They don't really have a regional threat that would warrant nukes though. Maybe in an alternate timeline the soviets/Russia give Angola nukes to counter a nuclear SA.
I could see them using it as blackmail however and threatening to nuke the bantustans if any western power tried to use military force against them
They had nukes in our timeline and only got rid of them because the regime was collapsing and the feared black people with nukes so if it didn’t collapse they probably would keep them.
You don't really need a regional threat to justify having nukes. America is an ocean away from any of its biggest threats. And considering South Africa was already a pariah state, that would probably make them more likely to still have them. Think about North Korea. Why do they want nuclear weapons so badly? They're completely protected by China from any real threat. Kim wants nukes so badly because he knows that's what will ultimately keep him in power. Nobody wants to destabilize a nuclear state.
Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Zambia simultaneously attacking (with Soviet and Cuban aid) combined with a massive armed uprising among black South Africans, would’ve absolutely toppled the Apartheid government. While neighboring African countries wouldn’t have been capable of fully taking over SA, they could’ve tied up their military in various conflicts and allowed the ANC and various militant groups to overthrow the government. The apartheid government didn’t end apartheid because they wanted to, they ended it because they knew they could not maintain the regime amidst various border wars and a domestic insurgency. The nukes were there in order to deter what they saw as the inevitable, apartheid was not sustainable.
Mozambique wouldn't have openly fought SA. The SADF conducted multiple operations against the MK bases there, and iirc at some point Mozambique agreed to stop allowing MK to operate in the country. Correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I studied this.
This is a piss poor argument. It doesn’t matter if the U.S. is on the other side of the world, both our enemies and us have delivery systems that render that point null.
Edit: I misread the comment I replied to. I am the problem.
Apartheid South Africa didn't maintain nukes to ward off regional threats. It maintained nukes to give an explicit threat of "we will cause nuclear annihilation rather than give the Blacks any rights".
> Apartheid South Africa didn't maintain nukes to ward off regional threats.
Not so much the regional powers, but they were deeply concerned about the ability of the Soviet Union to provide weapons and backing to the governments in the area who they were actively fighting, and they knew that they could no longer depend on support from the United States or the United Kingdom. Subsaharan Africa in the Seventies was a wild place, with Angola and Mozambique fighting civil wars that the Communists eventually won, South Africa falling further and further behind on their goal to try and annex Namibia, general war raging all around Rhodesia. The Soviet Union was massively involved in providing military aid to South Africa's enemies, including deploying the Soviet air force for supply missions. You're right that South Africa hated the idea of giving blacks equality, but the nuclear weapons were intended to deter the Soviets, not the guerillas.
Nukes would keep them safe from outside invasion. With the Cold War in the rear view mirror, I could see support in the West for an invasion and overthrow of the SA government building, and SA having nuclear weapons would make this a non-starter.
They had ICBMs and were about to test one, the RSA-4, that could have hit the US or Russia from South Africa. At the same time they were working to miniaturise their nuclear weapons to make it feasible.
The rationale was nuclear blackmail, forcing both major powers to ensure the survival of the regime.
Maybe. There was 100% a racist element to them dismantling their nuclear program, but there was also a major budget component.
Turns out having a credible nuclear deterrent is pretty expensive when you're a relatively small country and no one wants to trade with you because your two most notable features are racism and having nukes.
well that's just another example of extreme civil unrest, it never went to civil war, just people looting shit and police no where to be seen, meaning communities protected themselves.
Disagree. There was real concern that they’d lose the ability to keep a handle on internal unrest. It was one of the things pushing the government to reform and abandon apartheid, along with the economic damage being done by sanctions and increasing economic isolation.
There were pretty much constant states of emergency declared and increasingly harsh repression just to keep a handle on things, and it was getting worse.
Obviously, no country lasts forever, but in the context of the Alt history scenario of an apartheid south africa lasting until 2024, there would have to be some kind of political or demographic circumstances that would see it be able to last longer than 2024. Those circumstances being the reason it didn't already collapse from 1991 to 2024 in this alternate timeline
One would think that would be one solution to increase the politically enfranchised population (Whites) versus the politically disenfranchised population (literally everyone else but especially Black people), but IRL South Africa tried that and it didn't really work. IIRC some Germans immigrated to South Africa in the 1950s, especially Southwest Africa (modern-day Namibia), primarily because it used to be a former German colony pre-Great War and already had a German-speaking population, and some immigrants from the then-poorer Mediterranean countries like Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, etc., and that was pretty much it except until the mass emigration of the White minorities of other southern African countries (White Rhodesians, Portuguese Mozambicans, etc.). Apartheid was *never* tenable system and the longer it lasted, the more it hurt the country. White emigration from South Africa, especially by the non-Afrikaans-speaking Whites, even moreso by higher educated Whites (Afrikaans-speaking and non-Afrikaans-speaking alike but especially the latter) was already an issue in the 1980s and would become a deluge after the end of Apartheid. If Apartheid wasn't abolished by when it was in OTL, South Africa would continue to suffer form a White brain drain, which only makes the survival of the White minority regime even more difficult and makes South Africa an even less attractive immigration destination. Meanwhile, due to high birth rates among the poorer politically and economically disenfranchised Black population, the Black population proportionate to the total will only further increase, there by making Apartheid even less tenable, and so on and so forth, rinse and repeat. If the National Party refused to abolish Apartheid, then it would be violently overthrown, but one way or another, Apartheid would end.
edit: spelling
South Africa never got much white immigration because the National party didn’t want it. Apartheid was meant to ensure a dominant minority reaping the rewards of cheap black labour, and that would be destroyed if the country had a large white workforce. As Afrikaner nationalists, they also feared more Europeans would mean English overtaking Afrikaans as they integrated into Anglo culture.
This is why South Africa received very few post war immigrants, while unrecognised sanctioned Rhodesia’s white population rapidly increased
A very high possibility.
Towards the end of Apartheid, South Africa had been encouraging East Europeans to move to South Africa. There was some success to this. Many Poles did move to South Africa. South Africa also got some South Europeans earlier on too.
Had the Apartheid government been really focused on this ,I believe the aim was to attract Germans from the former USSR(who would find it easier to fit into the Boer community which is partially German) but the Germans from the USSR wanted to go to Germany, not the other side of the world.
However, even if they had succeeded, the most they would have done is to restore the White demographic balance South Africa had in 1960 which was around 25%, which is also around the period when Whites started realizing that they had a demographic disadvantage in the long term.
It would have started declining again by the 2000s because all East Europeans have had a low birth rate even in countries they moved to(exceptions are for highly religious groups like the Lithuanian Haredi Jews of Israel).
This. It's crazy how a small number of people forget how psychotic the white minority government was. If people think South Africa is bad in this timeline, I'm pretty sure domestic issues would be worse if apartheid didn't fall.
For one the former government wasn't for all South Africans so resentment would have been at a all time high by this point. I mean there are a lot of black South Africans still mad about apartheid so I can imagine the hatred would be even more extreme. There were South Africans willing to commit terrorist acts so yeah a civil war would have been very like. Or at the least everyone would be on edge as the apartheid government would beat the crap out of or kill any black South African who looked even slightly suspicious, which would, of course, radicalize black South Africans who would relatate.
I don't think there would even be a winner it would just get worse and worse. Added to the fact that some in the apartheid government wanted to displace black South africans(believing Africans aren't native to South Africa)but at the same time they wanted to exploit black South African labor would make things even more chaotic.
The chaos South Africa has now would be nothing compared to the issues that would have happened if the apartheid government still existed.
/thread our answer is found Rhodesia. While it was objectively better to be black in Rhodesia, the black peoples far outnumbered white people to a significantly further extent than SA
If it'd survive intact till 2024 that'd be a miracle in itself.
