History, Politics And Current Affairs

The South Africans were also close witnesses to the failure of Rhodesia (indeed they had pulled the rug out from under the Smith Regime). Other than the most extremist hardcore Afrikaners, they knew you can just defeat an insurgency by military means alone. You need a strong political element, like the British had in Malaya. A government can't survive by just offering the status quo when a large part (or majority) of the population is disenfranchised, and/or actively oppressed. The Rhodesians forgot that until it was too late.
The South Africans knew that if you offer people change, even if it is incremental, most will take it and stick with the lower risk of the existing system reformed, than the greater risk of a violent revolution. Like Britain did in the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries, the South Africans reformed just fast enough to stay ahead of the curve. They also made sure that while elements of the ANC and IFP were brought into government in political positions, whites remained in charge of the police, judiciary, civil service etc. until a Black Middle Class had developed. What is interesting is that if you look at South Africa in 2026, the Black, Coloured and Indian Middle Classes tends to vote with the White Middle Class, as they share interests. There's no such unity between the working class population, who are generally still split along ethnic lines.

It did help that a lot of the ANC was (and is) centre-left, rather than far left and the IFP is right-leading. Interestingly, Nelson Mandela, who was released from Robben Island during the war, was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher. Even if he did not share her economic views. Mandela and several other members of the ANC joining the South African government did lead to a split. The hard-left members of the ANC would eventually merge with the SACP, following which a lot of them would end up in jail.

Yes, and it didn't hurt that the country has gone to considerable efforts post-apartheid to bring better living standards to even the poorest populations of their country. That's why their cities aren't ringed by shantytowns anymore, and the ways they've done things are quite unique and quite smart. I don't know whose idea the Small Landholdings Initiative was, but I hope whoever it was got a nice promotion. It just made too much sense honestly, I'm surprised it hadn't happened much sooner than it did.

Yep, and not much of value was lost if you ask me, because an awful lot of the ANC's better braintrust - Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Trevor Manuel, Joe Modise - all were prepared by the time that South Africa was involved the War to support the adapting of their nation. Remember what happened when Modise and Magnus Malan started talking in the 1980s - they were totally opposite sides of the conflict but both recognized the other was right in what they sought - Malan was intent on defeating communism, Modise made him see it couldn't happen without blacks being a part of the new South Africa and brought him candidates that had already begun formal military training before the ANC's relationship with the USSR came apart in the 80s. A bunch of those guys ended up in command positions in the United States and from what I understand they were rather good at it, even by the standards of the SADF, who were generally pretty competent at what they were doing.

Nothing will ever convince me that part of the reason South Africa turned out better than a lot of us thought it would wasn't because of the War. When apartheid's enforcers finally figured out the obvious and when the apartheid's opponents recognized they'd all fail without closing the gap between them, they finally met, figured out where they had common ground and went that way, and some times they even came to like one another. It was probably the best way to sort things out, and it benefitted us stateside too. We needed all the help we could get, and the South Africans were good help to have.