WI: South Africa tried ethnic cleansing instead of apartheid.

Vladimir

Banned
When South Africa was sanctioned for apartheid, the South African government knew that the only way to end the economic pressure was to give blacks the vote, but the Afrikaner nationalists in power were not going to let that happen. So let's say that they came to this conclusion: the world will sanction us no matter what unless apartheid is lifted. But if we were to simply get rid of our blacks, the world can't do anything since there are already sanctions in place. We'll be a pariah state for a couple more decades, but in the end, the world will think "what's done is done", we can even issue an apology for what we did, a lot like what the US did many decades after it displaced the Indians, most of the black refugees will already be dead, and the survivors and their descendants will be living elsewhere and have no desire to leave their homes and livelihoods to return to some place that their parents left. The country will have a white majority, and this will ensure blacks will never get the vote. So why not just get rid of them?

Let's say that all of the Bantustans in South Africa are dissolved, even the supposedly-independent ones. The inhabitants are dragged from their homes, loaded onto trucks, trains, or other conveyances, and shipped away. My guess is that they would be taken to South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia), which was under South African occupation under a League of Nations mandate until 1990. South Africa then withdraws from Namibia (South Africa was under intense international pressure over its continued occupation of Namibia), and formerly black homes and lands are given to whites.

Of course, this is just one scenario. For all I know, once the SA government had reached the conclusion that they needed to be rid of their blacks, they would have conducted mass genocide.

What kind of effect would this have? Would the strategy work, with South Africa apologizing and being accepted into the international community many decades after the deed is done? Is there military intervention or more sanctions?
 
Last edited:

Samm

I don't think their is one chance in a million they could pull that off. The whites in Africa were a minority remember. It would be physically impossible for them to deport that many people and it would result in millions leaving who were the foundation of their economy. If they tried (which they never would they were racists and supremists not maniacs) they would just end up destroying themselves.
 
black angel

black angel

seems very unlikely, South Africa ran off black labor, kicking them out is economic death for any kind of South African state, also any such move would likely lead to war with many African nations, the ANC would likely get a boom in support we might see real terrorism out of them, many whites wouldn't be willing to give up house keepers and workers, while their sons and husbands have to serve in the military and get killed, you'd need to change things in a big way to get any kind of white state in South Africa and I can tell you it wouldn't be most of South Africa
 

Vladimir

Banned
Samm said:
I don't think their is one chance in a million they could pull that off. The whites in Africa were a minority remember. It would be physically impossible for them to deport that many people and it would result in millions leaving who were the foundation of their economy. If they tried (which they never would they were racists and supremists not maniacs) they would just end up destroying themselves.
Click to expand...
You're forgetting who had the tanks, guns and planes. They might pull it off if they really wanted to. During WWII, the Nazis were able to kill 6 million Jews and 5 million others, not to mention keeping more in camps, despite the fact that their army was not nearly as big.
 
TheMann

TheMann

Vladimir said:
You're forgetting who had the tanks, guns and planes. They might pull it off if they really wanted to. During WWII, the Nazis were able to kill 6 million Jews and 5 million others, not to mention keeping more in camps, despite the fact that their army was not nearly as big.
Click to expand...

But there were 40 million Germans, against at most five million whites. Germans were the huge majority in Germany, against a tiny minority in South Africa, and if that was to begin both the West would answer it with a direct military intervention and convoys of guns and explosives would end up in the hands of the ANC and most of the surrounding states. Also remember that there is thirty million plus blacks. Even the most diehard of Afrikaners wouldn't stomach that kind of slaughter.
 

ivanotter

Sorry, way too "alternative!"

1) Less than 5 million whites
2) A rather significant part of wites not supporting apartheid at all
3) Total defence force personnel (navy, army air, cleaners, the works) = 40,000
4) SA economy was (and probably still is) based on cheap black labour = economic suicide
5) The apartheid leaders were not crazy
6) Outside world? perfect excuse for intervention. Death camps again? for 30 million? not so likely
7) shipping 30 million to Namibia? Namibia cannot feed an additional 30 million.

Sorry, very "alternative"

Ivan
 

Unterkopf

Banned
The world had just gone through the largest armed conflict in the history of mankind to destroy just such a government. They aren't going to let history repeat itself right under their noses.

Hell, if they went balls-to-the-wall crazy and tried it, the post-intervention occupation would probably be good for South Africa in the long run.
 

Linkwerk

1) Legislative/Military coup by sane whites, almost all non-Boer whites, large part of Afrikaans speakers.

2)Mutiny of SADF units, arrest of whoever started enacting insane scheme which amounted to national suicide.

3) Immediate release of Nelson Mandela and recognition of ANC, creation of "transitional government" including every moderate black political leader that can be found in frantic attempts to defuse incipient race war.

4) Invitation of peacekeepers into the country to ensure transition of power, in reality to protect white population.
 

world-observer

Besides all the other intricacies involved in such a drastic step, perhaps the immediate issue would have been, "who would replace the blacks?" Unless they had millions of whites willing to take up domestic positions, military positions, and what have you. There was no chance for it to survive. If at all actualized, where would they have found the millions of whites to fill the gap is tantalizing to one's imagination! :rolleyes: I'm sure there will be lots of different views on this.
 

Arachnid

Complete collapse of the economy. White South Africans had the highest standard of living in the world in the 60's and the 70's with the exception of White Rhodesian's for one simple reason, masses of dirt cheap black labour so that almost every white could have a well paying, high status job, with the highly paid Army and Police soaking up whatever was left.

Every society needs janitors and farm labourers and those sorts of people will always make up the majority of any society, as long as the White South Africans weren't willing to do that sort of work they needed the blacks. As for the OP moving most of the blacks into territorially contiguous homelands, including Namibia leaving the remains of the country with a white majority is theoretically possible. It's what the homeland policy was meant to do. But it failed for the most basic reason, when push came to shove they needed the labour, and that meant no part of South Africa could be "ethnically cleansed".
 

ivanotter

Actually, the "home lands" policy did succeed to some extent.

The idea was to rob black South Africans of SA citizenship. That meant they became nationals of the "home lands" like Bophuthatswana (Bop), which btw consisted of 7 smal pieces of useless land throughout SA.

Suddenly, the SA labour laws, etc etc were not applicable to these "migrant" workers (mainly into the mines, that was the whole idea in the 1960's as these carried the best part of the economy).

It also meant that if the workers should be supportive of ANC, they could easily be deported "back" to their home land.

The home lands had "rulers" appointed by Pretoria, which also meant that they would clamp down on black political aspirations.

So, ok to some extent, a political solution.

Much more than that would not have been possible.

Ivan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top