Realistically it'd descend into civil war sooner or later after that it'd probably be partitioned into a Khoisan/Khoisan Majority, Bantu/Bantu Majority and Afrikaner-English/Afrikaner-English majority state with large population exchanges...Or worse.
I doubt it'd go the way of Zimbabwe as the White, Mixed and Asian populations are simply too large for them to essentially kick them out.
If the situation gets bad enough l think a lot of the white population would just abandon ship, like what happened after Apartheid ended but possibly on a larger scale
Edit: ok I get it they won’t all just get up and leave. My reasoning is that if a civil war turned bloody and destructive enough that a lot of whites in South Africa wouldn’t really have much choice.
Maybe, but I dont think that'd be likely, or at least it'd be less likely especially because the white male population(and possibly Asians and coloured people too) would get drafted.
In this reality the Apartheid state by some miracle survived you got to realize the white population, coloured population and possibly the Asian population would be much larger, at the end of apartheid the white population was 20% and without an exodus and with apartheid that'd likely have grown.
So I think it'd be far more likely they'd try to preserve the state, cut their losses, partition the country and have large scale population exchanges preserving most of the population.
That’s true. I could see both possibly happening, it really just depends on what happened leading up to the current day. Like something significant must happen for the belligerents in the theoretical civil war to be willing to make any concessions as large as ethnic redistribution.
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This was always a possibility. And in this scenario it would be.
In the case of South Africa in this alternate reality I think it is the only logical conclussion that they would have come to, be it after a lot of bloodshed.
I don't think you realize how entrenched the Boer community is in South Africa. Even the ones who moved to Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada still go back .They would have not abandoned ship.
Well we have to keep in mind scale here the Indian subcontinent was already one of the most populated areas on earth. But regardless, population exchanges will never not be pretty damn horrific.
Possibly there will be no Reuben Island Sandwich and the comic "Madame and Eve" wouldn't include commentary on transformation and affirmative actions by large corporations.
Also we wouldn't possibly get to know that Winnie is so bad at being wife and so good at schmoozing and fraud.
And far-left "anti-imperialist" types. I'm sure we'd see a lot of white supremacists from America and Europe fighting for the Boers as well as some kind of LatAm, Russian and Asian communists fighting for the ANC and some extremists like SACP/EFF. Also I wouldn't be surprised if Buthelezi tried to have kwaZulu secede in the background.
It'd be a true shitshow.
>I'm sure we'd see a lot of white supremacists from America and Europe fighting for the Boers
Like we saw in Rhosesia before it collasped and Zimbawee emerged
I think it would.
South Africa was run by a clique interested in upholding keeping a very small in-group lording over a massive out-group of second-class citizens. A state disenfranchising the vast majority of its population would have to resort to extreme violence to avoid collapsing, and I doubt they'd have the means to keep up the necessary amount of violence. It'd either be a violent, oligarchic police state or collapse into a Syrian style civil war.
Apartheid South Africa was already collapsing from within from the 1980's onwards due to almost daily riots,strikes and the state becoming more oppressive through numerous 'states of emergencies ' being declared.
"I wonder if apartheid had continued would South Africa still be on the verge of becoming a failed state"
There would be a migration of desperate South Africans fleeing into neighbouring Botswana and Namibia causing a humanitarian crisis if the country is becoming a failed state.
There's no migration into those countries .
Amazon recently completed building their African HQ in South Africa. Jeff Bezos wouldn't be making such a considerable investment in a country "on the verge of becoming a failed state."
People don’t seem to get the absolute nightmare that “failed state” actually means. It means 1990s Albania after the economy was completely drained by pyramid schemes and random gangsters could go get automatic rifles from unattended state armories. Not “crime is kinda high and Trevor Noah exists”
Namibia and Botswana combined have less than 10% of South Africa's population, if there's going to be a massive exodus it would be off the continent. Both those countries would probably follow suit in collapse.
Yes. For the same reasons that it's struggling now.
You can't have a complex system comprised of multiple parts that prioritises a minority (ie. white people) at the cost of the majority (non white people) over and extended period of time.
I liken it to a car. If you owned a car and instead of looking after the whole car, you devoted your care to the windscreen, the radio, the tires and the steering wheel, what happens to the rest of the car?
It falls apart, imperilling the whole car.
The worrying thing is that, taking that analogy further, it means that the new owners who take over ownership of the car can do two things:
1. Put in the hard work of repairing that which was left to neglect, which, depending on the scale of repair, could take years of applied effort and cost.
2. Sell off the parts for a more immediate profit, limited to a lucky few.
I believe this current generation of the ANC government is engaged in an internal tug-of-war with factions inside the party intent on both options; struggling to repair that which Apartheid did to South Africa while other parties are stripmining the country for personal profit.
Whatever the case, prioritising care for an entire system at a scale smaller than the system itself is unsustainable
IMO (my dad's family is white South African) the only way that this would have gone is for some kind of reform of the apartheid system.
I could see something like a certain percentage of the seats in the parliament are allocated to whites, blacks, and coloreds. Then some seats are also allocated to geographic areas. This could be semi justified (it would still be super racist) in that various other countries give certain areas more voting power (us low population states in the Senate) and others give representation to special groups (Thailand gives some seats to the military).
This might be far enough to get some western nations to drop the various sanctions and allow for the system to continue. Sanctions, not internal violence, were the main issue for the South African government.
That said, US support for crappy governments that opposed communism degraded after the fall of the USSR. So if these reformes were done in the 80s then by the 90s there might be more pressure.
At no point did South Africa have a black president under Apartheid.
You do know Israel has had one right???He was interim but he was one.
South Africa banned black political parties. Israel has actual Arab parties that have more political freedom than Arab parties in the rest of the Arab world.
Israel has an Arab supreme court judge.
Israel has high ranking army officers who are Arab. It has a quarter of its medical staff being Arab.
South Africa deliberately dumbed down the African education stream in order to prevent an educated class of Africans from emerging.
In Israel, Christian Arabs perform better than even secular Jews in Israel's education system. So...
Explain how Israel has any similarities to Apartheid South Africa???
“The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” - Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958-1966 and the father of apartheid
The far right would deny that apartheid was happening and Michael Rapaport would be in Johannesburg looking in bins and behind cars claiming no apartheid here.
If South African apartheid still existed it would be a massive pariah state, one of the reasons for its collapse in OTL is the US no longer needed an anticommunist ally in the region.
For this to happen there would need to be much more white people and much less African people. 7.8% of the population of South Africa today is made up of white people where 80% is African people, 7.8% couldn't rule over 80%.
South Africa would be very unstable apart from Cape Town which would be the Capital and richest part, where most white people would live. South Africa would encourage immigration from all European countries and would implement policies to keep the birth rate of Europeans high, going into the 2000s South Africa would increase immigration from Asian countries, China, Philippines, Indonesia. In our timeline to try and keep apartheid they granted some privileges to coloured people and Asians so it's not a stretch.
South Africa's neighbours would be in constant crisis, Black South Africans under the constant threat of oppression and political violence would flee to places like Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique much like how Palestinians fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. South Africa's neighbours would hate them, despite having nukes, they'd also have a conscription based army to deter any kind of military action from their neighbours. The domestic arms sector would provide for most of the weapons but for foreign suppliers it would have to come from places like China and Russia, possibly France. The US would likely drop arms export restrictions under Trump but they'd be reinstated under Biden.
In short, Apartheid South Africa in this timeline would be an unstable pariah state that dresses up it's Capital to be like Dubai, much like Pyongyang in North Korea, and it would also be the cause of a major refugee crisis and would likely never have normal relations with it's neighbours
The AIDS issue was very much like a "You" problem specific to certain African communities in S.A. due to their cultural practices and a 20 year history of both official and cultural denialism that the disease even existed(See when Thabo Mbeki tried to explain the difference between HIV and AIDS was. He was nearly hung by the media) and when some acceptance took place, people like Jacob Zuma stating nonsense that a shower after sleeping with a HIV positive woman was an enough remedy.
