Imagine a South Africa of the near future. Assume all current world leaders are still in power. The ANC government has started expropriating land and businesses belonging to whites. But this time, unlike Zimbabwe, the whites have secretly prepared and resist violently. In clearly pre-planned and coordinated strikes, whites seize key ports and airports and much military hardware. Very quickly it turns into a black vs white race war, with no quarter given on either side. They have no compunction in downing inbound flights and sinking incoming ships. Nor do they have any compunction in killing white reporters who sneak in and are found with blacks (they are open and honest about this - they don’t lie and say they were killed accidentally or by blacks. Further, the whites deter (or do they?) foreign intervention by detonating a remnant of SA’s old nuclear weapons program with many deaths, and threaten more. Despite being vastly outnumbered it becomes apparent that they are more than holding their own thanks to discipline, ruthlessness, generalship, and leadership. Black refugees flee north.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt since you appear to be British, but your posited scenario is substantially indistinguishable from the racist wet dreams of white separatist terrorists:
I think that in such a scenario it depends on how much the black Africans can unite together. Together, they’d outnumber the whites by quite a far margin, but they have a lot of differences among themselves. The whites would no doubt also be trying to sow discord as much as possible, divide and conquer.
Tough to predict, but I would think the whites would prevail, albeit in an always-must-be-on-defense mode.
Per South Africa - Wikipedia the white whites represent about 8% of the population. If we lump all the non-white non-blacks and all the mixed folks in on the white team they could conceivably total 20% of the population.
Definitely whites are concentrated in the cities and in the upper ranges of the economy. But despite that they aren’t winning anything when outnumbered between 5 and 12 to one. Once violence goes ethnic it goes real primitive. Even if somehow they hijacked the entire SA military there simply isn’t enough firepower there to succeed against massed pitchfork assaults by the far more numerous angry blacks.
As to the rest of the world’s reaction:
This could not happen overnight. To be sure, a coup-like assault on the government would be the overt headline kick-off event.
But it isn’t a “race war” until the races themselves decide it is. Until then it’s simply politics by violent means. Just as in happened in Turkey last summer.
But even the coup / revolution / attack all the blacks maneuver would be preceded by a long apartheid-ophile propaganda process. Which would be seen by the world to be gaining traction. Much as the world watched in dismay as Trump’s more obvious racist dog-whistles stopped being dog whistles and became plain English.
Much of the world will have set its hand to keeping the situation under control before it goes over the edge.
Afterwards while the violence is in full fury the outsiders may be limited to a firebreak approach: embargo the flow inwards of weapons, feed and house refugees (of both colors) at the borders, and wait for the supply of ammo and ambition to subside. Then spend 100 years trying to quell the hate engendered in 2 months.
The nukes are a non-issue. Whether current SA has even one is debatable. And debated. What they utterly lack is long range delivery systems. Nobody who matters is going to be deterred by the SA white rebels’ ability to possibly maybe detonate a second one on SA territory.
Even the weather & geography work against them. Yes, Australia is downwind. But substantially nobody else is anywhere in even the long term fallout pattern.
A week or so later when it finally gets to Australia much of the worst fallout will have decayed. Individual weapons just aren’t that significant a source of long distance downwind radioactive pollution. Dozens or hundreds are a different story. But one or two is not.
Despite the fairly mild reality, due to panicky domestic politics the Aussies will be *real *interested in stopping any more nukes from going off. When faced with a choice between them forcefully backing a decapitating force of the major powers or begging the white rebels to think first of Australia before their next mass murder of SA blacks I think it’s pretty obvious which approach the Aussies will take.
Whatever one may think of them, they’re not big on surrender or supplications. They’re more like the Texans of the Commonwealth. The white SAs *really *won’t like the Aussies when they’re angry. For a second tier power they have far more power projection capability than most amateur observers expect. Something about having a large maritime approach with many unstable regimes in sorta distant island chains.
Minus the nukes, this is a fairly traditional civil war scenario, in which the smaller but technology superior army gradually becomes overwhelmed by the inability to resist the guerilla tactics of the natives.
But throw in nukes on either side and the rest of the world gets invested in the outcome really fast.
And the outcome the outsiders will want very badly is to stop the sophisticated side before anything else significant happens then kill or try for war crimes *everyone *on that side.
Black South Africans will descend into tribalism because reasons but English-speaking and Afrikaans white South Africans will inevitably be the epitome of unity? :dubious:
Could you provide a link to a reputable source where it is debated? SA officially dismantled its nuclear programme at the end of apartheid and I don’t recall ever reading anywhere that a clandestine nuclear programme had continued.
In any event, you are fighting the hypothetical here. The entire scenario is absurd.
White is less than 10% of the population as I read in Wkik. If there was an all-out gloves off no quarter to be given race war then I am thinking the whites to be the ones decimated here.
Sure the adult white male population can take the ports and transportation centers, etc. However who is protecting the grandmothers, mothers, elderly men and babies back at the homestead ? They are all gone, every one right down to the family dog.
What the world to say on the matter, no idea. My guess is not much.
Or perhaps they realize those differences are trivial nonsense and it’s time to put away those things, why write them off so quickly?
Also, i’d think that the guy who detonates a nuke in SA, obviously killing a whole lot of non combatant type persons, and because having more just earned him asshole of the universe status, just purchased himself a whole case of whoopass in assorted flavors like Angry Afrikan, Whoopin Australian, Baleys British Cream, American Grape, Israeli Punch, Canadian Mist, French Fizz, etc.
I think some people here are underestimating the size of South Africa when talking about holding key points. Take for example the major ports, you hold Durban and Cape Town on either end and Port Elizabeth in the middle(ish). There is approx. 800km distance between them (1600km Cape Town to Durban), meaning the Defence Force can just take them back one at a time while the occupiers are unable to support each other at all.
Also white South Africans are not homogenous. Never mind the difference between English and Afrikaans speakers, they are also divided by geography as well. I (white, english) moved from Durban to Cape Town and multiple locals (also white, english) were convinced I was not South African based on my Durban English accent.
Also the bulk of the white males with military experience are mid-forties plus and that’s mostly conscripts who wanted nothing more than to finish their 2 years and get out. So the idea of a disciplined army of whites is laughable at best.
And ultimately it doesn’t matter how the country is divided white vs black because the current divide is between rich and poor. And the rich, black and white together, are not going to let something as silly as a race war interfere with their profits.
Indeed, if history is any guide, the ferocity of violence amongst Anglophone and Afrikaaner will be as bad or worse than among black and white, once the gloves are off. In no time at all it’d be an eight-way war and the Republic of South Africa would cease to exist.
Look, I don’t know what’s really going on in South Africa. MAYBE the future is bright, maybe it isn’t, but one thing is obvious: IF there were a race war in South Africa, there’s absolutely no way the whites could win it. They don’t have the numbers.
IF a rational white South African concludes that there’s no future in South Africa, he’s not going to stock up on guns and prepare for a fight. He’s going to sell all he has and move to England or the USA. White rule and Apartheid aren’t making a comeback.