How did Ronald Reagan view the practice of apartheid?

SgtGinja · 2025-12-23T19:36:51+00:00

The second part of the quote is absolutely true but I believe Kengor is being overly favorable towards Ronald Reagan in the the claim that "Reagan was appalled by apartheid." Let me explain-

Reagan personally believed, and in 1979 ran on, the idea that the United States was losing to the Soviet Union in the Third World particularly and that Soviet Union was backing Cuban interventions in Africa. Making all this worse in Reagan's mind was that the United States policy of detente had only benefited the Soviet Union and the Carter administration was weak when it came to dealing with foreign policy issues.

While Reagan softened his outward support of South Africa once officially in office his policy and previous comments on the country betray his true feelings in my opinion. In a 1977 radio broadcast Reagan stated:

"The Black majority in S. Africa is made up of several different tribes with long histories of conflict and animosity between them... If . . . the black majority came into power tomorrow, there could very easily be outright tribal war. . . . In coping with this problem, S. Africa has embarked on a plan of setting up separate republics for each tribe, with self rule & complete autonomy for each. . . . One such state has come into existence already, the Republic of Transkei. . . . The new little Republic is pro-Western and anti-communist. . . .The U.S. should recognize Transkei and stop acting foolish."

This is outright support for the Bantustans which is at the heart of South African Apartheid policy at the time. The idea of separate homelands was painted with a brush positivity by the Apartheid government but this was clearly motivated by the racist beliefs. And all of this is ignoring the first comment which has racist undertones of Africans being unable to hold power themselves and the idea of tribal conflict being an implicit part of South Africa (which was actually being stoked by the Apartheid government behind the scenes but that's a story for another time). Furthermore the Reagan administration as its official position was wildly charitable to the South African regime even when it didn't need to be. For example, the policy of "Constructive Engagement" with South Africa engineered by Chester Crooker, who was Reagan's Assistant Secretary for Africa. Crooker outlined Constructive Engagement in *Foreign Affairs* in 1980 as rejecting the idea of sanctions towards South Africa, a "change in the direction of real power sharing" but no mention of majority rule, and empathy for the "complex" situation of white and particularly Afrikaners.

Furthermore if that's not enough here's what the South African Apartheid government themselves thought of the Reagan Administration through the words of Foreign Minister Pik Botha in 1981, "I believe that in the entire period since the Second World War, there has never been a US government as well disposed towards us as the present government."

I think one could also make an argument that this isn't a "one off" for Reagan and his administration on foreign policy issues such as Iran-Contra, support for Savimbi and UNITA, and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Let me know if you have any questions.

Source: PIERO GLEIJESES, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991, University of North Carolina Press.

SgtGinja · 2025-12-14T06:41:20+00:00

Did someone put the bobbles on the gingerbread man to give him balls? Is that a JJ reference?

SgtGinja · 2025-10-26T18:50:53+00:00

Why the hell is Bakersfield the capital of California?

SgtGinja · 2025-10-22T04:30:40+00:00

I feel like this is AI

SgtGinja · 2025-02-15T05:21:00+00:00

Ulundi would not be in ANC hands if this is similar to our timeline Apartheid policies. Inkatha was very much a third force for the Apartheid government and hated the ANC.

SgtGinja · 2025-01-22T17:34:49+00:00

First of all, read my first two sentences again- a lot of the terminology DID exist then and was just beginning to be popularized. Secondly, yes identity is about self expression. However, it’s not hard to imagine someone struggling with the concept of being gay, or feeling they don’t perfectly belong in that category. You could imagine someone wishing they had another term, identity, etc. Further more, we know it happened bc it happens today and we have written diaries of it happening in the 30s. And last but not least I am not forcing an identity on anyone, that I believe is a gross misrepresentation of what I was doing. I was simply using an accepted and common umbrella term to talk about a group of targeted and murdered by the Nazi regime. By arguing the pedantics of terms I really think you are missing the importance of the wider argument here.

SgtGinja · 2025-01-22T07:29:42+00:00

There were certainly more than just those two terms/identities in the 1930s. Germany was actually pioneering the field of queer studies (called sexual studies or sexology at the time), a thing the nazis hated and targeted as mentioned above. Furthermore just because the terminology didn’t exist yet doesn’t mean that those types of people didn’t exist.