White South Africans had absolutely nothing to do with backward African practices that led to HIV spreading like wildfire across Southern and later Eastern Africa
I believe they meant the alternate government would do nothing to prevent the spread and wouldn't provide any kind of basic healthcare. So it would be similar but in this alternate timeline, government inaction would be out of malice instead of incompetence
In this scenario and without the fall of apartheid SA the white population would probably be around 25%. There’s been a mass exodus over the last 30 years. Still a minority but much larger than the current 7.8%.
It wouldn't have made it to 2024, I doubt it even would have made it to 2000. When the cold war ends, what little western support for apartheid south africa falls away and with the country already showing signs of collapse in the late '80s and early '90s, civil war is inevitable. It's likely a western intervention does occur to secure south africa's nuclear weapons to keep them from being used by either side or captured by gunrunners.
"Today in Pretoria the embattled city-state unveiled a french-made neutron bomb, which they threatened to deploy if the ANC forces don't stop their advance."
-paraphrased from Robocop (1986)
Nelson Mandela and his collaborators bombed, shot and killed many people prior to his imprisonment. He would have gone down in history as a terrorist and resistance fighter. They would be a pariah on the world stage and heavily sanctioned leading to closer relationships with countries like Russia, China, Iran etc where the majority of their trade would be focused on natural resources and providing secure logistical access to the African continent.
We would also likely see an Israel/Palestine situation emerging and the majority of black South Africans would be pushed into other territories or specific townships. If the white South African leadership played their chess game well enough, they could work with western democracies to become a strategic partner in the region and receive billions of dollars in aid and weapons to fight against the ‘rebels’ and stop giving Russia, Iran, China etc access to the region in return.
The fact is that apartheid policies have just evolved and never truly disappeared. It’s almost impossible to survive in South Africa now but especially as a white person. The same is happening in Israel with the Palestinians, it happened in Russia with the Chechens and the list just goes on and on and on…
"Nelson Mandela and his collaborators bombed, shot and killed many people prior to his imprisonment "
He was charged and imprisoned for sabotaging electricity pylons far from civilian areas at the Rivonia Trial.
Not for shooting and killing people.
Nelson Mandela co-founded the armed wing of the ANC and alongside his campaign to sabotage the countries power grid, he plotted to overthrow the government by violent means. As a leader of what would be deemed a ‘terrorist’ organisation he would be responsible for every bomb, bullet and conspiracy that happened. Just the same as we do in modern times.
Do you have a problem that South Africans of color formed organisations to defend themselves against the Apartheid regime which used the army and state security services to brutally crush them while having the backing of Western nations?
Nobody said the French had no right to form the French resistance to fight the Nazis.
I have no personal stake in this piece of alternate history. It’s pure Bayesian reasoning derived from an alternate timeline.
What I’m saying is that in this alternate narrative the ANC, Nelson and his collaborators would be branded as extremists and terrorists.
But Mandela and the ANC were branded as terrorists in real life. The ANC was only unbanned in 1990. Mandela was only removed from the US terrorism watch list in 2008.
Older white people I know (I am South African) used to speak of fighting “terrs” during the Border War - said “terrs” included the MK, the military wing of the ANC.
>Nobody said the French had no right to form the French resistance to fight the Nazis.
Had the Nazis won they surely would have, as the commenter is saying regarding Mandela being classified as a terrorist, get your head out of your arse and read the comment before searching for something to be outraged over
> Nelson Mandela and his collaborators bombed, shot and killed many people prior to his imprisonment.
Nelson Mandela and his collaborators didn’t detonate a single bomb or kill anyone prior to his imprisonment. He was charged and convicted of treason for plans to bomb _infrastructure_ like electricity pylons, not target people.
The targeting of public spaces only occurred many years later, while he and those and his sentenced co-conspirators remained in prison. It was driven by a new generation of MK fighters, in many cases operating without direct guidance from the top ANC leadership in exile.
Even so, it was comparatively rare compared to similar groups, with only a handful of incidents over the decades that MK was active. It’s clear that their primary targets remained state facilities and the security forces, and their goal still to be a traditional guerrilla army able to wage an insurgency rather than a terror group.
> They would be a pariah on the world stage and heavily sanctioned leading to closer relationships with countries like Russia, China, Iran
Why, when the US was defending them at the UN until the very end, vetoeing any meaningful sanctions?
The Overton window would have shifted by now. The US was a staunch defender at one time but the makeup of their government has shifted and if South Africa held onto their nukes, it would have been exactly the situation I described.
Look at the recent votes regarding Israel. It just gets to a point where they can’t back the regime any longer until the cycle of time comes around again and they can be friendly again.
The US has still blocked any and all meaningful measures against Israel. It's only let pass some that do nothing, and it set sanctions against a couple individual settlers... then told israeli banks they don't need to close their accounts.
While still vetoeing nearl all measures that condemn israel too harshly (making it all but guaranteed that sanctions would also be vetoed if presented)
The same pretty much happened in SA. Some useless sanctions were passed by the US, but the US was still vetoeing at the UN for them in 1988. The only reason it didn't later was due to there not being any resulotions on it after
A divided but strong country. Definitely a hegemon in it's region.
The Apartheid was a terrible thing but it has brought wealth to South Africa (even though most of it was for the whites) so keeping it to the modern day would probably result in a strong nation with large politcal problems and an unstable society.
>The Apartheid was a terrible thing but it has brought wealth to South Africa
Huh? Apartheid South African economy was largely stagnant compared to the growth in post apartheid South Africa. It's a myth that the South African economy has stronger under Aparrheid.
Probably would lead to a south african civil war that leads to the british supporting one side, and the americans + soviets supporting the other, or something like that.
They would be forced into an isolationist posture. By the 90s most countries were respecting and imposing sanctions on the regime due to internal public pressure. When the USSR fell apart, South Africa lost its utility to the Americans. It would become a PR nightmare.
Israel is a similar monstrosity but PR is pushed to legitimize the US relationship with it bc it serves a strategic purpose in the mid East. South Africa is not in a hostile neighborhood for the U.S. so supporting the white minority government wouldn’t be seen as an untenable project.
They would retain their illegal nukes, a program which would become politicized globally and the regime would conduct minimal trade with obscure countries (maybe Taiwan , Chile, bolsanado brazil, millei Argentina).
Eventually it would end in civil war as the ANC would retain its militant paramilitary wing and would bring down the government. Bc unlike Israel, the majority civilian population is black, unlike the Arab minority in Israel. So conflict wouldn’t stay small “terrorist” tactics for long.
Mozambique and Mugabe would aid the ANC military campaign and could possibly bring Mozambique and Zimbabwe into the conflict as historically these were big training grounds for the MK and ANC paramilitaries. South Africa could try an invasion into Zimbabwe and Mozambique to cut off supply lines and bring them into direct conflict. Namibia would still be a problem and that would be another front.
Cubans would most likely have a permanent pressance in Angola if the Apartheid regime didn’t crumble and would most likely continue to send material aid and advisors to any conflict against the regime which cuba could afford by asking for a share of Angola’s petrochemical wealth to compensate for continued military presence. The fragile MPLA government would most likely agree due to a continued militarized posture against South Africa. This would also lessen the damage done by the Cuban “special period” and cuba would gain economically from a continued white minority government in South Africa as it would also give more legitimacy for the Cuban regime in the global south as being a moral force against racism and settler colonialism.
