South Africa and weapons of mass destruction

During the 1980s, South Africa pursued research into nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. They succeeded in developing a small nuclear force of six crude weapons. With the changing international political climate of the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, making it the only nation in the world which voluntarily gave up nuclear arms which it had itself developed.

The country has been a signatory of the Biological Weapons Convention since 1975, the Chemical Weapons Convention since 1995, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty since 1991.

Nuclear weapons

South Africa developed a small finite deterrence arsenal of gun-type fission weapons in the 1980s. Six were constructed and another was under construction at the time the program ended.

Spare bomb casings from South Africa's nuclear weapon program, photograph by Mungo Poore.

Viable delivery

None of the six bombs were particularly sophisticated, being designed to be delivered from one of several aircraft types then in service with the South African Air Force. The Canberra B12 type in service with 12 Squadron SAAF was chosen as the primary air drop vehicle as it was highly reliable, spares were readily available from several countries ( unlike the Buccaneer - and the maritime reconnaissance Shackleton, grounded due to UK refusal to supply spare parts ), and it had both a significantly greater Radius of Action and a much higher operating altitude than both the Buccaneer and Cheetah. There was also much more internal space for the fitting of weapons system control equipment.

Further, the Buccaneer was designed with a rotating bomb-bay, which needed modification to carry the first-generation 'shape' weapon, raising complexity and reliability issues, and increased Specific Fuel Consumption, leading to the Canberra B12 being the preferred 'viable means of delivery' in the early part of the program.

SAAF Canberra B12 with inertial navigation and special sensors package over Transvaal, photo by author

However, South Africa had a relatively sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missile programme running concurrently with the nuclear programme, and was known to be working on more sophisticated nuclear weapons capable of delivery from such a platform. According to published data one of the missiles, the RSA-4, may have been capable of delivering a 700 kg nuclear warhead from its South African launch site to any point on earth.

In September, 1979 a flash over the Indian Ocean detected by a U.S. satellite was suspected of being a South African nuclear test, in collaboration with Israel (this event is known as Vela Incident). No official confirmation of it being a nuclear test has been made, and multiple expert agencies have disagreed on their assessments. In 1997, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad stated that South Africa had conducted a test, but later retracted the statement as being a report of rumors. Pahad apparently had no inside information about the program. A number of other sources have quoted anonymous Israeli officials verifying that some sort of test took place, but none of this has been officially confirmed by the Israeli, South African, or United States governments. However, in February 1994 Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, the convicted Soviet spy and former commander of South Africa's Simonstown naval base was reported to have said:

"Although I was not directly involved in planning or carrying out the operation, I learned unofficially that the flash was produced by an Israeli-South African test code-named Operation Phenix. The explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected. But they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed – so the Americans were able to pick it up."

A Soviet satellite in August, 1977 revealed preparations for an underground nuclear test in the Kalahari Desert, at the South African Defence Force's Vastrap Range, north of Upington, spurring both Washington and Moscow to apply diplomatic pressure on Pretoria. The site was soon abandoned and the two boreholes – one 385m and the other 216m deep – were sealed. One of the shafts was temporarily reopened in 1988 in preparation for another test which did not take place.

Nuclear strategy

The South African officials involved in the program claim that the nuclear weapons were only intended to be used as part of a "three phase nuclear strategy" to deter potential adversaries (especially Soviet-backed forces from neighboring states) and to compel Western involvement should deterrence fail; this is known as a finite deterrence. Phase one involved neither confirming or denying its nuclear capability. In phase 2, if faced with imminent attack, Pretoria would reveal its capability to Western leaders to force their intervention. If that failed, phase 3 would involve overt nuclear testing to demonstrate South Africa's ability and willingness to use nuclear weapons. In 1988, South Africa even took preliminary steps necessary to put phase 3 into effect when it clandestinely reopened one of the boreholes at the Kalahari test site (and built a metal concealment shed over the shaft) as part of a contingency plan to help bring an end to the Angolan war. Undeclared phase 4 contingency is borne out by South Africa's substantial investment in the development and production of intermediate-range ballistic missiles to be eventually fitted with nuclear warheads, and the completion in 1989 of the Advena nuclear warhead production facility.

Analysis

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. Subsequent to this, in 1993 F.W. de Klerk admitted the scope of the country's past nuclear activities to the IAEA and gave them access to the country's nuclear sites for verification purposes. On August 19th, 1994, after completing its inspection, the IAEA confirmed that one partially and six 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, 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.

Biological and Chemical weapons

South Africa pursued secret chemical and biological warfare programs during the 1980's (and abandoned them in 1993), despite having joined the Biological Weapons Convention in 1975. It ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in September 1995, although reports suggest that South African scientists were helping Libya's quest for biological and chemical weapons. In October 1998, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report containing 3,500 pages of testimony about human rights violations during the apartheid era. It included a chapter on Project Coast, a clandestine government chemical and biological warfare program conducted during the 1980's and 1990's.

Project Coast started in 1983, ostensibly to produce equipment for defensive purposes, including masks and protective suits. Despite vehement assertions to the contrary, testimony showed that the program went well beyond defensive purposes. Key officials said that Project Coast sponsored the production of chocolates laced with anthrax, umbrellas with poisoned tips, screwdrivers fitted with poison-filled cylinders, and clothing infused with lethal chemicals. Biological and chemical agents were developed to make attacks appear to be the result of natural causes. Other ideas, apparently unexecuted, included research into drugs to render black women infertile and a plan to gradually poison Nelson Mandela.

See also

• Vela Incident
• Helikon vortex separation process
• African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty

References

• Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal, Miriam Rajkumar. Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats. Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, 2005.

External links

• South Africa and the affordable bomb, David Albright, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 1994
• Birth and Death of the South African Nuclear Weapons Programme, Waldo Stumpf, Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa, October 1995
• South Africa and the nuclear option, Marcus Duvenhage, 1998
• Out of (South) Africa: Pretoria’s Nuclear Weapons Experience, Roy E. Horton, USAF Institute for National Security Studies, August 1999
• Nuclear Files.org guide to proliferation - South Africa
• The Nuclear Weapon Archive account of South Africa
• Israel conducted nuclear experiment in 1979