South African elections in the 1980s

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

IS VF+ still a white-supremacist party or have they kinda moderated ? What do they typicaly do in parliament ?

I would preface an answer by saying the FF+ could have been a lot worse than they actually are. Viljoen's mere decision to take part in the 1994 election did play a certain role in de-escalating the potential for violence among radical nationalist Afrikaners, especially in the light of the Bophuthatswana crisis (where a big far-right Afrikaner militia had attempted to defend the homeland's leader Lucas Mangope against a coup seeking to install a government that would accept its reincorporation into South Africa). Especially in so far as it led most of the radicals to accept the democratic elections and kneecapped outright nazi movements like the AWB.

Otherwise, yes, the party has moderated since 1994. Back then it was largely pushing for a quasi-independent Afrikaner Volkstaat, a concept which these days has essentially dissapeared from view. Overtime it has turned more into a Afrikaner minority interests party, which in recent times has gone through varying (and varyingly succesful) attempts to branch out into being a party representing the interests of all Afrikaans speakers, ie including coloureds. For example, in 2019 it had Peter Marais* leading it in the Western Cape provincial elections; and it also recently supported coloured prison guards in a Black Economic Empowerment related labour dispute. Which is probably a good indication of what they are up to these days, mostly hotly opposing BBBEE and land redistribution, defending Afrikaans language institutions, and basically setting itself up as a minority rights party.

I wouldn't overestimate their coloured support, or the degree to which it might have moved towards a non-racial, purely linguistic outlook tbh. It's electorate remains overwhelmingly white and Afrikaner speaking, mostly people who have deeply dubious opinions regarding race or what they want South Africa to look like.

*An odd character, leader of the People's Congress Party, which won 2 seats in the 1984 coloureds-only election, and a guy who has gone through multiple political, er, transformations since then

I see so would you say they are a loyal opposition party in terms of accepting a multi-racial state and the current government? What would you say would be the primarly difference or issue between white Afrikaaners/colored Afrikaan speakers who vote DA and vote FF+ ?

[parochial boy]

I see so would you say they are a loyal opposition party in terms of accepting a multi-racial state and the current government? What would you say would be the primarly difference or issue between white Afrikaaners/colored Afrikaan speakers who vote DA and vote FF+ ?

In terms of ther top level rhetoric at least they seem signed up to the democratic state. but how far deep that goes in reality... and they still have fairly close links to organisations like AfriForum who can be, well, problematic lets say. As in advancing the white genocide conspiracy or downplaying apartheid. Thes days you have the likes of the National Front/Afrikaner self-determination party who siphon off the really yikes elements though.

As for the electorate - well no surprises it is principally the rural, conservative platteland electorate that supported the CP in the 1980s - joined by certain more particularly working class or poorer working class urban suburbs.

For example, if you look at Cape Town coloured suburbs like Mitchell's Plain, FF+ get minuscule score. Like, around 0,5% and even behind what EFF get in those sorts of places. In the white suburbs of Cape Town, Joburg and Pretoria (the latter being the only large city where Afrikaners clearly outnumber anlgophone whites - and always the most conservative of the large cities); then the FF+ get better scores but still well behind the DA. Generally better and better the more working class a neighbourhood is, but on the whole still far behind the DA. That contrasts to out in the Platteland where they win the occasional precinct and on the potentially even outperform the DA among Afrikaners. A special mention goes to the Northern Cape where it would seem that there is some degree of a coloured vote for the party - in particular over fears of the migration of Setswana speaking black people - which has actually made the provicne majority black these days, when it was majority coloured back in the 90s.

[H. Ross Peron]

Btw are the Khoisan classified as "black" as opposed to "colored" in South Africa?

[Continential]

What led to the DP/DA becoming the primary opposition party in South Africa?

[parochial boy]

Btw are the Khoisan classified as "black" as opposed to "colored" in South Africa?

Short answer is that they are typically considered as coloured. Longer answer is that the "coloured" identity was built out of a whole spectrum of different groups of peoples, and in practice the randomness of who was assigned as being coloured or not during apartheid was one of the (very) many cruelties of that regime. As a sort of demonstration - both the soccer player Benni McCarthy and cricketer Herschelle Gibbs were classified as being coloured, and well, look at them.

