WI: P.W. Botha Assassinated in 1981?

According to Thabo Mbeki, in 1981 the ANC seriously discussed assassinating P.W. Botha along with his cabinet during the celebration of Republic Day of that year in Bloemfontein. All the operation needed was a signal from the ANC's leadership, who ultimately vetoed the plan after determining that there would be too many civilian casualties and that it would "blur the distinction" between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" targets.

However, what if the ANC had decided differently? With Botha and his cabinet gone, few obvious candidates - like Pik Botha, for instance, who P.W. Botha defeated in 1978 - are available for the leadership.
 
If the assassination ends in a massacre, ANC loses some international support.

Now, what sort of retaliation would there be? And would there still be support for a peaceful transition to majority rule only a few years later?
 
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If you want an idea for what might happen, read the book Vortex by Larry Bond (though that's more of "the villains let it happen" that it happening on its own)...

South Africa gets ugly. Fast...
 
Connie mulder might get a second chance. On the other side it might restore the pan african Congress. Not up to the one settler one bullet mindset yet. Trading on subokwes memory.
 
If you want an idea for what might happen, read the book Vortex by Larry Bond (though that's more of "the villains let it happen" that it happening on its own)...

South Africa gets ugly. Fast...
If you want an idea for what might happen, read the book Vortex by Larry Bond (though that's more of "the villains let it happen" that it happening on its own)...
At the end they have small sepretists enclaves for black and white
South Africa gets ugly. Fast...
If you want an idea for what might happen, read the book Vortex by Larry Bond (though that's more of "the villains let it happen" that it happening on its own)...

South Africa gets ugly. Fast...
 
According to Thabo Mbeki, in 1981 the ANC seriously discussed assassinating P.W. Botha along with his cabinet during the celebration of Republic Day of that year in Bloemfontein. All the operation needed was a signal from the ANC's leadership, who ultimately vetoed the plan after determining that there would be too many civilian casualties and that it would "blur the distinction" between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" targets.

However, what if the ANC had decided differently? With Botha and his cabinet gone, few obvious candidates - like Pik Botha, for instance, who P.W. Botha defeated in 1978 - are available for the leadership.
Very interesting. Sadly I think it's an effective way to never see Madiba in the sunshine again. Also even in a truly stable constitutional system wiping out a cabinet is one of the ultimate stress tests. Besides letting the security forces far enough off their leash (if there was a leash) to ensure they didn't turn around and lose their seats, any emergency government would quickly be faced (1) by a great deal of Afrikaner (and I do mean Afrikaner as distinct even from English-language reactionaries) pressure to create a system that turned the parliamentary system into a clerk's office for the security forces and (2) by a lot of fairly radical winners in sudden by-elections who'd have a lot of political capital to barge their way into the executive. It speaks to the same logic whereby the Provos, Brighton excepted, stayed away from attacks on political leadership (and even that was meant to be more surgical than it turned out; otherwise it was the splinter groups who went for Mountbatten, Neave, et al.) and the PFLP never blew up the Knesset. The places where such things did happen (Colombia and Sri Lanka for example) did time afterwards as, in effect, ungovernable hellholes. The smart revolutionaries -- as ANC turned out to be in the end -- realized you needed a system still in place to capitulate to you because a vacuum randomizes the outcomes in dangerous ways.
 
Well this is before the split of the Conservative Party (KP) which could make things quite interesting if one of the OTL splitters such as Treurnicht was elected National Party leader. I think if Botha was assassinated by the ANC, you'd get a hardliner in office (so someone who appears to be a liberal within the party like Pik Botha, no relation, is unlikely I'm afraid).
 
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