WI: South Africa stays British?

I'm not sure what you mean?

That's like saying "Keep Australia British."

The number of Afrikaners outnumbered the British in South Africa, so in any democratic system, Afrikaners are going to end up on top. The only way to change that is to have greater British migration to South Africa, or have Southern Rhodesia join in 1922, when they had a referendum.
 
Without either an influx of British or other White settlers or some other change - say earlier steps away from a white only polity, the Afrikaners are eventually going to win a demographic battle.

I cannot recall exactly how or when this happened, but sometime during the post War settlement / march towards Union, the leaders of some of the Afrikaner parties (I'm thinking Smuts/Botha) were able to secure support from the British to weight the electoral franchise to whole communities away from proportional universal white male suffrage. If this bargain hadn't been secured then (again, iirc) the demographics of the time would have given English speakers greater representation at the Province and then later, the Union level. I cannot seem to easily find results from the provincial elections/ or population figures at the moment, but this may have even allowed the English speakers to dominate the politics/representation of Transvaal well post WW1.
 
Without either an influx of British or other White settlers or some other change - say earlier steps away from a white only polity, the Afrikaners are eventually going to win a demographic battle.

I cannot recall exactly how or when this happened, but sometime during the post War settlement / march towards Union, the leaders of some of the Afrikaner parties (I'm thinking Smuts/Botha) were able to secure support from the British to weight the electoral franchise to whole communities away from proportional universal white male suffrage. If this bargain hadn't been secured then (again, iirc) the demographics of the time would have given English speakers greater representation at the Province and then later, the Union level. I cannot seem to easily find results from the provincial elections/ or population figures at the moment, but this may have even allowed the English speakers to dominate the politics/representation of Transvaal well post WW1.

What happened was that the number of voters required to make up a constituency were less in rural areas than that required to make up a constituency in urban areas. This favoured Afrikaners, as they tended to live outside of the towns.

I doubt it was any sort of conspiracy, and Smuts was about as Anglophile an Afrikaner as one could get.

Interestingly, this led to the situation in 1948 and 1953 where the more moderate United Party won more votes than the pro-apartheid National Party, but because of the way the constituencies had been drawn up, they managed to win the elections.
 
Agreed, it wasn't a conspiracy, but it was part of the political settlement - I am sure it was quite widely known and discussed at the time. My problem is that my source is a rather old Smuts biography which is many thousands of kilometres from me, so I cannot double check what the rest of the argument was
 
Agreed, it wasn't a conspiracy, but it was part of the political settlement - I am sure it was quite widely known and discussed at the time. My problem is that my source is a rather old Smuts biography which is many thousands of kilometres from me, so I cannot double check what the rest of the argument was

Yeah, you're right, I remember it being some sort of agreement.

If I remember I'll look it up at home. Have quite a good book on South African history.
 
I really miss university some times! At both places I studied they had a reasonably good collection of contemporary and historical works on South Africa, which I've yet to find an easily searchable equivalent online.

Oh well
 
More immigration from Britain is a bit of a well duh.
How about more integration of blacks in the cities to the extent they not only see themselves as British citizens but fully British like minorities in the UK today. It would require some majorly forward thinking people on the ground though....So probably ASB.
 
I really miss university some times! At both places I studied they had a reasonably good collection of contemporary and historical works on South Africa, which I've yet to find an easily searchable equivalent online.

Oh well

Yeah. People who say school is the best years of your life are talking crap. Varsity is the shizzle.
 
More immigration from Britain is a bit of a well duh.
How about more integration of blacks in the cities to the extent they not only see themselves as British citizens but fully British like minorities in the UK today. It would require some majorly forward thinking people on the ground though....So probably ASB.

Not necessarily. The Cape had a much more relaxed attitude to the franchise than the Transvaal, OFS, and Natal.

I read an interesting article by the historian Arthur Keppel-Jones. It was written sometime in the 1950s. Apparently in the 1850s the OFS was keen for increased integration with the Cape, in exchange for protection and assistance against the Basotho (I think). However, their advances were rebuffed, and this resulted in them seeing the Transvaal as their natural ally. He said that if that hadn't happened, there could have been a federation between the OFS, Natal, and the Cape, with the Transvaal being on its own. This would have resulted in the relatively liberal ideas of the Cape gaining a foothold in the more conservative Natal and OFS. Assuming that Union still happens, South Africa itself would have been a more liberal place.
 
Not necessarily. The Cape had a much more relaxed attitude to the franchise than the Transvaal, OFS, and Natal.
.

Thats true but allowing them to reagard as full British is taking it too far, even Italians doing that would be a bit iffy let alone blacks. Nationality and race were very tightly tied together in those days.
 
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