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<p>He and his party weren’t doing it completely or even mostly out of the altruistic goodness of their hearts. There were some serious economic, geopolitical, and military issues at stake at the time. </p>
<p>Some include the increasing negative impact international sanctions and divestment were having on SA’s economy and military technology procurement and the overextension of SA’s military and police forces. </p>
<p>The last was especially serious as due to the military conscription policies, Apartheid mentality, and more, practically all of SA’s military and police forces were made up of White citizens subjected to increasingly frequent mandatory periodic callups to perform military operations and/or internal policing operations to suppress political dissent or rebellions against their heavy-handed rule…especially by non-White populations chafing under decades of being treated as second-class citizens at best and sometimes as non-entities in their own native land. </p>
<p>A heavy burden considering Whites are a minority within the overall SA population* and when involved in internal policing operations to suppress political dissent or rebellions, are often vastly outnumbered demographically. </p>
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<li>A figure I spotted on wikipedia stated in 1977, they made up a little under 17% of the overall SA population.<br></li>
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<p>If the Whites had voted no, the overextension of SA’s military and police forces in waging war and internal anti-dissident/rebellion operations would have exploded. </p>
<p>Up until the early '90s, those forces were involved in waging wars in Namibia which SA claimed as its own territory against Namibians who wanted independence, Angola and Mozambique, and internal policing operations to brutally suppress dissent and those who had enough of the authoritarian White Afrikaner dominated Apartheid regime. </p>
<p>With the sanctions impact on the Afrikaner White dominated national economy and military procurement along with the increasing burden of the White minority males being called up more frequently to be involved in military and internal suppression operations both outside and within SA, the economic and demographic factors were increasingly becoming less favorable as time went on. </p>
<p>I’m not sure if the callups approached those of a nation formerly known as Rhodesia where every White male citizen and visitor who stayed more than a few weeks were liable for being called up to perform one week of internal security military duties involving heavy combat around every month and a half. However, if de Klerk and the Whites opted not to end Apartheid, SA may have eventually ended up in a siege-like military situation that similarly White minority dominated Rhodesia* faced between the late '60s till the early '80s. </p>
<p>Those military/policing callups and duties don’t only take a toll on the conscripts themselves, but also the overall national economy as the time called up and being involved in military/internal security duties is time away from their jobs. A serious issue considering most of the highly educated and technically skilled workforce are drawn from the White minority due to discriminatory policies against non-Whites in all areas of life in those countries…including education. </p>
<p>Moreover, with the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, the few Western nations still clandestinely providing military and financial support were becoming far less likely to risk international political opinion when SA’s usefulness in the Cold War was no longer needed. </p>
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<li>Now known as Zimbabwe.</li>
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