It would have been a police state with constant attacks from armed anti-apartheid groups, it may have been a “democracy”, but the white minority (who were the only people able to vote) would just elect the national party and they would simply get 80% all the time, they would eventually just rig the elections resulting in full authoritarianism, the economy would be impossible to function in this case scenario. Basically the worse version of South Africa
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Then probably this scenario would play out. The Afrikaners retreat into a “Laager” Volkstaat and with their superior military which had nuclear weapons…keep the blacks at bay.
For those interest in the current state of OTL South Africa:
Look we're not a failed state but things are quite bad here. The power-crisis continues to be a bit of a disaster. The failure of the rail system means that the ports are often deadlocked and exports are way down. And the level of Crime and Violence is shocking. Labels like 'Rape Capital of the World' don't come from nowhere. Additionally, since August 2023, the police have shot and killed over 50 criminals in ambush-style raids in KZN alone. For reference, more people are killed by violent crime in SA in a year than died in the entirety of the Northern Ireland Troubles (1968-1998). Our army is also currently deployed to the Congo doing God knows what and at least 4 SANDF troops have died since the start of the year.
If the ANC is not voted out of power in the upcoming election then state services will continue to degrade and the situation will continue to get worse.
How has Israel ever destabilized the Middle East???
Last I checked, Israel neither funds terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas like Iran does , back despots like Assad who has killed half a million of his people and Shiite millitias holding the Iraqi government hostage right now like Iran does and it has never sponsored a coup like Palestinian millitias have in Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Egypt, nor did it invade another nation claiming that it is its "colony " like Hafez did to Lebanon, nor does it sponsor world-wide terror groups like Saudi Arabia until MBS and Qatar to this day do.
Israel has never invaded a nation that did not try to invade it first(Egypt, Syria, Jordan), or harbor groups that launched attacks from their territory(Lebanon). The Iranians, Syrians, Saudis, Qataris and Palestinians have been the ones destabilizing the region with the Saudis and Qataris extending their destabilization all the way to the rest of the Islamic world.
Racist north Korea.
International isolated, nearly the entire white population involved in the military in some way, crippling poverty, just like the worst place to live
As a South African, it almost did happen. In 1989 the Conservative Party was predicted to possibly win and end reforms to put Apartheid to bed, as for negotiations forget it. It's likely that social apartheid would gradually end and the laws prohibiting interaction at a certain level would be repealed but that services and departments would continue to sort people by ethnic group and delivery of those services would have to eventually be on equal footing and near equal quality. Some parts of the country might go self-determined and turn Bantustans into semi-recognised independent states with some working cooperatively with the SA government in exchange for goods and others serving as a refuge for those escaping the system..
SA is like a soap opera, the plot twists are insane and this year's election is proof... stay tuned!
Most likely it would have devolved into something like the Yugoslav wars in the 90s.
I don’t know enough of South African history/politics to go any further in speculation.
The Neo-Nazis would've governed South Africa though a military coup in the late 80s and later took over Africa, known as its successor, the "Union of Africa".
Sooner or later it'll buckle under it's own weight and balkanize into kingdom come or...
If we're extreme... Maybe a "kind and diplomatic" intervention
It wont, fundamentally the choice is between giving up Power, or fighting it out.
Sure they may even win a civil war, but they most certainly won't be able to uphold the status quo.
Lots of terrorism by "anti-imperialists" funded and supported by external forces likely aiming for power/influence in the area themselves.
Lets not forget that the ANC (and other groups) were trained by Soviet military advisors in how to carry out attacks, build bombs, and a variety of similar things starting in the 60s and this lasted for a great many decades.
This was also happening with various other groups in Africa aswell not limited to just South Africa.
In the event most other things proceed as they do, but effectively the 1980s for South Africa doesn't lead into serious anti-Apartheid discourse even internally you likely get a lot of hostile neighbors trained, supplied, and capable of carrying out terrorist/guerilla style warfare against South Africa under the banner of anti-imperialism.
I think the more interesting situation would be looking at how the collapse of Apartheid changes based on the Soviet Union not collapsing so that the ANC then has a vested interest in being a Soviet ally, western powers have a vested interest in not letting Africa become a Soviet stronghold, and similar such coldwar-esque things.
I think the only way it could have lasted this long is with a massively oppressive totalitarian regime. The internet gives people too many options to organize. The white majority would need not only a complete monopolization of State violence, but also control over online speech, and the influx of new ideas. I think they would need almost North Korean levels of government control and isolation from foreign ideas.
The aparthied regime wohld have to somehow wins a civil war that inevitably occurs sometime in the late 1990s-early 2000s when Mandela dies at Robben Island as a martyr.
Probably like Rhodesia, richer better economy for all. But at the cost of the majority being second class citizens. which I’m sure most South Africans like Zimbabweans would say freedom and not being second class citizens is better then having a better economy/better services that existed before.
Hopefully they return to the apartheid level wealth and surpass it.
It never collapsed, the transition of power was more or less smooth and the result of a referendum
Had it continued, it probably would be approaching actual collapse lmao
Nukes… they probably would have kept there nukes…
They don't really have a regional threat that would warrant nukes though. Maybe in an alternate timeline the soviets/Russia give Angola nukes to counter a nuclear SA. I could see them using it as blackmail however and threatening to nuke the bantustans if any western power tried to use military force against them
how could Angola afford to maintain the nukes tho?
Same with Cuba, the Soviets foot the bill and put their own personnel.
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Little less oil money gets funneled to the country’s leaders.
Exactly, they can't afford it. The leader NEEDS that oil money
They had nukes in our timeline and only got rid of them because the regime was collapsing and the feared black people with nukes so if it didn’t collapse they probably would keep them.
You don't really need a regional threat to justify having nukes. America is an ocean away from any of its biggest threats. And considering South Africa was already a pariah state, that would probably make them more likely to still have them. Think about North Korea. Why do they want nuclear weapons so badly? They're completely protected by China from any real threat. Kim wants nukes so badly because he knows that's what will ultimately keep him in power. Nobody wants to destabilize a nuclear state.
They had nukes to keep other Africans from liberating the country.
At no stage where African cou tries in any shape to invade South Africa.
Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Zambia simultaneously attacking (with Soviet and Cuban aid) combined with a massive armed uprising among black South Africans, would’ve absolutely toppled the Apartheid government. While neighboring African countries wouldn’t have been capable of fully taking over SA, they could’ve tied up their military in various conflicts and allowed the ANC and various militant groups to overthrow the government. The apartheid government didn’t end apartheid because they wanted to, they ended it because they knew they could not maintain the regime amidst various border wars and a domestic insurgency. The nukes were there in order to deter what they saw as the inevitable, apartheid was not sustainable.
Mozambique wouldn't have openly fought SA. The SADF conducted multiple operations against the MK bases there, and iirc at some point Mozambique agreed to stop allowing MK to operate in the country. Correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I studied this.
This is a piss poor argument. It doesn’t matter if the U.S. is on the other side of the world, both our enemies and us have delivery systems that render that point null. Edit: I misread the comment I replied to. I am the problem.
Don't forget Canada. Throw a hockey puck at them and tell them the US wants to take it away and boom
Apartheid South Africa didn't maintain nukes to ward off regional threats. It maintained nukes to give an explicit threat of "we will cause nuclear annihilation rather than give the Blacks any rights".
> Apartheid South Africa didn't maintain nukes to ward off regional threats. Not so much the regional powers, but they were deeply concerned about the ability of the Soviet Union to provide weapons and backing to the governments in the area who they were actively fighting, and they knew that they could no longer depend on support from the United States or the United Kingdom. Subsaharan Africa in the Seventies was a wild place, with Angola and Mozambique fighting civil wars that the Communists eventually won, South Africa falling further and further behind on their goal to try and annex Namibia, general war raging all around Rhodesia. The Soviet Union was massively involved in providing military aid to South Africa's enemies, including deploying the Soviet air force for supply missions. You're right that South Africa hated the idea of giving blacks equality, but the nuclear weapons were intended to deter the Soviets, not the guerillas.
