From the 1960s to the 1990s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons under the apartheid government. South Africa is one of the ten states to ever acquire a nuclear weapons capability, and the only state to relinquish them. South Africa's nuclear weapons doctrine was designed for political leverage rather than actual battlefield use, specifically to induce the United States to intervene in any regional conflicts between South Africa and the Soviet Union or its proxies. To achieve a minimum credible deterrence, a total of six nuclear weapons were covertly assembled by the late 1980s. Before the anticipated changeover to a majority-elected African National Congress-led government in the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons. The country has been a signatory of the Biological Weapons Convention since 1975, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since 1991, and the Chemical Weapons Convention since 1995. In February 2019, South Africa ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, becoming the first country to have had nuclear weapons, disarmed them, and gone on to join the treaty.
Nuclear weapons
The Republic of South Africa's ambitions to develop nuclear weapons began in 1948 after giving commission to South African Atomic Energy Corporation (SAAEC), the forerunner corporation to oversee the nation's uranium mining and industrial trade. In 1957, South Africa reached an understanding with the United States after signing a 50-year collaboration under the U.S.-sanctioned programme, Atoms for Peace. The treaty concluded the South African acquisition of a single nuclear research reactor and an accompanying supply of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel, located in Pelindaba.
Research programs In 1965, the U.S. subsidiary, the Allis-Chalmers Corporation, delivered the 20 MW research nuclear reactor, SAFARI-1, along with ~90% HEU fuel to South African nuclear authority. In 1967, South Africa decided to pursue plutonium capability and constructed its own reactor, SAFARI-2 reactor also at Pelindaba, that went critical using 606 kg of 2% enriched uranium fuel, and 5.4 tonnes of heavy water, both supplied by the United States. The SAFARI-2 reactor was intended to be moderated by heavy water, fuelled by natural uranium while the reactor's cooling system used molten sodium. In 1969, the project was abandoned by the South African government because the reactor was draining resources from the uranium enrichment program that had begun in 1967. South Africa began to focus on the success of its uranium enrichment programme which was seen by its scientists as easier compared to plutonium. South Africa was able to mine uranium ore domestically, and used aerodynamic nozzle enrichment techniques to produce weapons-grade material. In 1969, a pair of senior South African scientists met with Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a nuclear engineer from Pakistan based at the University of Birmingham, to conduct studies, research and independent experiments on uranium enrichment. The South African and Pakistani scientists studied the use of aerodynamic-jet nozzle process to enrich the fuel at the University of Birmingham, later building their national programs in the 1970s. South Africa gained sufficient experience with nuclear technology to capitalise on the promotion of the U.S. government's Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE) program. Finally in 1971, South African minister of mines Carel de Wet gave approval of the country's own PNE programme with the publicly stated objective of using PNEs in the mining industry. The date when the South African PNE programme transformed into a weapons program is a matter of some dispute. The possibility of South Africa collaborating with France and Israel in the development of nuclear weapons was the subject of speculation during the 1970s. In 2010, declassified documents revealed secret meetings between P. W. Botha and Shimon Peres on 31 March 1975 and 30 June 1975, where PW Botha requested nuclear warheads be attached to the Jericho missiles South Africa was purchasing.
Nuclear weapons strategy Unlike many other countries' nuclear weapons doctrine, South Africa's strategy anticipated no actual battlefield use of nuclear weapons. Although the weapons were intended to be used as a basis for a bluff of its antagonists, South Africa had to be perceived as having the means and resolve to use nuclear weapons in a military conflict. The goal was not to be involved in a nuclear war that South Africa could not survive; the goal was to deter the potential aggression of the country's enemies. South Africa's doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons did not endorse the deployment of the arms in combat, but rather it proposed that the threat of the country's deployment of a nuclear arsenal could be used as political tool. Such a capability could be used to manipulate other, allied Western powers (primarily the United States) to assist South Africa against any overwhelming military threat to its sovereignty, such as if Soviet-backed forces were to overrun South African Defence Forces in Angola and then invade South Africa itself. If the South African government found political and military instability in southern Africa to be unmanageable, it might then demonstrate its nuclear capability—such as by conducting an underground nuclear weapons test in the Kalahari Desert. This would provoke the Soviet Union to escalate its confrontation with the United States until South Africa was constrained, which would mean American intervention to seek an end to the conflict in Angola. In 1978, the South African Defence Force Chief of Staff for Planning Army Brigadier John Huyser produced a confidential memorandum which outlined potential elements of a nuclear strategy:
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
