Disarming Apartheid: The End of South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Programme and Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 1968–1991 1009307045, 9781009307048

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Disarming Apartheid

South Africa remains the only state that developed a nuclear weapons capability, but ultimately decided to dismantle existing weapons and abandon the programme. Disarming Apartheid reconstructs the South African decision-making and diplomatic negotiations over the country’s nuclear weapons programme and its international status, drawing on new and extensive archival material and interviews. This deeply researched study brings to light a unique disarmament experience. It traces the country’s previously neglected path towards accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Rather than relying primarily on US government archives, the book joins the burgeoning field of national nuclear histories based on unprecedented access to policymakers and documents in the country studied. Robin E. Möser, in addition to providing access to important new documents, offers original interpretations that enrich the study of nuclear politics for historians and political scientists.

Essential reading for anyone wanting to know why South Africa abandoned its nuclear weapons programme, Möser’s book draws upon a wide range of newly available archival documents, along with interviews, to explain why South Africa acceded to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991. This is a part of the story of the ending of apartheid that has not been told before. Christopher Saunders, University of Cape Town ‘The South African case reminds us nuclear disarmament is possible – [but depends on] multiple political and geopolitical conditions’. This is a meticulous reconstruction of the story of the apartheid government’s long ‘dance’ with the NPT and demystifies South Africa’s claim to the moral high ground with its final decision to dismantle its nuclear arsenal in 1990–1991. Sue Onslow, University of London Robin Möser has produced a thoroughly researched volume that sheds new light onto South Africa’s nuclear past and accession to the NPT. A highly recommended and accessible scholarly text. Jo-Ansie van Wyk, University of South Africa

Disarming Apartheid The End of South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme and Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 1968–1991 Robin E. Möser University of Potsdam, Germany

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05-06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009307048 DOI: 10.1017/9781009307062 © Robin E. Möser 2024 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2024 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-009-30704-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For my children: Joschua and Lotte

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction South Africa and the NPT About the Book Outline of the Book

1 The Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry and Relations with the IAEA, 1950–1977 1.1 Into the Cold War: Uranium Mining and Atoms for Peace 1.2 The NPT’s Article IV and South Africa’s Position on the Treaty 1.3 From ‘Atoms for Peace’ Beneficiary to a Global Nuclear Actor 1.4 Towards the Late 1970s: South Africa Finds Itself Alone – But Well-Equipped!

2 Towards Nuclear Weapons – Away from Safeguards: The NPT Position, 1977–1981 2.1 Into the 1970s: The Growth of the South African Defence Sector 2.2 The Carter Administration and the Koeberg Nuclear Fuel Issue 2.3 The Carter Administration Pushes for South African Accession to the NPT 2.4 Pretoria’s Reasons for Continued Non-accession to the NPT

3 Nuclear Diplomacy: NPT Defiance vs Non-proliferation Efforts, 1981–1988 3.1 Reagan’s First Term: Reviving US–South African Nuclear Relations 3.2 Reagan’s Second Term: Diminishing Leverage over Pretoria 3.3 US Non-proliferation Efforts and Attempts of Rapprochement with Pretoria 3.4 Pretoria’s NPT Strategy: Prospects of Change

page ix xi xiii 1 3 6 13

16 16 25 27 36

40 40 44 52 62

67 67 80 100 103

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4

Contents

Towards the End of South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons and NPT Negotiations, 1988–1989 4.1 The End of the Cold War and South Africa’s NPT Position 4.2 Into 1989: Domestic Political Changes 4.3 Indefinite Stalling or Meaningful Progress: Pretoria’s NPT Approach under de Klerk

5

South African Movement towards NPT Signature, 1990–1991 5.1 The Interplay between the Domestic and International Dimensions 5.2 US Non-proliferation Policies and de Klerk’s Visit to Washington 5.3 Continued FLS Lobbying and Movement in the South African Position 5.4 Signature of the NPT and South Africa’s Return to the IAEA

6

Post-NPT Accession: Champion of Non-proliferation Norms – Or Recalcitrant Proliferation Hot Spot? 6.1 Signing the Safeguards Agreement 6.2 The IAEA Verification Mission in South Africa 6.3 Scaling Down the Nuclear Industry and the AEC– ESKOM Relationship 6.4 Becoming a Global Disarmament Champion 6.5 American Attempts to Obtain South African HEU Stocks

Conclusion Towards an Alternative View: Elucidating the NPT Trajectory Ramifications of South Africa’s Nuclear Reversal

105 105 122 136

138 138 156 163 168

172 172 177 187 190 193

196 198 202

Bibliography

206

Sources Interviews Correspondence Literature Index

206 206 208 210 220

Figures

I.1 During the transition to multiparty democracy in South Africa, a lot of records from several departments were destroyed to avoid having them fall into the hands of the new government (Cartoon/SAHA collection item AL3129_H02). page 3 1.1 The opening ceremony of the SAFARI-1 research reactor in March 1965 (National Archives, Pretoria). 19 1.2 Prime Minister H. F. Verwoerd welcomes international visitors together with AEB Chairman A. J. A. Roux at the opening ceremony of the first research reactor at Pelindaba, in March 1965 (National Archives, Pretoria). 20 2.1 Brezhnev: ‘Comrade Jimmy, we have new evidence about the Boers’ atom bomb: it is located between Cheatville, Booze City and Dishonesty Hill’ (Beeld, 30 August 1977). 47 2.2 ‘I do not know what this is, but to me it looks like their A-bomb infrastructure’ (Oggenblad, 24 August 1977). 48 2.3 Prime Minister B. J. Vorster in action (The Natal Mercury, 3 September 1977). 51 4.1 ‘Pik says S.A. can make atomic weapon’, and Cuban soldiers ask: ‘Where is he going to test it?’ (Die Transvaler, 18 August 1988). 116 4.2 After the NPT Depositary Powers’ talks with South Africa in August 1988 ended inconclusively, international concerns that South Africa possessed nuclear weapons lingered on (The Argus, 17 August 1988). 117 6.1 IAEA Director-General Hans Blix and South Africa’s Ambassador to the IAEA Cecilia Schmidt gathered in Vienna to sign the comprehensive safeguards agreement, 16 September 1991. 175 6.2 IAEA Director-General Hans Blix, South Africa’s Ambassador to the IAEA Cecilia Schmidt, Political ix

x

List of Figures

Counsellor at the South African Embassy in Vienna Pieter Bezuidenhout and the AEC’s Chairman Waldo Stumpf celebrate the signing of the comprehensive safeguards agreement, 16 September 1991. 6.3 ‘I’m prepared to admit we did make mistakes. We should have dropped one on Frikkie.’ (Sunday Times, 28 March 1993). This cartoon appeared shortly after F. W. de Klerk revealed South Africa’s nuclear past in 1993. 6.4 Enduring rumours that Pretoria was hiding nuclear weapons were fuelled again after F. W. de Klerk’s announcement about South Africa’s nuclear past in March 1993 (Diamond Field Advertiser, 31 March 1993).

176

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Acknowledgements

First, I want to point out that I consider this book and the underlying research a collaborative effort. It would not have been possible without the generous help I received from various individuals. This support encompasses several areas and touches many aspects of my life, such as financial aid for my basic livelihood and travel to archives, scholarly advice given by colleagues and friends, and social networks that I could luckily draw on to combine academia and family life as best as I could. I also tremendously benefited from a passport that allowed me to cross borders with almost no restrictions, a fact often taken for granted when writing global and transnational histories. I interacted with numerous archivists and librarians, and warm thanks go to Carlien Scholtz, Ronel Jansen van Vuuren, Gabriele Mohale, Mary Curry, Freddy Sentso, Marta Riess and several others. My two supervisors during my PhD thesis, Prof Ulf Engel (Leipzig) and Prof AnnaMart van Wyk (Johannesburg), not only provided helpful feedback, wine and shelter, but also afforded me the freedom I needed to pursue my interests and different avenues – I am most grateful. In addition, thanks go to Martina Keilbach (Leipzig) for various kinds of administrative support. After more than a year of no funding, I was lucky to obtain a PhD scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation (Berlin), which put my financial worries aside. Did I deserve it? Was my project any better than those that were rejected? I do not know, but I used the allocated amount to conduct the research for this book. Moreover, this book belongs academically as much to Rome as it does to the University of Leipzig and to South Africa in general. Were it not for Leopoldo Nuti, Giordana Pulcini, Niccolò Petrelli, Marilena Gala, Giulia Clarizia and Egisto, who provided much food for thought, not to mention the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP) under Nuti’s and Christian F. Ostermann’s leadership, I think I would never have seen the bigger picture that my project was part of. I thank you for opening intellectual doors where I did not see any. xi

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Acknowledgements

My thanks also go to the 2018 cohort of the Nuclear History Boot Camp at Allumiere, who provided a fruitful academic safe space. During my encounters under the NPIHP umbrella, I met countless academics who are so sharp and witty that their research has left a deep imprint on my own work. These include Elisabeth Roehrlich, Carlo Patti, Allen Pietrobon, Flavia Gasbarri, Ori Rabinowitz, Thomas Jonter, Mariana Budjeryn, Benoît Pelopidas, Jo-Ansie van Wyk and Jayita Sarkar, to name but a few. Many of them became friends. And there are people whom I got to know who had an impact on the book as well. They are, in no particular order, Jamie Miller, a brilliant historian, Katharina Döring, Ruth Ennis, Mortimer Berger, Katharina Jörder, Ana Moledo and Chris Saunders. Thanks also go to numerous people who I annoyed during different phases of the work, such as Michal Onderco and Luz Seiberth, both of whom I consider to be my favourite academic sparring partners, Noel Stott (VERTIC), and my working group on Global and Transnational History at Leipzig University under Steffi Marung’s and Matthias Middell’s leadership. Then there are those I interviewed for my thesis, who generously shared their memories and coffee. I have kept in touch with some of them over the years; others have unfortunately already passed away. There were, of course, also the human beings whose names I never knew or do not recall: Airbnb hosts, bus drivers, bartenders, drycleaners and others, who also, unknowingly, contributed to the project. Thank you all! Moreover, I need to acknowledge the Jobcenter Potsdam-Mittelmark, under whose generous support I wrote the first draft of this book. Transitioning from a luxurious PhD scholarship to the job market, be it academic or otherwise, can be quite irksome. Many of you know that, but the fact that rent and health insurance are covered in Germany meant a lot. It might not be the most advisable option for young scholars, but it helped me tremendously. Thank you! On a personal note, I wish to thank my parents and siblings for never (openly) questioning what I did/do, Lea for her support and being the mother to our children, and Wolf for our friendship, much needed distraction and Facebook connections to former South African finance ministers. Lastly, I wrote this book in memory of Horst Schumann and Ingeborg Schumann, my grandparents, who passed away in the last three years while I wrote the manuscript. You inspired me, in different ways, and I am grateful for your unwavering support.

Abbreviations

AEB AEC AFRA ANC Armscor BEVA CEA CIA CNEN CP DFA FNLA FLS FRELIMO HEU IAEA KWU LEU MPLA MTCR NAM NIS NNPA NNWS NP NPT NSC NSG NWFZ NWS

Atomic Energy Board (South Africa) Atomic Energy Corporation (South Africa) African Regional Cooperative Agreement for Research African National Congress (South Africa) Armaments Corporation of South Africa Brandstof Element Verwaardigings Aanleg (South Africa) Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (France) Central Intelligence Agency (US) National Committee for Nuclear Energy (Italy) Conservative Party (South Africa) Department of Foreign Affairs (South Africa) National Liberation Front of Angola frontline states Mozambican Liberation Front highly enriched uranium International Atomic Energy Agency Kraftwerk Union (Duisburg, Germany) low-enriched uranium Movement for the Liberation of Angola Missile Technology Control Regime Non-Aligned Movement National Intelligence Service (South Africa) Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978 (US) non-nuclear-weapon state National Party Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1968 National Security Council (US) Nuclear Suppliers Group nuclear-weapon-free zone nuclear weapon state xiii

xiv

List of Abbreviations

PAC PNE Renamo SADF SAFARI-1 STEAG SWAPO UCOR UK UNITA UNSC US

Pan-African Congress (South Africa) peaceful nuclear explosion Mozambique National Resistance South African Defence Force South African Fundamental Atomic Research Institution-1 Steinkohlen-Elektrizitäts AG (Essen, Germany) South West Africa People’s Organisation Uranium Enrichment Corporation (South Africa) United Kingdom National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola United Nations Security Council United States

Introduction

South African Characteristics: The Apartheid Legacy Writing South African nuclear history is an exercise in piecing together a shredded past. In the last years of the apartheid regime, South African security establishment routinely destroyed documentation without legal authorization. This included almost all records pertaining to South Africa’s secret nuclear weapons programme and other matters deemed crucial for national security and the regime’s survival. These were categorized ‘uiters geheim’ (Afrikaans for ‘top secret’).1 After February 1990, when South Africa’s last white President Frederik Willem de Klerk announced the release of black opposition leader Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, the majority-white government realized that with the loss of its grip on power would come the loss of its custody of all state records. What followed was an even more resolute shredding of official documentation. This affected all departments of the state. Between 1990 and 1994, selective destruction and systematic obfuscation reached their limits, in the hope that any incoming government could be kept from learning the intimate details constituting the apartheid past. Several archivists told me personally that former officials often took folders brimming with documents home upon retirement. Presumably, these served as insurance to prevent other people from learning detrimental secrets. Consequently, those who purged the archives willingly contributed to the deletion of over four decades of official state memory.2 The outgoing apartheid regime was acutely aware that the rest of the world would eventually review and judge its racial policies. It also had

1 2

Harris et al., 2004, pp. 460–461; and Pohlandt-McCormick, 2005, pp. 299–324. With a special reference to South African military records, see: Baines, 2010, pp. 87–94. ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report’ (hereafter TRC Report), 1998, p. 235.

1

2

Introduction

time to act, which contributed significantly to the archival purges. Unlike other regimes in East Germany or Cambodia that fell and were replaced quickly, Pretoria’s3 officials had enough time to carry out the destruction thoroughly over several years.4 Indeed, the investigators of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), in an attempt to bring some justice to apartheid victims, stated that the destruction of records gained momentum in the 1980s and culminated in a concerted endeavour, officially approved by the Cabinet under Presidents P. W. Botha and, his successor, de Klerk. All this was done to remove evidence of the oppressive rule by the National Party (NP) spanning more than four decades.5 It was only in late November 1995 that the Cabinet imposed a moratorium on the destruction of all governmental records, regardless of their age and of whether departmental heads and archive staff recommended their disposal.6 Furthermore, research into the apartheid-era nuclear weapons history was rendered extremely difficult due to long-lasting secrecy laws and the hitherto uncontested monopoly of information held by the old regime. The destruction of most of the policy-related documents created by the institutions that dealt with nuclear issues – the Department for Mineral and Energy Affairs, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Defence Ministry – seriously infringed on attempts to reconstruct the past. What happened towards the end of apartheid was by no means ‘normal’ archival practice, it had more to do with preventing any successors from inheriting knowledge of some of apartheid’s best-kept secrets (see Figure I.1).7 Fortunately for researchers, however, some important South African documents escaped the shredding machine. In Disarming Apartheid I make good use of these survivors, interviews with former officials, as well as official records from archives outside South Africa, to recount the unique story of South Africa’s decision to dismantle its secret arsenal of nuclear weapons and join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon state.

3

4 5 6 7

In this book, I used ‘Pretoria’ as a metonymy, aware that sometimes it can obscure the complexity of South Africa’s foreign policymaking. The same is true for ‘Washington’ and ‘Moscow’ and their respective policymaking. Harris, 2000, p. 45. TRC Report, 1998, p. 201. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 206–208; p. 227. Moreover, NECSA – the successor of the AEC – and Armscor – the South African manufacturer of military equipment – to this day, block access to their archival holdings or only make available heavily redacted documents (author’s own experiences following meetings and communication with personnel in charge).

