WI:South Africa in a continuing Cold War

[Miss Teri]

So, I often read that the end of the Cold War allowed for the Western powers to begin to cut off ties with South Africa, which ultimately helped led to the end of Apartheid. However, had the Cold War continued, would the Western powers continued to support the white-minority government, or was it dying anyway at that point, and it would have ended, regardless of the geopolitical situation.

 

[Autocrat]

So, I often read that the end of the Cold War allowed for the Western powers to begin to cut off ties with South Africa, which ultimately helped led to the end of Apartheid. However, had the Cold War continued, would the Western powers continued to support the white-minority government, or was it dying anyway at that point, and it would have ended, regardless of the geopolitical situation.

Support for South Africa had been steadily decreasing for a long time, before the end of the Cold War. In fact a lot of the things that led to the end of Apartheid had already occurred or were occurring before the Cold War finished. So South Africa's Apartheid government probably would have fell within the next decade. The question of which side the new South Africa ends up on depends on how Apartheid ends. If it ends peacefully like OTL, who'd probably see a Capitalist aligned South Africa. But should it end in violence and bloodshed its more likely South Africa will be Unaligned or Soviet Aligned.