South Africa S Weapons Of Mass Destruction

A comprehensive history of the development and dismantling of South Africa's weapons of mass destruction program.

The primary focus of this paper is the impact of key South African leaders on the successful developments and subsequent rollbacks of South Africa's nuclear weapons capability. It highlights the key milestones in the development of South Africa's nuclear weapon capability. It also relates how different groups within South Africa (scientists, politicians, military and technocrats) interacted to successfully produce South Africa's nuclear deterrent. It emphasizes the pivotal influence of the senior political leadership to pursue nuclear rollback given the disadvantages of its nuclear means to achieve vital national interests. The conclusions drawn from flu's effort are the South African nuclear program was an extreme response to its own identity Crisis. Nuclear weapons became a means to achieving a long term end of a closer affiliation with the West. A South Africa yearning to be identified as a Western nation and receive guarantees of its security rationalized the need for a nuclear deterrent. The deterrent was intended to draw in Western support to counter a feared total onslaught by Communist forces in the region. Two decades later, that same South Africa relinquished its nuclear deterrent and reformed its domestic policies to secure improved economic and political integration with the West.

South Africa was the first nation in the world to renounce and destroy its top-secret nuclear weapons capability. Its government also eliminated the ability to produce and deliver these warheads. Because no one archived the official documentary evidence of the program, various writers and scholars, as well as the public at large, have been left to speculate-and forget-the activities that consumed billions of rands and years of dedication. Based on facts and first-hand perspectives, Armament and Disarmament offers intimate views from three participants in the nuclear weapons program. A larger picture emerges through their recollections, fulfilling the role of essential perspectives and documentation where official records no longer exist. Out of secrecy and a need-to-know philosophy, many involved in the program, both wittingly and unwittingly, were never briefed as to how their particular endeavors fit into the bigger scheme. Armament and Disarmament sheds light on the complexity of events surrounding the South African nuclear weapons program and brings tribute to the ingenuity and dedication of all those involved.

In 1989, South Africa made the momentous decision to abandon its nuclear weapons, making it the first and still the only country that has produced nuclear weapons and given them up. Over thirty years, the apartheid regime had created a remarkably sophisticated capability to build nuclear weapons-both the nuclear warhead and advanced military systems to deliver them. The program was born in secret and remained so until its end. The government initially sought to dismantle it in secret. It hoped to avoid any negative international consequences of possessing nuclear weapons. The apartheid government's strategy did not work, because too many intelligence agencies knew about South Africa's nuclear weapons. Faced with intense pressure, South Africa's President F.W. de Klerk reversed course and adopted a policy of transparency in 1993. However, he decided to hide many of its aspects. Nonetheless, most of the remaining secrets emerged over the ensuing 25 years. Revisiting South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Program draws on previously secret information to provide the first comprehensive, technically-oriented look at South Africa's nuclear weapons program; how it grew, evolved, and ended. It also finds lessons for today's nuclear proliferation cases.

Project Coast was the codename for a covert programme, established by the South African apartheid government in 1981, to develop a range of chemical and biological agents intended for use against opponents of the regime within and outside the state. This book examines the history of the project, its operation outside ordinary political, military and financial controls, through to its eventual demise in 1995. It draws on information made public at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, as well as evidence presented at the criminal trial of Dr Wouter Basson, the project's director.

This publication examines the experiences of South Africa and Lesotho in the disposal of surplus weapons and the management of small arms stocks. It seeks to highlight the lessons learned and benefits realised in terms of security, development and economics, in order to encourage other governments in Africa to carry out similar programmes.