The fact there was a referendum about that in their history already was the joke. Never mind.
All this talk of referenda pushed me into thinking about the 1921 Southern Rhodesia referendum, presided over from London by Winston Churchill and from Salisbury by Resident Commissioner Crawford Douglas Douglas-Jones, both of whom favoured incorporating the colony into the Union of South Africa.
The rejection of union with the USA resulted in what is now Zimbabwe not becoming part of South Africa - which is both an extremely good and extremely bad thing.
It's an interesting POD. It is interesting to consider the influence that Zimbabwean polity of the 30s onwards would have had on South Africa. It would have finished Malan easily - but after that?
Masotsha Ndhlovu, George Nyandoro and of course Joshua Nkomo in the ANC too... or would Zimbabwean black nationalists have been separatists too?