Quote:
Originally Posted by Mohoender
I think that you are all right but I chose the exact opposite with South Africa remaining under a revived Apartheid.
In 1993, Chris Hani (an anti-apartheid activist) is assassinated (that failed in real life) by a Polish immigrant. The murderer is found dead and the investigation is slow.
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Mo, I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding here and you're using the Chris Hani assassination as a suggested point of divergence from the real life timeline, but in real life the assasination didn't fail - Chris Hani was indeed murdered in April 1993.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hani
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mohoender
As a result, riots are taking place in various districts. Mandela and the ANC fail to take control of the uprising and several white people are killed in the following weaks. As a result, the white/coloured minority starts to worry and de Klerk is forced to resign from the party. He is, then, replaced by Ferdinand Hartzenberg, a conservative. Later, the ANC is banned again, Mandela is send back to jail and dies, while the parliament change the law again and call for the 1994 election to be cancelled.
Of course, the result is growing chaos but basically, South Africa is left alone. The Western world is more concern about the Russian coup and the soviets don't get involved except for a renewed support to several of South Africa's neighbours. In addition, South Africa retain control of Walvis Bay.
When tensions start to really grow and war is on sight, NATO declares that it has no reason to get involved in South African's internal affairs. In return, it gets a fair access to the South African ressource market. Surprisingly, despite this, the country is never targeted by the Warsaw Pact.
Of course, internal tensions goes from riots to unrest to local uprising to full civil war but the various ethnic groups fail to unite and the government is able to play on these tensions. At last, while everyone else is engaged in the Twilight War, Hartzenberg's government meet the revolt with full military force, eventually dropping a few nukes on the few neighbour state providing what little support they can to the insurgents.
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The above all sounds plausible if you want to keep an apartheid Government in place. I'd suggest it's probably also worth looking at the Afrikaner Volksfront as a means of resurrecting Apartheid. The Volsfront was led by General Constand Viljoen, a former head of the South African Defence Force and a hero to many Boers. In real life Mandela met with Viljoen in August 1993 and was able to persuade the General and the rest of the Volksfront leadership to take part in the 1994 elections. More on Viljoen here, including the fact that he apparently had 50,000 to 60,000 trained military personnel under his command and could have taken over large parts of South Africa had he chosen. I've also read that had he chosen to launch a takeover large parts of the SADF would have supported him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constand_Viljoen
As a point of divergence I'd suggest the possibility of white extremists assasinating Viljoen, but successfully managing to put the blame on the ANC in the process. In my opinion that could well have blown apart the 1994 elections and led to a very, very nasty racially motivated Civil War. A white victory in that War would probably have taken South Africa back to the worst days of apartheid.
I totally agree that with War on the horizon, NATO would not have interfered in South African internal politics, particularly if given preferential access to South Africa's natural resources.
Cheers
Dave