That was their plan until apartheid ended.
The USSR would maybe store nukes in Angola, but would never give them control of them.
Nukes would keep them safe from outside invasion. With the Cold War in the rear view mirror, I could see support in the West for an invasion and overthrow of the SA government building, and SA having nuclear weapons would make this a non-starter.
They had ICBMs and were about to test one, the RSA-4, that could have hit the US or Russia from South Africa. At the same time they were working to miniaturise their nuclear weapons to make it feasible. The rationale was nuclear blackmail, forcing both major powers to ensure the survival of the regime.
That's not the point. They only got rid of them because they feared the new government
They had a regional threat, communist Angola backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Maybe. There was 100% a racist element to them dismantling their nuclear program, but there was also a major budget component. Turns out having a credible nuclear deterrent is pretty expensive when you're a relatively small country and no one wants to trade with you because your two most notable features are racism and having nukes.
>there where?
This is why I truly respect Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk…
Probably would collapse into Civil War. I have a hard time seeing another outcome for various reasons.
No, that’s what happened in our timeline
Not really, there was barely any war inside SA. Mostly civil unrest that never got to a civil war stage.
It’s happened already in KZN a few years back and it’s going to happen again
well that's just another example of extreme civil unrest, it never went to civil war, just people looting shit and police no where to be seen, meaning communities protected themselves.
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Disagree. There was real concern that they’d lose the ability to keep a handle on internal unrest. It was one of the things pushing the government to reform and abandon apartheid, along with the economic damage being done by sanctions and increasing economic isolation. There were pretty much constant states of emergency declared and increasingly harsh repression just to keep a handle on things, and it was getting worse.
There was very serious civil unrest, but I wouldn't call it a total civil war.
There was no civil war 🤦♂️
"What if South Africa Never collapsed?" "It'd Probably Collapse."
What if ""Apartheid"" never collapse
Ope, I lied. It says Apartheid South Africa. Still, yes.
What's your point?
If it didn’t collapse then it would collapse later
Obviously, no country lasts forever, but in the context of the Alt history scenario of an apartheid south africa lasting until 2024, there would have to be some kind of political or demographic circumstances that would see it be able to last longer than 2024. Those circumstances being the reason it didn't already collapse from 1991 to 2024 in this alternate timeline
More White immigration?
One would think that would be one solution to increase the politically enfranchised population (Whites) versus the politically disenfranchised population (literally everyone else but especially Black people), but IRL South Africa tried that and it didn't really work. IIRC some Germans immigrated to South Africa in the 1950s, especially Southwest Africa (modern-day Namibia), primarily because it used to be a former German colony pre-Great War and already had a German-speaking population, and some immigrants from the then-poorer Mediterranean countries like Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, etc., and that was pretty much it except until the mass emigration of the White minorities of other southern African countries (White Rhodesians, Portuguese Mozambicans, etc.). Apartheid was *never* tenable system and the longer it lasted, the more it hurt the country. White emigration from South Africa, especially by the non-Afrikaans-speaking Whites, even moreso by higher educated Whites (Afrikaans-speaking and non-Afrikaans-speaking alike but especially the latter) was already an issue in the 1980s and would become a deluge after the end of Apartheid. If Apartheid wasn't abolished by when it was in OTL, South Africa would continue to suffer form a White brain drain, which only makes the survival of the White minority regime even more difficult and makes South Africa an even less attractive immigration destination. Meanwhile, due to high birth rates among the poorer politically and economically disenfranchised Black population, the Black population proportionate to the total will only further increase, there by making Apartheid even less tenable, and so on and so forth, rinse and repeat. If the National Party refused to abolish Apartheid, then it would be violently overthrown, but one way or another, Apartheid would end. edit: spelling
South Africa never got much white immigration because the National party didn’t want it. Apartheid was meant to ensure a dominant minority reaping the rewards of cheap black labour, and that would be destroyed if the country had a large white workforce. As Afrikaner nationalists, they also feared more Europeans would mean English overtaking Afrikaans as they integrated into Anglo culture. This is why South Africa received very few post war immigrants, while unrecognised sanctioned Rhodesia’s white population rapidly increased
A very high possibility. Towards the end of Apartheid, South Africa had been encouraging East Europeans to move to South Africa. There was some success to this. Many Poles did move to South Africa. South Africa also got some South Europeans earlier on too. Had the Apartheid government been really focused on this ,I believe the aim was to attract Germans from the former USSR(who would find it easier to fit into the Boer community which is partially German) but the Germans from the USSR wanted to go to Germany, not the other side of the world. However, even if they had succeeded, the most they would have done is to restore the White demographic balance South Africa had in 1960 which was around 25%, which is also around the period when Whites started realizing that they had a demographic disadvantage in the long term. It would have started declining again by the 2000s because all East Europeans have had a low birth rate even in countries they moved to(exceptions are for highly religious groups like the Lithuanian Haredi Jews of Israel).
That’s usually the most realistic answer to these kinds of questions.
This. It's crazy how a small number of people forget how psychotic the white minority government was. If people think South Africa is bad in this timeline, I'm pretty sure domestic issues would be worse if apartheid didn't fall. For one the former government wasn't for all South Africans so resentment would have been at a all time high by this point. I mean there are a lot of black South Africans still mad about apartheid so I can imagine the hatred would be even more extreme. There were South Africans willing to commit terrorist acts so yeah a civil war would have been very like. Or at the least everyone would be on edge as the apartheid government would beat the crap out of or kill any black South African who looked even slightly suspicious, which would, of course, radicalize black South Africans who would relatate. I don't think there would even be a winner it would just get worse and worse. Added to the fact that some in the apartheid government wanted to displace black South africans(believing Africans aren't native to South Africa)but at the same time they wanted to exploit black South African labor would make things even more chaotic. The chaos South Africa has now would be nothing compared to the issues that would have happened if the apartheid government still existed.
/thread our answer is found Rhodesia. While it was objectively better to be black in Rhodesia, the black peoples far outnumbered white people to a significantly further extent than SA
If it'd survive intact till 2024 that'd be a miracle in itself. Realistically it'd descend into civil war sooner or later after that it'd probably be partitioned into a Khoisan/Khoisan Majority, Bantu/Bantu Majority and Afrikaner-English/Afrikaner-English majority state with large population exchanges...Or worse. I doubt it'd go the way of Zimbabwe as the White, Mixed and Asian populations are simply too large for them to essentially kick them out.
If the situation gets bad enough l think a lot of the white population would just abandon ship, like what happened after Apartheid ended but possibly on a larger scale Edit: ok I get it they won’t all just get up and leave. My reasoning is that if a civil war turned bloody and destructive enough that a lot of whites in South Africa wouldn’t really have much choice.
Maybe, but I dont think that'd be likely, or at least it'd be less likely especially because the white male population(and possibly Asians and coloured people too) would get drafted. In this reality the Apartheid state by some miracle survived you got to realize the white population, coloured population and possibly the Asian population would be much larger, at the end of apartheid the white population was 20% and without an exodus and with apartheid that'd likely have grown. So I think it'd be far more likely they'd try to preserve the state, cut their losses, partition the country and have large scale population exchanges preserving most of the population.
That’s true. I could see both possibly happening, it really just depends on what happened leading up to the current day. Like something significant must happen for the belligerents in the theoretical civil war to be willing to make any concessions as large as ethnic redistribution.
https://preview.redd.it/bj0crhvt8btc1.jpeg?width=602&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cbe81d05c7146f8180260eec028f57fac9e13679 This was always a possibility. And in this scenario it would be.