South Africa and the NPT

3

Figure I.1 During the transition to multiparty democracy in South Africa, a lot of records from several departments were destroyed to avoid having them fall into the hands of the new government. Here Thabo Mbeki receives the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, while F. W. de Klerk observes (Cartoon/SAHA collection item AL3129_H02). Source: @Zapiro, Sowetan@2003. All rights reserved

South Africa and the NPT South Africa’s hands are clean and we are concealing nothing. […] I sincerely trust that this unprecedented act, namely the voluntary dismantling of a nuclear deterrent capability, and the voluntary revelation of all relevant information will confirm this Government’s effort to assure transparency. I trust also that South Africa’s initiative will inspire other countries to take the same steps.8

With these words, in 1993 President F. W. de Klerk confirmed longstanding rumours that South Africa had indeed embarked successfully on a nuclear weapons programme during the Cold War. About two years 8

De Klerk, 1993a, ‘Matters relating to nuclear non-proliferation treaty, violence, negotiation and the death penalty’, statement by the State President to a Joint Sitting of Parliament, 24 March 1993, Debates of Parliament (Hansard), col. 3465–3478.

4

Introduction

before the announcement, on 10 July 1991, the South African government signed the NPT, the world’s most widely ratified multilateral disarmament agreement.9 A few months later, Pretoria’s officials also concluded a comprehensive safeguards agreement10 with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As de Klerk later admitted, the six nuclear weapons completed during the Cold War (a seventh device was under construction) were safely dismantled between 1990 and 1991. This successful disarmament made South Africa the first – and so far the only – country known to have dismantled its entire indigenously developed nuclear weapons capability, and to subsequently adhere to the nonproliferation regime by joining the Treaty.11 Despite this notable distinction, little is known about South Africa’s internal nuclear decision-making processes or how the national position on NPT accession and IAEA safeguards evolved over time. Considering today’s global nuclear proliferation and disarmament challenges, this unprecedented termination of a full-scale nuclear weapons programme invites closer consideration. This investigation thus tackles the question of how South Africa’s accession to the NPT actually came about and therefore reconstructs the decision-making trajectory of the apartheid regime between 1968 and 1991. From the mid-1970s until 1989, the government of South Africa actively pursued a nuclear weapons programme. During this entire period, the project was kept secret, even though the international community suspected that South African scientists were working on nuclear weapons. The nuclear devices served as an assurance for the whiteminority regime and were intended to deter African liberation movements and their supporters in the region, namely Cuba and the Soviet Union. From Pretoria’s perspective, threatening the use of nuclear weapons was seen as a last resort to coerce Western support for the apartheid regime’s survival. This was deemed a credible reassurance strategy during the height of the Cold War in southern Africa, and was considered particularly relevant in case liberation movements, perceived as Soviet proxies, advanced too far South. The programme was kept

9 10

11

For a useful overview of the NPT’s trajectory over its fifty years of existence, see Kaplow, 2022. A comprehensive safeguards agreement allows the IAEA’s inspectors to ensure that safeguards be applied on ‘all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within the territory of the State, under its jurisdiction, or carried out under its control anywhere’ (INFCIRC/153). NPT signatory states have up to eighteen months to conclude the agreement with the Agency. Masiza, 1993, pp. 34–53; Stumpf, December 1995/January 1996, pp. 3–8; and De Villiers et al., 1993, pp. 98–109.

South Africa and the NPT

5

secret, and the government’s ambiguity about the de facto status of its nuclear capabilities was key to the deterrence strategy. For almost twenty years, this kept the world guessing whether Pretoria’s leaders possessed nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.12 In turn, the secret development of its nuclear arsenal also affected South Africa’s position on the NPT. As no state possessing nuclear weapons, other than the five that acquired nuclear weapons before 1 January 1967, or in the process of acquiring them could accede to the NPT, apartheid leaders were initially prevented from signing it. Although during the Cold War, Pretoria refused to acknowledge its growing stockpile of nuclear weapons, the small leadership circle of people in the know was well aware that NPT signature would not be possible before unilateral disarmament. On the diplomatic level, this led South Africa to engage in an uneasy ‘dance’ with the NPT. Foreign policy officials had to skilfully drag out and delay international discussions for more than two decades in order to reduce global criticism, often without knowing the full details of the nuclear weapons programme. Following the NPT’s opening for signature in 1968, the South African government under President Balthazar Johannes Vorster decided not to sign the Treaty, officially claiming that it would infringe on the country’s sovereignty in nuclear matters. Hence, apartheid leaders defied emerging global non-proliferation norms and evaded the nascent regime. While talks were initially held between South African, IAEA and US delegations with the aim of bringing Pretoria’s growing nuclear infrastructure under safeguards, the South Africans broke off negotiations in 1977. Over the following years, this gave rise to immense criticism within the IAEA and beyond. South African diplomats became increasingly marginalized in the IAEA and lost their seat on the Agency’s Board of Governors as well as the right to participate in the General Conference, the two policymaking bodies of the Vienna-based agency. The continued refusal of the South Africans to sign the Treaty stretched over two decades and in turn jeopardized the country’s IAEA membership. It was only towards the late 1980s that the geostrategic situation in southern Africa changed tremendously. The looming end of the Border War saw Cuban soldiers withdraw from Angola, the Soviet grip on the region decline and the South Africans modify their nuclear deterrence strategy. This shift accelerated following the general election in September 1989. President P. W. Botha, a hardliner and staunch advocate of apartheid, was replaced by F. W. de Klerk. The new president

12

Howlett and Simpson, 1993, pp. 158–159.

6

Introduction

surprised many by introducing tremendous reforms to end apartheid in South Africa. With the benefit of hindsight, these also encompassed important changes in South Africa’s disarmament, non-proliferation and arms control policies. This analysis brings new evidence and offers novel insights into this important transformation. The South African case reminds us that nuclear disarmament is possible and highlights the combination of domestic political and geopolitical conditions of this possibility. It serves as an important reference point in current debates on nuclear non-proliferation, particularly with the developments presently unfolding in Ukraine. The South African experience reiterates the importance of security environments, and especially the perceptions of what constitutes a threat therein. Continuous missile and nuclear testing in North Korea, unilateral US withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran in 2019, as well as the last-minute extension of the New START Treaty between the United States and Russia in February 2021, all indicate that discussion about nuclear disarmament on a global scale is as acute today as it was at the end of the Cold War.13 About the Book More than thirty years after South Africa’s NPT accession, open questions remain about South Africa’s nuclear activities, and de Klerk’s 1993 claim that his outgoing government concealed nothing cannot be accepted at face value. But what has been omitted from the existing narrative? While the disarmament achievements of the last apartheid government can only be praised, the final years of South Africa’s nuclear past are still shrouded in mystery. The nuclear rollback is often presented as a straightforward process: de Klerk succeeded P. W. Botha as State President, ordered the dismantlement of the nuclear weapons and then acceded to the NPT. However, this linear and almost teleological narrative tends to neglect many factors including the competing interests of the actors and institutions involved in the programme. I argue that the outcome was not as inevitable as later portrayals suggest, particularly concerning South Africa’s accession to the NPT. 13

A case in point is the launch of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a coalition to advocate adherence to and full implementation of the NPT in terms of global reduction of nuclear warheads, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. ICAN also strongly supported the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) against the opposition of the nuclear-armed states and some of their allies, which entered into force on 22 January 2021 when the Treaty achieved its fiftieth ratification (Kmentt, 2021, pp. 1–2; and: Borrie, 2021, pp. 1–12).

About the Book

7

The South African example contains important lessons. Surrendering nuclear weapons requires both domestic political preconditions and an international context perceived to be conducive. It cannot succeed if solely based on the moral conviction of the political leaders endorsing disarmament per se. De Klerk’s actions from 1989 to 1993 illustrate that his decisions were heavily influenced by his assessment of domestic political risks, which were weighed against the potential benefits and repercussions that disarming and signing the NPT would bring for his government. Disarming Apartheid tackles precisely this complex set of domestic, regional and international aspects and reconstructs the subcutaneous decision-making processes driving it. I follow the contours of shifting interests and positions within South African institutions and detail how they interacted with the outside world’s pressures and strategies. Based on a foundation of new archival material from several countries and interviews with former key actors, I differentiate between South Africa’s decision to disarm its nuclear weapons and its entry into the international non-proliferation regime, illustrating how the latter proved a more sensitive domestic political task than has been previously understood. It becomes clear that NPT accession was a distinct decision separate from disarmament, and a far more challenging one to reach in the maze of domestic politics stretching across apartheid’s final years. This is not to suggest that the decisions did not overlap or were unconnected. However, accession to the NPT and the conclusion of a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA did not automatically follow the decision to terminate the nuclear weapons programme in late 1989. It took much longer to materialize. Indeed, this step was not taken for another two years by de Klerk and his advisors due to a number of considerations including the domestic fulcrum of power and the internal reform process towards democracy. Different reasons motivated de Klerk to disarm and join the NPT. Firstly, he inherited the nuclear weapons programme from his predecessor P. W. Botha in 1989 and did not like it. De Klerk had been aware of the programme since the early 1980s when, as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs, he was briefed about it as one of a handful of politicians. He felt South Africa did not need nuclear weapons and had misgivings about the massive spending associated with the programme.14 Therefore, immediately upon his election as President in September 1989, he made moves towards termination, believing that the nuclear weapons had

14

F. W. de Klerk, interview with author, 17 March 2017, Cape Town.

8

Introduction

become obsolete considering the improved regional security environment. Moreover, he was also motivated to reduce South Africa’s international isolation, which in part stemmed from the characteristic nuclear ambiguity the country displayed throughout the Cold War. De Klerk regarded NPT signature as a crucial step towards becoming a respected member of the community of states. Joining the NPT, he and his advisors knew, could only be achieved legally through the prior dismantlement of the nuclear weapons arsenal and by inviting the IAEA to inspect South Africa’s nuclear facilities.15 The importance of South Africa’s NPT accession in the plans of domestic reformists and advocates of the global non-proliferation regime at the end of the Cold War dawned on me only after my research stint in the UK National Archives at Kew Gardens more than a year into this project. It was then that I realized how UK, US and Soviet diplomats, in a concerted effort, tried to make NPT signature palatable for the white regime in Pretoria towards the end of the Cold War. In light of more and more documentary evidence I amassed from archives on three different continents, I began to see the story take shape. After years of defying the NPT, in 1988, leaders in the top echelons of the apartheid regime were finally willing to move towards giving up nuclear weapons and signing the Treaty. This window of opportunity was used by the three NPT Depositaries, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union, to good effect. While the Cold War tensions in the region abated, the South African domestic arena remained fractured and political reform far from certain. At the time de Klerk ordered the disarmament in early 1990, the South African government was not yet on a clear path towards democratic majority rule and only slowly gearing towards a political transition.16 In fact, the newly elected President himself was initially considered to be part of the conservative wing of the ruling NP. As late as 1989, a new facility for advanced weapons design was opened to the west of Pretoria, known as the Advena Central Laboratories, with the purpose of expanding the nuclear delivery options. Moreover, the Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor) and the Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC) had stated their willingness to continue with the nuclear weapons programme just a year before.17 At its core, the book discusses the evolution of the South African government’s position vis-à-vis the NPT under white-minority rule, from the Treaty’s conclusion in 1968 to the NP’s decision in favour of 15 16 17

De Klerk, 1999, pp. 273–274. Du Preez and Maettig, 2010, pp. 319–320. Van Wyk, 2010a, p. 66.

About the Book

9

disarmament and accession in 1991. For years, the official South African NPT strategy, as stated by the government, stressed Pretoria’s general interest in and support of non-proliferation norms and even proclaimed accession to be a feasible option under the condition that it would enjoy the same rights as other states under the Treaty. This ostensible openness, however, ran counter to the secret development and completion of six nuclear weapons by South African scientists under apartheid rule. Contrary to official professions that the leadership was prepared to enter into negotiations about entry into the NPT regime, the reality was over two decades of defiance of the non-proliferation norm. By bringing together the government’s position on non-proliferation with wider developments of the Cold War in southern Africa, Disarming Apartheid transforms understandings of both nuclear disarmament and the Cold War history of southern Africa. The end of the Cold War and the rapidly changing regional security dynamic and threat perceptions appear as a major driver of decision-making on NPT signature. Through its diplomacy with the three NPT Depositaries – the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union – and engagement with a coalition of Frontline States – Namibia, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zimbabwe – regarding NPT accession, the F. W. de Klerk government overcame various obstacles by enlisting the world’s major powers in a campaign to encourage NPT accession across the southern African region. The success of this strategy laid the groundwork for the establishment of the African nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ). Disarming Apartheid draws heavily on hitherto classified archival records obtained in the United States, the United Kingdom, at the IAEA and in South Africa itself. In particular, I enriched the at-timesincomplete South African archival records with documents from UK and US archives to comprehensively account for the multiparty negotiations leading up to South Africa’s NPT accession. Furthermore, the account uses more than 50 interviews conducted between 2016 and 2020 with people involved in the South African nuclear weapons programme in one way or another, as well as individuals from outside South Africa who were diplomatically engaged in advocating Pretoria’s adherence to nonproliferation norms throughout the 1970s and 1980s. My hope is to present the reader with an authoritative account of South Africa’s nuclear history. Previous accounts of the dismantlement of the South African nuclear weapons programme and NPT accession have been incomplete and often suffered from neglect of primary records.18 Partly, this is due to 18

Liberman, 2001; Steyn et al., 2003; Purkitt and Burgess, 2005; Badenhorst and Victor, 2006; Venter, 2008; and McNamee, 2002.

10

Introduction

the fact that archival records are subject to lengthy classification periods that have only recently reached their limits. In addition, no existing account has undertaken to comprehensively examine South Africa’s motivations for NPT accession and disarmament, least of all based on South African records. Therefore, the internal deliberations on NPT accession remain poorly understood. Nuclear histories of major powers such as the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China have been extensively researched and broadly published. Other histories have often been confined to ‘case studies’ illustrating international relations and proliferation theories. Recently, monographs appeared on the nuclear histories of the less well-known cases of nuclear proliferation and restraint, such as Sweden, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Brazil and Ukraine.19 Yet until now, no academic monograph detailing the history of the South African nuclear programme and disarmament existed. This gap is particularly striking concerning the second decade of the programme’s existence, which started in the early 1980s, presumably because until recently relevant archival collections were subject to binding security regulations. Over the last three decades, however, the South African case has featured in models and comparative analyses of nuclear rollbacks, mostly in political science literature concerned with dissecting best-practice examples for non-proliferation policies.20 The argument of my book can also be understood as addressing this need, because without a thorough, in-depth understanding of the South African disarmament and NPT accession process, it is difficult to draw conclusions and apply them to other scenarios.21 It is therefore valuable to broaden the scope of empirical investigations beyond the nuclear decision-making to also account for the interplay between domestic and international political dynamics, mapping the motivations of actors who took strategic decisions in the final years of the apartheid regime. Owing to the multilateral nature of the Treaty itself, Disarming Apartheid was greatly informed by approaches used in Cold War studies and global history more broadly, because the traditional parameters of the superpower conflict are not adequate to fully capture the extent of a single state’s nuclear past. Analysing these processes from a transnational and global perspective, as I did in this book, is indispensable to fully 19

20 21

Jonter, 2016; Kassenova, 2022; Akhtar, 2018; Abbas, 2018; Patti, 2022, and Budjeryn, 2022. Although Ghana never attempted to embark on a military nuclear path, it is worth mentioning the only book dealing with its nuclear history (Osseo-Asare, 2019). Sagan, Winter 1996/97, pp. 54–86; Solingen, 1994, pp. 126–169; Pabian, 1995, pp. 1–19; Narang, 2014, pp. 207–221. As is argued also by Levite, 2002/03, pp. 59–88.

