WI: South Africa reintroduces slavery and becomes a pariah state like North Korea

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thorr97

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And with a black majority that... suddenly... is found to be increasingly well armed with the latest in Western weaponry and also... suddenly... increasingly well trained in how to wage war against the slave holders.

Mass slavery with a black majority that can revolt at any time.
 
Nuclear war happens, South Africa gets balkanized, a crazed man who claims to be South Africa's President establishes a micronation with slavery. The micronation more or less consists of his house and immediate family. No one recognizes the micronation.
 
Nuclear war happens, South Africa gets balkanized, a crazed man who claims to be South Africa's President establishes a micronation with slavery. The micronation more or less consists of his house and immediate family. No one recognizes the micronation.

It could be a little bit bigger with a cult of personality-type of person to come into power and create some authoritarian post-South African state.
 
What about some sort of system where slavery is banned in theory but in practice, most black South Africans have been enserfed?
 

missouribob

Banned
You did respond to someone else after my initial query though.

Yes, of course South Africa could have undergone a violent insurrection - in many ways the 1980s had exactly that. What is more likely that in a scenario where there is a revolt which the white government wins, partition will be the result. South Africa will be split into two, with a white state and a black state.

There is no scenario where white South Africans would reintroduce slavery.

What many people on this thread seem to believe is that white South Africa was some sort of Nazi state. It wasn't. It was certainly a police state, but for whites there was relatively free political activity, and civil society, sections of the the media, and academic institutions were all heavily critical of apartheid and the government.

It is impossible that white South Africans would reimplement slavery, and it is impossible that black South Africans would be accepting of it.
Impossible is a very strong word and I disagree with your analysis of the situation. As a side note sorry I didn't respond to you right away I guess I didn't see your post. Back on subject picture the following:

A black revolt that is put down.
Some (and only some) blacks are put into forced labor post the revolt.

I mean are the two things I just listed THAT impossible? I mean after formal slavery ended in the United States "Convict labor" was (And still is but that is a whole other can of worms) used as slave labor. You really can't picture a "law and order" equivalent in South Africa that enslaves some of its black citizens through the criminal justice system?
 
Impossible is a very strong word and I disagree with your analysis of the situation. As a side note sorry I didn't respond to you right away I guess I didn't see your post. Back on subject picture the following:

A black revolt that is put down.
Some (and only some) blacks are put into forced labor post the revolt.

I mean are the two things I just listed THAT impossible? I mean after formal slavery ended in the United States "Convict labor" was (And still is but that is a whole other can of worms) used as slave labor. You really can't picture a "law and order" equivalent in South Africa that enslaves some of its black citizens through the criminal justice system?
Would you happen to know how to close a thread?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Something else that would happen is cubic zirconia and colored precious stones become far more common, even in engagement rings. Iit's not out of the question to see a U.K.-led war against SA that would have a 1991-Gulf War level and number of supporting nations.

I think we just go with manufactured diamonds.
 

missouribob

Banned
Would you happen to know how to close a thread?
I think you need to reach out to a moderator. I'm sorry this thread turned out like this with half of the respondents screaming ASB and such. Considering the massive human rights abuses that have been inflicted on black peoples by white governments I was actually looking forward to an analysis of this. Instead we just get people screaming "hate speech! hate thread!".
 
I think you need to reach out to a moderator. I'm sorry this thread turned out like this with half of the respondents screaming ASB and such. Considering the massive human rights abuses that have been inflicted on black peoples by white governments I was actually looking forward to an analysis of this. Instead we just get people screaming "hate speech! hate thread!".
That's okay, I probably should have and will Likely ask the question in before 1900s, since it's more plausible.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Getting beyond an image of the Apartheid SA Goverment with the nuance of a Spitting Image skit, who exactly in that Government would want Slavery to be introduced?

I am serious and that isn't a rhetorical question. If anyone can find a single scrap of evidence that a member of the National Party in a position of relative power actually spit-balled this idea seriously, then it's something we can take seriously. But beyond that, it's a awful WI because it relies on the Apartheid Goverment being this faceless torrent of pure undiluted evil that's basically the Draka, as opposed to a bunch of greedy, racist, violent dickheads who just wanted to cling to the power they had and their parents had and their parents before them had, and did so through violence and segregation.

Honestly, given how Marius is from around these parts, I trust his judgement that a PoD for 'the Apartheid Goverment reintroduces Slavery' doesn't actually exist and would require a lot hand-waving and leaps of logic, at least within the confines of what the OP provided. Wage slavery or private individuals human trafficking, maybe, but as an official Goverment policy, it's not plausible.