As far as Khoisan people go - the vast majority of people who could be considered Khoisan today are thoroughly Afrikanerised linguistically speaking. It is likely that the coloured population of the Northern Cape do have an overwhelmingly Khoisan background - or some of them at least, a lot are the descendents of eg the Griqua people who migrated from the Western Cape. That said, lots of Coloureds (dare I say, it is what you might call a rather "woke" affectation) including in Cape Town will claim a Khoisan identity in the face of a coloured label that they see as having been imposed on them by the colonialist regimes even before apartheid.

Tl;dr the label "Khoisan" can be a touchy area. But almost everyone that you might consider as being Khoisan will be coloured.

What led to the DP/DA becoming the primary opposition party in South Africa?

That is also a - long - story. But summarising somewhat, the NP went straight head on into a major identity crisis after the first democratic elections. As in, it had no idea how to position itself - whether to be an opposition force, a partner in government, whether to position itself as "non-racial" after all - and attempting to do that having run what was actually a pretty stunningly racist, albeit successful, campaign in 1994 aimed at scaring coloured voters about the alleged imminent arrival of millions of black Xhosa speakers in the previously protected area of the Western Cape.

This all led to a series of defections from the party, in particular towards a DP that had a slightly better struggles related legitimacy, but that was also pretty firmly able to establish its credentials as an opposition party.

Come the 1999 elections, the DP then ran a, what some might call "dog whistle" and others might call "pretty forking racist" campaign using the (oh my god) tag line "fight back". Designed to appeal to white fears about the skyrocketing (at least as white people were concerned) crime rates; insecurity; degraded city centres and public services and Black Economic Empowerment.

(which of course is a source of many of the DA's issues today, as in it has no real conception as to how to hang on to its white electorate at the same time as appealing to a black electorate that - not exactly without cause - is rather suspicious of it. You then have the delightful spectacle of the DA being particularly nasty to the coloured electorate that actually forms the bedrock of its support these days, in the same way as the ANC can be completely callous about the fortunes of poor blacks)

True to form, the white vote consolidated around the DP while the newly coined New National Party was only really able to hold on to its Western Cape Coloured electorate - at which point, clearly on its last legs, it eventually folded into the ANC.

[parochial boy]

A bump with a bunch of results from the 1961 election, as in the Progressive Parties first outing. Key other story in the election was 64 of the ~150 seats were uncontested.

Only two switched between the NP and UP in that particular outing (Pretoria Sunnyside - a university seat; and Queenstown (in the Eastern Cape) - with a  growing - among whites obv - Afrikaner majority). Both went from UP to NP, with the NP only actually losing ground in one seat in the whole country; Humansdorp in the Eastern Cape, which had a rather unpopular incumbent MP.

Anyway the PP-UP match ups: (just showing PP scores because all two way match ups in any case)
In the Transvaal/Johannesburg
Houghton: as mentioned before, Helen Suzman won with a 52.4% vote share
Parktown - PP 49.6%
Johannesburg North - PP 46%
Orange Grove - PP 47.5%

Natal
Pietermaritzburg District - PP 48.9%
Pietermaritzburg City - PP 45.6%
Durban Berea - PP 45.6%
Durban Musgrave - PP  44.7%
Durban North - PP 38.9%
South Coast - PP 31,4%

Cape Province
Sea Point - 35,4%
Simonstown - 20,4%
Salt River - 31,9%

George - 5,3% (this one was won by PW Botha of the NP)
East London North - 28,8%
East London City - 17,3%
Albany - 16,1%

That's not all of them, but it is notable, in respect of it's liberal reputation and the PP's scores in the 80s, the it was notably weaker in Cape Town than in Durban or Joburg.

With Joburg, there is a Jewish thing going on (especially playing an explicit factor in the result in Parktown), but Joburg was also the terrain of the Rand Daily Mail, ancestor of the Mail & Guardian and most explicitely pro-Progressive and anti-apartheid paper of the era.