Archival Research

11

grasp the entanglements between the domestic, regional and international spheres. A focus that solely considered the national arena would fall short of accounting for the mutual reinforcement of these two dimensions in South Africa’s NPT accession. It is vital to pool a variety of perspectives, such as those of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, the British government under Prime Minister Thatcher and the IAEA Secretariat. While the South African perspective is most fully reconstructed, it is thus not examined in isolation. Archival Research Multilingual archival research – a hallmark of global history for many years now – also substantially informs Disarming Apartheid. An essential tool for scholars concerned with the Cold War, this approach highlights the myriad facets of global connectivity. In fact, more than a decade after Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War,22 scholars increasingly make use of archives situated outside the United States and Europe that were previously marginalized in conventional approaches to the Cold War. This is not surprising, given that archival holdings outside the usual binary approaches not only shed light on the national history of the state in question, but also connect that country to broader geopolitical currents and political projects, thereby challenging the bipolarity inherent in traditional approaches. Indeed, with an emphasis on engaging with the Cold War’s nuclear history, Leopoldo Nuti and Christian Ostermann claim that traditional parameters of the superpower conflict are not adequate to fully capture the extent of a state’s nuclear past. With an emphasis on apartheid South Africa, they claim its ‘[history] can only be understood by integrating the bipolar framework with a strong emphasis on the local and the domestic dimensions of Pretoria’s atomic policies’.23 Over the course of my research, it became clear that foreign affairs files, both from South Africa and from the United Kingdom, provide an indispensable source for reconstructing the events. This was the case in the DFA24 Archive, which produced several documents pertaining to multilateral negotiations. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Archive provided a significant number of records on the topic too, as did the National Security Archive in Washington D.C. These records give crucial insights into the multilateral and bilateral 22 23 24

Westad, 2007. Nuti and Ostermann, 2015, p. 3. Which is now known as the Department of International Relations and Cooperation – DIRCO.

12

Introduction

meetings towards the end of the Cold War. The predominant use of British and South African records throughout the book reflects the state of availability, because it was not for a lack of trying that only a comparatively small number of documents of US origin feature in the study. The primary sources on which this book relies, however, include secret letters from the head of the AEC in South Africa, strategy papers from the DFA regarding South Africa’s NPT accession, and sources from US and UK archives such as telegrams, interdepartmental letters, records of meetings and internal minutes. Distributed among ministries (Energy, Defence, Foreign Affairs) and embassies, they illustrate the politicized ‘how and why’ of Western states’ attempts to influence the apartheid regime in its nuclear decision-making. Archival research in South Africa proved complex and time-consuming because the task of identifying and locating the relevant documents was hindered by the almost complete absence of digital finding aids, rendering my very first research stint in 2016 rather cumbersome. In contrast to the IAEA Archive and the British National Archives, which provide digital finding aids, it is nearly impossible to determine from abroad what South African archives harbour in their holdings. Even knowledgeable archivists were at a loss when it came to identifying even remotely relevant sources. This just goes to show the degree of serendipity involved in archival research, from which I also benefited. With a view to the current state of affairs in South Africa, one cannot shake off the feeling that preserving archival records, especially from the Cold War era, has not been a priority for successive post-apartheid governments. Most probably, this results from an unfavourable combination of lack of funds and a general indifference towards records dating back to the apartheid era. Lastly, for several reasons, Soviet sources were not consulted. This concerns inter alia the personal papers of Roland Timerbaev, the Soviet ambassador to the IAEA. Due to restrictions downstream from the COVID-19 pandemic, his files are currently inaccessible at the PIR Center in Moscow. Interviews I conducted more than 50 semi-structured narrative interviews throughout 2016 and 2020 with people from relevant institutions who had been engaged in the decision-making. The choice of respondents was limited to those who were in one way or another either involved in the nuclear programme on the South African side or internationally exposed to matters concerning non-proliferation in bilateral or multilateral interactions with the apartheid regime. This included the former South

Outline Of The Book

13

African President F. W. de Klerk, who presided over the nuclear rollback and NPT accession, the Mineral and Energy Affairs Minister, the Finance Minister and his Deputy, several ambassadors, the chairman of the AEC, the head of the South African National Intelligence Service (NIS), a number of Generals of the South African Defence Force (SADF), senior managers of Armscor and more than a dozen DFA officials who had been posted to the IAEA in Vienna and to Washington D.C. Moreover, British Foreign Office and US State Department officials were contacted, most of whom had been directly involved in discussions with the South Africans between 1988 and 1991.25 The search eventually became more fine-tuned as I targeted not only the top echelons of the respective institution or department’s structures. I decided to speak with former desk officers who attended meetings and drafted the papers that formed the basis for later decisions. At the same time, this brought to the fore old power structures and networks of the military-security establishment of the former regime. The value of the oral history interviews increased tremendously when used to cross-check certain factual assumptions based on archival documents and to develop additional interpretations. In turn, thanks to the knowledge gathered from primary sources, I could pose detailed questions during interviews. In some cases, the initial enquiry only triggered an ‘official’ version of the events, which the person had already given several times or even published. However, once I started asking more specific questions touching upon issues that had not been discussed in previous accounts, I uncovered new ground (see Chapters 3–5). Furthermore, I strongly believe that my own background, being a young white male from Germany, helped tremendously in the context in which the research was carried out. And so did other privileges I enjoy, such as the freedom to travel unrestrictedly through South Africa, the United States and various parts of Europe with the necessary funding provided by research institutions to pay for these trips. Outline of the Book Following the Introduction, Chapter 1 begins with a brief sketch of the development of the domestic nuclear energy sector in South Africa (1950–1977). It illuminates how scientists were able to tap into sources 25

All but one of the people I contacted for interviews were male. (Amb. Cecilia Schmidt was the only woman.) None of them was younger than 60 years of age. This suggests that nuclear issues during apartheid and international diplomacy during the Cold War were almost exclusively the domain of white men; women hardly featured at all.

14

Introduction

of cooperation and funding to advance the nuclear energy industry during the 1960s and 1970s, following the Plowshare Program initiated under US President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative. Part of this chapter is devoted to the cooperation between South African, French and German firms. Recently obtained primary sources show how these collaborations enabled apartheid scientists to realize their vision of erecting the nuclear infrastructure to produce enriched uranium locally, ultimately feeding their nuclear weapons. I show how internal South African opposition to subjecting its nascent nuclear infrastructure to the emerging global non-proliferation regime manifested itself during that period, with repercussions for the coming decades. Chapter 2 closely examines developments in the South African government’s position on the NPT from the mid-1970s to 1981. It starts with an overview of the emerging South African defence sector and the government’s growing parallel interest in building a nuclear deterrent. In addition, it also deals with the relationship between Pretoria and Washington, particularly analysing the way in which the United States under President Carter pressured South Africa to accede to the NPT and the continued defiance of non-proliferation norms by the apartheid regime. The following Chapter 3 establishes the nexus between South African policies on the NPT and their defiance thereof, and the continued parallel development of nuclear weapons. Drawing on recently declassified documents, I trace the national position of the South African government on NPT accession and the application of IAEA safeguards over the 1980s. Most importantly, the focus lies on domestic decisionmaking and how a small number of people in the South African government decided whether to sign the NPT. This also includes a careful analysis of Pretoria’s relations with the US government under President Ronald Reagan and related exchanges with the IAEA Secretariat under its Director-General Hans Blix, developing in parallel over the period from 1981 to 1988. Chapter 4 traces how South Africa’s position on the NPT evolved during the transition from P. W. Botha to F. W. de Klerk. My concentrated attention here lies on the role played by the South African DFA because the department’s officials were intimately involved in setting up these multilateral talks and, more crucially, were at the forefront of advocating the South African strategy on the NPT internationally. The ensuing discussion reconstructs events chronologically, bringing together the views of the South African, British, American and Soviet officials who dealt with the issue. Chapter 5 engages with the brief period of decision-making in which the nuclear rollback decision was initiated by newly elected President

Outline Of The Book

15

F. W. de Klerk. Set against the winding down of the Cold War in the region and the final stages of the Border War in Angola, I discuss the end of the nuclear weapons programme, showing how the South African strategy on NPT accession changed to incorporate the region in an attempt to ultimately broker a NWFZ in southern Africa. I detail how the apartheid regime, and in particular the DFA officials, revised their strategy to enable de Klerk and his advisors to be able to present signature to the Treaty to domestic opponents as a step worthy of pursuance. I also highlight how President F. W. de Klerk’s newly elected government had to consider and balance international opinion and pressure in the form of sanctions and embargoes. Moreover, I illuminate the need for the government to come to terms with a domestic situation of rising unrest and increased right-wing pressure threatening the reforms initiated by the NP, and how Pretoria finally acceded to the NPT. The ultimate Chapter 6 bridges the gap between the apartheid years and the post-apartheid majority government under African National Congress (ANC) rule. Following the signature to the NPT, the saga of South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme was far from over, as the government still had to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA. I illuminate how the nuclear sector inherited from the apartheid era was scaled down under the first democratic government. In addition, yet another leftover from the apartheid past continued to make headlines well into the second decade of the new millennium: the highly enriched uranium (HEU) in the hands of the South Africans remained an irritating issue from a US non-proliferation policy point of view. By looking at the government’s nuclear policies under ANC majority rule, I reveal that the Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma administrations were not receptive to US incentives to sell South Africa’s remaining HEU to Washington. However, from the US State Department’s perspective, this could have decreased the danger of proliferation. Lastly, the Conclusion provides a summary of the main findings and arguments made. The central argument highlighted here is that revisiting the South African case study of denuclearization in light of newly available archival documents contributes rich texture to any future debate about global nuclear disarmament.

1

The Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry and Relations with the IAEA, 1950–1977

1.1

Into the Cold War: Uranium Mining and Atoms for Peace

During World War II, the South African Prime Minister J. C. Smuts was approached by US officials with a request to start conducting investigations into the uranium deposits of his country. The United States needed uranium ore for domestic demands, namely to accelerate nuclear weapons production. By 1948, studies showed that South Africa possessed this very rare mineral in abundance, as it occurred in almost every gold mine in the Witwatersrand area close to Johannesburg and was also later found in the boreholes of the Free State. Soon after, the South Africans erected uranium mining plants and in 1948 formed the Atomic Energy Board (AEB). Henceforth, all atomic matters became the responsibility of this board as its mandate included oversight of all nuclear-related activities in the country. Thereafter, with technical support from the United States and the United Kingdom, who also provided steel and other indispensable but scarce materials, several plants for mining uranium were constructed in the areas rich in natural uranium.1 For a number of years, the AEB’s focus was almost exclusively on the production and sale of uranium ore and regulatory tasks related to radioactive materials.2 Realizing the opportunity to generate more revenue in this sector, the South Africans increasingly sought to build up their domestic uranium industry. Due to US President Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ programme initiated in 1953,3 they were soon able to tap into sources of cooperation and funding to accumulate the knowledge necessary to set

1 2 3

Newby-Fraser, 1979, p. 5. Ibid., p. 31. Pilat, 2007. For an overview of how the United States promoted the promise of apparently peaceful nuclear technology to other nations and the inherent gamble of the latter being used for non-peaceful purposes, see: Hamblin, 2021, pp. 1–10.

16

1.1 Into The Cold War: Uranium Mining And Atoms For Peace

17

up the domestic basis for nuclear and reactor physics.4 However, even before Eisenhower’s seminal speech in December 1953, US officials had signed a contract with the AEB for the purchase of uranium oxide over an extended period and free of safeguards in return for technical and scientific collaboration benefitting the young AEB. As part of the Atoms for Peace initiative a few years later, then under the so-called ‘Plowshare Program’, the United States entered into a formal ten-year nuclear cooperation agreement with South Africa. This was confined to cooperation for various peaceful uses of nuclear energy subject to safeguards and controls, to make sure that the US assistance did not further any military goals.5 Commercial uranium extraction commenced in 1952, closely followed by the commissioning of four additional uranium mining plants in 1953. Thereafter, production accelerated quickly and in 1959, twenty-six mines existed, feeding seventeen uranium milling plants. The entire output was designated for the Western world’s nuclear armaments programmes, but after 1959, the uranium needs of these countries declined.6 The United States was able to satisfy its uranium demand domestically after the discovery of uranium in the US southwest, and informed the AEB that it would stop buying foreign ore. To absorb the economic impact for suppliers such as South Africa, the United States entered into so-called bilateral ‘stretch-out agreements’, which ran until 1967. The AEB therefore had to find new customers to keep its nascent but growing uranium sector intact. Following the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 and South Africa’s unilateral withdrawal from the Commonwealth a year later, this task became ever more difficult as fewer governments were willing to enter openly into contracts with the regime.7 In the meantime, domestic efforts to advance the growth of the atomic industry accelerated and politicians were keen to support its expansion. Until 1959, the young AEB was mainly endowed with a regulatory function, until on 5 September 1959, the South African Cabinet approved a nuclear research and development programme, which would change the character of the institution in the years to come. Renowned South African scientist A. J. A. Roux became its first research director, and his priorities 4 5

6 7

Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 20–25; and Jaster, 1984, pp. 826–827. See also: Van Wyk, 2009. Van Wyk, 2007, pp. 197–200; Edwards and Hecht, 2010, p. 621. As Elisabeth Roehrlich has shown, the question of sharing nuclear knowledge and the resulting spread of knowhow, which in turn could also be applied to non-peaceful uses, was prominently discussed between Soviet and US officials during the founding negotiations of the IAEA. The Agency’s mandate included inter alia making the benefits of nuclear science available to ‘the power-starved areas of the world’, as per Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ proposal (Roehrlich, 2016, p. 198). Brynard et al., 1988. Hecht, 2011, pp. 81–82.

18

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

included developing a cadre of nuclear scientists and engineers. To achieve this, the AEB started to send employees to selected overseas research institutions for basic nuclear training related to their scientific disciplines.8 From 1960 onwards, senior staff members of the AEB made use of these new opportunities in advanced nuclear facilities in the United States. These measures helped overcome the lack of qualified nuclear scientists for ambitious research projects. Despite the availability of a small pool of scientists by 1959, none of them had undergone the necessary academic training in nuclear physics. Sending a cadre of scientists overseas to gain a wide range of experience seemed the only option:9 In fact, the whole pattern of the Board’s research activities in the early years of the 1960s was an interwoven blend of construction activities, installation of equipment, active research and recruitment and training of staff, and by the end of the first five-year period a substantial range of research projects were already well advanced.10

Ultimately, this training proved instrumental in the establishment of a nuclear industry, especially in the early years of atomic research in the country, when nuclear physics and reactor physics were entirely new fields and the domestic research institutions were not yet in a position to contribute meaningfully.11 1.1.1

The Development of the Nuclear Industry: SAFARI-1

In 1957, following the spirit of ‘Atoms for Peace’ and its Plowshare Program,12 an agreement between the Americans and the South Africans provided for the acquisition of the South African Fundamental Research Installation-1 (SAFARI-1) research reactor to be constructed near Pretoria. Moreover, a contract was signed which stipulated that the highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel for the reactor would be supplied by the United States as well.13 Although South Africa had such rich uranium deposits, it had to import HEU as reactor fuel because at that time it did not possess the domestic capability to enrich uranium. Construction work on South Africa’s first National Nuclear Research Centre at Pelindaba started in 1961, and the water-moderated, high-flux research and test reactor provided by the US firm Allis-Chalmers was erected.14 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 30–31. Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 54–56. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., pp. 8–9. Stumpf, 2011, p. 135; and p. 138. Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 8–9. Van Wyk, 2007, pp. 197–200.

1.1 Into The Cold War: Uranium Mining And Atoms For Peace

19

Figure 1.1 The opening ceremony of the SAFARI-1 research reactor in March 1965. On the far left in the control room is Prime Minister H. F. Verwoerd, next to Minister of Home Affairs ‘Jan’ de Klerk (F. W. de Klerk’s father), and Minister of Mines Jan Haak, behind a smiling Betsie Verwoerd (National Archives, Pretoria). Source: National Archives, Pretoria (South Africa)

A few years later, South African scientists started making use of their first domestic research reactor, the SAFARI-1, which was commissioned in early 1965 and went critical on 18 March 1965, almost a year later than initially scheduled due to problems related to the reactor vessel (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2).15 Despite deteriorating international opinion of South Africa following the consolidation of its discriminating apartheid policies, the cooperation with the United States, Pretoria’s most important ally in the nuclear sector, continued unabated into the Johnson administration. Following the completion of the SAFARI-1 reactor, this relationship was again formalized in 1967 with the renewal of the cooperation agreement between the two states for another ten years, despite earlier signs of 15

Newby-Fraser, 1979, p. 53; Stumpf 1995/96, p. 3.

