Picking up the Pieces in Africa By moxn Watch

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In the early morning hours of May 8th, 1981, the world came to an end.



Cold War tensions were at an all-time high when a false alarm caused the Soviets to retaliate to what they thought was an initial American attack. NATO quickly responded in kind. While the majority of the fighting for WWIII would be over by nightfall, missiles would continue to fly for weeks afterward as submarines and hidden bases emptied the last of their nuclear, chemical, and biological arsenals.



Not all of these missiles would reach their targets, however. While the majority of the Soviet arsenal was directed to North America, Western Europe, China, and the Middle East, a single ICBM from the first wave of attack was directed to Pretoria, South Africa. They planned to coat the rest of the country with more in the successive waves, but the submarine carrying the deadly package found itself ripped in two at the bottom of the ocean before it could unleash death. The rest of Africa was left almost completely untouched, with the exception of the northern coast was bombarded as an extension of the attacks on Europe and the Middle East.



This left South Africa as the best armed, most industrialized, and least destabilized nation in a region full of natural resources and lacking protection from any outside powers. The years spent as an international pariah would now pay off, as the policies of autarky would let it survive the complete collapse of international trade following the war. Its geographic location would also protect it from the worst of the fallout, which was mainly concentrated in the Northern hemisphere.



The nationalist government, still operating under apartheid, found itself free to use its army and newfound power to "liberate" outside countries and crush internal dissent alike. Zimbabwe was one of the first targets, where the progress made to remove minority rule was taken back and Prime Minister Mugabe was deposed. Lesotho and Swaziland soon followed, and were both incorporated as internal bantustans.



While most of Africa was untouched by the nuclear holocaust, it still greatly suffered. Many countries relied on outside support for food aid, financial support, and manufactured goods. The regimes in power also relied on military support from either the Communist or Capitalist powers. Now that the survivors in NATO and the Warsaw Pact were busy eating each other before dying of radiation poisoning, all of that outside support vanished. This combined with the oncoming nuclear winter left hundreds of millions to die from starvation, warfare, and disease. Religious extremists and doomsday cults which would have made ISIS look like the Girl Scouts surged in power.



By 2000, South Africa would have united a large portion of the southern half of the continent. On top of merging with "Greater Rhodesia", they have also expanded into south-east Angola and Katanga for their resources and strategic positions. There have been talks of integrating Mozambique as well, but for now it has been deemed too much work for too little gain. They reserve the right to annex the puppet nation in the future should they ever change their minds, however. The government itself has benefited from the glut of white refugees fleeing Europe and North America, whom they mostly put to work in the military and civil services to earn their citizenship before shipping them off north to help settle the frontier. Anyone who arrives with known communist or anti-Apartheid backgrounds disappears to a work camp, never to be heard from again. The secret police force has grown over the years to ensure that any internal threats to the status quo are quickly silenced.



The nation also maintains most of the continent's remaining people. In 1981 the population of Africa stood at 490,000,000. By 1985 it would plummet to only 20% of that. By 2000, it has grown back up to 162,000,000, with nearly half of it in South Africa's new borders. A large portion of these survivors are native Africans eking out a living in the Bantustans, highly segregated communities set apart from the rest of South Africa with very low standards of living.



South Africa would not be the only nation on the continent to weather the storm, however. In the north was Ethiopia, still ruled by The Derg. During the long winter, the central government holed up with whatever resources they could to wait it out, even while it left much of the civilian population to die. Afterwards, it emerged from the core of the highlands to retake the nation and attempt to rebuild. The fragile state only stayed together through sheer force, greatly helped by a new cult of personality around Mengistu Mariam. One of the state's biggest goals was to secure the fertile farmland in southern Sudan, no matter the cost to the people already living there. The country would last to this day under a harsh Marxist regime that functions similarly to North Korea. It has found some success in sending teams to Arabia to salvage any vehicles, ships, and skilled survivors they can.



To the West was another final bastion of civilization. Nations in La Francophonie banded together, forming a European Union-like organization to coordinate aid, defense, and other needs. In reality, however, it would be a de facto military dictatorship ruled through the French Foreign Legion in small pockets of civilization separated by vast uncontrolled territories. The military forces cobbled together have started to resemble the local corrupt warlords they're supposed to be defending against. Compared to the outright genocidal dictatorships in South Africa and Ethiopia, however, they remain a paragon of Western ideals. Also unlike the other two major powers on the continent, La Francophonie also maintains decent relations with other surviving nations such as Ghana and the Central African Commune.

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Published : Dec 28, 2016