and permanent answer to the threat of the "black communist takeover".

--Using a Spear of the Nation assassination of a major Afrikaner politician or SA military figure as the pretext, he orders his men to overthrow the Vorster government "in defense of the Boer nation". Parliament is dissolved, all parties except the National Party are outlawed, and the press is shut down.

Where does this take us? Presumably, such a regime emulates what Pinochet and Videla, Massera, and Agosti did in the southern cone of Latin America and a massive "dirty war" ensues in which anybody remotely suspected of opposing apartheid, and many of their family members, disappear (yes this happened in OTL too, but in this scenario it is far more extensive, and is targeted more at white dissidents than ANC). I also think that the Ian Smith government of UDI Rhodesia is officially recognized, and that Viljoen tries to incorporate Rhodesia into SA--possibly by mutual agreement, and possibly by force.

I presume that the SA military is initially tremendously successful in the endeavor of its "dirty war" and in the bush wars, but proves rather less adept at managing the SA economy and keeping the people happy.

I also see this South Africa eventually getting drawn into a military debacle with a major power (most likely Britain, but perhaps the Soviet Union) a few years down the line, possibly from an attempt to unilaterally annex Swaziland and Lesotho. This may lead to white rule ending quite a bit sooner than in OTL.

What do you all think of my very first WI?
Top