At some point it became clear that apartheid could not last. Costs from sanctions, terrorism, and conscience were just too high. What could be done? The easy path was to simply stop being the oppressors: democracy+equality under the law. That would appease the terrorists, right?
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Nelson Mandela seemed to many to genuinely want peace between the races and vibrant rainbow nation multiculturalism (perhaps he believed it himself), so he was not too threatening to the whites in power.
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So the majority of white people thought: 1. Oppressing people makes us feel bad and takes a lot of effort 2. Lifting sanctions will increase our prosperity 3. The nonwhites will be peaceful and not vindictive 4. Democracy would make everything work out
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What else could they have done? They could have kept going as they were, but that was costing a lot of money. A minority of whites of course realized that democracy would result in them being permanently out of power and subhect to a hostile majority.
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If they were oppressing the 85% nonwhite population while they were in power, why wouldn't the nonwhite population end up oppressing them with the roles reversed under democracy? Was democracy that magical? Why not cut losses and partition the country?
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Let's say it's 1980 and whites are 15% of the population but hold 80% or more of the wealth and land. How do you partition the country? Can you keep 1/2 of the country for yourselves even though you're only 15% of the population? Maybe 40% would go over internationally?
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Hard to say exactly what might have worked, but whites who might have gone for that strategy would have been looking at losing potentially half their property. Better to just blend into a rainbow nation and keep it all, right? (Also, partition is hard!)
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Well I think we know how this turned out. Some managed to sell their assets while the selling was good and escape rather than remain subject to the hostile majority. Others stayed and are currently in the process of losing everything.
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Yes, they managed to retain their holdings for a time and even benefit from the lifting of sanctions, but the gains were fleeting. The majority would never be satisfied with a market dominant minority holding most of the wealth, and democracy would ensure the majority's will.
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Addendum: Maybe the whites thought the constitution would protect them? Perhaps it did for a number of years, but now the majority is amending the constitution.
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2) another alternative would have been a Lebanon/Northern Ireland style solution rather than 1 man 1 vote. Whites would be guaranteed a place in the executive and all laws would require majority support from each ethnic group, rather than majority support overall
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Interesting thought. Not sure how viable and stable that would have been.
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1) Partition was literally the stated goal of Apartheid so they probably should have been more serious about that the whole time they were in power. They didn't do this because cheap Bantu labor was too alluring.
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Demography is destiny
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