In Natal, you have a similar story with the Natal Witness which also supported the PP. On top of that, there was a factor of simmering unhappiness over the 1960 Republic Referendum and discontent with Douglas Mitchell, the leader of the Natal UP who was deeply unpopular and perceived as far too conservative, having been one of the ringleaders in kicking the progressives out of the UP in the first place. Pietermaritzburg is also home to the University of Natal, which was a long standing bastion of resistance to Apartheid.

In contrast, in Cape Town - the main local papers stayed loyal to the UP, and De Villiers Graaf was both from CT and very popular there. Meaning more loyalty to the party overall.

Elsewhere, the Wikipedia page on the election suggests that a certain "National Union Party" won a seat in Namibia. This seems to not be true and the NP won all 6 Namibian seats (which it did in every election, then). The NUP won it's seat in Bezuidenhout in Johannesburg, but the confusion seems to come from the fact that the party's founder - and sole elected MP - a certain Japie Basson had previously represented the Namib constituency in Namibia.

Basson was, well, an interesting personality shall we say. He split from the NP over opposition to its apartheid policies to form the more moderate NUP, which having failed to take off, merged into the United Party. Basson himself then wound up a member of the PFP by the 1970s before being expelled from it over his support for the tripartite parliament and finally winding up back in the NP. Totally normal story in sum.

[parochial boy]

Fwiw, the Progressives' policy on voting rights at that election:

In 1960 the PP adopted a franchise policy that was on the recommendations of the Molteno commission. In February 1960, Steytler announced the names of the members of the commission, which was to be chaired by D Molteno, a former natives' representative in parliament. Its members included ex-Chief Justice Centlivres, Leslie Blackwell also a former judge and retired MP), Harry Pppenheimer, JG Strauss formerly leader of the UP ), Dr D van der Ross, and Zach de Beer. Two professors of history, LM Thompson and S Marais, were also members of the commission.

In October 1960 its report was published. It proposed granting full voting rights on the ordinary voters' roll to all South Africans who had passed Standard Eight or its equivalent. Alternatively those who had reached Standard Six and had the attainments of a semi-skilled worker or who were literate and had the attainments of at least a skilled worker should be allowed to vote. Those who were literate and owned fixed property or who had been at any time a voter for the House of Assembly should also be enfranchised. There would be a special voters' roll for those who did not qualify to vote on the general voters' roll. The main requirement for admission to the special voters' roll was passing a literacy test. Voters on this roll would elect no more than ten percent of the members of the House of Assembly in specially delimited constituencies and at a separate election.

As in, no votes for the vast majority of blacks. That is what passed for unacceptably left wing in 1960s South Africa. Phwoar.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Fwiw, the Progressives' policy on voting rights at that election:

In 1960 the PP adopted a franchise policy that was on the recommendations of the Molteno commission. In February 1960, Steytler announced the names of the members of the commission, which was to be chaired by D Molteno, a former natives' representative in parliament. Its members included ex-Chief Justice Centlivres, Leslie Blackwell also a former judge and retired MP), Harry Pppenheimer, JG Strauss formerly leader of the UP ), Dr D van der Ross, and Zach de Beer. Two professors of history, LM Thompson and S Marais, were also members of the commission.

In October 1960 its report was published. It proposed granting full voting rights on the ordinary voters' roll to all South Africans who had passed Standard Eight or its equivalent. Alternatively those who had reached Standard Six and had the attainments of a semi-skilled worker or who were literate and had the attainments of at least a skilled worker should be allowed to vote. Those who were literate and owned fixed property or who had been at any time a voter for the House of Assembly should also be enfranchised. There would be a special voters' roll for those who did not qualify to vote on the general voters' roll. The main requirement for admission to the special voters' roll was passing a literacy test. Voters on this roll would elect no more than ten percent of the members of the House of Assembly in specially delimited constituencies and at a separate election.

As in, no votes for the vast majority of blacks. That is what passed for unacceptably left wing in 1960s South Africa. Phwoar.

What was Helen Suzman personal view on all this ?

[parochial boy]

What was Helen Suzman personal view on all this ?