20

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

Figure 1.2 Prime Minister H. F. Verwoerd welcomes international visitors together with AEB Chairman A. J. A. Roux (centre) at the opening ceremony of the first research reactor (in the background) at Pelindaba, in March 1965 (National Archives, Pretoria). Source: National Archives, Pretoria (South Africa)

misgivings under President John F. Kennedy.16 Thus, the South Africans could for the time being rest assured that HEU supplies would continue to keep SAFARI-1 operating. Nevertheless, early in the process of developing the South African nuclear infrastructure, it became apparent that the supply of fuel, such as HEU for the newly constructed reactor, was of primary concern. The apartheid regime remained dependent on overseas supplies to keep its nascent nuclear industry flourishing. 1.1.2

South Africa and Its Relations with the IAEA

In the late 1950s, South African representatives participated in the eightnation negotiation group that was initially concerned with bringing into 16

Van Wyk, 2007, pp. 197–200.

1.1 Into The Cold War: Uranium Mining And Atoms For Peace

21

practice a global forum managing all things nuclear throughout the world.17 South African delegates took part in this process because of the country’s vast natural deposits of uranium. The eight-nation group officials connected the fact that a country was naturally endowed with vast uranium resources with technological advancement in the nuclear research field. This made South Africa one of the most powerful secondtier nations in the organization, behind the nuclear weapons states,18 providing the country with more leverage in the negotiations than less privileged states could exercise in the future Agency.19 According to Elisabeth Roehrlich, the country followed strategic goals here: South Africa had succeeded in including the production of source materials in the formula for being ‘most advanced’ in the field of nuclear energy. This would guarantee the major uranium producer state South Africa, which could not hope for one of the elected seats given its isolation in the United Nations, quasi-permanent membership on the board.20

As a result of this diplomatic coup, it was no surprise that South Africa became a founding member of the IAEA in June 1957. At the same time, the South Africans used the same arguments concerning their technological advancement and extensive domestic nuclear research and development programme to position themselves as the most advanced state on the African continent. They did this in an attempt to bolster Pretoria’s requests for a permanent seat on the IAEA Board of Governors.21 They were successful in this regard and secured an influential position within the newly founded IAEA, the only international organization in which this increasingly criticized apartheid regime could hope to make a major impact.22 As Roehrlich observed, South Africa’s only feasible chance of being considered for the Board was to focus on the country’s vast uranium deposits, because the members of the General Conference would otherwise never have elected the apartheid state to the Agency’s Board. It therefore had to rely on the formula its diplomats had managed to include in the Agency’s legal statute, namely the production of source material, as a marker of being ‘most advanced’ in the nuclear field.23 As the relationship between the South Africans and the IAEA developed over the second half of the 1950s, it became clear that it was both uneasy and conflictual. This was increasingly the case as more and more newly 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Roehrlich, 2016, p. 200. Hecht, 2006, p. 27. Roehrlich, 2016, pp. 201–202. Ibid., p. 209. Hecht, 2011, p. 80. Hecht, 2006, p. 28. Roehrlich, 2022.

22

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

independent member states from the Global South joined the Agency, countries which for obvious reasons were highly critical of South Africa’s apartheid system and challenged Pretoria’s membership. However, the representatives from South Africa successfully maintained an influential position within the IAEA in the years to come, and with the helpful connivance of Western nations, the South Africans managed to defeat the Non-aligned Movement’s (NAM)24 efforts to deprive them of their Agency credentials. Right from the beginning, these early critical voices against continued South African membership in the Agency,25 which mainly targeted the domestic apartheid legislation, came primarily from Indian, Egyptian and Soviet officials. Despite strong criticism of the IAEA’s politicization by Pretoria’s diplomats, this signalled that the Agency would not remain an apolitical international forum: it became clear that the wider Cold War framework could not be easily separated from the inner workings of the institution. In contrast, South African delegates repeatedly stressed their support for the IAEA’s technical and apolitical character and wanted to maintain the Agency as a purely technical forum.26 The NAM countries in particular exerted pressure within the Agency, and from 1964 onwards, the South Africans embarked on what has been described as a ‘collision course against the normative and legal IAEA framework’.27 As a result, the climate within the IAEA became increasingly hostile towards the South Africans, and twenty nations signed the ‘Declaration on the incompatibility of Apartheid with IAEA membership’ in the mid-1960s. Delegates from the United States provided diplomatic support for South Africa via backchannels and helped fend off these early attempts to get South Africa’s membership suspended. Washington defended Pretoria’s continued Agency membership on grounds of the universality of member rights. Increasingly, the United Kingdom also extended its support to the South Africans within the IAEA.28 1.1.3

The Nuclear Energy–Apartheid Nexus

During the mid-1960s, it became obvious that one key impetus for Pretoria to develop and invest in the nuclear industrial complex was to strengthen the techno-nationalism advocated by the apartheid regime. 24 25

26 27 28

The states that formed the NAM sought an alternative to alignment with one of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. Donald Bell Sole, South Africa’s first representative at the IAEA, recalled in his memoirs the opposition against South African delegates within the Agency (Donald Bell Sole, undated, ‘This above All: Reminiscences of a South African Diplomat’, unpublished manuscript, p. 247). Hecht, 2006, pp. 27–31. Van Wyk, 2015, p. 399. Hecht, 2006, pp. 40–48.

1.1 Into The Cold War: Uranium Mining And Atoms For Peace

23

Therefore, progress on the nuclear scientific front served another function beyond the satisfaction of domestic energy needs (and later the production of HEU for the bombs), namely to uphold and cement the conviction that the Republic could indeed carry out a modern scientific project and further the development of the nuclear industry in the interest of the whole country. This task stood in stark contrast to the underdeveloped rest of the African continent, in Pretoria’s logic. Therefore, apartheid and its separate development doctrine could be justified by invoking the dichotomy of a well-advanced industry in the hands of a small white elite and a backward and non-scientific African other. Gabrielle Hecht and Paul Edwards claim that ‘critical to the apartheid state and its industrial elites was a nationalist, technological history that simultaneously allied South Africa with the West and maintained its exceptionalism [on the African continent]’.29 The uranium industry was perfect for articulating this narrative. Globally, atomic science and technology had assumed centre stage of modernity and became an important means to achieve, also in terms of geopolitics.30 By the mid-1960s, the various factors that encouraged technological development as well as the international isolation of the apartheid state had jointly guided South African scientists into the next phase of nuclear development. It is here that a confluence of factors came to the fore: on the one hand, commercially oriented nuclear research activities, set in motion by the export of South African uranium in the 1950s, and on the other hand, the deterioration of the security situation as perceived by the decision-makers in Pretoria.31 1.1.4.

Aiming High: Plans for Domestic Uranium Enrichment

In the 1960s, the AEB set out to master the next step in the nuclear fuel cycle, namely to enrich processed uranium ore and thus turn it into fissionable material as fuel for nuclear power reactors.32 Coinciding with the return of overseas-trained scientists and engineers to South Africa, which greatly augmented its knowledge base, the AEB almost immediately proposed to pursue two ambitious research projects in parallel to become independent from overseas expertise: the development of an 29 30

31 32

Edwards and Hecht, 2010, p. 621. Van Wyk has called this ‘nucleo-nationalist ambitions’ (Van Wyk, 2015, p. 401). Ibid., p. 621. Hecht and Roehrlich show how having a more developed national nuclear sector brought greater leverage in the talks leading up to the creation of the IAEA and the composition of its Board of Governors. Roehrlich has termed this ‘atomic colonialism’ (Roehrlich, 2016, p. 18), whereas Hecht referred to the same phenomenon as ‘nuclear ontologies’ (Hecht, 2011, pp. 75–76). Van Wyk, 2018, p. 1155. Edwards and Hecht, 2010, p. 623.

24

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

indigenous enrichment process and a reactor concept, using natural uranium as fuel.33 Ultimately, the South African government opted for the first project. It prioritized plans to develop its nascent nuclear infrastructure so that it would be possible to enrich uranium domestically and achieve self-sufficiency concerning fuel supply, which was important due to the growing international isolation of the apartheid regime.34 According to the official AEB account of this time, the reactor project as well as the enrichment project had reached a stage where considerable financial investment was needed to carry on with both projects simultaneously. Given the financial dimensions of the two projects and governmental budget constraints, the Cabinet decided to abandon the reactor project in favour of channelling the available resources into research on uranium enrichment, ultimately aimed at developing an indigenous process.35 The underlying rationale was that South Africa, then one of the most important uranium producers globally, would benefit from the lucrative possibility of increasing the value of natural uranium by enriching it as well as using it as fuel for domestic reactors.36 Thus, the enrichment of uranium was deemed of greater importance for the Republic in the near future than the development of an indigenous reactor concept, as it would enable the South Africans to break free of foreign low-enriched uranium (LEU) and HEU37 sources. What tipped the decision in favour of continuing the exploration of the South African enrichment method was that by late 1967, the feasibility of the so-called vortex-tube enrichment, which resembled the centrifuge enrichment process, had satisfactorily been demonstrated on a laboratory scale. This led to the Cabinet voting in favour of the construction of a pilot plant intended to precede the development of a full-scale commercial enrichment complex sometime in the future.38 Thus from the very beginning, the technical purpose of the pilot plant (Y-plant) was to form the basis for planning a much larger commercial enrichment plant if the research showed that domestic uranium enrichment could be competitive with foreign processes. Therefore, in hindsight, the pilot project was endowed with a twin purpose: while the main task was to produce HEU for the SAFARI-1 research reactor and eventually for the

33 34 35 36 37

38

Von Wielligh and von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 110–111. The latter was called the ‘Pelinduna Project’. Fig, 1999, p. 81. Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 34–35. See also Stumpf, 2011, pp. 138–139. Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 92–93. Highly enriched uranium contains 20 per cent or more U-235; it is therefore considered proliferation sensitive whereas LEU is not. Both are fissionable materials. Low-enriched uranium is mostly used as reactor fuel. Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 92–93; Waldo Stumpf, 2011, pp. 138–139.

1.2 NPT’s Article IV & South Africa’s Position on Treaty

25

weapons programme that took off a little later, the second objective was to test-drive the technology of the vortex tube enrichment process that South African scientists were investigating at that time.39 Shortly thereafter, on 20 July 1970, Prime Minister B. J. Vorster informed the world that South African scientists had developed a process to produce HEU. He elucidated that a pilot plant would be built to prove the process beyond a laboratory scale, pointing out that the government had plans to ultimately build a much larger commercial enrichment plant. The reason for this, Vorster claimed, was to add value to locally mined uranium and to save money on having it otherwise enriched overseas.40 At the same time, Vorster said that his government would use these new technologies for peaceful purposes only and would be open to discussing a possible signature to the NPT with interested parties.41 However, in the wake of Vorster’s announcement, Pretoria’s continued unwillingness to accede to the NPT increasingly proved a conundrum for South Africa’s Western partners.42 Following Vorster’s announcement, in November 1970, the Uranium Enrichment Cooperation of South Africa (UCOR) was founded, and A. J. A. Roux became its chairman. The scientists of the AEB, who had previously worked on uranium enrichment, started working for the new company, but the two organizations retained a high level of cooperation, not least because their premises were adjacent to each other. Moreover, the construction of the pilot Y-plant at Valindaba began in August 1971, exactly a year after Vorster’s speech.43 Characteristic of UCOR’s first years of existence was the construction of the pilot enrichment plant, which became operational in May 1975. Pretoria announced that thanks to the operation of this plant, UCOR would soon be able to market uranium internationally for a third of the US price. The South Africans began looking for buyers on a global scale.44 1.2

The NPT’s Article IV and South Africa’s Position on the Treaty

By the mid-1960s, the number of nuclear weapons states had increased to five and there were fears that dozens more would appear. The international community perceived the fundamental need to prevent any

39 40 41 42 43 44

Stumpf, 2011, pp. 138–139; Van Wyk, 2007, pp. 197–200. Fig, 2005, p. 31. Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 91–92; p. 95. The full speech in Parliament by Vorster on 20 July 1970 was given in English for the benefit of foreign visitors and journalists. Van Wyk, 2018, p. 1155. Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 103–104. Ibid., pp. 91–92; 95.

26

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

further spread and negotiated an international treaty that curbed nuclear proliferation on a global scale.45 The NPT, which became open to signature for IAEA member states in 1968, reiterated and strengthened the IAEA’s authority and required that all states should accept and apply international safeguards to all its nuclear activities.46 From Pretoria’s point of view, the most important of the eleven articles of the NPT was Article IV, as it regulated the exchange of nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes among the signatories of the Treaty. Pretoria’s leaders were overly concerned that they would not receive the same treatment as other IAEA member states under this article, in part due to the international criticism of apartheid. Article IV affirms that the benefits of peaceful applications of nuclear technology, including any technological by-products which may be derived by nuclear-weapons States from the development of nuclear explosive devices, should be available for peaceful purposes to all Parties to the Treaty, whether nuclear-weapon or non-nuclear-weapons States. [Hence, all parties are entitled to] participate in the fullest possible exchange of scientific information for, and to contribute alone or in co-operation with other States to, the further development of the applications of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.47

From the very beginning of the discussions that led to the conclusion of the NPT, however, representatives of the non-nuclear-weapon states pointed out that Article IV provided no absolute guarantee that the benefits of atomic research and nuclear energy would become available to all states equally.48 Such overtures made South African delegates suspicious as to whether they could reap the benefits of nuclear cooperation, which from their perspective had to offset the reduced domestic nuclear sovereignty that followed NPT accession. By the time the Treaty entered into force on 5 March 1970, South African scientists had already achieved much domestic progress and a large research and development programme was under way. They therefore wanted to minimize external oversight of their nuclear industry, a goal contrary to the spirit of the NPT. Moreover, the imposition of IAEA safeguards on atomic installations worried Pretoria officials, who claimed that commercial secrets would leak and find their way to competitors, which would ultimately affect the worldwide marketability of South African uranium.49 45 46 47 48 49

Roehrlich, 2022, pp. 107–129. For another in-depth account, see also: Popp et al., 2017. Van Wyk, 2015, pp. 399–400. Shaker, 1980, p. 273. Ibid., p. 278. Hecht, 2006, p. 42.

1.3 ‘Atoms for Peace’ Beneficiary to Global Nuclear Actor

27

Following the inception of the NPT in 1968, the South African government challenged the emerging nuclear order from the outset by foregoing signature to the Treaty and not placing crucial parts of its nuclear infrastructure under IAEA safeguards. South Africa’s persistent refusal to sign the NPT encountered much international criticism within the IAEA in the 1970s. This effectively put the country’s nuclear installations beyond the reach of the new IAEA safeguards regime, except SAFARI-1, which fell under a trilateral US–IAEA–South African safeguards agreement.50 All things considered, Pretoria’s leaders maintained the view that there was not much to gain under the new Treaty. With the rise of international criticism targeting the apartheid regime’s racial policies, it was clear that resistance to nuclear technology sharing with South Africa would be extremely difficult to overcome. Yet well into the 1970s, secret Western support was still forthcoming. It can thus be argued that it was unnecessary for the South Africans to sign the NPT for the sake of Article IV benefits, because enough cooperation was available in this period. 1.3

From ‘Atoms for Peace’ Beneficiary to a Global Nuclear Actor

During the early years of the atomic sector in South Africa, collaboration and access to foreign technology was mostly obtained through the United States and the United Kingdom. Right from the late 1950s and early 1960s, this enabled local scientists to develop their own expertise via research trips to US and European nuclear installations.51 However, following the rise of voluntary embargoes and later the binding sanctions that started to hit in the 1970s, the South African nuclear industry was forced to become increasingly self-reliant. The industry nonetheless still had to import many items necessary to progress with their ambitious plans, and South African scientists therefore established secret networks with links abroad to obtain the much-needed supplies. The use of these backchannels enabled them to alleviate the impact of sanctions and to

50

51

The SAFARI-1 research reactor was initially under a bilateral safeguards agreement with the United States from March 1965, because back then the IAEA did not yet have a model agreement and the NPT had not yet entered into force. It was only in late 1965 that the IAEA approved a model agreement (INFCIRC/66) and the US administration was able to transfer oversight of the reactor to the Agency eleven days later (Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 109–110). For an additional account, see: Olli Heinonen, 2016, p. 148. Fuhrmann 2012, pp. 158–159.

