Most of Africa was colonized by European powers, but as far as I know, South Africa is the only nation whose European occupants just kept living there throughout the decolonization of the rest of the continent, and not only that but further entrenched themselves by implementing apartheid. Why did this go so differently from every other African country?
During the mid-20th century, several African states or colonies had large populations of white settlers. South Africa, Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), Angola, Mozambique, and Namibia each had large white populations, ranging from 1-2% of the population in Kenya to over 15% in Algeria [1]. Most experienced large exoduses of white settlers during decolonization, and, today, only Namibia and South Africa have white populations exceeding 5% of the overall population.
Contrary to your assumption, many of the aforementioned white minorities violently resisted the prospect of majority rule, and one colony - Rhodesia - declared its independence from the metropole in order to preserve white minority rule. Under Harold Wilson, the British government adopted a policy of No Independence Before Majority Rule, in effect requiring colonies' white minorities to forfeit their political monopolies before Britain granted them independence. In response, Rhodesia's Prime Minister, Ian Smith, issued the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. Throughout the next 14 years, Rhodesia would wage a particularly vicious counterinsurgency against the nationalist ZANU and ZAPU groups to maintain white minority rule. To get a sense of how atrociously Rhodesian forces behaved throughout this period, I'll point to Glenn Cross' book on Rhodesian use of chemical and biological weapons [2].
Rhodesia's military prospects deteriorated rapidly after the independence of Lusophone Africa in 1975 (which in turn spurred the flight of white settlers from those colonies). The new nationalist (FRELIMO) government in Mozambique provided sanctuary to the ZANU rebels, and this prompted Rhodesia to engage in a series of cross-border raids (including the infamous Operation Eland) and to back an insurgeny against the FRELIMO government by the group RENAMO. The latter endeavor proved very costly, and, by 1976, even South Africa had doubts about the sustainability of white rule in Rhodesia.
These military woes were exacerbated by more fundamental demographic issues. Rhodesia lacked a stable white population in the same vein as South Africa; between 1955 and 1972, around 60% of the white population's growth came from immigration, and the same period saw the emigration of 246,000 white Rhodesians. This high rate of emigration was amortized by new immigration (predominantly to and from neighboring South Africa), but these fundamental demographic issues rendered white minority rule increasingly hard to sustain [3].
By the late 70s, the situation had become untenable, and Ian Smith made a last-ditch effort to salvage the government by allowing blacks to vote in significantly widening the franchise before the 1979 elections. However, Rhodesia's white government did not permit the main nationalist parties - ZANU and ZAPU - to participate in these elections, which seriously damaged their international credibility. Ultimately, Smith would consent to the Lancaster House Agreement in December 1979, which laid out provisions for elections including ZANU and ZAPU. In the coming decade, the white minority would shrink substantially, with most emigrating to apartheid-era South Africa.
At present, Namibia contains the largest white minority in Africa outside of South Africa itself. Whites account for roughly 7% of the population, and certain locales - e.g. Windhoek - have majority white populations. The continued presence of a white population in both South Africa and Namibia is perhaps unsurprising, since Namibia endured South African occupation for most of the 20th century. This occupation, beginning in 1915 following the capture of German Southwest Africa, originally derived its legitimacy from a 1919 League of Nations mandate. During the next 3 decades, South Africa would work to integrate Namibia into their system of white minority rule. In 1922, South Africa allocated "reserves" for the indigenous population while offering land grants to white settlers. That May, brief uprising by the indigenous Nama against taxation would result in the confinement of the Bondelswart people to a reservation of just 1,750 square kilometres. In the aftermath, South Africa would grant 12,800 square kilometers of confiscated farmland to the British Karaskoma Syndicate. In 1925, South Africa formed a legislative council to oversee elections in Southwest Africa, and this body would completely exclude non-whites from the franchise. Most apartheid legislation passed during and after 1948 also applied in Namibia. In 1945, shortly before the League of Nations' disbanding, South Africa requested permission from the United Nations to annex Southwest Africa, but the UN refused. The onset of an armed rebellion by SWAPO in 1966 would further sour international attitudes towards the occupation, and, in late 1966, the UN General Assembly voted to invalidate the League of Nations mandate. In 1971, the ICJ ruled that the South African occupation of Namibia violated international law [4].