I've not seen anything that would indicate her taking a line against the party. But in any case, given a context of the time, you wonder the degree that the line the PFP took was basically as far as they could go. Already they basically had to fend off accusations of wanting to hand over power and bring about the expulsion of whites from South Africa etc, etc... That's just what 1960s South Africans were like.

To demonstrate that point, the only party actually supporting universal suffrage at the time was the Liberal Party, who were so marginal that they could only field candidates in two constituencies, which regularly had its members being banned from political participation for "communism" (yes, seriously) and wound up being banned entirely by the end of the decade.

As for the PFP's own policy on the vote - it was still more or less the same as 1974, but it seems as if they were in favour of universal franchise by the 1980s. Of course, by which time the entire context had moved on somewhat and there was a much more opposition to apartheid including on the part of whites.

[Continential]

When did the National Party start trying to get the votes of Anglos?

[Estrella]

This isn't really an election question, but I figured this thread is the best place to ask: how did South African national identity develop for different groups? Like, for example, when did Anglos stop identifying as British subjects and start thinking of themselves as South African? How about a rural Black person identifying with the country before his tribe, or a Durban Indian, or a Verwoerd-type Afrikaner?

[parochial boy]

This isn't really an election question, but I figured this thread is the best place to ask: how did South African national identity develop for different groups? Like, for example, when did Anglos stop identifying as British subjects and start thinking of themselves as South African? How about a rural Black person identifying with the country before his tribe, or a Durban Indian, or a Verwoerd-type Afrikaner?

Well that is a huge question that I am probably not really qualified to answer. But if I do the best I can... Afrikaner nationlism is the easiest and most well documented one to trace. It starts to be formulated in earnst by various in particular strict Calvinists in the middle part of the 19th century. Obviously this is in tandem with the arrival of the British in the Cape Province and the resentment that a lot (but not all) of the Dutch had towards this - in particular the way the British unkindly forced them to free their slaves and stuff like that. It then develops a big mythologial push with events like the great treks; later the Boer war which continues to be intellectualised by organisations like the National party and the Broederbond in the early 20th century.

There is often mention of an alleged divide between "Boers" (ie descendents of those who left the Cape) and Afrikaners (those who stayed, were more loyal to the Brits etc...) that does occasionally get mentioned these days. It was a bigger deal in terms of the Nats' mid-20th century internal divisions, broadly speaking the more radical Verwoerdian Nationalism was always more associated in particular with the Transaval ie "Boer" NP, with the Cape Dutch or "Afrikaners" being  comparitively less... out there... with regards to how nasty to be to non-whites. I wouldn't overplay it's role these days though. The defining characteristic of 21st century Afrikanerdom is a massive identity crisis over "what they did", how they are supposed to fit in to modern South Africa and all the rest.

As for how their identity merged into South African national identity. Well, it's an ongoing process - but in some respects almost functions the other way round. In so far as they had to be convinced that other peoples, first the English, then the Coloureds and Africans and Indians all got to be part of "their" South African identity.

In contrast, English South African identity is much weaker. In so far as "English" South Africans are a mix of different backgrounds, mostly British, but lots of Jewish, Eastern European, Portuguese - where the "English" term just became a portmanteau for everyone who didn't speak Afrikaans and adopted english as a lingua franca. That is especially the case in the Witwatersrand; in contrast Natal had a very (very) British identity well into the second half of the 20th century. It actually toyed very seriously with trying to seceed after the Republic referendum, and continued to have the epithet "the last outpost of the British empire" for its Anglophilia for a long while after that. Eventually though, it was things like the Republic, the sense of "white" South African being back to the wall against universal condenmation during the apartheid era that mostly brought them into the fold with the Afrikaners.

For Indians - again you could almost turn the question around. A big part of the experience of Indian South Africans has actually been convincing the rest of the country that they have the right to be there. It took, basically, until the 1960s for the National Party to even come round to accepting that they weren't going to be able to deport the Indians back to India (by which point, they had been in the country for over a century); and race relations in Durban have historically been defined by big tensions between the Indians and the Zulu over access to housing, jobs, land and all of the rest. There were huge deadly riots in 1949 for example, and in 2021 - even if less explicitely about that issue, it was very clearly present at the time. Helps that Durban is also somewhat less segregated than the other two major cities. As in, it has big Indian and black townships on both the north and south sides of town, and less major concentration away from the centre in the way Cape Town has the Cape Flats and Joburg Soweto.

