The apartheid bomb: First comprehensive history of South Africa's nuke program

• Despite its recognized military and nuclear industries, South Africa depended on foreign procurements up until the end of the nuclear weapons program.
• The leadership of the South African Air Force sought to dramatically ramp up the nuclear arsenal and delivery capabilities for the 1990s, ahead of F. W. De Klerk coming into office and ending the nuclear weapons program.
• A closer look, based on declassified South African government documents, at South Africa’s nuclear strategic thinking, shows a government at conflict with itself over the question of whether South Africa would use nuclear weapons in a crisis or maintain them strictly as a deterrent.
• South Africa initially did not plan to disclose its nuclear weapons program to the international community and the IAEA. An evolution of thinking by South Africa’s new leaders and the IAEA, and intense pressure from the African National Congress, NGOs, and other governments, led to the acknowledgement that greater transparency was key to assuring South Africa’s neighbors that it had denuclearized. This process has valuable historical lessons for today’s proliferation cases.
• Despite establishing a policy of greater transparency in 1993, South Africa held back key details of its nuclear weapon delivery systems from the IAEA inspectors. It also was highly circumspect in describing its foreign procurements for its nuclear programs. This lack of disclosure in two key areas did not stop the IAEA from verifying South Africa’s nuclear disarmament. However, history deserves a fuller treatment, and this book seeks to contribute to that goal.

The Institute for Science and International Security notes that work on South Africa’s nuclear program goes back to the Institute’s founding in 1992. One of its first projects was working with African National Congress (ANC) officials, who were interested in learning more about nuclear non-proliferation in anticipation of assuming key positions in a democratic South African government. This cooperation led to contacts with several former members of South Africa’s nuclear weapons program and a range of collaborative endeavors with them. It included two tours of the old nuclear weapons production sites. On the trip in August 2002, Albright was allowed to photograph the old nuclear weapon production sites before they were modified beyond recognition of their original purpose. Many of these images appear in the book for the first time.

Revisiting South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programhas relied on many interviews conducted by the authors in the 1990s and early 2000s with past members of the nuclear weapons programs and IAEA inspectors directly involved in verifying South Africa’s nuclear dismantlement. The authors relied as well on a range of documents from that period, some of which they regret to state can still not be revealed publicly.

The book is organized as a chronology of the nuclear weapons program’s growth, maturation, and demise. However, it can be read out of order. For those interested in the details of the bomb program, the authors recommend looking at chapters, 2, 5, and 7. For those interested in the program’s dismantlement, see chapters 8-12. If nuclear weapons strategy is of interest, start with chapters 4 and 6. For those who are more technically inclined to the nuclear fuel cycle, and in particular highly enriched uranium production, see chapters 1, 3, and 12. Finally, for those interested in today’s lessons, read chapter 13.

Although not every question could be answered, this history reveals a great deal of new information about the program. The authors say they hope that this book will be regarded as a useful contribution to policy debates and serve as a compendium of information on South Africa’s nuclear weapons program and its dismantlement.

The Institute has produced multiple electronic and print versions of this book to allow it be viewed on several platforms. We want to especially thank 52 Novels for making this possible and Stewart Williams for designing the cover.

The Institute has also funded the dissemination of the book so that electronic pdf and e-publication versions could be provided at no cost. The pdf is available on the Institute’s Web site; at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (PASCC); and also on the Homeland Security Digital Library. An e-book version is available at no cost at Smashwords and Nook – and also on Kindle, but note that the policies of Kindle do not allow for the book to be offered at no cost on its platform, at least initially. The book is also available in a paperback version (with black and white photos only) for purchase on Amazon.

— Read more in David Albright and Andrea Stricker, Revisiting South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Its History, Dismantlement, and Lessons for Today (Institute for Science and International Security, 2016)