Ooh, what book?
Promise and Despair: The First Struggle for a Non-Racial South Africa by Martin Plaut.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Promise-De...8&qid=1469106150&sr=1-1&keywords=martin+plaut
Ooh, what book?
It doesn't really matter. As long as the migrant labour system, urban segregation and land expropriation continue there will continue to be resistance to whoever is in power. Perhaps you might not get an armed struggle but as blacks continue to become more urbanised, whites will inevitably push back. I've never really bought into the idea that the UP getting elected in 1948 would inevitably lead to slow reform. There are a lot of factors to consider, would the UP risk alienating their white base by granting greater rights to non whites? Definitely not, they would quickly loose votes to the NP. What about the colour bar? No UP government is going to risk loosing the votes of poor whites by taking away their job security.
Any reform will be seen as selling out the white man, so even if apartheid isn't implemented in 48, the UP will be hurt badly in the next election if they take even a very moderate reform agenda. So no aprtheid means that either it get's implemented later when the Nats take the election after a huge backlash from the white population or the UP is so slow in reform that blacks will inevitably rise up against the state.
So without apartheid, you might not have mass resettlement of non-whites, meaning there are more non-whites living in townships around the cities. No tribal homelands, perhaps just land reserved for Africans, and blacks being limited to where they can own land. Rhodesia had a single university, and it was desegregated, but on the other hand Rhodesia had a much smaller white population (1/15th the size) than South Africa, making something as cumbersome and costly as a apartheid and the bureaucracy to go with it unfeasible.
I agree with you re: the IFP-ANC, but you brought up in response to a question about whether a Mugabe-like figure could emerge in SA.
There was certainly a low-level civil war between the ANC and the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Johannesburg, which could easily have erupted into a bigger conflict. Jacob Zuma, for all his faults, played a major role in bringing an end to the violence between the IFP and ANC.
The coup is an interesting one. Constand Viljoen has some different stories but there have been claims that he was a few phone calls away from mobilising his men and overthrowing the government.
http://mg.co.za/article/2001-03-26-sa-came-within-whisker-of-civil-war
A coup by hardliners in 1993 would have been a disaster for South Africa.
It doesn't really matter. As long as the migrant labour system, urban segregation and land expropriation continue there will continue to be resistance to whoever is in power. Perhaps you might not get an armed struggle but as blacks continue to become more urbanised, whites will inevitably push back. I've never really bought into the idea that the UP getting elected in 1948 would inevitably lead to slow reform. There are a lot of factors to consider, would the UP risk alienating their white base by granting greater rights to non whites? Definitely not, they would quickly loose votes to the NP. What about the colour bar? No UP government is going to risk loosing the votes of poor whites by taking away their job security.
Any reform will be seen as selling out the white man, so even if apartheid isn't implemented in 48, the UP will be hurt badly in the next election if they take even a very moderate reform agenda. So no aprtheid means that either it get's implemented later when the Nats take the election after a huge backlash from the white population or the UP is so slow in reform that blacks will inevitably rise up against the state.
I would actually disagree. The NP considered 1948 to be a CRUCIAL election to win because the UP was planning to end districting and representation rules that massively over represented rural whites (OTL the Nationals won a commanding majority with 40% of the vote as was mentioned earlier in the thread). Smuts winning, changing the rules, encouraging tons of immigration (that might be the biggest thing, those immigrants aren't going to vote for an Afrikaaner nativist party), and quite possibly expanding the colored franchise, even if only by one or two seats, would make it incredibly difficult for the National Party to get a majority in future elections.
Given how distorted the FPTP system was (UP polled 11% more in the popular vote and still lost) I could see UP pushing electoral reform if they won. If they went for full PR I could see that having an impact on South African politics.
What if the UP had to form a coalition government with Labour? As a smaller party in a FPTP system they would have an incentive to push for a more proportionate electoral system.Perhaps but a redistricting to equalise urban and rural seats may mean you don't need to do that.
What if the UP had to form a coalition government with Labour? As a smaller party in a FPTP system they would have an incentive to push for a more proportionate electoral system.
Combining those two would be interesting. They could easily argue that thanks to the expansion of the media in the forms of newspapers and wireless plus improved transportation links from the railways and increasing automobile ownership mean that the special rules for rural constituencies are no longer equitable and pass legislation to equalise the number of electors in constituencies by carrying out a boundary review. They run the subsidised immigration scheme heavily in the first three years or so to increase the, entirely coincidentally Anglo, white population, then have the boundary review take place to set the number and locations of the constituencies for the 1953 general election to take advantage of them whilst the number of rural constituencies is reduced.The NP considered 1948 to be a CRUCIAL election to win because the UP was planning to end districting and representation rules that massively over represented rural whites (OTL the Nationals won a commanding majority with 40% of the vote as was mentioned earlier in the thread). Smuts winning, changing the rules, encouraging tons of immigration (that might be the biggest thing, those immigrants aren't going to vote for an Afrikaaner nativist party), and quite possibly expanding the colored franchise, even if only by one or two seats, would make it incredibly difficult for the National Party to get a majority in future elections.
NOM, whilst I enjoy the occasional military-related thread as much as the next man not everything has to revolve around tanks, guns, planes, and ships.SNIP
What effect would South Rhodesia joining the Union of South Africa at its birth have had on South African politics? Obviously there are pretty big butterflies involved, but in general would it have helped or hindered the NP and apartheid?
Back to the OP it all depends how we avoid apartheid.
Perhaps Leander Jameson is killed during the raid; Cecil Rhodes is more cleverly censured for having organised a criminal enterprise against the governments of the Boer Republics and his career is destroyed?