28

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

secure dual-use equipment such as machine tools and furnaces for their nascent industry.52 From the very beginning, these links with European governments also included another dimension that went beyond the training provided for South African scientists. Starting in the late 1950s, the South African authorities regularly sent delegations of AEB representatives all over Europe to explore the demand for uranium on the continent and to forge relationships with potential customers. These international connections proved incredibly useful in the developmental stages of the South African nuclear industry, both in terms of providing a constant stream of revenue as well as offering a source of scientific know-how and technology. A. J. A. Roux, head of the AEB, made this point when he acknowledged in 1976 that the early nuclear assistance given by the Americans especially, referring to overseas training of South African scientists, had proved indispensable.53 Indeed, a major characteristic of the US–South African relationship was that Washington considered the apartheid regime to be an important ally during the Cold War. However, especially after P. W. Botha’s rise to power, domestic racial policies in South Africa had a marked effect on the mutual relationship, turning US domestic opinion increasingly against the apartheid state. Nonetheless, under successive US presidents, the view that South Africa was strategically important for the West still prevailed in Washington’s decision-making circles. This encompassed matters such as trade, cooperation and commercial partnerships, clearly showing that Cold War and military interests ranked high in various US administrations during the 1960s and 1970s.54 1.3.1

A Transnational Nuclear Network: German and French Connections

Right from the early planning stages, leading officials in the South African nuclear energy circles realized that initiating large-scale projects would not be possible without considerable foreign investment. In that regard, the relationship between South Africa and Germany is of importance, because a number of German firms and research institutions from the energy sector entertained relations with their counterparts in the apartheid regime. This dated back to the 1960s and included most prominently the Steinkohlen-Elektrizitäts AG (STEAG) based in 52 53 54

Fig, 2005, p. 47. Fig, 1999, p. 80. Rabinowitz 2014, pp. 107–109.

1.3 ‘Atoms for Peace’ Beneficiary to Global Nuclear Actor

29

Essen, the Gesellschaft für Kernforschung (GfK) in Karlsruhe and the Kraftwerk Union (KWU) in Duisburg. At the same time South African energy officials reached out to the French atomic industry as well, trying to find the financially most promising option offered by their European partners. This included careful consideration of what technology was needed and what was possible to obtain in light of the deteriorating international climate towards the apartheid regime, which greatly limited the available options and the will of potential partners to act in support of Pretoria. Secret means of technology exchange became one important way to obtain nuclear know-how.55 By the mid-1970s, the South African scientists had advanced quickly and made progress towards enriching uranium domestically. With the Y-plant scheduled to become fully operational towards the end of the 1970s, they set out to build a much bigger plant on a commercial scale. The Z-plant, as it became known, was intended to produce the LEU needed for a planned nuclear power station once it began producing nuclear energy at some point in the 1980s.56 In order to find out if the South African enrichment process was suitable for use in such a largescale plant, coupled with the twin objective of convincing possible overseas partners to invest in such an enterprise, UCOR entered into feasibility studies with overseas energy companies, some of which remained secret.57 To ensure progress and financial support, UCOR officials were also involved in discussions with the French Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA) regarding a partnership subject to a formal intergovernmental agreement. This included joint feasibility studies of the new enrichment process, with a view to using this method in the enrichment plant, provided it was competitive with other processes available at the time, such as the gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment method used by the CEA. Ultimately, this endeavour resulted in the building of a large commercial enrichment plant in South Africa, according to their ambitious plans. Adopting a long-term view, AEB officials also hoped to secure indispensable foreign investment for the construction of the plant, which would use the UCOR process provided it proved competitive. On the other hand, the South Africans would share their knowledge with the CEA in return for political protection of the whole endeavour. However, about a year later in 1971, the French government indicated to Pretoria that it would not conclude an agreement for the joint 55 56 57

Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, pp. 312–315. Stumpf, 2011, pp. 138–139. Helmut Völcker (STEAG), personal correspondence, September 2019, via email.

30

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

exploration of the South African enrichment process, as it had decided to join its European partners in the exploration of another enrichment option based on gaseous diffusion, as pursued by the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM). This precluded any collaboration between the French nuclear industry and Pretoria at that stage, because it would have required Paris to follow two different enrichment processes. The decision to abandon cooperation with the South Africans was also influenced by political considerations, because if French authorities had agreed to a joint endeavour, a large-scale enrichment plant would most likely have been erected in South Africa. Being seen to be in close cooperation with the apartheid state would have caused a setback to France’s relations with its former colonies, now independent nations, on the African continent.58 The French thus proved unwilling to collaborate, but the German channel pursued in parallel by the South Africans proved initially more responsive, as STEAG was generally willing to engage in joint feasibility studies, despite an apparent lack of political will in Bonn to support the project. STEAG’s interest in engaging in joint feasibility studies with UCOR revolved around the chance to prove the viability of its process under concrete conditions beyond a laboratory scale.59 Ultimately, the more promising of the two processes would be used in any future plant to be built in South Africa. While STEAG and the GfK were eager to further develop and refine their enrichment process in a joint study with the AEB, the German government was hesitant and played for time.60 Despite these limitations, the joint comparative studies went ahead and upon conclusion in 1974, the results showed that there was not much difference between the two processes. This was enough for UCOR to go ahead unilaterally. The performance data were made available to the Germans, but the sensitive data of the separative elements in the UCOR process were withheld and treated as a black box. This was because STEAG’s officials would have needed to sign a declaration of secrecy to access the sensitive data, but they were unable to do so due to political reasons. 61 The decision by UCOR to proceed unilaterally was probably also influenced by the likelihood of resistance within the German Cabinet, so that the AEB leadership opted for the local process because its availability was not subject to changing political liabilities. 58 59 60 61

Van Wyk, 2018, pp. 1156–1157. Helmut Völcker (STEAG), personal correspondence, September 2019, via email. Romberg, 2020, pp. 240–242. Helmut Völcker (STEAG), personal correspondence, September 2019, via email.

1.3 ‘Atoms for Peace’ Beneficiary to Global Nuclear Actor

1.3.2

31

The Z-Plant in Need of Foreign Investment: Talks with STEAG and the CEA

With the pilot plant almost fully completed by the mid-1970s, and having made general progress in upgrading the nuclear energy sector with the help of foreign cooperation, South African energy officials aimed higher and set out to make financially lucrative use of the advanced state of their domestic nuclear infrastructure. This included marketing the gaseous diffusion enrichment process they claimed to have discovered. By early 1975, sufficient technical progress had been achieved to enter into concrete discussions on a large-scale enrichment plant with potential investment partners.62 As a first step, the goal was to advance the secret discussions with the CEA and STEAG officials and secure a preliminary agreement to jointly build a commercial plant, not to merely conduct feasibility studies as a few years before. Therefore, presenting UCOR’s enrichment method at a prominent venue was perceived as crucial for obtaining the much-needed financial investment from interested partners. The European Nuclear Conference taking place in Paris in April 1975 presented the perfect venue. In the event, a dual approach was pursued by the South African delegates in the French capital: scientific results were shared in academic circles and at the same time efforts were made to interest possible partners in the proposal for a large-scale nuclear project which the South Africans could not financially manage alone. During the conference, AEB Chairman Roux delivered a paper called ‘Uranium Enrichment in South Africa’, which he claimed lifted the veil on the process slightly. In particular, regarding the information he carefully made available to the public, Roux remarked that: ‘we had to adopt a cautious approach in the paper so that we revealed just enough about the process to arouse interest and secure a place for South Africa on the commercial enrichment front without revealing our valuable secrets and reducing our advantage’.63 After the official part of the conference, Roux and Wally Grant, Chairman of UCOR, continued to hold a series of secret meetings with representatives of STEAG and the CEA. These talks in 1975 concerned financial investment for the large-scale enrichment plant envisioned by the South Africans, as they hoped that STEAG would provide the much-needed foreign investment whereas

62 63

Newby-Fraser, 1979, p. 105. ‘The South African Enrichment Process and Reaction from overseas before and at the European Nuclear Conference, Paris, held from 21 to 25 April, 1975’, 14 May 1975, PV476, File: 1/7/13/1/1, Archive for Contemporary Affairs (hereafter ARCA).

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Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

UCOR would contribute the necessary technology.64 Like STEAG, the CEA had earlier been similarly involved in determining the quality of the South African enrichment process. Already in February 1974, the CEA and AEB/UCOR had entered into an agreement that led to a joint feasibility study on the prospects offered by a large industrial application of UCOR’s uranium enrichment process. The results of this study were passed on in February 1975 by the CEA to AEB/UCOR.65 The two sides agreed that further cooperation would have to take place in absolute secrecy, as had been the case in the past. This secrecy could hardly be maintained if STEAG were to partake in the construction of a large-scale enrichment plant in South Africa, because the UCOR scientists would then eventually have to disclose the secret cooperation of another potential partner to them, namely the CEA.66 By way of summarizing the meetings with the German and French delegations, A. J. A. Roux concluded that on the one hand, STEAG had declared that it was prepared to take up the anticipated stake of 20 per cent in the planned company ‘Uranium International’, subject to certain conditions, which still had to be specified. On the other hand, the French CEA had made it repeatedly clear that ‘STEAG’s participation remained a fly in the ointment’67 and that for competitive reasons, any deal involving STEAG and a possible trickle-down of CEA’s knowledge to its German competitor, could end the CEA’s involvement. In any case, at that point in late May 1975, both proposals still lacked approval by the French and German governments, which was a precondition for Pretoria’s officials to enter into any cooperation on the future Z-plant, in order to alleviate fears that either the CEA or STEAG would not fulfil their obligations in the costly endeavour. As he was unsure what to make of these exchanges with the two parties, Roux eventually recommended that UCOR should wait for a revised STEAG proposal and, if this were not acceptable, then enter into further negotiations with the CEA.68 Interestingly, newly obtained archival documents show that the discussions between the three potential partners went way beyond exploring the practicability of a commercial enrichment plant, as had been officially 64 65

66

67 68

Ibid. Ibid., Appendix B, 2 April 1975. In addition, as Van Wyk has shown, French and South African officials had already considered a formal intergovernmental agreement to jointly exploit the newly developed South African uranium enrichment process in 1971. However, this did not materialize at that point (Van Wyk, 2018, p. 1156). ‘The South African Enrichment Process and Reaction from overseas before and at the European Nuclear Conference, Paris, held from 21 to 25 April, 1975’, 14 May 1975, PV476, File: 1/7/13/1/1, Appendix B, 2 April 1975, ARCA. Ibid. Ibid.

1.3 ‘Atoms for Peace’ Beneficiary to Global Nuclear Actor

33

acknowledged by their governments. Instead, UCOR and STEAG went as far as producing a detailed draft agreement laying out the risks and financial benefits, such as the price for which STEAG could eventually purchase enriched uranium from the new plant.69 However, in the absence of support (and commitment) from STEAG, the South Africans nevertheless decided in 1975 to build a new enrichment plant with an estimated capacity of five million separative work units (SWU) per annum, although they then drastically reduced the project due to the lack of foreign capital. In the end, the South Africans settled with building a semi-commercial enrichment plant with 300.000 SWU/year, less than 10 per cent of the originally planned capacity, but still a size deemed sufficient to provide enough LEU for the two Koeberg reactors under construction. Hence, the plant was intended to serve only domestic purposes.70 It is quite striking that the official AEB account did not reveal how the lack of a supporting industry to build such a plant was overcome, although this had been regarded as a huge obstacle earlier. Even with a smaller plant, which meant less financial investment, the principal technological challenges remained the same, albeit on a much reduced scale. Instead, South African accounts based on personal recollections usually portray their industry as having already been competent enough in 1979 to produce these vital components.71 This was a gross simplification of the situation, because many parts of the Z-Plant had to be imported from foreign suppliers at high cost as the erection of the plant commenced. Generally, the main driver behind the development of a domestic nuclear infrastructure was to achieve a level of independence from foreign sources of support, in particular enriched uranium. After about five years of running the research reactor SAFARI-1 at full power, the political climate had worsened from South Africa’s perspective and it was decided to reduce the power output of the reactor to 5 MW (instead of 20 MW) in order to save fuel. Due to international opposition towards the apartheid state’s racial policies, the uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel from allies in the Western world could then no longer be taken for granted, least of all dual-use technology. However, running the reactor at reduced capacity impacted the speed and scope of the ongoing research projects carried out by the AEB.72 69

70 71 72

‘The South African Enrichment Process and Reaction from overseas before and at the European Nuclear Conference, Paris, held from 21 to 25 April, 1975’, 14 May 1975, PV476, File: 1/7/13/1/1, Appendix A, 21 April 1975, ARCA. Albright and Stricker, 2016, pp. 60–61. Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 111–113. Ibid., pp. 54–55.

34

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

1.3.3

The Koeberg Power Reactors and the Tender Process

What was still missing from the South African nuclear landscape was a nuclear reactor to produce energy, and with the AEB’s earlier reactor project shelved in favour of the enrichment plans, there was no chance of a domestic solution to fill this lacuna. Therefore, parallel to building the commercial enrichment plant, the South Africans tried to obtain a power reactor for electricity production to meet the country’s increasing energy demands. However, South Africa lacked the necessary industrial prowess to build such a reactor, in terms of capable people and of a relevant industrial base. Carrying out such a sophisticated project was clearly beyond the capacity of the domestic nuclear sector, and an international tender was set up. Therefore, once more during the 1970s, German– French competition over nuclear cooperation with the apartheid state flared up, following the AEB’s announcement of a tender for its planned nuclear power station at the Atlantic Ocean north of Cape Town, near a town called Koeberg. Initially, three shortlisted consortia submitted bids for the contract, but a Dutch–US–Swiss group failed to provide the requested governmental guarantees and dropped out. This left only two parties in contention: the German Kraftwerk Union (KWU) and a French-led consortium of Framatome-Alsthom-Spie-Batignolles.73 It was generally perceived that the stronger of the two bids came from the German firm KWU. However, to export nuclear reactors to the apartheid regime, the German government had to consider a multitude of factors including its commitments as an NPT signatory as well as financial aspects, not to mention political repercussions arising from cooperation with the South Africans. In contrast, the French consortium Framatome-Alsthom-Spie-Batignolles, which in 1977 eventually won the tender, was politically backed by the French government, as Paris was not then a signatory of the NPT. KWU officials were left to lament the lack of political support from the German government.74 While in 1975 French officials did not manage to conclude a deal with Brazil, to the benefit of West German energy firms who eventually won the contract to build reactors,75 the French nuclear complex achieved its goal in South Africa: it emerged as the successful party and constructed the Koeberg power plant.76 Regarding the overall support from Bonn for KWU’s bid, Romberg argues that in the case of the Koeberg tender, the German government 73 74 75 76

Fig, 1999, pp. 91–93. Helmut Völcker (STEAG), email message to author, September 2019. Patti, 2022, pp. 81–95. Adamson, 2022, pp. 334–335.

1.3 ‘Atoms for Peace’ Beneficiary to Global Nuclear Actor

35

did not really go out of its way to support the application. While it rather reluctantly provided an export credit guarantee for KWU in 1975, it was generally too constrained by domestic and international opposition to apartheid, which prevented substantial nuclear cooperation with the government in Pretoria. The leadership in Bonn did not want to be seen as openly cooperating with South Africa on a governmental level. Therefore, when the tender was awarded to the French consortium, the German government was apparently not too disappointed that KWU’s bid had been unsuccessful.77 It was widely believed that the decision between the only two contenders left would be made on technical grounds, albeit subject to possible political considerations. Apparently, scientists from the Electricity Supply Commission (ESKOM) in South Africa, who had visited Germany in April 1975, were convinced that the German offer had an edge over the French bid regarding its technical merits, whereas the French consortium provided slightly better financial conditions. However, ESKOM scientists argued that this would be outweighed by Germany’s firm reputation of being able to deliver on a due date, unlike the French who had earlier failed to supply Iran with a reactor on time.78 Given the underlying political considerations, it was concluded that ‘South Africa would hesitate to put even more eggs into the single French basket than that basket already holds’ and the government as well as ESKOM were acutely aware of the need for ‘diversification in the interest of South Africa’s long-term future’.79 This very same argument was a valid one in view of threats emanating from the French side that there could be cuts in the provision of French armaments if the Koeberg contract were not awarded to the French consortium. However, according to the South Africans, the French arms industry would sell its weapons regardless of the outcome of the Koeberg tender, as long as it was in their financial interest to continue with weapons sales. Therefore, ‘threats of the nature referred to should be taken as a fundamental and indeed legitimate aspect of French negotiating techniques’.80 This indicated that a whole web of factors had to be considered and that it was not just technical merits that tipped the decision-making scales. With a view to the political developments in both countries, the South African side forecast that after the 1978 French general election a 77 78

79 80

Romberg, 2020, pp. 258–259; and p. 272. Report, ‘Reactions in Germany to the award of the Koeberg Contract to FramatomeAlsthom-Spie-Batignolles’, 17–19 June 1975, file PV528 MB 3/2/2 Vol. 29, Minster of Foreign Affairs, Visit to Foreign Countries, ARCA. Ibid. Ibid.