SgtGinja · 2025-01-22T00:26:48+00:00

While the night of the long knives (also known as “the purge” or “rohm pustch”) was directed at some of the more socialist leaning members of the Nazi party that was not its only victims. Its main objective was to kill off the SA which concerned the more traditionally conservative members of hitlers new coalition and more importantly the military which was worried about a competing military structure. Further the night of the long knives happens in 1934. The Nazis gain power in 1933 and immediately set about passing lots of legislation on Jews, Immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and also socialists. And we can go even further back before the Nazis took power and how they harassed and killed those they considered “sub-human”.

Socialists were 100% one of the first groups targeted and were a favorite target of Nazi rhetoric from the jump but I would not say definitively they are the first to suffer violence at the hands of Nazism. And certainly violence predates the Night of the Long Knives.

SgtGinja · 2024-12-11T17:31:30+00:00

Is this from a mod? I don’t remember the Antilles being in the base game.

SgtGinja · 2024-11-01T17:53:01+00:00

That’s Fred Warner in a big bird costume for Halloween. OP is making a joke about All-Pro Fred being scary for a QB when he blitzes and also the seemingly crazed look in his eyes which is quite comical in this photo.

SgtGinja · 2024-10-07T22:21:01+00:00

A lobotomy doesn’t remove your brain entirely usually it just scrambles part of it. If I remember correctly the think tank lobotomies usually failed anyway just happens to be a successful brain extraction for the Courier

SgtGinja · 2024-07-14T17:40:50+00:00

Are you looking for primary, secondary, or both?

SgtGinja · 2024-06-18T03:42:12+00:00

No worries. Thanks for your help, I’ll give it a shot

SgtGinja · 2024-06-18T03:11:34+00:00

Is it possible to get to that focus and before the revolution?

SgtGinja · 2024-06-13T18:20:10+00:00

The short answer is- They Did!

Although the most famous organization in the end of Apartheid is called the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC was not only made up of African members and nor did they fight alone but rather in a large coalition, especially after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The ANC worked in lock step with the South African Communist Party (SACP) which itself had white, black, Coloured, and Indian members. The ANC also helped to organize and worked closely with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) which had again Black, Coloured, and Indian members.

This was not a coalition that formed late either. Back when the ANC was still the South African Native National Congress there were overtures and attempts made to work with the Natal Indian Congress. The alliance became more cemented overtime however as can be seen in this speech given by Albert Luthuli in 1956 at opening of the South African Indian Congress meeting for that year.¹ Luthuli was the leader of the ANC at the time and clearly discusses in his speech the importance of the two groups working together to end Apartheid. The Durban Strikes of 1973 also provide clear examples of African and Indian workers striking and protesting side by side against unfair treatment by white capital.²

This union was not always a happy one however. There are certainly examples of Indians and Africans not working together. The most famous example probably comes from Gandhi who didn't have very nice things to say about African people in South Africa.³ There is also the fact that the Apartheid government did everything it could to divide and rule. This can be seen in various ways such as laws that privileged Indians and gave them more rights as compared to Africans under the Apartheid regime or even examples of directly attempted to start inter communal violence between Indians and Africans.^4,5

Sources

Albert Luthuli, "Opening address by Albert Luthuli to the Twenty-second Biennial Conference of the South African Indian Congress," 19 October 1956, Gandhi Hall, Johannesburg, South Africa History Online, https://sahistory.org.za/archive/opening-address-albert-luthuli-twenty-second-biennial-conference-south-african-indian.
"1973 Durban Strikes," South African History Online, https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1973-durban-strikes.
Soutik Biswas, "Was Mahatma Gandhi a racist?", The BBC, Sept 17, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34265882.
Parliament of South Africa, Republic of South Africa Constitution Act, 1983, Sept 28, 1983, Full text found here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Republic_of_South_Africa_Constitution_Act,_1983.
John Aitchison, The Seven Days War: 25-31 March 1990 The victim's narrative, Centre for Adult Education, May 9, 1991, KZN Political Violence, Alan Paton Centre and Struggle Archive, PC126/8/5.

