South African Coalition - Politics, laws, structure

[Icelander]

Does the South Africa Coalition in THS have any historical links with the real-world Southern African Development Community and/or the Southern African Customs Union?

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Does the South Africa Coalition in THS have any historical links with the real-world Southern African Development Community and/or the Southern African Customs Union?

Not mentioned in the text that I recall. I'm not sure that anyone ever really developed the SAC in any detail, beyond the idea that it's a formalisation of South African hegemony in the continent, which in turn arises from South African economic success, and the dominance of South African biotech corporations following their development of an AIDS cure in 201<mumble>.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Not mentioned in the text that I recall. I'm not sure that anyone ever really developed the SAC in any detail, beyond the idea that it's a formalisation of South African hegemony in the continent, which in turn arises from South African economic success,

Setting a game in a a free city located in Tanganyika, a South Africa Coalition country, demands that the GM establish a lot of these details for his campaign. As more knowledgable about THS than he is* and the owner of more books on the setting, I've been deputised to world-building duties, at least so far as the world at large impinges on the free city of Dar es Salaam.

So far, immigration law and bioroid rights are of special interest, as our characters are involved in saving bioroids from sex slavery, protracted death by toxic waste or similar terrible situations. As the SAC accords citizen rights to bioroids, we immediately thought of being involved with smuggling them across the border into Tanganyika.

We really wanted to be connected to the al-Mu'aqqibat underground railroad, which seemed to us from reading the books likely to be involved in helping bioroids get to the SAC, as well as the southern parts of France. The Islamic Caliphate is vast and parts of it are much closer to Tanganyika or Kenya than the EU.

Of course, the extreme poverty of Tanganyika means that they'd probably need to get to another SAC country from there, one rich enough so that it's at least conceivable for it to accept immigrants that will require social assistance and/or jobs. It was in connection to that we were wondering about immigration, citizenship laws, work permits and the situation with borders between SAC countries generally.

As Line Editor, do you have any insights?

We fully plan to assume what we find plausible, as well as what fits our desired campaign frame, but if we can do so without doing violence with the setting as envisioned by the Line Editor, that would be ideal.

*He had never heard about the setting before starting campaign planning.

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

and the dominance of South African biotech corporations following their development of an AIDS cure in 201<mumble>.

I accept that Transhuman Space is a future set in an alternate timeline. So far, I've been working off the theory that the timelines are identical until now unless that would make something that is directly specified otherwise in the book impossible or illogical enough to break suspension of disbelief.

Obviously, that applies for historical events in THS which didn't happen in our world. I've also applied it to China's far greater interest and investment in space technology that could be used in colonising Mars all the way back before the year 2000 in the THS world.

Sub-Saharan Africa bio-tech firms are another, interesting difference between the timelines. This, of course, has particular impact on our game, as Dar es Salaam was decimated in 2021 by hantavirus accidentally released from a bioresearch facility. That will probably turn out to be a fairly big deal in our background history of the city. Obviously, as Ithemba is still in business, it wasn't them, but we haven't established anything in our setting about the exact details. Any thoughts?

We want Dar es Salaam to have been a booming local hub before that, as it is in our 2010s, but after the accident, we were thinking it might have been almost abandoned for a long while. The background history we've been throwing around to justify cyberpunk tropes in a THS city, even at 2100, would be substantially helped by having parts of the city having been almost empty until the 2070s, with lots of empty office buildings there that were then resettled by economic refugees* looking for jobs as the harbour area started to come together again.

*Maybe aided by a last spasm of fighting as mainland Tanganyika was finally reunified after the balkanisation that the civil war brought on.

[ldj00]

Hello,

I am hoping you do not mind me giving my opinion?

I would say that the virus put so much burden on the governmental infrastructure, that it collapsed, and a few corporations stepped up and said they would handle a subset of the public services, if the laws and regulations where modified to help them remain profitable while keeping the city from becoming a ghost town.

Then you have a few corporations that are in charge of different aspects. I could see a security firm standing as the police/defense forces, another one or two corporations taking over healthcare (hospitals, ambulances, clinics, etc), and so on.

Of course, all regulations and restrictions were removed, which means the pharmaceutical and/or biotech companies can test new drugs, surgeries, etc on patients without any malpractice or other negatives.

I am sure to help finance this, some bank was made the preferred banking institute and all that entails.

Now you have no government, or so little government that has no power over the corporations. This allows the corporation to basically do what they want. They might have declared only corporations are citizens, while people are just dwellers there, not citizens. The corporations would offer some protections for their employees, but everyone else would be a second class citizen. That would give it a very cyberpunk feel.

In such an environment, where corporations are trying to extract all the money they can, with access fees, processing fees, and such, a rampant black market, robbery, crime, etc would grow quickly outside the corporation gated housing projects.

I could also see those coming from the Caliphate who were seeking something not readily available there, or the smuggling to the Caliphate from Dar es Salaam and the tension between the Caliphate and the SAC.

Seems like it would make a very interesting cyberpunk type setting.

I know this is several months later, and may not be helpful, but I am working on my own THS game, preparing to run, and trying to work up some details on where and what is available there.

[vicky_molokh]

Some of the things mentioned sound over the top even for Broken Dreams.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Some of the things mentioned sound over the top even for Broken Dreams.

Which, in particular?

1.4 billion people in THS canonically live in countries where the GURPS Wealth level rounds down to Dead Broke. In the real world, countries with such utterly failed economies are usually wartorn hell holes where civil war has been going on for decades or operate under some equally other terrible conditions that make it impossible for even basic economic development to occur.

I can't imagine many ways for a functioning society to remain at that level for long. If the average Wealth level somewhere is Dead Broke, it's because something is very, very wrong on many levels. When this thread was posted, I was looking for ideas on what that could be, in the specific countries which belonged to the SAC, but were still failed states, or close to it, economically.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Which, in particular?

"Only corporations are citizens, people are not citizens" does not seem like something out of post-cyberpunk genre-wise, as is much of the rest of the high-end corp-related stuff.

[ldj00]

Hello Vicky,

This?

Originally Posted by ldj00

Now you have no government, or so little government that has no power over the corporations. This allows the corporation to basically do what they want. They might have declared only corporations are citizens, while people are just dwellers there, not citizens. The corporations would offer some protections for their employees, but everyone else would be a second class citizen. That would give it a very cyberpunk feel.

If that is what you were referring to, I gave some suggestions to Icelander to provide a cyberpunk feel to a city state near or contained by the SAC.

I think of it like this, North Korea's government starts to collapse (military coups, massive embezzlement, etc), the government, in a desperate grab to remain in charge, makes agreements with corporations that promise to stabilize and keep them in charge. Once going down that road, those in the government keep getting 'forced' to make these deals, instead of doing the hard work to fix their countries economy and socio-economic structure. Before long, the majority of the population are basically indentured servants to one of a few corporations that have all the power in the country. And why would they think this is wrong? They have now lived generations with some of the most strick governmental controls on the planet.

I could see that happening over the next 10 to 15 years IRL, so I could see something like this happening to a border country or free city on the border of the SAC, especially just south of supposedly some of the poorest countries on Earth (TS, pg 85).

Or, instead of North Korea, what if a group of corporations formed som partnership to 'save Haiti'? I could see a take-over of governmental functions by corporations there... Or many other countries that are wartorn or ravaged by massive criminal organizations.

Any of the countries listed in this article could easily collapse or be taken over... Well, at least enough for a setting like Transhuman Space.

That is my opinion, if you think it is over the top, then it obviously will not work for you and your games. Maybe Icelander likes it... or maybe they do not.