For Coloureds, I've talked about this in the past, in so far as "coloured" is an umbrella term for a lot of different identities and they have never really been anything but South African in practice. Back in the bad old days they always had this sort of debate going on about them as to whether they should be considered as "western" ie "civilised" and should be accepted as part of the dominating group. If anything, there is a degree to which the entirety of South African history consists of shïtting on them to be honest. As they get lumped in as being relative "winners" of apartheid even though their history is one of slavery and exploitation and enormous levels of abuse at the hands of the white (eg look up the "Dop system", nasty stuff really).

Finally, with regards to black South Africans, it is actually impressive how little ethnic nationalism there is when you think about it. I mean, sure, it is there, in particular you often hear about the alleged conflict between the "progressive, liberal" Xhosa (who contributed a huge part of the leadership of the liberation movement. Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, the Mbekis, Chris Hani, Steve Biko were all Xhosa) versus the "traditionalist and conservative" Zulu, but even that, I mean, compare it to the ethnic conflict you see in other post colonial societies.

The Nationalist government in fact, did deliberately try to play up the "tribal" divisions between different black groups in South Africa. The Bantustans being the outstanding example of this. Which makes it all the more impressive as to how much it didn't work - as to why not. Well, in part you have the likes of the ANC that was set up as being explicitely non-tribal and inclusive. Although perhaps more noteworthy is that even at the time the Nats came to power in 1948, they were already worrying about what they called the "detribalised" urban blacks. That is, the black people who had moved to the cities before the 1940s, and in the multicultural atmosphere of the time had integrated into a more inclusive identity. In fact, quite what to do with these people was an ongoing theme during the entire apartheid era, and it was famously in the townships that a huge part of the resistance to apartheid was drawn from. People living out in rural areas tend to be a lot more Conservative, but even with the mass migration to cities, especially in Gauteng, since the beginning of the 1990s things haven't changed in that respect. Potentially it helps that so much xenophobia can be directed at migrants from the rest of Africa.

Sorry if that's a bit meandering and doesn't fully answer the question. But it's the stuff that I am aware of, and you could probably write an entire thesis about each of those topics.

When did the National Party start trying to get the votes of Anglos?

As hinted in the answer to Estrella, it more or less starts in earnest around the time of the 1961 election. As in the nats hold on power and the tools of proaganda has made white South Africans progressively more conservative as a whole at that point; but in addition in the fall out of the republic referendum the Nats started to take a much more peaceful approach and started talking about "our two peoples" in the face of foreign condemnation and the fact that they were all terrified of the African ever getting into power.

It's around that time that you have the first really NP aligned English political figures (whose name I've forgotten, helpfully), but it's also around that time that the UP are becoming increasingly obviously clueless and directionless and split between trying to be a more liberal opposition party and even trying to out-do the Nats. For example in the opposition of Douglas Mitchelll, the Natal UP leader to the Bantustan policy on the rather opportunistic basis that they entailed white farmers being made to sell their land that would become the future homelands

It was a slow process though, really only taking off in earnest with the final collapse of the UP in the 1970s

[Continential]

What would be the worst case for South Africa hadn't they ended Apartheid?

[Conservatopia]

What would be the worst case for South Africa hadn't they ended Apartheid?

Worst case?
Civil war in a nuclear armed state.  Even tighter sanctions leading to further unrest.  The world's black market for arms becoming even more awash with stolen South African armaments potentially including chemical weaponry.  The conflict could easily spillover to the north if SADF were to pursue their enemy over borders.

Not very nice.

[CumbrianLefty]

Alternatively, an eventual black takeover by force - with all that would have likely entailed.

(think late period Mugabe, but on steroids - and it could easily have been worse than that)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There was a realistic chance of something like that which followed the roughly contemporaneous breakup of Yugoslavia occurring. People forget, but the government had essentially lost control of large parts of the country by the late 1980s.