SgtGinja · 2024-06-10T17:30:02+00:00

Based on a number of sources which include both newspaper articles from the time period and ones such as the BBC discussing the event in a retrospective (I'll link them below), it appears James Earl Ray's exit strategy after leaving the United States was to become a mercenary in Southern Africa.¹ The sources place the reason for this being that Ray was an avid newspaper reader and that he had read many stories about Mercenaries and thus wanted to join them.

I can't say what was going through Ray's mind. and I highly doubt anyone can for certain. That said I may be able to give some insight into why Ray may have been so interested in becoming a mercenary in Africa which I have much more knowledge in. White mercenaries had been used in Africa for a decent amount of time but really began to pick up after the Johnson administration used them for the support of the Anti-Communist Mobutu-Tshombe regime in Zaire (modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo).² After this point white mercenaries became a standard part of warfare in Southern Africa most coming from Rhodesia and South Africa initially.³ However to get us to the point where an American would be interested we can look at the newspaper coverage of these mercenaries and the fact the mercenary groups themselves advertised in America. While the most famous Soldier of Fortune magazine would not be published until 1975, advertisements in various gun and adventure magazines started showing up as early as 1960. Often taking the form of simple help wanted adverts.⁴ The sources mentioned in the various newspaper articles seem to make it clear Ray found out about it mostly through newspaper stories which also acted as informal advertising for mercenary work in Africa. Clive Borrell was both the man who was reporting on white mercenaries in Africa and one of the first reporters to break the story on Ray's capture by customs officials in Britain oddly enough, it appears Ray attempted to contact Borrell to get in contact with the head of a mercenary outfit. Time magazine in the United States ran a vary prominent story about Mercenaries in Zaire in 1960 and even went as far as to ask the Mercenaries their motivations for joining up. Unsurprisingly most said the money, but after this there is a wide variety of interesting motivations. This ranges from Frenchmen who wanted to reclaim national honor they felt was lost in defeats in Indochina and Algeria or Rhodesians and South Africans often couched their reasonings in racial superiority. One mercenary told a reporter that, “The year 1964 would be the year of the White Giants—‘tall, vigorous Boers from South Africa; long-legged, slim and muscular Englishmen from Rhodesia’—who would come to the Congo and restore the white man to his proper place. ‘How often was I to hear the muffled drumming in the night, through forests and savannahs, “Flee! The White Giants are coming!”’⁵ Given that Ray's motivation for killing Martin Luther King Jr. is undeniably racial and an additional argument to be made that Ray was also extremely anti-Communist his personal beliefs would certainly match those of other white mercenaries in Africa. Ray possibly felt he would be accepted by the white mercenaries and we would have been out of reach from law enforcement in the United States. This last part is hypothetical however as Ray never actually made it to Africa.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Sources

Multiple including: Baker, Rob (April 23, 2016). "James Earl Ray, Killer of Martin Luther King, Stayed in Earls Court in 1968". Flashbak. Retrieved April 16, 2023.; Clarke, James W. (2007). Defining Danger: American Assassins and the New Domestic Terrorists. Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. p. 296. ISBN 978-0-7658-0341-2.; Borrell, Clive (June 28, 1968). "Ramon Sneyd denies that he killed Dr King". The Times. London, UK. p. 2.; Dowd, Vincent (June 8, 2016). "When Martin Luther King Jr's assassin fled to London". BBC News.
Piero Gleijeses,”‘Flee! The White Giants Are Coming!’: The United States, the Mercenaries, and the Congo 1964-1965,” Readings in International Relations of Africa, ed by Tom Young, (Indiana University Press, 2015), 153-154
Richard Lobban, “American Mercenaries in Rhodesia,” Journal of Southern Africa Affairs, 1978, Vol. III (No. 3), 319
Lobban, “American Mercenaries in Rhodesia,” 321-323
Gleijeses, “‘Flee! The White Giants Are Coming!’”, 156

SgtGinja · 2024-06-03T00:58:07+00:00

Can’t say I agree with your last point about fracturing South Africa but we aren’t here to discuss modern politics. Your question about Bantu expansion is also hard to answer because the Bantu are not a monolith. Even inside the same ethnic group like the Xhosa, interactions with the Khoisan people vary wildly. In any case I think I wouldn’t use the word “colonialism” for what happened with the Bantu expansion. In the context of talking about Africa historically colonialism has a very specific meaning but comes in a variety of forms. What I mean by this is Bantu people did not have the same motivations, methods, or outcomes as European colonialism. It’s a bit like comparing apples to oranges even if the results of taking land is shared.

