This sort of tweet really annoys me with its how, despite it's supposedly "progressive" viewpoint, it distorts and mangles actual history in order to create a neater narrative that actually weakens one's ability to understand and therefore change the world
Like Apartheid South African and Contemporary Israel have a lot in common; both are white supremacist apartheid Settler States that are intimately tied to and heavily supported by international Imperialist Capitalism (as headed by the USA). They also enjoyed friendly relations with each other and regularly shared ideas and technology, so you have active mutual influence on top of natural convergent evolution. Comparison, as well as contrast, between each regime is a useful way to understand how these sorts of systems function. And yes, observing past trends in one system can help us predict the future of another
But like South Africa and Israel also have a vast number of differences; from their specific relationship with future designs for the peoples they oppressed, to the state of their regional neighbours as well as the overall extent to which other imperialists were willing to openly support them. And these differences in circumstance lead to significant differences in policy.
Like the fact of the matter is this tweet is incredibly misleading; it implies the Apartheid regime of South Africa somehow went berserk in the final years of it's existence when like this political intervention in their northern neighbours had been South African policy since the 1960s. Even before the independence of Angola or Zimbabwe (as well as Mozambique) the South African government had invested considerable sums of money and manpower into propping up the Portuguese and Rhodesian White Settler regimes against the pressure of Anti-Imperial Socialist resistance movements. After the end of Portuguese rule in Africa in 1974 (as their colonial wars drove them bankrupt and exacerbated domestic problems to the point that the Fascist regime found itself overthrown by a Leftist military coup) the South Africans then switched to supporting armed movements of local reactionaries and compradors like UNITA in Angola (which already had a long history of collaboration with the Portuguese) and later RENAMO in Mozambique (whose initial formation was one of the Rhodesian CIO's last significant achievements).
South African attempts to overthrow the Angolan revolutionary government, launching several major offensives with their own ground troops alongside their UNITA puppets while offering plentiful supply, funding and air support to UNITA outside of this, had been policy for as long as there was an Angolan Revolutionary Government to overthrow. And while their had less luck finding useful allies to destabilise Zimbabwe, their cross-border raids were simply an extension of their previous support for Rhodesia. Meanwhile their violations of Zambian sovereignty also were a consistent policy dating back to the 60s due to the Zambian Socialist government's mostly consistent support for the Anti-Imperial resistance movements of Southern Africa. While a deterioration of their relationship with Botswana was a later development, this was mainly a result of political pressure from both other African nations and their own citizens for the Bourgeoisie Botswanan government to stop collaborating with South Africa and to tolerate the presence of anti-apartheid fighters in their territory.
The whole "set-up a puppet government in Namibia" is the most misleading part of all. It implies that Namibia was some sort of independent nation they tried to subvert, and not a colonised territory they outright occupied (de facto since 1922, de jure since 1946; either way since before even the formal inauguration of nation-wide Apartheid in 1948). The attempts to set up a puppet government in Nambia were a direct de-escalation of South African involvement in the territory, prompted by the costly resistance offered by SWAPO and their Angolan Allies. Like if anything the very last years of Apartheid saw a de-escalation of South Africa's aggressive foreign policy, as the social and economic costs of their multiple intense wars had weakened the country and brought the regime close and closer to collapse while even among the Afrikaner Conservatives there was a growing recognition that some sort of compromise with Black Africa was necessary to secure any sort of survival.
And like there were very real material reasons for this, such as the lesser extent of open US support or the inherent contradiction of keeping the indigenous Africans as an oppressed pool of cheap labour which Israel avoided by tending towards outright genocide of Palestinians. It's not like the South African Apartheid regime was morally any better than Israel, just materially different. But these differences must be remembers if we want any chance of actually understanding the situation, instead of just mechanistically applying 1:1 comparisons because it makes an easier story. The nuances of Southern Africa must be appreciated if we want to truly appreciate the history of human struggle against oppression; we can't reduce it to a footnote on whatever conflict it's currently popular to perform activism for.
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