Recent content by Warthog

Interesting question. The grossly oversimplified summary in Southern Africa is that most states were less interested in direct control of territory than in control of trade. So a surviving Rozvi Kingdom, for example, would have maintained a watchful peace with occasionally clashes vs...

No, not by any normal definition. There are problems, but government bureaucracies function, utilities are on, schools are open etc etc

A lot of overlap with this thread There's the military service matter, delaying university until he was 20, so he'd have been at university at the dawn of democracy, and looking for his first job during the Mandela administration. He could have started with one of the telecoms, or Denel or...

The conflicts are not so comparable, starting with the differences in ethnic/racial demographics. Not only is oppressing a majority much harder than oppressing a population of similar size, but over time "your own" businessmen start thinking they'd make more money if "the other side" had more...

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 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...

Who, Heunis? The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner 🤔

Writing was already on the wall for the end of apartheid: the Dakar Dialogue had happened, and follow up talks were happening by the time PW died. PW had already met Mandela in 89. Heunis was very much part of PW's attempts at minor reforms, and had some limited contact with ANC. He wasn't an...

Where does this conspiracy theory come from? Is this a recent thing on par with more recent false flag lunacy, or has it been around? I'd never read such lunacy (on FDR) before??

I think it takes more than that: the Federation was largely a UFP creation, and the Prime Ministers were UFP. So the African nationalist opposition was very much directed at the UFP government in Salisbury. Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland weren't equal partners, with the initial suggestion of...

Yes but extrapolating from something which specifically didn't happen, to predict what might happen is confusing, especially as it isn't a thing among South Africans, who'd be the ones doing the rioting (or not)

Sorry, what? That didn't happen. It's recent history, you can watch the newsclips etc.

Thing is, Mandela wasn't a moderate. He was a founder of the armed struggle, and when P.W. Botha offered him release from prison if he renounced violence (1985) he refused. The armed struggle wasn't suspended until 1990. And by the time Mandela was meeting with government officials to start...

Nelson Mandela was very popular, then and now, as a symbol of the struggle (in addition to the reputation he developed after his release). However, it is easy to overestimate his role in the early to mid 80s, given the monumental role he later had. Mandela's involvement in negotiations with the...

Ah. This idea is back. Link to the thread from just over a year ago

Fruit and nut department