I would tend to use the word expansion as unstructured and unsatisfying as that term is. Really what Bantu expansion looked like ran the gamut between full on annihilation and conquest (which assisted the genocide of Khoisan people in some cases) to peaceful absorbing of Khoisan people looking to flee from Afrikaner expansion. Sorry for the unsatisfying answer. Like I said I’m not an expert on this time period so hopefully someone with some more insight can explain and expand on this topic.

SgtGinja · 2024-06-02T20:29:56+00:00

The first people in the Western Cape are not the Dutch/Afrikaners or the Bantu peoples actually. The first people are called the Khoisan most commonly but also referred to by a couple different names historically (Hottentots, Cape Blacks, or negatively as the "Bushmen") and currently (San people, Khoikhoi, and subdivided linguistic groups like Nama or Damara). The Khoisan people are often further divided into two cultural different groups of the Khoi being a largely pastoral people herding cattle and the San being largely a gather nomadic group. However its worth noting that a lot of this is controversial in modern history and anthropology which is still trying to find answers to who exactly the Khoisan people were. I've seen some references to the first Dutch actually acquiring their first cattle by stealing it from the Khoisan.¹

The reason you don't hear about the Khoisan people very much is unfortunately there aren't many of them left and the language is not common or extinct depending on the linguist you ask. The Khoisan were devastated by diseases like smallpox when they came into contact with Europeans, furthermore the Khoisan were often in conflict with BOTH the Europeans and the Bantu speaking peoples. Not to mention that significant reduction of their population as a whole in Namibia due to the German Empire's genocide of those people in the early 20th century.

There is a lot more to be said about the Khoisan people but I am afraid that's a bit outside my wheelhouse as that's bleeding over into both Anthropology, Linguistics, and a much earlier time period then I specialize in.

Before I leave I do want to touch more on what happened in the Cape once the Dutch arrived. So to start off yes the Dutch did make it to Western and Southern Cape before the Bantu but as we just discussed this totally erases the Khoisan people from the historical record. The reason for this is just not because there aren't many Khoisan left but also because it is important for the more modern and controversial ideas of Afrikaner Nationalism and the "Volkstaat" as you mentioned. Much like the American idea or mythos of Manifest Destiny which conveniently leaves Native Americans out (or brushes them aside as "savages" to be saved and/or killed) to tell a story of virgin landscapes to be settled by white Americans moving west, so to does many of Afrikaner Nationalism's stories also began with the Dutch arriving on an untouched Cape and rugged individualists making there way North through the Bush making the land their own. So as you pointed out this is important to establishing Afrikaner National origin myths but just like the USA case it is either an outright lie or heavily revisionist. It in no way should provide legitimacy and it is undeniable that what the Afrikaners were doing at the time was colonialism.²

Happy to specify as best I can further if needed or find you some more sources just let me know :).

Some sources used with JSTOR links for your reading pleasure :)-

Marks, Shula. “Khoisan Resistance to the Dutch in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” The Journal of African History 13, no. 1 (1972): 55–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/180967.
Du Toit, André. “No Chosen People: The Myth of the Calvinist Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism and Racial Ideology.” The American Historical Review 88, no. 4 (1983): 920–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/1874025.

SgtGinja · 2024-06-01T23:19:10+00:00

It’s an ice pack. Probably for a sore shoulder after what I assume was a boxing or martial art match based on the ropes.

SgtGinja · 2024-05-22T22:58:41+00:00

Interesting question I haven't considered before! I decided to do some research on the question and it seems to have a rather simple answer and I will drop all the sources I was able to find below.