[Lord Halifax]

Alternatively, an eventual black takeover by force - with all that would have likely entailed.

(think late period Mugabe, but on steroids - and it could easily have been worse than that)

Seems unlikely given the strength of SADF, and the fact that whites made up a far bigger portion of the population than they ever did in Zimbabwe. It would have resulted in a genocide on the black population if they tried. 

[CumbrianLefty]

Alternatively, an eventual black takeover by force - with all that would have likely entailed.

(think late period Mugabe, but on steroids - and it could easily have been worse than that)

Seems unlikely given the strength of SADF, and the fact that whites made up a far bigger portion of the population than they ever did in Zimbabwe. It would have resulted in a genocide on the black population if they tried. 

Which would likely have led to outside intervention to remove the Apartheid regime.

Though of course its hard to see that ending terribly well either.

[parochial boy]

Yeah, I'd be minded to say that apartheid, at least as it had existed, quite simply couldn't have continued along the lines it had up until then. The boycotts and sanctions, universal international condemnation, the civil unrest, the declining weight of the white population, even simply the end of the cold war meaning the end of the "anti-communism" justfication that had been a huge part of how the regime justified itself by the 80s all effectively made a continuation of things as they were effectively impossible.

The question then becomes - had the settlement that was eventually reached not been reached - how much worse would it have been? I would be minded to agree with Al's analysis, in that respect, something very nasty.

Regarding the Zimbabwe comparison though that there are some fairly meaningful differences between Zimbabwe's and South Africa's white populations. As in that South Africa's population isn't just bigger (these days it's not actually that much larger relatively speaking. Around 7-8% probably compared to the 5% that it topped out at in Zimbabwe). Additionally, because its settlement was so much earlier, what South Africa also has is - especially among Afrikaners - a much larger number of white people who don't have dual nationality in the way that most "Rhodesians" did; and a lot more people who aren't necessarily highly qualified or educated. Both of those factors make emigration less of an option for a lot of white South Africans in the way it was for the white Zimbabweans. Add to that the roughly 10-12% of South Africans who are neither black nor white, and you are left with a situation that never really could be totally analogous to what happened north of the border.

[Dan the Roman]

The Cold War would have destroyed the white position. IF, and this is a big IF, the regime could have survived to the post 2017 era, I think they would be "fine". Not fine in a a good way. Fine in a dystopian, Venezuela or Nicaragua, or Belarus, we are safe from regime change but at the cost of being a an economic and political basket case where every white who could leave did leaving a radical population behind.

The current norms in Africa and the wider non-Western world where internal repression of groups has been "de-racialized" such that what China does in Xinjiang, or Modi in Kashmir or even to am increasing degree Israel(outside of Europe and the US, white westerners still care) is now written up as an "internal affair" with solidarity among those who do domestic oppression trumping solidarity with people of the same skin color, religion, or background being repressed. Ironically, a white minority regime could probably find kinship with Rwanda, and a PR/Moral absolution modus vivendi with Mugabe Zimbabwe against outside condemnation.

The problem would be getting through the "end of history." Precisely because White South Africans were seen as white, they would have been held to a vastly higher standard than anyone else, including Israelis during the Unipolar moment because the continued existence of the Apartheid regime would have stood as an existential challenge to the triumph of Neoliberalism/Neoconservatism.

I think Clinton/Blair would have basically abandoned any sort of rational calculations to get rid of such a regime. Even by the standards of their often with hindsight nonsensical Balkan policies, I think everyone would look on the sort of lengths they would go and say "wow that was kind of embarrassing for everyone". Not saying there wouldn't be strong political, moral, and strategic reasons to try and oust such a system, but I suspect such efforts would go far beyond that.

It is possible for their to be a double standard and for it not to actually be a particularly exculpatory defense. South African whites by virtue of being whites and many speaking English would have found it almost impossible to survive the 1990s global environment in a way a non-Western regime could have.