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Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

Socialist–Communist coalition would come to power, which harboured the danger of the new government rescinding the guarantees and undertakings provided by the present French government. In Germany, on the contrary, an election was scheduled for autumn 1976, but this was not seen as a threat. It seemed likely that the present guarantees given by the incumbent administration would be upheld if it were re-elected. Furthermore, if the opposition parties emerged victorious, a new government would most likely be even more favourably disposed towards South Africa. In this scenario, with a conservative CDU/CSU coalition in power, the risk of Bonn’s government reneging on existing contracts was virtually non-existent. In the end, however, despite the better technical and political options inherent in the KWU offer, the South African government decided to award the tender to Framatome, which apparently could only provide a slightly better financial package.81 It is still unclear what precisely influenced this decision, but given the longstanding relationship encompassing the nuclear-military nexus between Paris and Pretoria, it seems likely that the motives are hidden somewhere in the lesser-known areas of this connection. At a time when multilateral export control mechanisms such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the Zangger Committee were not yet fully established and, thus, international non-proliferation policies were still relatively weak, the French nuclear industry, and foremost the CEA, aimed at securing lucrative overseas contracts.82 1.4

Towards the Late 1970s: South Africa Finds Itself Alone – But Well-Equipped!

From the early 1970s, the South Africans tried to find partners to finance a joint commercial-scale uranium enrichment plant. This included encounters with delegations from France, Germany, Italy and Japan who were interested in entering into lucrative deals to obtain enriched uranium from South Africa in return.83 The confluence of attempts to establish UCOR as an important global supplier of enriched uranium 81 82

83

Ibid. Sarkar, 2020, p. 317. For more information on the importance of France for the apartheid regime as a source of weapons, see also van Vuuren, 2017, pp. 209–256. Konieczna claims that South African sources suggest that the CEA’s secret consultancy to UCOR/AEB could have been linked to the attribution of the tender to the Framatome consortium (Konieczna, 2021, p. 11). ‘Letter to Cesidio Guazzaroni from Carlo Salvetti’, 4 April 1972, Comitato Nazionale per L’Energia Nucleare (CNEN). I am indebted to Dr Giordana Pulcini (Roma Tre University) for sharing and translating this document. Towards the late 1970s, attempts were made to enter into cooperation with Brazil (Patti, 2018, pp. 1–17).

1.4 South Africa Finds Itself Alone – but Well-Equipped!

37

fuel and growing international criticism of the apartheid regime warrants further scholarly enquiry in the future. As discussed earlier in this chapter, South African atomic scientists and engineers won support internationally, despite the fact that the overall global political climate for the apartheid regime deteriorated rapidly in the wake of the Soweto riots in 1976. This hindered Western countries from entering into long-term cooperation contracts with South Africa.84 However, over the years, the AEB did not solely rely on its own industrial base. It was later acknowledged during internal discussions that foreign sources were indeed still forthcoming with supplies of technological expertise via backchannels, despite embargoes to prevent the apartheid state from acquiring these items.85 While it would be speculation to name one or several companies as possible suppliers, there is reason to believe that the deals between the CEA and UCOR discussed above were eventually carried out, at least to some degree.86 This brings French firms operating in the nuclear-energy nexus into the spotlight, and future research to disentangle the military-atomic relations between Paris and Pretoria will be of crucial importance. Indeed, as Hecht has observed, ‘the South African uranium industry operated in a space delineated by entanglements between the politics of market capitalism and those of global Cold War’.87 In fact, the relations with the apartheid regime served Western states equally well, as uranium continued to flow north long after sanctions and embargoes were introduced and concrete evidence of Pretoria’s nuclear weapons programme had surfaced. Moreover, this is a prime example of how European companies, especially of German and French origin, were eager to enter into close cooperation with the apartheid regime, thereby undermining international efforts to prevent South Africa from becoming a nuclear weapons state. And while the South Africans had to limit their plans of commercializing the enrichment of uranium in the late 1970s due to a lack of foreign capital, they nevertheless produced enough HEU for strategic-military purposes. In fact, the earlier cooperation and joint studies with French and German partners had given UCOR’s scientists

84 85

86

87

Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 111–113. ‘Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant of the AEC: Resolution against South Africa at the General Conference of the IAEA, September 23–29, 1985’, 7 October 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/3, ARCA. Newly unearthed correspondence records between Pretoria and Paris reveal that French firms continued cooperating with South Africa, despite changes of government in France (Konieczna, 2021, pp. 297–299). Hecht, 2011, p. 91.

38

Development of Pretoria’s Nuclear Industry, 1950–1977

confidence and enabled them to build elaborate nuclear infrastructure, which served their domestic purposes until the end of apartheid. The perceived threat resulting from the deterioration of the regional security situation in the wake of the crumbling of the Portuguese colonial empire and Pretoria’s pariah status necessitated a change of strategy, so that open collaboration in the nuclear sector was replaced by secret cooperation with those firms still willing to engage with the South Africans. After entering the international scene as an important supplier of the uranium ore needed by the United Kingdom and the United States to cater for their domestic demands, the development of the South African nuclear energy sector for peaceful purposes was for years bolstered by Western cooperation.88 However, during the 1970s, after South African scientists had established solid domestic nuclear infrastructure, there was a marked shift towards more sophisticated plans including the mastering of the front-end nuclear fuel cycle, not least because enriching uranium seemed a major potential source of income at that time.89 Progress to this end would also free South Africa from the dwindling international options for nuclear cooperation and fuel deliveries from overseas. Thus, under the utmost secrecy, the South African government and its scientists worked towards obtaining the necessary atomic infrastructure. This formed the basis for the nuclear weapons programme that commenced in the second half of the 1970s. Ultimately, however, while almost desperately seeking overseas cooperation and access to global markets during the 1960s and 1970s, the growing international opposition to apartheid prevented the regime’s establishment as an important nuclear fuel supplier on the world market. South African defiance of non-proliferation norms following the inception of the NPT and the resulting ambiguity around their nuclear capabilities, led the apartheid regime to become increasingly cut off from sources of technology and international cooperation. Moreover, criticism in the form of mandatory sanctions and embargoes against South Africa soon followed because of Pretoria’s continuous intransigence and refusal to join the NPT regime, and the overall apartheid policies. From the 1970s onwards, the issue of South Africa’s nuclear capabilities was a constant feature on IAEA General Conference agendas. On an international scale, criticism and sanctions against South Africa accelerated, resulting in the country losing its seat on the Board of Governors of the Agency in 1976. The Board decided a year later (with 19 votes in favour, 88 89

Newby-Fraser, 1979, pp. 20–25; see also Jaster, 1984, pp. 826–827. Internationally, the price of uranium had quintupled in the first half of the 1970s (Christie, 1984, p. 173).

1.4 South Africa Finds Itself Alone – but Well-Equipped!

39

12 against and Chile and Japan abstaining) that Egypt would take the seat as the ‘most advanced’ member state on the African continent. While the South African nuclear industry in practice far outmatched Egypt’s atomic sector, this move signalled a clear break with the IAEA’s earlier handling of the South African case. Western attempts for the IAEA Board to come to a traditional consensus decision sympathetic to South Africa and thus to prevent a vote going against the country had clearly failed.90 Added to this downward spiral in mutual relations was the 1979 decision of the General Conference to reject South Africa’s credentials, denying it the right to attend. While Western European member states in tandem with the United States supported South Africa’s case, the developing countries and the Eastern bloc sided with Egypt.91

90

Roehrlich, 2022, pp. 159–165.

91

Ibid., and Van Wyk, 2015, pp. 400–403.

2

Towards Nuclear Weapons – Away from Safeguards The NPT Position, 1977–1981

2.1

Into the 1970s: The Growth of the South African Defence Sector

Following World War II, the South African general election of 1948 saw the NP triumph over the United Party led by Jan Smuts. The incoming government could rely on a nascent armaments industry. This sector had earlier produced armoured cars, explosives, artillery pieces, rifles and ammunition as logistical support for the Allied forces in World War II. After the war, production levels were scaled down but capabilities were retained, partly to continue the manufacture of explosives and propellants deemed crucial for the local mining industry. The initial plan was that the overseas procurement of selected items would complement domestic production when the need arose.1 By the mid1950s, one of the aims of those responsible for long-term planning in the defence sector was a development programme for the creation of a wide range of facilities to end the reliance of the South African defence sector on foreign sources of support and innovation. This, it was argued, could help prevent a potentially disastrous dependence on outside know-how should the international climate turn to South Africa’s disadvantage.2 Most of the development in the armaments sector since the early 1960s can therefore be interpreted as a direct reaction to the increasingly hostile climate and the resulting punitive measures at the UN, such as the 1963 voluntary arms embargo. Those responsible for strategic decisions in the defence sector realized that even voluntary embargoes could negatively affect supply chains and cooperation, ultimately to Pretoria’s detriment. Thus, from the mid1960s, there was a drive towards a consolidation of the armaments sector in South Africa in order to adapt to a new era characterized by dwindling options for international cooperation. After taking over the 1 2

Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 46–47. Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, pp. 28–29.

40

2.1 The Growth of the South African Defence Sector

41

defence portfolio in 1966, P. W. Botha, a staunch advocate of apartheid who had risen through the ranks of the NP, almost immediately placed the needs of the defence industry higher than his predecessors had ever done. He advocated for a reorganization of the armed forces, pushing for major upgrades and a complete restructuring of the supporting industry. Over the second half of the 1960s, until the early 1970s, this resulted in a decisive growth of the local armament sector and the supporting industry.3 The restructuring of the defence and armament industry thus enjoyed the highest priority, especially the setting up of a network of subsidiary companies to contribute to local manufacturing. The aim was to achieve a higher level of self-sufficiency in the continued supply of up-to-date weaponry for the SADF,4 which in turn was intended to empower domestic arms producers.5 These decisions were influenced by the security situation as seen from a South African point of view. Apartheid leaders started to feel seriously threatened as their country gradually became engrossed in the ongoing liberation wars in southern Africa. Hendrik Samuels, former chairman of the Armaments Board, acknowledged years later that these activities must be viewed as congruent with the overall approach the South African regime took to secure its position in the region. If a decision could help the survival of the country and ensure its longevity, he was prepared to go ahead ‘[…] even if the generally accepted rules of the outside world had to be changed to achieve the objective’.6 This also applied to procurement patterns from the nuclear sector, in which secrecy was key. Indeed, the problems the South Africans faced in developing their nuclear infrastructure mirrored the challenges encountered when they set out to modernize and bolster their defence forces. The increased sanctions limited the options for acquiring military technology and led to the setting up of clandestine channels for the procurement of weaponry needed in the ongoing Border War in southern Angola. The birth of the military nuclear programme in the 1970s strikingly brings to the fore how the security considerations of the white-minority regime with regard to regional conflicts shaped the defence policies of the government, ultimately leading to a nuclear weapons programme.

3 4 5 6

Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, pp. 44–46; and pp. 56–58; see also Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 47–48. Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, pp. 73–74. Ibid., pp. 64–65. Ibid., p. 66.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

2.1.1

The Regional Security Situation and the South African Defence Sector

The so-called Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 ushered in the demise of Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and Mozambique. With the end of what apartheid’s leaders had long perceived as a buffer zone made up of white-minority-ruled regimes in southern Africa, the security situation from a South African point of view changed tremendously. Jamie Miller shows how officials in the South African government, who were closely aligned to President Vorster, advocated détente policies towards Pretoria’s neighbouring states in the southern African region, a strategy aimed at showing that apartheid was able to coexist alongside Africanmajority rule. However, there were other factions in the South African regime who rallied behind then Defence Minister P. W. Botha, who perceived the increased Soviet support for African liberation movements as a threat to the survival of the Afrikaner state.7 A ‘total onslaught’8 was said to be facing the white-minority state, which could only be countered by a heavily subsidized defence force to secure the regime’s survival.9 Part of the South African government’s objective10 was to prevent hostile regimes from coming into or remaining in power in the southern African region. Therefore, the South Africans meddled in newly independent Angola’s internal affairs by supporting the anti-communist liberation groups National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA). This support included clandestine border crossings to prevent the Soviet-backed Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) from establishing itself as the main liberation movement before the first election after independence. Following the rapid advance of the SADF towards Luanda in the second half of 1975, Cuban and Soviet support for the MPLA changed the situation on the battlefield. Subsequent political considerations led to the withdrawal by the South Africans from Angola in January 1976, 7

8

9 10

Miller, 2016, p. 11. For a general account of the crumbling of the Portuguese regime and its impact on apartheid South Africa, see Miller, 2012, pp. 183–204; and Telepneva, 2022. The ‘total onslaught’ scenario was coined by P. W. Botha as Minister of Defence and other military strategists in the mid-1970s, and it related to the anti-apartheid hostilities emanating from African nationalist movements. These were believed to be ‘[…] merely a tool of a communist “total onslaught” aimed at the riches and strategic position of South Africa’. (Ibid.). With regard to the impact on the nuclear weapons development, see Van Wyk, 2010b, pp. 563–567. Alden, 1996, pp. 51–52. As Miller showed, this was rather the Defence Ministry’s agenda carried out by the SADF and supported by P. W. Botha, then still as Minister of Defence (Miller, 2013, pp. 4–33).

2.1 The Growth of the South African Defence Sector

43

effectively ending what the SADF had coined Operation Savannah. The military campaign into Angolan territory thus ended with the embarrassing retreat of the SADF. Moreover, the United States, who had earlier secretly supported the South African incursion, now publicly criticized the military endeavour.11 The SADF’s Angolan adventure between October 1975 and early 1976 alerted the domestic armaments industry to the fact that the weapons it was producing failed to equal those of the MPLA and the Cubans, supplied by the Soviet Union. The brief episode of military involvement in Angola during Operation Savannah left Pretoria’s leaders worrying about how the domestic armaments industry could produce weapons on a par with those of their adversaries. In Cabinet, Defence Minister P. W. Botha advocated strongly for an enormous increase in military expenditure, despite budget cuts proposed by Finance Minister Owen Horwood. In the end, Botha prevailed with his proposal to restructure the armaments industry, ushering in strategic changes for the defence sector. To strengthen the local industry to produce better products, defence spending rose tremendously, more than tripling the expenditure levels of the previous decade. In the aftermath of the SADF’s incursion into Angola, which had led to increased international criticism of the apartheid state, achieving greater selfreliance in the armaments sector was top of the agenda. However, there were clear limits to improving domestic production in all the hightechnology sectors necessary for state-of-the-art armaments. Soon, defence strategists realized that it was impossible for all the necessary production to be based in South Africa, and that it was thus necessary to approach several countries that were not vehemently involved in the still voluntary UN arms embargoes against South Africa. As a result, over the next few years, a considerable quantity of armaments was obtained in this way, in addition to a sizeable amount of technical information.12 This served as a backup strategy, because from the early 1960s, after South Africa gradually became more isolated internationally, a number of newly independent African states called for sanctions against the apartheid regime. Consequently, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 181 on 7 August 1963, which requested member states to forego the sale of armaments and military vehicles to the country and called upon the Verwoerd government to abandon its policy of apartheid. This was followed on 4 December of the same year by the unanimous adoption of a voluntary arms embargo under UN Security Council 11 12

Ibid., pp. 31–33; see also Steyn et al., 2003, p. 50. Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, pp. 72–74.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

Resolution 182, after the South Africans had failed to cooperate on the previous resolution.13 Following the UN General Assembly’s request that member states should terminate all educational, cultural, sporting and other connections to South Africa, on 23 July 1970 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 282, which called on UN members to bolster the voluntary arms embargo against the Republic of South Africa, originally adopted seven years earlier.14 However, these voluntary measures did not have the anticipated impact on the apartheid government. Consequently, mandatory steps against Pretoria logically followed towards the end of the 1970s, representing the next stage in South Africa’s growing international isolation.15 2.2

The Carter Administration and the Koeberg Nuclear Fuel Issue

In 1977, after winning the election over Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president of the United States. Soon, the Carter administration’s focus on human rights resulted in harsh criticism of South Africa’s racially discriminating policies. This was a challenge for the government in Pretoria, especially after its clandestine involvement in Angola became public, as it was already subject to international criticism before Carter entered office.16 The new US administration confronted the apartheid regime precisely because of its racial and ambiguous nuclear policies, and Carter stressed that he was committed to global non-proliferation and human rights. He was also in favour of prohibiting the export of US military goods to South Africa, including nuclear technology such as reactors, nuclear fuel and reprocessing equipment.17 Before the advent of the Carter administration, as the 1970s had shown, the apartheid regime’s leaders remained optimistic that at least some form of cooperation between the two states could be maintained. A brief look at the late 1960s and early 1970s suggests that the apartheid regime had every reason to count on the United States for nuclear technology support. In fact, earlier cooperation under the Atoms for Peace programme continued unabated into the Johnson administration, when in 1967 an agreement formally renewed the ties between Pretoria and Washington and extended it for an additional ten years. With the 13 14 15 16 17

Wessels, 2010, p. 140. Ibid., p. 141. For an overview of the punitive measures leading up to mandatory sanctions instituted against South Africa, see Deon Geldenhuys, 1984, pp. 205–208. For detailed accounts of US–South African nuclear relations during the Carter years, see Rabinowitz, 2014, pp. 106–136; and Van Wyk, 2007, pp. 195–225. Stevens, 2012, p. 853; and Rabinowitz, 2014, p. 113; as well as Michael Martinez, 2002, p. 268.