Angola had something very near slavery, they just did not use the name. And with South Africa in SouthWest Africa, it is a neighboring country. And I don't remember us putting sanctions on Portugal. A lot depends if you give the world a face saving way to ignore it, as Portugal did. At some point after WW2, Portugal revoked the civil rights of the blacks. You could earn you rights back thru years of free/underpaid work.

Pre WW1, the Germans would tax Africans in a tax only payable in German currency. The only way to get the German currency was to work at German jobs. They would raise or lower the tax based on what they wanted done that year in East Africa.

There are other examples to pull from. We can get to basically de jure slavery, and avoid calling it slavery. It is just a darker ATL than OTL.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
This is beyond ASB.
Why would they reintroduce slavery? That would mean whites would have to feed, house and clothe their black slaves, a lot more expensive than just paying them shitty wages, segregating them from the cities and such.
Can't you see that Apartheid is far more economically beneficial than slavery?


People do dumb things all the time.
 
Impossible is a very strong word and I disagree with your analysis of the situation. As a side note sorry I didn't respond to you right away I guess I didn't see your post. Back on subject picture the following:

A black revolt that is put down.
Some (and only some) blacks are put into forced labor post the revolt.

I mean are the two things I just listed THAT impossible? I mean after formal slavery ended in the United States "Convict labor" was (And still is but that is a whole other can of worms) used as slave labor. You really can't picture a "law and order" equivalent in South Africa that enslaves some of its black citizens through the criminal justice system?

Let's agree to disagree.
 
I think you need to reach out to a moderator. I'm sorry this thread turned out like this with half of the respondents screaming ASB and such. Considering the massive human rights abuses that have been inflicted on black peoples by white governments I was actually looking forward to an analysis of this. Instead we just get people screaming "hate speech! hate thread!".

I don't think anyone said it's a 'hate thread'. For the record the two South Africans who posted in this thread both think it's ASB, so that is something to note.
 

Czar Kaizer

Banned
People do dumb things all the time.
But it wouldn't happen. Firstly the Apartheid government, while terrible, still tried to present apartheid as a respectable political ideology. They want to be accepted by the rest of the world, reintroducing slavery and becoming a pariah state was never part of their agenda it would basically be commiting political suicide, so they would never reintroduce slavery.
Second, the racists had "evoloved" beyond such crude forms of racism. Apartheid was an attempt to make racism not seem like racism, it became an ideology centered on the notion of seperate development, there is no room in their ideology for slavery.
Third, crude forms of economic exploitation, some carried over from the days of slavery, still persisted in South Africa. Migrant labour, the dop system,the mining compounds, domestic work, etc, were all forms of labour that were not that different from slavery but the government never called it slavery since they painted them as legetimate forms of labour that "benefitted" blacks. So already you have forms of economic exploitation that make reintroducing slavery redundant.
There is Zero chance that any apartheid government would reintroduce slavery. If people still believe that it's possible, I want to know where you get the stuff you are smoking because I want to try it.
 
But it wouldn't happen. Firstly the Apartheid government, while terrible, still tried to present apartheid as a respectable political ideology. They want to be accepted by the rest of the world, reintroducing slavery and becoming a pariah state was never part of their agenda it would basically be commiting political suicide, so they would never reintroduce slavery.
Second, the racists had "evoloved" beyond such crude forms of racism. Apartheid was an attempt to make racism not seem like racism, it became an ideology centered on the notion of seperate development, there is no room in their ideology for slavery.
Third, crude forms of economic exploitation, some carried over from the days of slavery, still persisted in South Africa. Migrant labour, the dop system,the mining compounds, domestic work, etc, were all forms of labour that were not that different from slavery but the government never called it slavery since they painted them as legetimate forms of labour that "benefitted" blacks. So already you have forms of economic exploitation that make reintroducing slavery redundant.
There is Zero chance that any apartheid government would reintroduce slavery. If people still believe that it's possible, I want to know where you get the stuff you are smoking because I want to try it.

Scenario 1 of possibility :

Nazi Germany wins World War Two. Using Kaiser K's TL, a cold war ensues with South Africa, the United Arab Republics, the Republic of China allying with Nazi Germany against the rest of the world which forms a democratic/communist/Sowjet alliance. Supposed a nuclear exchange exchange occurs during the 1960s or 1970s between the fascist and democratic/communist alliance.

Cape Town, Jo'burg, Durban, East London, Prétoria, and other cities got hit with a nuclear exchange from the democratic-communist alliance. A post-atomic rump post-South Africa regime forms that creates an authoritarian dictatorship using the slave labour of aboriginal blacks to rebuild their small nation-state. The nation is small, but otherwise deterred by the ruins of former South Africa.
 
If this has been said before in this thread, then sorry, but what you have to take into account is that many religious Afrikaners supported Apartheid and saw it as God's plan, and how he would have wanted things. They wouldn't have thought that way about slavery.
 
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