South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme Openly Declared
On 24 March 1993, apartheid South African President F.W. de Klerk announced the existence of a South African nuclear weapons programme as well as the fact that the apartheid regime had successfully constructed six indigenous nuclear devices. South Africa had initiated this programme to deter what it considered “a major Soviet threat” to its sovereignty and to prop up the apartheid regime.
After having spent millions of Rands developing the technologies necessary to enable the production of nuclear weapons, the apartheid regime then completely dissolved and disassembled the entire programme in the twilight of the negotiations between the apartheid state and the national liberation movements. De Klerk’s reforms also required a re-assessment of the nuclear weapons programme. De Klerk stated that from the mid-1980s he had moral qualms about the nuclear weapons programme and believed nuclear weapons to be a burden, as it had lost its deterrence purpose following the end of hostilities in Angola.
When questioned about the timing of the announcement, De Klerk said the apartheid government feared that revealing the existence of its nuclear arsenal earlier could have led to confrontational IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections similar to those occurring in Iraq. De Klerk’s announcement before Parliament followed growing international and domestic pressure to reveal the programme, which had been
