Looking for South Africa-centric Timelines/ISOTs

[H.J. Fleischmann]

Does anyone have any good South Africa or Boer Republic timelines? Either ones where the Boers won the Second Boer War, by say proceeding to Natalia rather than attempting to invest towns and wasting their mobility, or where South Africa continues on with its political isolation and nuclear programme.

I tried asking this in another thread, but got no answers, so here I am asking again. Sorry if this is annoying.

 

[ivanotter]

I started on a scenario some time ago, but never really got into it in a more serious way. Feel free to use.

Scenario 1:
We need to look a bit at the characters in this and the more complex of them all is PW Botha. It is not true that he didn’t like black people. He didn’t like people to begin with!

First of all, he managed to do the Kamtieport agreement. That took Mozambique off the table.

The he let Namibia go (first election in 1989).

Now it was time to do something in SA.

PW Botha (as I read it) did not mind black people making money. As a matter of fact he wanted to see a black middle-class emerging.

But no political aspirations.

So, he created the homelands as a labor pool for the mines. Homelands meant that the workers were now not SA citizens anymore, but belonged to Bop etc. Mangope was fine as Pretoria kept him in powers and as long as he cooperated with Sun City etc.

It solved one big problem. If any of the workers wanted to support ANC, they could be deported to their ‘country’ e.g. Bop and Mangope would quickly sort them out.

A black middle class would not endanger the comfortable living with private school for the kids, two cars and a house in Kyalami (and a dog).

That took care of the black aspirations which would be fulfilled in the economic sphere.

Then terrorizing the townships and ensuring that there would be no support for ANC there.

… and then he had a stroke!

FW de Klerk came in and PW never forgave him for just giving it all away.

Here is the ‘plot’: what if PW never had a stroke? What if he did the last thing he had planned: setting Mandela free.

This is a bit speculative and only supported by facts in a very roundabout manner.

Oliver Tambo was sitting in London and was running ANC (very successfully. How he managed to keep ANC together in those years was spectacular).

If Mandela had been released with the proviso that there would be no passport and overseas trips.

That would mean two centers of power.

Would Oliver just have handed over the keys to Mandela and disappeared into obscurity? Or maybe he really liked running the show.

There would be scope for two ANC’s: Oliver-ANC and Mandela-ANC. And neither the two shall meet.

Could it have meant that Apartheid could have been prolonged for at least another 20 years?

The ‘token’ democracy could have bluffed the outside world perhaps? The ones that preferred to deal with Apartheid SA (Boeing sold a ton of 747s, Xerox, banks, insurance, they were all there).

If transition was being promised but just ‘delayed’ (deliberately?)

Over to you

 

[Seandineen]

Let's not forget, Mangope, although the best is not the only homeland leader. Brigadier Gozo, and Bantu Holosima have taken charge of the two Xhosa nation-states, perhaps a Rhodesian style internal settlement with those three and the wild card Prince Buthelezi.

 

[Texas Bulldog]

Not sure if my timeline qualifies because it does involve a more equitable South Africa with earlier Majority Rule, but if you're interested, I think it's passable enough.

 

[Warthog]

I've seen a couple of timelines* where the Nats don't win the '48 election, and things don't get as bad as OTL.

*not on this platform

where South Africa continues on with its political isolation and nuclear programme

This crops up every 6 months or so as a scenario / challenge, but haven't seen anyone do a proper timeline. It is there as part of the backstory to John Brunner's Jagged Orbit and Ralph Peter's War in 2020. Neither author fleshed out how this happened, but gives a fairly unpleasant dystopia background. However working out how this would happen is difficult, given the balance of various forces in the 80s make it difficult to convincingly suggest how it would happen, rather than handwave it in the background.

 

[H.J. Fleischmann]

Not sure if my timeline qualifies because it does involve a more equitable South Africa with earlier Majority Rule, but if you're interested, I think it's passable enough.

That counts. I am honestly just interested to see what people do with the country in general, as it has a lot of possible paths.