2.2 The Koeberg Nuclear Fuel Issue

45

NPT not yet in force, the US government merely paid lip service to the notion of not contributing to nuclear proliferation in any way. This episode was repeated seven years later under President Richard Nixon when the United States amended the agreement so that US fuel supplies for the South African nuclear power station at Koeberg would continue for 25 years after the plant’s completion (planned for 1982). This shows that the US State Department was not yet profoundly concerned about the threat of nuclear proliferation in South Africa, even though suspicions regarding the continued development of Pretoria’s homegrown enrichment process had increased since the mid-1970s.18 Despite rising US concerns, it was indeed still possible for the South African authorities to conclude a long-term contract with the US Department of Energy for the enrichment of South African uranium in the United States, which would subsequently be used as fuel for Koeberg once the power station was online. In particular, ESKOM officials signed two contracts to ensure the power station’s future fuel supply. Accordingly, the AEB had to deliver natural uranium to the US Department of Energy, which in turn would enrich it and afterwards transfer it to the French firm Framatome. The latter then had to produce the actual fuel elements needed for Koeberg’s start-up in the early 1980s.19 Therefore, when Donald Bell Sole, the newly appointed South African Ambassador to the United States arrived in Washington in May 1977, he was optimistic that it would at least be possible to maintain the status quo that had prevailed throughout the Nixon and Ford administrations. However, disillusionment soon kicked in when he realized that […] the advent of the Carter Administration had brought to office in Washington a group of Government officials who, ideologically speaking, were far more orientated towards confrontation with South Africa than towards co-operation.20

Early in his presidential term, Carter applied a ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach in his dealings with the South Africans, exemplified by seeking non-proliferation commitments in return for fuel deliveries destined for Koeberg.21 The international image of the US State Department was also at stake here. The US government supported the emerging nuclear non-proliferation and export-control regimes, hence any perception of close alignment with Pretoria’s leadership concerning nuclear matters would have potentially undermined the US stance against increased proliferation internationally. Officials from the US State Department 18 19 20 21

Van Wyk, 2007, pp. 199–203. Fourie, 1991, pp. 101–106. Sole, undated, p. 446. Van Wyk, 2007, p. 217.

46

Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

therefore confronted their South African counterparts, stressing that they should sign the NPT and enter into a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. As a result, the US National Security Council (NSC) recommended terminating the provision of nuclear fuel until such time as South Africa signed a full-scope safeguards agreement with the IAEA in Vienna.22 It was at this moment that Pretoria’s leadership shocked the world with the (most likely unintended) disclosure of their advances in the military nuclear field. 2.2.1

The 1977 Aborted Test in the Kalahari

Details about the early years remain sparse, but what is known is that in 1971, then Minister of Mines, Carel de Wet, approved a secret report by the AEB that recommended the preliminary investigation into the feasibility of different types of nuclear explosive devices, including gun and implosion types. Research progressed and three years later in 1974, Prime Minister B. J. Vorster secretly authorized production of at least one fission device as a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ (PNE) device.23 All the development work on a gun-type prototype was successfully completed by mid-1977. Meanwhile, in anticipation of this day, a decision was taken that all the requirements for a test should be in place, with a suitable demonstration site located and timely developed. A ‘cold test’, namely an underground test of an identical nuclear explosive device but with a core made of depleted or natural uranium instead of HEU, was scheduled for mid-August 1977. From the AEB’s perspective, the main purpose was to test whether the basic design for the PNE developed by its engineers (mainly at Somchem in the Cape) would work.24 A remote location in the Kalahari Desert, called Vastrap, located nearly 100 km north of Upington, was eventually selected in order to avoid triggering too many questions about the real purpose of the undertaking. Over the next few months, two shafts were dug, 385 and 216 metres deep, for the planned ‘cold’ test.25 But the preparations on the ground were soon picked up by a Soviet satellite which had the area under surveillance. While ideologically at odds at the height of the Cold War, Soviet and American policymakers shared intelligence information as they realized that the threat of a nuclear-armed apartheid state was against their respective non-proliferation and political objectives.26 After the discovery 22 23 24 25 26

Sarah Bidgood, 2018, p. 74. Jeffrey Richelson, 2006, pp. 244–245. Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 39–40; and Buys, 2007, pp. 6–10. Bidgood, 2018, pp. 57–58; and Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, p. 173. Bidgood, 2018, p. 55.

2.2 The Koeberg Nuclear Fuel Issue

47

Figure 2.1 Brezhnev: ‘Comrade Jimmy, we have new evidence about the Boers’ atom bomb: It is located between Cheatville, Booze City and Dishonesty Hill’ (Beeld, 30 August 1977). This cartoon appeared a few days after the United States accused the South Africans of having attempted to test a nuclear weapon at Vastrap in the Kalahari Desert.. Source: ©Orin Scott, Beeld, 30 August 1977.

of the Kalahari test site in early August 1977, the Soviet embassy in Washington submitted a letter to US President Carter from Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in which he shared the Soviet assessment about an imminent South African nuclear test (see Figure 2.1.). The Carter administration quickly took up the chance to bring Soviet–US cooperation on nuclear non-proliferation to the next level. The US officials were eager to engage with the Soviets and requested additional information relating to further Soviet intelligence material on the attempted South African test. The United States itself conducted an aerial search of the presumed test site at Vastrap by sending an unmarked aircraft, which belonged to the US military attaché in Pretoria, to fly over the area. They afterwards shared and confirmed the newly gathered material with their

48

Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

Figure 2.2 ‘I do not know what this is, but to me it looks like their Abomb infrastructure’ (Oggenblad, 24 August 1977). Another cartoon appeared in South Africa ridiculing the accusations related to the test site discovery. Source: ©Frans Esterhuyse, Oggenblad, 24 August 1977.

Soviet counterparts.27 Subsequently, in the absence of direct Soviet– South African relations, Moscow’s officials left it to the Carter administration to exert pressure on Pretoria via the relevant channels.28 Meanwhile in the Kalahari Desert, Richardt van der Walt from the AEB, responsible for preparing the Vastrap test, received notification on 17 August 1977 to immediately terminate activities at the site, to hide anything suspicious, and then to return to Pretoria. In some haste, the facility was dismantled, with the threat of an inspection by foreign officials seeming a real possibility at that stage. A mere four days later, all traces of the preparations had vanished (see Figure 2.2.). Some items were simply covered with desert sand. A little while later, the US Ambassador in Pretoria requested South African Foreign Minister 27

28

Bidgood, 2018, pp. 59–63. Interestingly, South African scientists who were at the Vastrap site during the test preparations were of the view that this aircraft had detected their activities and seemed to be unaware at that time of the earlier satellite detection. Had they been aware of the US–Soviet collaboration, it would likely have further strained US– South African relations (Johan Slabber, interview with author, 2 March 2018, Pretoria). Bidgood, 2018, p. 75.

2.2 The Koeberg Nuclear Fuel Issue

49

Roelof ‘Pik’ Botha to ask his government to prove in a publicly persuasive way that no test had been planned, and that there was no intention to produce HEU at the Y-plant or to embark on a nuclear weapons path. Likewise, US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance followed up on the issue and even provided the South Africans with a list of suspicious areas identified by the US intelligence community, in an attempt to push them to reveal additional information. Openly stating that it had not prepared a nuclear test, the South African government tried to alleviate international suspicions with assurances that the Vastrap site was not intended for nuclear tests at any point and that, of course, there was no plan to develop nuclear explosives of any kind.29 2.2.2.

The Armaments Industry and the 1977 Arms Embargo

Following a Cabinet decision in March 1977, the two corporate structures responsible for armaments acquisition and production merged to form the Armaments Corporation of South Africa (Armscor). The SADF became the prime decision-maker with regard to which weapons had to be produced by the newly formed company.30 Henceforth, acquisition became Armscor’s primary goal. The aim was to rely on local subcontractors for the manufacture of the requested items and in general tie in the private sector. Should this prove impossible, Armscor was to exploit its foreign contacts and explore overseas markets to obtain the required goods. At the same time, any unnecessary suspicions by international observers had to be avoided at all costs, because this could lead to the cessation of supplies through clandestine channels.31 These secret networks for the procurement of weapons became even more crucial after November 1977, when the UN Security Council passed Resolution 418. This resolution heralded a new phase as the previously voluntary arms embargoes against South Africa became mandatory.32 Resolution 418 set in motion huge changes within Armscor and the supporting industries, causing an unbridled domestic growth of the defence industry in the 1980s.33 However, considering the challenges in obtaining armaments, the South Africans had to revert to extensive foreign assistance, thereby relying on several countries for secret and discreet support. As it turned out, overseas partners were only too willing

29 30 31 32 33

Bidgood, 2018, pp. 62–65; and Johan Slabber, interview with author, 2 March 2018, Pretoria. Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, pp. 78–80; Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 48–49. Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, pp. 91–94. Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 49–50; see also Albright and Stricker, 2016, p. 83. Steyn et al., 2003, p. 50.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

to take advantage of loopholes in the wording of the arms embargo, much to the benefit of the South African arms industry.34 It is quite astonishing how openly the clandestine activities were acknowledged even in the official history commissioned by Armscor, including a revelation that sanction-busting practices were an almost daily activity for those employed in the arms company. The authors were quite open about the fact that the South Africans had been fortunate in that several countries willingly assisted by providing niche products or technology information, which otherwise would have needed years to develop from scratch. This led, in contradiction to the aims of the sanctions and embargoes instituted in the 1960s and 1970s, to the growing self-sufficiency of apartheid’s arms sector in various fields of production, and acquisition via clandestine channels through secret deals. With this also came a change in the traditional way of concluding deals, because in light of the low profile Armscor officials had to maintain, official tender processes made way for clandestine acquisition practices.35 For those states who still supplied South Africa with weapons and related materials, it was imperative to avoid public exposure. Rendering assistance openly to the apartheid regime invited international criticism, and individuals who were involved and exposed could be prosecuted. Certain countries applied stricter legislation and regulated the arms embargo more effectively, which in some cases led to the closure of established channels through which the South African defence industry had received supplies for years. Facing these realities in the late 1970s, new forms of acquisition had to be created and those responsible at Armscor developed more sophisticated supply chains. By 1977, the share of the arms trade conducted by arms procurement officials via clandestine channels amounted to 67 per cent. Armscor was compelled to set up front companies and associated paying schemes to mask its involvement. As a result, by June 1979, already more than fifty front companies existed in several countries, in addition to the foreign bank accounts that concealed the real South African origins. Thus, despite the compulsory arms embargo, secret trade relations expanded, and international sanctions could largely be circumvented.36 Indeed, the identified loopholes in the sanctions legislation were exploited so successfully that the South Africans were able to satisfy their

34 35 36

Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, p. 191. Ibid., pp. 312–315. Ibid., pp. 315–319. But this should not be conceived as a one-sided relationship only, because Armscor also realized the importance of exports to earn foreign revenue and established itself on the market (Ibid., pp. 320–321).

2.2 The Koeberg Nuclear Fuel Issue

51

Figure 2.3 Prime Minister B. J. Vorster in action (The Natal Mercury, 3 September 1977). Source: Paul Lessing (©Campbell Collections/Alan Paton Centre/GandhiLuthuli Documentation Centre of the University of KwaZulu-Natal).

armament requirements and to upgrade the whole industry to match the firepower of their regional adversaries.37 However, despite Armscor’s elaborate schemes to procure overseas weaponry, growing international opposition to apartheid and the ongoing Border War meant that these channels could not be taken for granted indefinitely. The combination of technological advancement, international isolation and the intricate regional security situation compelled the South African leadership to ponder the idea of having their own nuclear weapons capabilities in the future. In the final instance, a nuclear capability was to serve as a deterrent against the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons in African states, and generally disincentivize a military advance by the Frontline States (FLS), considered by Pretoria as Moscow’s proxies (see Figure 2.3.).38 37 38

Ibid., p. 128. Van Wyk, 2018, p. 1155.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

2.3

The Carter Administration Pushes for South African Accession to the NPT

Early in the Carter presidency, the US Congress and human rights groups called for comprehensive sanctions against the apartheid regime. This led to a general acceptance in the US State Department that action against Pretoria had to go beyond the often-employed rhetoric, which usually portrayed the South African regime as an important Cold War ally. Ultimately, the administration supported the mandatory arms embargo, and Resolution 418 was accepted by the UN Security Council on 4 November 1977.39 This included the restriction of US exports of nuclear technology such as reactors and nuclear fuel. But even in late 1977 with the arms embargo already in place, the Carter administration could not agree to a total termination of the nuclear relationship with the apartheid government.40 Instead, in trying to solve the South African proliferation conundrum, the US administration set out to convince the regime in Pretoria to sign the NPT. It proposed a deal in which they would honour existing delivery contracts provided Pretoria accepted international safeguards and acceded to the Treaty. To give substance to its non-proliferation goals, the Carter administration revisited its nonproliferation policies designed to bring countries into the emerging NPT regime. This was a goal which had assumed much greater importance after Carter’s ascent to power.41 In March 1978, Carter signed the nonproliferation bill into law as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act (NNPA), which meant that American corporations could no longer sell nuclear material and technology on an unrestricted basis. The NNPA enshrined a number of legal mechanisms to control nuclear exports, inter alia refined language contained in cooperative agreements with other states to include a clause limiting nuclear technology exports. Yet another clause provided for existing contracts to undergo renegotiation to reflect these changes. In general, the NNPA’s purpose was to increase American leverage over states such as France, Japan, West Germany and South Africa, whose governments employed less strict policies in respect of reprocessing and the global transfer of nuclear technology.42 Therefore, by mid-1978, US officials suggested renegotiating existing supply agreements, including the Koeberg fuel deal, to reconcile these contracts with the statute of the new NNPA. The apartheid government 39 40 41 42

Van Wyk and Grobler, 2006, p. 171 and pp. 188–192; Thompson, 2008, pp. 90–91. Martinez, 2002, p. 263; and Thompson, 2008, p. 101. Martinez, 2002, p. 262. Martinez, 2002, p. 263; and p. 272; Thompson, 2008, pp. 101–102.

