Some Knowledgeable Person Tell Me Why South Africa Gave Up The Bomb

[ThomWV]

South Africa had a nuclear weapon, tested one in the Southern Ocean, and then abandoned and dismantled their program. Why? I have heard one reason given, but it was, to my ears, so preposterous that I will not repeat it.

If someone has any insight as to why they gave up what so many want I'd be appreciative to hear it.

[tabatha]

1. Here are some links about it:

There is lots more if you google.

http://cns.miis.edu/research/safrica/chron.htm
September 1989

At a meeting of his senior political aides and advisors, President F.W. de Klerk declares that in order to end South Africa's isolation from the international community, both the political system of apartheid and the nuclear weapons program must be dismantled.<43>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

South Africa was the first state in the world to give up its nuclear weapons capability voluntarily. When South Africa dismantled its advanced, but clandestine, nuclear weapons program and assumed a leading role in the nonproliferation regime, it was in anticipation of the country’s immense political changes. The then President F.W. de Klerk's decision in 1990 to dismantle the apartheid system paved the way for democratic elections. All the bombs (six constructed and one under construction) were destroyed and South Africa acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991. In 1993 F.W. de Klerk admitted the scope of the country's past nuclear activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and gave them access to the country's nuclear sites for verification purposes. On August 19, 1994, after completing its inspection, the IAEA confirmed that one partially-completed and six fully-completed nuclear weapons had been dismantled. As a result, the IAEA was satisfied that South Africa's nuclear program had been converted to peaceful applications. Following this, South Africa joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as a full member on 5 April 1995. South Africa played a leading role in the establishment of the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty (the Treaty of Pelindaba) in 1996, becoming one of the first members in 1997. South Africa signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 and ratified it in 1999.

Although South Africa declared its fissile material inventory to the IAEA, it did not reveal the exact figures to the public. Moreover, scientists who had previously worked on the nuclear weapons and missile programs could constitute a proliferation risk, and some reports indicate that some South African scientists may have gone to work for Middle Eastern countries. Some individuals and companies in South Africa are known to have been part of the A Q Khan nuclear black market. Other reports suggest that the country's Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (NECSA) secretly sold China some of the equipment from its dismantled nuclear facilities.

[ThomWV]

3. Thank you, your search skills are much better than mine.

You know, it still doesn't give a reason. At least in a sense it doesn't It was certainly a moral imperative to dismantle apartheid but it does not follow, if one presumes nuclear weapons to be defensive, that he necessarily anticipated a complete change in the power structure or more offensively that he chose to withhold the ultimate defensive weapon from the new state that would emerge.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

6. All countries should follow South Africa and destroy their nuclear

weapons. This is the only sane position.

[Taverner]

2. They have no reason to keep up an expensive nuclear weapons program

They have other shit to deal with - like we do.

[ThomWV]

4. I believe they were a world class exporter of diamonds and gold

Maybe it was Canada that exported most of the gold, not sure, but either way, this was not a poor nation.

[Taverner]

5. Definitely not - but once the threat of invasion was mollified

Democracy mollified this

They had no reason to fear an enemy

What good is a bomb if there's no one to drop it on?

Maybe we should take note

[tabatha]

11. Yes, it was and is a poor nation.

By the end of aparthied, the country had been brought to its knees by sanctions.

In the "more wealthy" days of apartheid, the bulk of the country - blacks - lived in abject poverty.

Today, it is still a poor country, if poor is measured by average income.

Your statement "this was not a poor nation" is incorrect.

A good book to read about how Blacks lived sometimes for a week without food is "Kaffir Boy".

[HamdenRice]

13. South Africa is considered a "middle income developing nation"

It's pretty much right in the middle -- neither poor nor rich by global standards.

It's problem, as you suggest, is distribution. Last time I checked, South Africa has the most uneven distribution of wealth of any nation on earth, except for Brazil -- and this was a decade after majority rule. That's how it can be moderately wealthy and yet a segment of the African population is exceptionally impoverished. At the same time the Black middle class has expanded dramatically. It has just left the Black poor behind.

[tabatha]

17. Yes, that is why I said "measured by average salary".

There is a huge divide between the black and white, with blacks having made some progress. But it is very difficult to overcome over 200 years entrenched racial/economic policies in a few decades, made worse by sanctions to end apartheid. It will probably take 2-3 decades more.

Unfortunately, privatization that was pursued after 1994, has limited the progress that should have been made.
Although, I do think that Trevor Manuel has done a good job under the circumstances.
Also, the forced upgrading of jobs by blacks may have contributed to the backward steps, such as the bad management of the energy policy. But one has to start somewhere.

South Africa certainly does not have any money to spare to pursue nuclear weapons, and there was some wasting of money on some recent arms deals. The money should have been spent on energy and education and job-training of the "lost generation", who lost out on education between the last 70's and 90's. Check the age of the people who killed Lucky Dube.

[HamdenRice]

20. Good analysis -- here's an interesting point about the power "crisis"

The power crisis has been spun a lot of ways. But if you read closely the business press reports, the power crisis is, in fact, a form of perverse good news.