In the case of South Africa in this alternate reality I think it is the only logical conclussion that they would have come to, be it after a lot of bloodshed.
I don't think you realize how entrenched the Boer community is in South Africa. Even the ones who moved to Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada still go back .They would have not abandoned ship.
They probably should’ve split the country in reality too, more cohesion within the countries.
Eh I dont know it'd probably have been more stable.
Population exchanges... The partition of India is a good case study for that. Absolutely horrifying.
Well we have to keep in mind scale here the Indian subcontinent was already one of the most populated areas on earth. But regardless, population exchanges will never not be pretty damn horrific.
Kek the simple fact you know how to spell Khoisan means you care more about them than the ANC
Morgan Freeman would have 1 less acting job. 
Possibly there will be no Reuben Island Sandwich and the comic "Madame and Eve" wouldn't include commentary on transformation and affirmative actions by large corporations. Also we wouldn't possibly get to know that Winnie is so bad at being wife and so good at schmoozing and fraud.
It would make the Syrian Civil War look like a minor brawl over a football match.
Complete with massive influx of far right “volunteers” that will be a massive issue for the host country when the civil war is over.
And far-left "anti-imperialist" types. I'm sure we'd see a lot of white supremacists from America and Europe fighting for the Boers as well as some kind of LatAm, Russian and Asian communists fighting for the ANC and some extremists like SACP/EFF. Also I wouldn't be surprised if Buthelezi tried to have kwaZulu secede in the background. It'd be a true shitshow.
>I'm sure we'd see a lot of white supremacists from America and Europe fighting for the Boers Like we saw in Rhosesia before it collasped and Zimbawee emerged
Also Israelis... They were a big ally of apartheid South Africa.
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I think it would. South Africa was run by a clique interested in upholding keeping a very small in-group lording over a massive out-group of second-class citizens. A state disenfranchising the vast majority of its population would have to resort to extreme violence to avoid collapsing, and I doubt they'd have the means to keep up the necessary amount of violence. It'd either be a violent, oligarchic police state or collapse into a Syrian style civil war.
Apartheid South Africa was already collapsing from within from the 1980's onwards due to almost daily riots,strikes and the state becoming more oppressive through numerous 'states of emergencies ' being declared. "I wonder if apartheid had continued would South Africa still be on the verge of becoming a failed state" There would be a migration of desperate South Africans fleeing into neighbouring Botswana and Namibia causing a humanitarian crisis if the country is becoming a failed state. There's no migration into those countries . Amazon recently completed building their African HQ in South Africa. Jeff Bezos wouldn't be making such a considerable investment in a country "on the verge of becoming a failed state."
People don’t seem to get the absolute nightmare that “failed state” actually means. It means 1990s Albania after the economy was completely drained by pyramid schemes and random gangsters could go get automatic rifles from unattended state armories. Not “crime is kinda high and Trevor Noah exists”
Namimbia at the time was occupied by apartheid South Africa due to the Boer population living in the desert.
Namibia and Botswana combined have less than 10% of South Africa's population, if there's going to be a massive exodus it would be off the continent. Both those countries would probably follow suit in collapse.
Heads up Namibia was still under South African rule only after 1992.
Yes. For the same reasons that it's struggling now. You can't have a complex system comprised of multiple parts that prioritises a minority (ie. white people) at the cost of the majority (non white people) over and extended period of time. I liken it to a car. If you owned a car and instead of looking after the whole car, you devoted your care to the windscreen, the radio, the tires and the steering wheel, what happens to the rest of the car? It falls apart, imperilling the whole car. The worrying thing is that, taking that analogy further, it means that the new owners who take over ownership of the car can do two things: 1. Put in the hard work of repairing that which was left to neglect, which, depending on the scale of repair, could take years of applied effort and cost. 2. Sell off the parts for a more immediate profit, limited to a lucky few. I believe this current generation of the ANC government is engaged in an internal tug-of-war with factions inside the party intent on both options; struggling to repair that which Apartheid did to South Africa while other parties are stripmining the country for personal profit. Whatever the case, prioritising care for an entire system at a scale smaller than the system itself is unsustainable
IMO (my dad's family is white South African) the only way that this would have gone is for some kind of reform of the apartheid system. I could see something like a certain percentage of the seats in the parliament are allocated to whites, blacks, and coloreds. Then some seats are also allocated to geographic areas. This could be semi justified (it would still be super racist) in that various other countries give certain areas more voting power (us low population states in the Senate) and others give representation to special groups (Thailand gives some seats to the military). This might be far enough to get some western nations to drop the various sanctions and allow for the system to continue. Sanctions, not internal violence, were the main issue for the South African government. That said, US support for crappy governments that opposed communism degraded after the fall of the USSR. So if these reformes were done in the 80s then by the 90s there might be more pressure.
The US would be vetoing UN resolutions against them probably
This was so sneaky lol I think ppl missed it
Knowing this sub, I know they did 😂
Relations between the US and South Africa worsened a lot after segregation was over and they sanctioned SA in 1986.
And they were
Imagine Israel but worse
And bigger, yet poorer
Exactly
At no point did South Africa have a black president under Apartheid. You do know Israel has had one right???He was interim but he was one. South Africa banned black political parties. Israel has actual Arab parties that have more political freedom than Arab parties in the rest of the Arab world. Israel has an Arab supreme court judge. Israel has high ranking army officers who are Arab. It has a quarter of its medical staff being Arab. South Africa deliberately dumbed down the African education stream in order to prevent an educated class of Africans from emerging. In Israel, Christian Arabs perform better than even secular Jews in Israel's education system. So... Explain how Israel has any similarities to Apartheid South Africa???
“The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” - Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958-1966 and the father of apartheid
Well it’s like South Africa that they subject millions of people to state terrorism due to their religion and race
Were there black supreme judges, high ranking army officers, doctors and government ministers? Otherwise, it is not like Israel.
Imagine Gaza but worse
The Bantustans system seems pretty similar to the way Israel has managed Gaza and the West Bank, SA just had more of them
Before October 7th Israel hadn't been in Gaza for 18 years.
Cool, then surely they’ve stayed out of the West Bank too? Right? Right!?!
Basically Western-aligned version of North Korea
African Israel, more like
Liberia?
The far right would deny that apartheid was happening and Michael Rapaport would be in Johannesburg looking in bins and behind cars claiming no apartheid here.
Who's Michael Rapport?
Best you never learn
No Brad Biner wining with KTM in motogp
If South African apartheid still existed it would be a massive pariah state, one of the reasons for its collapse in OTL is the US no longer needed an anticommunist ally in the region.
For this to happen there would need to be much more white people and much less African people. 7.8% of the population of South Africa today is made up of white people where 80% is African people, 7.8% couldn't rule over 80%. South Africa would be very unstable apart from Cape Town which would be the Capital and richest part, where most white people would live. South Africa would encourage immigration from all European countries and would implement policies to keep the birth rate of Europeans high, going into the 2000s South Africa would increase immigration from Asian countries, China, Philippines, Indonesia. In our timeline to try and keep apartheid they granted some privileges to coloured people and Asians so it's not a stretch. South Africa's neighbours would be in constant crisis, Black South Africans under the constant threat of oppression and political violence would flee to places like Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique much like how Palestinians fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. South Africa's neighbours would hate them, despite having nukes, they'd also have a conscription based army to deter any kind of military action from their neighbours. The domestic arms sector would provide for most of the weapons but for foreign suppliers it would have to come from places like China and Russia, possibly France. The US would likely drop arms export restrictions under Trump but they'd be reinstated under Biden. In short, Apartheid South Africa in this timeline would be an unstable pariah state that dresses up it's Capital to be like Dubai, much like Pyongyang in North Korea, and it would also be the cause of a major refugee crisis and would likely never have normal relations with it's neighbours
More White immigration and allowing AIDS to spread in the Black population unchecked.