[DL]

Well that is a huge question that I am probably not really qualified to answer. But if I do the best I can... Afrikaner nationalism is the easiest and most well documented one to trace. It starts to be formulated in earnest by various in particular strict Calvinists in the middle part of the 19th century. Obviously this is in tandem with the arrival of the British in the Cape Province and the resentment that a lot (but not all) of the Dutch had towards this - in particular the way the British unkindly forced them to free their slaves and stuff like that. It then develops a big mythological push with events like the great treks; later the Boer war which continues to be intellectualised by organisations like the National party and the Broederbond in the early 20th century.

There is often mention of an alleged divide between "Boers" (ie descendents of those who left the Cape) and Afrikaners (those who stayed, were more loyal to the Brits etc...) that does occasionally get mentioned these days. It was a bigger deal in terms of the Nats' mid-20th century internal divisions, broadly speaking the more radical Verwoerdian Nationalism was always more associated in particular with the Transaval ie "Boer" NP, with the Cape Dutch or "Afrikaners" being  comparitively less... out there... with regards to how nasty to be to non-whites. I wouldn't overplay it's role these days though. The defining characteristic of 21st century Afrikanerdom is a massive identity crisis over "what they did", how they are supposed to fit in to modern South Africa and all the rest.

As for how their identity merged into South African national identity. Well, it's an ongoing process - but in some respects almost functions the other way round. In so far as they had to be convinced that other peoples, first the English, then the Coloureds and Africans and Indians all got to be part of "their" South African identity.

In contrast, English South African identity is much weaker. In so far as "English" South Africans are a mix of different backgrounds, mostly British, but lots of Jewish, Eastern European, Portuguese - where the "English" term just became a portmanteau for everyone who didn't speak Afrikaans and adopted english as a lingua franca. That is especially the case in the Witwatersrand; in contrast Natal had a very (very) British identity well into the second half of the 20th century. It actually toyed very seriously with trying to seceed after the Republic referendum, and continued to have the epithet "the last outpost of the British empire" for its Anglophilia for a long while after that. Eventually though, it was things like the Republic, the sense of "white" South African being back to the wall against universal condemnation during the apartheid era that mostly brought them into the fold with the Afrikaners.

As an English Canadian who grew up in Quebec - reading this I find striking parallels between the Afrikaners and the Quebecois (francophone Quebecers) and English Quebecers and anglo South Africans

[Continential]

Found Hash's thread on South African politics, which is an incredible resource.

[DC Al Fine]

Hypothetically, how much of a swing would it have taken for either the Democrats or the Conservatives to win a plurality (or majority) of seats in 1989? I know the Nats had a very favourable map, but at some point the malapportionment and gerrymandering would approach dummymander territory.

[parochial boy]

Hypothetically, how much of a swing would it have taken for either the Democrats or the Conservatives to win a plurality (or majority) of seats in 1989? I know the Nats had a very favourable map, but at some point the malapportionment and gerrymandering would approach dummymander territory.

It's probably difficult to work out precisely given the three dimensional nature, but if you assume the unconstested seats don't change (9 NP, 2 CP, 1 DP), then my logic goes something like this (which hopefully not too crazy seeing as the number of direct CP-DP contests was essentially zero):

In a two party between NP and DP with the Conservatives unchanged, in order for the DP to surpass the NP they need to win 35 seats from them. That means winning Paarl, where they actually got 15,2% to the NP's 61,9% (and CP in second, which I think more or less writes it off as a possibility)

For the CP to surpass the NP they need to pick up 31 seats, meaning they need Vanderbijlpark on the Gauteng -Free state border. In reality, they lost the seat by an 18 point margin - from that point it only takes a little (like 4%) swing to get to a majority as you have a bunch of mostly Afrikaans seats in the PWV or rural Cape province where the Democrats are taking around 10-15% of the vote

So in practice the NP do look very safe - they would have needed probably to lose pretty heavily in both directions before being overtaken. As much as anything, the Conservatives had 35 seats, and the DP had 62 seats where they didn't stand at all. If nothing else, the level of geographical polarisation between anglophone cities and Afrikaner countryside would have meant either of the opposition parties basically having to clean up in their respective strongholds to even get close to the Nats.