For the next several decades, South Africa would fight a counterinsurgency against SWAPO which overlapped with a South African intervention in Angola. Ultimately, 600,000 South Africans served in the conflict, but, by 1990, political will had largely dried up. In particular, the Cuito Canavale campaign - the campaign responsible for the largest tank battle in Africa post-WWII - had had a detrimental effect on public morale. This, combined with new Soviet willingness to negotiate, led South Africa to sign the Tripartite Accord in 1988. Under the terms of the Tripartite Accord, South Africa agreed to withdraw all forces from Namibia in exchange for a concurrent Cuban withdrawal from Angola. The Accord also contained provisions for an election with universal suffrage, and, in 1990, SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma was elected president.
Nujoma generally pursued a policy of reconciliation with Namibia's white minority not unlike that in South Africa. In particular, Namibia's 1990 constitution guaranteed the tenure of apartheid-era civil servants, mirroring similar clauses in South Africa. Moreover, Namibia has largely abided by the blanket amnesty issued by South African administrator Louis Pienaar during the twilight of the occupation. Until the indictment of João Rodrigues in 2020, Namibian courts completely refrained from prosecution of former South African forces or collaborators [5]. In 1997, Namibia even rejected South African requests to extend the purview of their own Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to cover abuses committed in Namibia. Bear in mind that the TRC took an extremely mild approach towards punishment of apartheid-era abuses; it primarily prosecuted acts that were already illegal under apartheid-era law (e.g. death squads like the Civil Cooperation Bureau), and it maintained the line that the apartheid-era leadership was largely unaware of these abuses. As such, Namibia's refusal to cooperate with the TRC or establish an equivalent body signals a mostly lax policy towards punishment of apartheid-era abuses (arguably as a means to avoid accountability for SWAPO's own crimes). In short, the SWAPO government has gone to great lengths to reconcile with the white population. Namibia's trajectory echoes South Africa's in this regard: a negotiated settlement, followed by reconciliation with the white population [6].
It's debatable how influential these national reconciliation policies were on curbing white emigration. On the one hand, the Namibian government's approach certainly contrasts with, for e.g., the NLF in Algeria, which carried out reprisals against Pieds Noirs (e.g. Oran massacre). However, one can easily point to Rhodesia as a counterexample; Rhodesia's white minority departed in the early 80s despite the presence of white parties in a coalition with Mugabe during the same period. If the behavior of the postcolonial government towards the white minority was the primary catalyst of white emigration, it becomes more difficult to explain the mass exodus of whites from Rhodesia. Ultimately, I think it's too complicated to make any sort of definitive statements here.
CITATIONS:
[1] Cavanaugh, Edward, and Lorenzo Veracini, editors. The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
[2] Cross, Glenn. Dirty War: Rhodesia and Chemical Biological Warfare 1975-1980. Helion and Company, 2017.
[3] Brownell, Josiah. “The Hole in Rhodesia’s Bucket: White Emigration and the End of Settler Rule.” Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 34, no. 3, 2008, pp. 591–610.
[4] UNESCO. Racism and Apartheid in southern Africa: South Africa and Namibia. The UNESCO Press, 1974.
[6] Conway, Paul. “Truth and Reconciliation: The Road Not Taken in Namibia.” (2003).
Oh a question on South Africa, right in my wheelhouse! So to answer this question I will be utilizing a previous answer I have used to answer a similar question about a year ago with some modifications for clarity.
Now to provide a short answer: South Africa was the last African country to decolonize and its white population was larger and had longer ties to the land than in other African colonial states.
The long answer:
First is important to mention that South Africa was not the only colonial African state that attempted to institute a racialized society and have the white population enrich and empower themselves with the intention of staying. Examples of this can be seen in Algeria, Kenya, and Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) all of which had violent revolutions that ultimately lead to the white populations leaving. If you would like to know more about these cases either in the aggregate or individually just let me know. I'll reference them in comparison to the South Africa in my response. Settler colonial states in Africa all had violent transitions of power or at least violence spurring on the transition of power. From Algeria to Kenya to Angola removing the white settler was a rallying cry for black liberation movements and revolutionaries. To them the project wouldn’t be completed until they were back in control.
However, (generally speaking) the whites living in these areas were not as attached to the land as in South Africa. For a family living in say Kenya for a couple generations it was preferable to move back to the UK then live under African rule. In cases where whites had stronger connections to the land in places like Zimbabwe it is worth noting that the leader there, Mugabe, made a point of trying to force whites to emigrate by seizing land and businesses.