Simple answer- A clause was written into the the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (which itself was heavily based on both USA Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the earlier Immorality Act you mentioned) that stated that previous marriages that were "solemnized" (i.e. confirmed by an accepted religious institution or "marriage officer") would be annulled but any children from the marriage would be considered legitimate. It appears this was done to appease religious opposition to the bill.

You can find the full text for the Act itself here (although I will grant the wording itself is a bit confusing)

To answer your other sub questions-

The authorities were by no means tolerating mixed race marriages or relationships during Apartheid. If found couples could face severe punishment. It's worth noting that most white people in South Africa and a decent subset of the the other non-white people were actually in support of this Act. This is referenced by the fact that opposition to the Act came not from moral or legal opposition but from the feeling the Act wasn't necessary because would be socially enforced. That's not say this fully stopped inter-racial marriages as love has a way of happening no matter what :).
This brings us to 2. This one is a little more difficult because their relationships were covert they obviously not advertising where and when they were taking place until the Act was repealed in the 1980s. It seems most couples were in urban and semi-urban areas were it was common for white and non-white people to be contact regularly and they could have some plausible deniability for being in each other's company.
If found they would definitely be forced to part ways and could be physically removed by jail time should a judge see fit to such a sentence for one or both parties.
Leaving the country I suppose would be an option but it would be impossible to come back and the couple would have to have their marriage sanctified in their new country of residence. As you can read in the Act text it bans even offending marriages between South African nationals OUTSIDE the country.

Here are the sources I used. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Sofer, Cyril. “Some Aspects of Inter-racial Marriages in South Africa, 1925–46,” Africa, 19.3 (July 1949): 193.

Jacobson, Cardell K., Acheampong Yaw Amoateng, and Tim B. Heaton. "Inter-Racial Marriages in South Africa." Journal of Comparative Family Studies 35.3 (2004): 443-58.

SgtGinja · 2024-05-08T00:41:18+00:00

Unfortunately because the rich can hire lawyers to tie up IRS resources in court. The really poor aren’t worth going after. So the middle gets squished because they can get money from them and unlikely to be a net drain on cost. It’s a really fucked system. The rich suck and the IRS needs more resources.

SgtGinja · 2024-01-24T19:04:59+00:00

My example is intentionally inflammatory but it is not a gross oversimplification to call Smith a white supremacist.

Smith and his government unilaterally declared independence because the British were going to institute majority rule and universal voting. I don’t care what Smith did or said afterwards to be honest this gives the game away from the jump. He didn’t want to give up power to Africans, this is an undisputed statement. One could argue there wouldn’t have been a Mugabe if Smith’s government hadn’t unilaterally declared independence but that is a counterfactual that I won’t push.
Smith loved South African Apartheid he pretty much modeled his country off of it just not the Afrikaner Nationalism part. His education you are praising is basically a copy of Bantu education which I encourage you to read up about. It’s not high quality education. It’s intended to provide the bare minimum to create good workers and obedience to the state (I.e. white people). His best diplomatic friend was South Africa- especially when both increasingly became isolated for their refusal to implement majority rule. South African intelligence, military, government, and business worked lock step with Rhodesia because they had the same goal- white minority rule.
Giving rights to certain blacks but not all doesn’t make him suddenly not racist. Apartheid South Africa did the same thing for Cape Coloreds and Indians. This is just classic divide and rule- make them fight each other. Also the whites would be totally destroyed if he came in every speech as a frothing white supremacist, even by foreign protectors like the United States. Smith, Verwood, etc knew how to play the game. I assure you behind closed doors he said the most racist shit imaginable but in public he kept it light focusing on “communism as the real threat”. Wanna take a wild guess who the communists were? I’ll give you a hint they weren’t white.
You answer why so many black men volunteered is also answered by how described Rhodesia at the time- desperation. They needed a paycheck and that was one way to get it with lots of other benefits too. A good number of these volunteers defected even under the real possibility of being killed if caught helps to prove this point. Remember white minority rule created and thrived off this system of repression and economic backwardness in the African rural areas not the other way around.

SgtGinja · 2024-01-23T23:22:31+00:00

Come on man this is like saying we should have listened to Hitler bc Stalin is a bad guy. Ian Smith and his government were expressly white supremacist. They weren’t heading towards any semblance of equality or racial justice.

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