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.

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.

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.

Prior to the Six-Day War, Israel was a darling of the international left, vocally opposed to apartheid and devoted to building alliances with black leaders in newly independent African nations. South Africa, for its part, was controlled by a regime of Afrikaner nationalists who had enthusiastically supported Hitler during World War II. But after Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, the country found itself estranged from former allies and threatened anew by old enemies. As both states became international pariahs, a covert—and lucrative—military relationship blossomed between these seemingly unlikely allies. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries, The Unspoken Alliance tells a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and startling secrets.

Includes the text of the treaty

An innovative three hundred year exploration of the social and political contexts of science and the scientific imagination in South Africa.

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.