Now let’s look at the case of South Africa specifically. South Africa has and has had the largest white population of any settler state in Africa. And on top of that many of the families there had been living there for many, many generations (some going back to the 1600s). And they identified as South African- going to the UK was already highly unlikely for the English speaking whites and going to the UK or Netherlands for the Afrikaans speaking whites was seen as impossible as that was no longer their home. For this reason decolonization could not happen like it did in Ghana, were a comparatively few white government officials and businessmen (who in all likelihood were born in the UK anyway) just packed up and left. In the case of all settler colonies in Africa it is only after violent actions did decolonization actually take place. Now it is worth noting that many historians continue to debate the effect violent resistance had in the case of the end of Apartheid in South Africa. But in any case it does follow this same trend and black opposition did engage in a violent revolution and it is not until after this point that significant gains are made towards black liberation in Southern Africa. In South Africa, the whites had no intention of leaving and Black opposition knew this. That is why the message of the ANC was never to create a blacks-only state, they knew it would never work and instead opted for fighting for equality and a multi-racial society. The ANC was a multiracial party and movement which included Indians and whites as well as blacks. And while the ANC did use violence, there was no race war or large scale local revolution inside South Africa that would have pushed race relations to the brink. Instead there was free and fair elections that opened South Africa to democracy and a multiracial society. Basically short of a race war, there was no way the white population in South Africa was going anywhere and the largest spokes-people for Black opposition in South Africa, the ANC, did not want a blacks-only society or at least knew it would never realistically exist.
Time is also a factor. Southern Africa in general was much later to the decolonization party as compared to their Northern and West Africa comrades (not for a lack of trying). While 1960 was the year of African decolonization, with new states popping up in West Africa like Ghana, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, things were just beginning to heat up in Southern Africa. The Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa convinced many for the need for violent revolution and resistance also happens in 1960, most resistance before this was non-violent. The MPLA in Angola doesn't start fighting the Portuguese until 1961 and ZAPU in Zimbabwe wasn't even formed until 1961. South Africa, with the help of the United States, created a zone of influence in Southern Africa doing everything they could to stop or at least slow the advancement of African Liberation Movements. They were largely successful until the 1970s. We have to remember that Apartheid in South Africa itself did not end until 1991. Up until around 1985 I would argue most people in South Africa thought that the Apartheid government would continue to hold onto power for the foreseeable future. So there was no reason for the White population to worry about moving or fleeing or anything of that nature even speaking in the short term.
Hopefully this helps add some context and answers your question. If you have any other questions or follow-up feel free to ask! :)
Sources:
Insurgency and Counter-insurgency in South Africa by Daniel L Douek, Warfare by Other Means by Peter Stiff, and Visions of Freedom by Piero Gleijeses.
In your question, you state that "as far as I know, South Africa is the only nation whose European occupants just kept living there throughout the decolonization of the rest of the continent".
That's not exactly true! What's true is that South Africa is the only nation where large numbers of European occupants just kept living there. A lot of African countries had white minorities in 1960, and many countries kept at least some of them. So, there are still significant numbers of whites (like, tens of thousands) living in places like Kenya, Zambia Botswana, and Angola.
To be fair, the OP was probably not thinking of countries where most whites left after colonization and where the remaining whites are a tiny remnant -- less than 0.5% of the population. So, for instance, there are probably almost 40,000 white Zambians, and they're still economically significant. But they're only around 0.2% of Zambia's total population of ~20 million or so. Focusing on such small remnant populations would be pretty pedantic.
That said -- there are at least three countries besides South Africa where there were significant (>2% of the population) numbers of whites at independence, and where there are still significant numbers of whites today. Those are Namibia, Botswana, and Swaziland. Namibia has about 150,000 whites -> about 7% of the population. Botswana has around 60,000 -> about 3% and Swaziland has about 40,000 -> also about 3%.
These numbers are not huge, but they do represent populations that are pretty stable and well-settled. Most whites in these countries have been there for generations. And barring war or some other catastrophe, there will probably be whites in these countries for generations to come. Also, while whites as a group no longer wield political power, in many cases these small numbers punch above their weight economically or socially. So, for instance, in Botswana Boers still dominate the commercial cattle industry (which is mostly around Ghanzi, where a lot of Boers settled and still live). Botswana has a number of classic Texas-style cattle barons, and they're disproportionately white.
So, while South Africa certainly dwarfs all the others, it's not alone. There are several other countries where European colonists just kept on keeping on, and are still there today.
This was an incredible read. Thank you to everyone!