South Africa is experiencing severe power shortages because no one predicted that economic growth would be so strong, and therefore the power upgrades were not planned for. The power demand comes from the Black working class and middle class getting electricity and rapid growth in manufacturing.

I'm amazed when I read about this spun as the "Blacks have ruined things," rather than that no one predicted their success.

[tabatha]

21. Well, I read an article in a SA online newpaper -

that the management at Eskom will go down as an example of one of the worst.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=334909&area=/insight/insight__economy__business/

"When business schools look for case material in object lessons on how not to run an enterprise, Eskom has no peer and no precedent in South Africa. Its January wipeout where it shut down the mines and hobbled the country's growth prospects, is breathtaking in both its scale and impact."

Yes, I am also aware that they did not predict the expansion of energy needs - but, I am also aware of stories about untrained people put into jobs. But, don't get me wrong, I agree that they should be put there - because there is no faster way to learn - but some of the consequences may not always be positive. But they will always be better than doing nothing at all.

Here is a list of articles about Eskom:

http://www.mg.co.za/search/Search2007.aspx?keywords=eskom

[Mike03]

7. Fascinating. Can you share the reason that you heard? It can't be any

crazier than everything else going on in the world right now.

Thanks for posting this, as I'd never heard a word about this.

[ThomWV]

8. Pure bigotry

They expected the nation to be taken over by blacks and they did not want nuclear weapons in the hands of a black nation. They intended to get rid of everything before the white Government was forced from power.

[The Stranger]

14. That sounds like the most credible reason yet offered.

Can't have the bomb in the hands of brown people or black people. That includes Iraqis and Iranians.

The Pakistanis were only allowed to have one because of India, but that license appears to be revoked.

[HamdenRice]

15. Except that the ANC was in favor of nuclear disarmament before it came to power

That's why that theory doesn't add up.

[ThomWV]

18. That does not mean that they were belived

I didn't say what the ANC position was, in fact I didn't know what it was, but that is beside the point. It was the white power structure that didn't care who it was, if they were black they should not have the weapon. That is how it was told to me. To be honest with you I did not believe it and am not sure that I do even today.

[Middle finga]

9. My guess is, once they realized the tide was about to turn

and the Apartheid Regime would not last (meaning black leadership would be taking over). The powers that be would not allow Nukes to be in the hands of Black South Africans.

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. Too expensive to maintain two separate bombs under apartheid?

(Nods to Tom Lehrer and his song, http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/whosnext.htm">Who's Next?)

[HamdenRice]

12. It had no strategic value

I should disclose I've spent lots of time in SA, including studying its evolving political structure.

I just read a long article on this topic about 6 months ago, but don't have it handy. I'll try to summarize from memory.

The basic idea behind the SA bomb, as with most bombs, was deterrence. SA under apartheid considered itself to be under attack from most of its neighbors who harbored ANC guerillas. Although the apartheid government was very confident in its military, it did consider the doomsday scenario of a future alliance of African countries, backed by the Cubans or Soviets, invading to topple the regime (the "tanks rolling across the Limpopo River" scenario).

The purpose of the bomb was a threat against neighboring African countries that if a massive force of tanks ever rolled across the Limpopo -- or any other regular or irregular existential threat to the regime from its neighbors materialized -- SA would bomb their capitals with nuclear weapons.

The program, however, had little internal support within the apartheid government for complex reasons having to do with how P.W. Botha governed (going back to his period as Defense Minister, when the nuclear weapons program began). The program was never really vetted throughout the government and was something of a pet project of Botha and his closest military allies. According to some of the people who studied this most closely the program actually grew largely through bureaucratic inertia.

When de Klerk came to power, the program had little political support, and de Klerk began negotiating immediately with the ANC toward majority rule. Both the government and the ANC wanted the program dismantled, so the theory that this was a unilateral apartheid government decision to dismantle the weapons to keep them out of blacks' hands isn't supported by historical fact.

After it was obvious that the ANC government would come to power through negotiations, the nuclear program, which was quite expensive, had no strategic value whatsoever and no political support. The ANC government of South Africa has close, cooperative relations with its neighbors. Rather than considering its neighbors a threat, the ANC government is leading the effort to create a united states of southern Africa, or at least a common market -- the Southern African Development Coordination Conference, which has evolved into the Southern African Development Community.

To give you a strained analogy, the South African bomb has about as much strategic purpose at this point as Washington keeping a nuclear arsenal to protect against the threat of the Confederate States of the American South.

The threat the bomb was designed to deter has disappeared, and the funds were needed elsewhere. They also realized that they could capitalize on their already stellar moral stature (under de Klerk and Mandela), by being the first nuclear power to go non-nuclear. As hard headed realists, the SA government saw its elimination of nuclear weapons as a tremendous strategic/diplomatic asset.

[Johnyawl]

16. thank you...

..That was a well written, insightful post.

John

[ThomWV]

19. Thank you very much. That was the answer I was looking for.

Makes sense.