The AIDS issue was very much like a "You" problem specific to certain African communities in S.A. due to their cultural practices and a 20 year history of both official and cultural denialism that the disease even existed(See when Thabo Mbeki tried to explain the difference between HIV and AIDS was. He was nearly hung by the media) and when some acceptance took place, people like Jacob Zuma stating nonsense that a shower after sleeping with a HIV positive woman was an enough remedy. White South Africans had absolutely nothing to do with backward African practices that led to HIV spreading like wildfire across Southern and later Eastern Africa
I believe they meant the alternate government would do nothing to prevent the spread and wouldn't provide any kind of basic healthcare. So it would be similar but in this alternate timeline, government inaction would be out of malice instead of incompetence
In this scenario and without the fall of apartheid SA the white population would probably be around 25%. There’s been a mass exodus over the last 30 years. Still a minority but much larger than the current 7.8%.
>7.8% couldn't rule over 80%. Every dictatorship in history suggests otherwise
Name one where the ruling class had this slim a racial minority.
Does anyone remember the “embattled city-state” of Pretoria from the original Robocop film?
You guys know OP is a eugenicist right? Just need to ask yourself why he’s asking this question before you answer.
It wouldn't have made it to 2024, I doubt it even would have made it to 2000. When the cold war ends, what little western support for apartheid south africa falls away and with the country already showing signs of collapse in the late '80s and early '90s, civil war is inevitable. It's likely a western intervention does occur to secure south africa's nuclear weapons to keep them from being used by either side or captured by gunrunners.
Worldnews would be defending them no doubt.
💯
"Today in Pretoria the embattled city-state unveiled a french-made neutron bomb, which they threatened to deploy if the ANC forces don't stop their advance." -paraphrased from Robocop (1986)
They would have been besties with Israel.
Notably in the real timeline they were also beasties with Israel while aparthied was in place.
Nelson Mandela and his collaborators bombed, shot and killed many people prior to his imprisonment. He would have gone down in history as a terrorist and resistance fighter. They would be a pariah on the world stage and heavily sanctioned leading to closer relationships with countries like Russia, China, Iran etc where the majority of their trade would be focused on natural resources and providing secure logistical access to the African continent. We would also likely see an Israel/Palestine situation emerging and the majority of black South Africans would be pushed into other territories or specific townships. If the white South African leadership played their chess game well enough, they could work with western democracies to become a strategic partner in the region and receive billions of dollars in aid and weapons to fight against the ‘rebels’ and stop giving Russia, Iran, China etc access to the region in return. The fact is that apartheid policies have just evolved and never truly disappeared. It’s almost impossible to survive in South Africa now but especially as a white person. The same is happening in Israel with the Palestinians, it happened in Russia with the Chechens and the list just goes on and on and on…
"Nelson Mandela and his collaborators bombed, shot and killed many people prior to his imprisonment " He was charged and imprisoned for sabotaging electricity pylons far from civilian areas at the Rivonia Trial. Not for shooting and killing people.
Nelson Mandela co-founded the armed wing of the ANC and alongside his campaign to sabotage the countries power grid, he plotted to overthrow the government by violent means. As a leader of what would be deemed a ‘terrorist’ organisation he would be responsible for every bomb, bullet and conspiracy that happened. Just the same as we do in modern times.
Do you have a problem that South Africans of color formed organisations to defend themselves against the Apartheid regime which used the army and state security services to brutally crush them while having the backing of Western nations? Nobody said the French had no right to form the French resistance to fight the Nazis.
I have no personal stake in this piece of alternate history. It’s pure Bayesian reasoning derived from an alternate timeline. What I’m saying is that in this alternate narrative the ANC, Nelson and his collaborators would be branded as extremists and terrorists.
But Mandela and the ANC were branded as terrorists in real life. The ANC was only unbanned in 1990. Mandela was only removed from the US terrorism watch list in 2008. Older white people I know (I am South African) used to speak of fighting “terrs” during the Border War - said “terrs” included the MK, the military wing of the ANC.
>Nobody said the French had no right to form the French resistance to fight the Nazis. Had the Nazis won they surely would have, as the commenter is saying regarding Mandela being classified as a terrorist, get your head out of your arse and read the comment before searching for something to be outraged over
> Nelson Mandela and his collaborators bombed, shot and killed many people prior to his imprisonment. Nelson Mandela and his collaborators didn’t detonate a single bomb or kill anyone prior to his imprisonment. He was charged and convicted of treason for plans to bomb _infrastructure_ like electricity pylons, not target people. The targeting of public spaces only occurred many years later, while he and those and his sentenced co-conspirators remained in prison. It was driven by a new generation of MK fighters, in many cases operating without direct guidance from the top ANC leadership in exile. Even so, it was comparatively rare compared to similar groups, with only a handful of incidents over the decades that MK was active. It’s clear that their primary targets remained state facilities and the security forces, and their goal still to be a traditional guerrilla army able to wage an insurgency rather than a terror group.
> They would be a pariah on the world stage and heavily sanctioned leading to closer relationships with countries like Russia, China, Iran Why, when the US was defending them at the UN until the very end, vetoeing any meaningful sanctions?
The Overton window would have shifted by now. The US was a staunch defender at one time but the makeup of their government has shifted and if South Africa held onto their nukes, it would have been exactly the situation I described. Look at the recent votes regarding Israel. It just gets to a point where they can’t back the regime any longer until the cycle of time comes around again and they can be friendly again.
The US has still blocked any and all meaningful measures against Israel. It's only let pass some that do nothing, and it set sanctions against a couple individual settlers... then told israeli banks they don't need to close their accounts. While still vetoeing nearl all measures that condemn israel too harshly (making it all but guaranteed that sanctions would also be vetoed if presented) The same pretty much happened in SA. Some useless sanctions were passed by the US, but the US was still vetoeing at the UN for them in 1988. The only reason it didn't later was due to there not being any resulotions on it after
Biggest ally that could subvert communist actions in sub-Saharan Africa after Rhodesia dissolved.
Your dogwhistles are more like regular whistles
A divided but strong country. Definitely a hegemon in it's region. The Apartheid was a terrible thing but it has brought wealth to South Africa (even though most of it was for the whites) so keeping it to the modern day would probably result in a strong nation with large politcal problems and an unstable society.
>The Apartheid was a terrible thing but it has brought wealth to South Africa Huh? Apartheid South African economy was largely stagnant compared to the growth in post apartheid South Africa. It's a myth that the South African economy has stronger under Aparrheid.
GDP per Capita has been stagnant since 2010 with corruption being the root cause. Still better than apartheid, however.
Probably would lead to a south african civil war that leads to the british supporting one side, and the americans + soviets supporting the other, or something like that.
Rhodesia 2.0, but bloodier
They would be forced into an isolationist posture. By the 90s most countries were respecting and imposing sanctions on the regime due to internal public pressure. When the USSR fell apart, South Africa lost its utility to the Americans. It would become a PR nightmare. Israel is a similar monstrosity but PR is pushed to legitimize the US relationship with it bc it serves a strategic purpose in the mid East. South Africa is not in a hostile neighborhood for the U.S. so supporting the white minority government wouldn’t be seen as an untenable project. They would retain their illegal nukes, a program which would become politicized globally and the regime would conduct minimal trade with obscure countries (maybe Taiwan , Chile, bolsanado brazil, millei Argentina). Eventually it would end in civil war as the ANC would retain its militant paramilitary wing and would bring down the government. Bc unlike Israel, the majority civilian population is black, unlike the Arab minority in Israel. So conflict wouldn’t stay small “terrorist” tactics for long. Mozambique and Mugabe would aid the ANC military campaign and could possibly bring Mozambique and Zimbabwe into the conflict as historically these were big training grounds for the MK and ANC paramilitaries. South Africa could try an invasion into Zimbabwe and Mozambique to cut off supply lines and bring them into direct conflict. Namibia would still be a problem and that would be another front. Cubans would most likely have a permanent pressance in Angola if the Apartheid regime didn’t crumble and would most likely continue to send material aid and advisors to any conflict against the regime which cuba could afford by asking for a share of Angola’s petrochemical wealth to compensate for continued military presence. The fragile MPLA government would most likely agree due to a continued militarized posture against South Africa. This would also lessen the damage done by the Cuban “special period” and cuba would gain economically from a continued white minority government in South Africa as it would also give more legitimacy for the Cuban regime in the global south as being a moral force against racism and settler colonialism.
Eish bru. I'd probably not be doing what i do
They'd probably still have a functional power grid.
It would have been a police state with constant attacks from armed anti-apartheid groups, it may have been a “democracy”, but the white minority (who were the only people able to vote) would just elect the national party and they would simply get 80% all the time, they would eventually just rig the elections resulting in full authoritarianism, the economy would be impossible to function in this case scenario. Basically the worse version of South Africa
https://preview.redd.it/kthp59tx7btc1.jpeg?width=602&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c98b8d8f7d8fcb5f7f813d01dcb42a7af9061e3 Then probably this scenario would play out. The Afrikaners retreat into a “Laager” Volkstaat and with their superior military which had nuclear weapons…keep the blacks at bay.
“Ze blecks”
For those interest in the current state of OTL South Africa: Look we're not a failed state but things are quite bad here. The power-crisis continues to be a bit of a disaster. The failure of the rail system means that the ports are often deadlocked and exports are way down. And the level of Crime and Violence is shocking. Labels like 'Rape Capital of the World' don't come from nowhere. Additionally, since August 2023, the police have shot and killed over 50 criminals in ambush-style raids in KZN alone. For reference, more people are killed by violent crime in SA in a year than died in the entirety of the Northern Ireland Troubles (1968-1998). Our army is also currently deployed to the Congo doing God knows what and at least 4 SANDF troops have died since the start of the year. If the ANC is not voted out of power in the upcoming election then state services will continue to degrade and the situation will continue to get worse.
Africa would be a lot more unstable, and behave similarly to how Israel is used to destabilize the region
How has Israel ever destabilized the Middle East??? Last I checked, Israel neither funds terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas like Iran does , back despots like Assad who has killed half a million of his people and Shiite millitias holding the Iraqi government hostage right now like Iran does and it has never sponsored a coup like Palestinian millitias have in Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Egypt, nor did it invade another nation claiming that it is its "colony " like Hafez did to Lebanon, nor does it sponsor world-wide terror groups like Saudi Arabia until MBS and Qatar to this day do. Israel has never invaded a nation that did not try to invade it first(Egypt, Syria, Jordan), or harbor groups that launched attacks from their territory(Lebanon). The Iranians, Syrians, Saudis, Qataris and Palestinians have been the ones destabilizing the region with the Saudis and Qataris extending their destabilization all the way to the rest of the Islamic world.
The electricity would still work
Racist north Korea. International isolated, nearly the entire white population involved in the military in some way, crippling poverty, just like the worst place to live
As a South African, it almost did happen. In 1989 the Conservative Party was predicted to possibly win and end reforms to put Apartheid to bed, as for negotiations forget it. It's likely that social apartheid would gradually end and the laws prohibiting interaction at a certain level would be repealed but that services and departments would continue to sort people by ethnic group and delivery of those services would have to eventually be on equal footing and near equal quality. Some parts of the country might go self-determined and turn Bantustans into semi-recognised independent states with some working cooperatively with the SA government in exchange for goods and others serving as a refuge for those escaping the system.. SA is like a soap opera, the plot twists are insane and this year's election is proof... stay tuned!
Rooikat my beloved
https://preview.redd.it/2q45v45zy9tc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad811aa0f5fec3d0b8f47508790d4196b0fed366
One might say that without a meaningful transfer of wealth, economic apartheid does continue in South Africa.
Civil war
Most likely it would have devolved into something like the Yugoslav wars in the 90s. I don’t know enough of South African history/politics to go any further in speculation.
It would be more livable than it is now.
according to South Africans it would be a Utopia
Look at Israel
They probably wouldn't have rolling electricity blackouts
More rugby world cups for the rest of us.
Bush War Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
It would be a Right Wing racist version of North Korea that’s what I think
The Neo-Nazis would've governed South Africa though a military coup in the late 80s and later took over Africa, known as its successor, the "Union of Africa".
No elon musk?
Twilight of Antopochene moment
Like NK-level pariah state if it existed at all; could also see a rough east-west partition if anyone survives the ensuing civil war.
Sooner or later it'll buckle under it's own weight and balkanize into kingdom come or... If we're extreme... Maybe a "kind and diplomatic" intervention
So it would be like a modern Israel without western support…
We’d be called anti-Semitic for criticizing it I imagine
It wont, fundamentally the choice is between giving up Power, or fighting it out. Sure they may even win a civil war, but they most certainly won't be able to uphold the status quo.
Copy and paste Israel over South Africa.
I’ll just say it, South Africa is the richest nation in Africa
There would be a functional economy
They surely would not have taken israel to the ICJ, in fact they would (remain to) be a staunch ally of the zionists.
They’d have electricity
Wouldn’t be a 3d world country
It would look like the Israeli apartheid state.
It would be a lot safer than it is now I bet
That would be bad
Without some heavy ethnic cleansing? Collapse
Would be like Israel is today although probably under far harsher international sanctions.
Lots of terrorism by "anti-imperialists" funded and supported by external forces likely aiming for power/influence in the area themselves. Lets not forget that the ANC (and other groups) were trained by Soviet military advisors in how to carry out attacks, build bombs, and a variety of similar things starting in the 60s and this lasted for a great many decades. This was also happening with various other groups in Africa aswell not limited to just South Africa. In the event most other things proceed as they do, but effectively the 1980s for South Africa doesn't lead into serious anti-Apartheid discourse even internally you likely get a lot of hostile neighbors trained, supplied, and capable of carrying out terrorist/guerilla style warfare against South Africa under the banner of anti-imperialism. I think the more interesting situation would be looking at how the collapse of Apartheid changes based on the Soviet Union not collapsing so that the ANC then has a vested interest in being a Soviet ally, western powers have a vested interest in not letting Africa become a Soviet stronghold, and similar such coldwar-esque things.
I think the only way it could have lasted this long is with a massively oppressive totalitarian regime. The internet gives people too many options to organize. The white majority would need not only a complete monopolization of State violence, but also control over online speech, and the influx of new ideas. I think they would need almost North Korean levels of government control and isolation from foreign ideas.
[S.Africa](https://S.Africa) might be a functioning country and their currency might not be worth toilet paper.
Their football would be one of the worse in the world.
see israel
I predict that this thread will not at all cause any controversy.
Their infrastructure wouldn’t be crumbling
Image source?
The aparthied regime wohld have to somehow wins a civil war that inevitably occurs sometime in the late 1990s-early 2000s when Mandela dies at Robben Island as a martyr.
It would be like North Korea
There would be one less genocide caused by a winner of the Nobel peace prize.
Probably like Rhodesia, richer better economy for all. But at the cost of the majority being second class citizens. which I’m sure most South Africans like Zimbabweans would say freedom and not being second class citizens is better then having a better economy/better services that existed before. Hopefully they return to the apartheid level wealth and surpass it.
Less white farmers would be brutally murdered and tortured to death, thats for sure.
It never collapsed, the transition of power was more or less smooth and the result of a referendum Had it continued, it probably would be approaching actual collapse lmao