2.3 South African Accession to the NPT

53

thus became one of the non-proliferation focal points of the US administration. Perceived as hostile towards Pretoria, the incoming Carter administration and the dependency on US fuel played into the South African leadership’s decision in 1978 to become self-sufficient in the enrichment of uranium and to promote the manufacturing of domestic fuel elements for the power station north of Cape Town.43 If the two Koeberg reactors, then under construction, could not start operating as planned, they faced accumulated losses believed to amount to one million rand a day.44 Moreover, the South African government feared that even full compliance with the requirements of the NNPA would not result in a less confrontational approach by the Carter administration, because of its emphasis on nuclear non-proliferation.45 From Pretoria’s perspective, Carter’s vocal support for non-proliferation and the NNPA as the legislative cornerstone were anything but reassuring signals from Washington, especially as the Act had a direct impact on the future delivery of US nuclear fuel for the South African nuclear industry.46 However, despite its outspoken stance against nuclear proliferation, the Carter administration at times advocated bending the rules. Several officials in the United States opposed a complete cut-off of all nuclear ties with the apartheid regime, regardless of concerns about the ongoing South African nuclear ambiguity. A complete diplomatic break with Pretoria might have caused the United States to lose remaining leverage over the apartheid regime. The outstanding fuel deliveries for the South African nuclear reactor therefore became a defining element in the ensuing diplomatic encounters.47 According to one South African report of the negotiations, the American delegation was also determined to make the NNPA work because they feared losing status as a fuel supplier on the world market. This concern related to the fact that the NNPA was likely to drive recipient nations, such as South Africa, to alternative markets and to the possible development of indigenous enrichment facilities – both scenarios that were regarded as detrimental to US non-proliferation endeavours as well as business interests. From a US point of view, it was therefore crucial to balance the efforts of implementing the NNPA with reassuring potential 43

44 45 46 47

This followed the earlier secret decision to enrich uranium to weapons-grade in the Yplant exclusively devoted to the nuclear weapons programme, which ranked higher at that time by those responsible for strategic matters. Fourie, 1991, pp. 101–106; see also Van Wyk and Grobler, 2006, p. 181. Sole, undated, p. 446. Rabinowitz, 2014, p. 115. Van Wyk, 2007, pp. 214–216; Thompson, 2008, p. 92, p. 101 and p. 117; Rabinowitz, 2014, p. 115.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

customers. The Americans devoted much time and energy to convincing their counterparts that they would react favourably towards future requests for fuel export licences put forward by Pretoria’s officials, not least to keep a certain political sway over the apartheid government.48 Only half a year after the Carter election, the deteriorating US–South African relationship experienced its first stress test. In the aftermath of what was perceived as an attempted nuclear test by South Africa, the United States wanted to obtain concrete answers from Pretoria’s government concerning its nuclear intentions. Carter and his advisors were not satisfied with Prime Minister Vorster’s verbal assurances of August 1977, in which he stressed South Africa’s peaceful nuclear intentions in immediate reaction to the US alerts about their knowledge of the preparations in the remote Kalahari area. Officials from the United States sought an immediate commitment in the form of a public statement of intent to sign the NPT, as well as submission of the Valindaba plant (Y-plant) to interim IAEA safeguards. Only after fulfilling these conditions would the United States resume fuel supplies for Koeberg.49 What ensued over the following years became a characteristic feature in the relationship for the remainder of the Carter term. The United States primarily tried to lure South Africa into the non-proliferation regime, whereas the South African officials delayed signature to the NPT and voiced concerns about a plethora of issues, including possible commercial disadvantages should information about their unique enrichment process leak and end up in the hands of market competitors. Thus, from 1977 onwards, the South Africans did not react favourably to the US demands, despite threats to suspend the continued nuclear fuel shipments as per existing contracts and pressure to join the NPT.50 South African DFA officials tried to resolve the tense relations, arguing that Vorster’s initial assurances were still valid and denying that the Kalahari area functioned as a nuclear test site. However, they declined to comment on its exact purpose. The same foreign affairs officials made it clear that the South African government most feared a scenario in which the United States might ultimately renege on earlier agreements and forego the delivery of nuclear fuel.51

48

49 50 51

‘Matters arising from the South African-American talks held in Washington on 20, 21 and 22 November 1978 in connection with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, 1978 (NNPA)’, 6 December 1978, PV895, File: A1/K4, Vol. 15, ARCA. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in South Africa and the White House, 13 September 1977, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 307. Memorandum from Secretary of State Vance to President Carter, 15 September 1977, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 309. Memorandum from Secretary of State Vance to President Carter, 11 November 1977, FRUS: 16: 320.

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55

This was because without the fuel the nuclear power plant under construction at Koeberg would run the risk of becoming a ‘white elephant’, running up huge costs while standing idle due to a lack of fuel.52 In addition, the South Africans expressed the fear that any solution on the nuclear fuel deliveries might well be overturned in the future if the United States were to support general UN sanctions targeting South Africa.53 To achieve a breakthrough in the so-far-fruitless talks, the US diplomats suggested sending an expert team to Pretoria to discuss the technicalities around the application of IAEA safeguards and to alleviate South Africa’s anxieties about maintaining the commercial secrecy of its enrichment technology. If the South Africans accepted safeguards, permitting the supply of fuel for Koeberg would not constitute a problem. During the ongoing exchanges, the South Africans however, as many times before, repeatedly stressed that they could not easily accept safeguards on their nuclear installations, because of a strong interest in protecting the secrets of their unique enrichment process. They feared that IAEA safeguards inspections would allow information about the process used at Valindaba (Y-plant) to leak to market competitors. Nevertheless, they agreed to the US proposal of holding expert talks on the subject.54 Soon thereafter, the proposed meeting between two high-level delegations took place to explore the chances of finding a mutually face-saving basis for future cooperation. The South Africans made clear their two most pressing concerns: the fuel supply for the Koeberg reactors and the details of the proposed interim safeguards at Valindaba.55 In turn, members of the US delegation emphasized their wish to re-establish a good bilateral working relationship as far as nuclear matters were concerned, with Pretoria’s adherence to the NPT and the application of interim safeguards at Valindaba as a basis. South Africa’s acceptance of a nonproliferation regime, they argued, would resolve the deadlock and allow for the provision of fuel in the future. Equally importantly, they reiterated that going forward, the South Africans should lift the veil over the true nature of the Kalahari site, because ‘[…] whatever settlement involving continued nuclear supply we eventually reach, we will have to assure the 52 53 54

55

Fourie, 1991, pp. 101–106; and Sole, undated, pp. 445–449. Memorandum of Conversation, 11 November 1977, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 321. Memorandum from the Executive Secretary of the Department of State (Tarnoff ) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski), 11 February 1978, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 330. Telegram from the Embassy in South Africa to the Department of State, 20 February 1978, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 331; and Telegram from the Embassy in South Africa to the Department of State, 21 February 1978, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 332.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

Congress […] and the public that we are not contributing to a programme that is on the threshold of a nuclear test’.56 Carter’s officials argued in vain. The continued delay of the South Africans to sign the NPT must be seen against the backdrop of a hostile atmosphere that was developing in international forums such as the IAEA and the UN, and also in the region with its overall deteriorating security situation. Pretoria’s leaders doubted that the supply of nuclear fuel and related technology would be resumed even if they signed the Treaty, because possible new UN Security Council resolutions aimed at diminishing cooperation with the apartheid regime would most likely prohibit the deliveries anyway.57 US officials avoided clear links between nuclear matters and general political questions such as the US reaction to be expected if the UN would put a resolution to the vote. However, the South Africans were able to elicit a commitment that Washington’s officials were prepared not to let the pressures on South Africa in the UN Security Council escalate, provided the aforementioned conditions were fulfilled.58 Given the lack of information about the Kalahari site’s true function and South Africa’s NPT accession being stalled, the US officials tried to obtain more information on a personal basis. The US ambassador in Pretoria approached the Director-General of the DFA, Bernardus ‘Brand’ Fourie. He lobbied for understanding of the fact that President Carter had to consider the international response following any engagement with the apartheid regime, because ‘[…] some people felt we would be out on a limb with any kind of nuclear agreement with South Africa since there would inevitably be fears and suspicions whether real or stimulated about South Africa’s nuclear intentions’.59 These constraints continued to circumscribe more flexible US non-proliferation policies towards the South African government, but talks continued unabated. In parallel, however, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, the South Africans had secretly proceeded with their nuclear weapons programme. 2.3.1

Getting Serious: Nuclear Weapons Development under P. W. Botha

The AEB’s civilian programme of developing nuclear explosives for the mining sector was already well advanced by the time the decision was 56 57 58 59

Telegram from the Embassy in South Africa to the Department of State, 21 February 1978, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 332. Memorandum of Conversation, 24 May 1978, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 341. Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski) to Secretary of State (Vance), 19 June 1978, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 342. Telegram from the Embassy in South Africa to the Department of State, 9 August 1978, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 347.

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57

taken, in 1978, to embark on a military nuclear programme.60 There continues to be debate in the literature about the exact year that marked the start of the nuclear weapons programme; however, F. W. de Klerk, who was the Minister responsible for Mineral and Energy Affairs from 1980 to 1982, referred in his autobiography to 1974 as the year in question.61 Within a month of P. W. Botha succeeding B. J. Vorster as Prime Minister in September 1978, he brought together a high-level steering committee, consisting inter alia of selected Cabinet Ministers, called the ‘Witvlei Committee’. Its task was to decide on strategic matters related to the nuclear weapons programme. The committee consisted of the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Defence, Finance, Mineral and Energy Affairs, and Foreign Affairs. In addition, it included the Chairs of the AEB and Armscor, the Chief of the SADF, the Director-General of the Department of Minerals and Energy, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs.62 The committee’s main responsibility was to determine the way forward in the manufacturing of suitable nuclear devices for the country.63 At a meeting on 31 October of that year, a tri-party approach to the nuclear weapons development was decided upon: Armscor, the SADF and the AEB were to cooperate with a view to preparing a strategy to initiate a top-secret nuclear weapons programme. To engage with a variety of aspects related to the military side of the programme, several working groups were established. Tasks included the drafting of a nuclear strategy as well as work on possible delivery systems for the nuclear devices, the latter carried out by Armscor.64 According to the national nuclear strategy internally promulgated in 1978, a year after the Kalahari incident, P. W. Botha approved maintaining an ambiguous position about South Africa’s actual nuclear weapons capability in order to keep the world guessing.65 The regime’s leaders intended to use the resulting uncertainty to their advantage and therefore to disincentivize the Russians and their proxies from advancing too far south. Apparently, the South African nuclear weapons strategy never considered an offensive use of the weapons, as the Witvlei Committee fully recognized that using atomic devices on the battlefield would result in massive nuclear retaliation. Ultimately, South Africa’s deterrent 60 61 62 63 64 65

Steyn et al., 2003, p. 15. De Klerk, 1999, p. 273. Peter Liberman, 2001, p. 53. ‘Draft speech for the opening of the Kentron Circle by the Prime Minister, 4 May 1981’, File: 13/2/8/C, in: Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 477 (Appendix). Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 42–43. See also Gideon de Wet, personal correspondence, 6 September 2018. Stumpf, December 1995–January 1996, p. 5.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

strategy was at no point implemented beyond its first phase, which foresaw the creation of ambiguity around South Africa’s nuclear capability that would deter hostile forces.66 Generally, the driving force behind the nuclear weapons programme was the fear of a growing Soviet influence in southern Africa through closely aligned liberation movements such as the MPLA, FRELIMO and SWAPO.67 This scenario became even more acute following the disintegration of the Portuguese colonial empire in 1974–75. This triggered the apartheid government’s ‘total strategy’, which foresaw the secret development of a nuclear weapons stockpile that ultimately would serve as a deterrent to prevent a regime change in Pretoria and, thus, secure the survival of the white-minority regime in the long run.68 From the late 1970s onwards, the nuclear weapons project thus became a cornerstone in the response to the deteriorating regional security situation, as seen from Pretoria’s point of view. Under Vorster’s successor, long-time Defence Minister P. W. Botha, a move towards maturing the nuclear weapons programme can also be recognized. This was also manifested in the structural foundations for the expansion of the programme, such as the transfer from the AEB to Armscor. The project was relocated to the South African arms procurement agency when those involved in militarizing the nuclear programme realized that the AEB lacked the expertise to transform the scientific nuclear device into an engineered weapons system. This was at least in part because such a task was not in line with the overall civilian character of the institution, particularly as the nuclear payloads would have needed to be integrated into conventional weapons delivery systems at a future date, a field of research the AEB was simply not prepared to carry out. Therefore, technically as well as organizationally, the integration of the nuclear weapons programme into the existing supply chains for the SADF, of which Armscor was the procurement agency, seemed the best option. This made sense especially at that time because initial research and development work was being undertaken on a TV-guided glide bomb, the Raptor, for the South African Air Force, and a rocket launcher for the SADF’s reconnaissance satellite. Both could be used for the delivery of South Africa’s nuclear warheads.69 With the integration of the nuclear weapons programme into existing Armscor structures, the AEB’s task was to supply the nuclear devices 66 67 68 69

Stumpf, December 1995–January 1996, p. 5. The full names of the last two movements are as follows: Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) and South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO). Stumpf, December 1995/January 1996, p. 5. Armscor Employee No. 2, interview with author, 19 January 2020, Irene. See also Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 164–168.

2.3 South African Accession to the NPT

59

with the HEU that since 1977–78 had come from the Y-Plant.70 The nuclear weapons project, once it was under Armscor’s wing, comprised three facets carried out in parallel: firstly, the development of gun-type devices which could be delivered by air and dropped from a plane; secondly, research into implosion and thermonuclear weapons technology (including boosting technology); and, thirdly, studies investigating the production and extraction of plutonium, tritium and lithium.71 To provide the necessary materials for the last two objectives, there were plans to build a large plant with a pressurized water reactor at a site called ‘Gouriqua’ near Mossel Bay in the Western Cape, which should be able to produce plutonium and tritium for thermonuclear or boosted guntype devices. The Witvlei Committee approved these ambitious plans sometime in the early 1980s, because plutonium would also be needed if Armscor were to move towards the production of physically smaller nuclear devices.72 Armscor leaders also realized the need to focus on upgrading its infrastructure. In 1980 and 1981, a complex of buildings made up of development, production and storage facilities was built to host the programme after its relocation to Armscor. The work progressed under the project name ‘Circle’, about 15 kilometres west of Pretoria at the site of an Armscor subsidiary by the name of Gerotek. The name was later changed to Advena, where engineers focused on turning the devices into qualified military weapons.73 Moreover, hand-picked personnel from the AEB, who had earlier worked on the explosives programme, were transferred to this new production site. During the 1980s, mechanical work on nuclear explosives took place at this new facility, including miniaturizing the physical size of the devices. The project’s transfer from the AEB to Armscor also gave rise to the development of more reliable and alternative triggers for the bombs.74 The character of the endeavour thus changed from a peaceful nuclear explosive to a military nuclear weapons programme over only a few years, clearly in response to the deteriorating regional security situation as seen from Pretoria. Owing to the civilscientific character of the AEB, unlike Armscor, which was decidedly military, the first nuclear device developed by the AEB in the late 1970s simply could not meet military standards in terms of reliability and safety. Hence, it became the demonstration model in the event of an 70 71 72 73 74

Steyn et al., 2003, p. 73. Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, p. 176. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 174–175. Albright and Stricker, 2016, p. 86. Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 42–43; p. 78; Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, p. 175 and p. 178.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

underground test, but not for delivery by air.75 In the meantime, abundant rumours circulated internationally that South Africa may be pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, and the apartheid regime was about to be confronted by a nemesis in the person of Jimmy Carter. 2.3.2

How the Carter Administration Pursued Non-proliferation Policies: The NNPA and Pretoria

While the Carter administration had to consider the US Congress’ stance on nuclear non-proliferation, it also had to contend with domestic nuclear energy industry’s objectives, whose representatives feared losing international influence following the application of the NNPA.76 Against increasing congressional constraints, US officials undertook renewed efforts to implement the NNPA with South Africa. However, it became obvious that there were clear limits to what US non-proliferation policies could achieve even after introducing the NNPA. This resulted in a realization that the United States had almost no political leverage over South Africa at that stage. Despite outstanding fuel deliveries, Pretoria’s officials did not bow to US pressure, but instead continued to defy the NPT for the remainder of Carter’s term in office. In addition, US officials were eager to make the NNPA work and went out of their way to accommodate the fears of potential customers, including Pretoria. At the same time, they acknowledged in private discussions that the NNPA called for ‘[…] intricate, cumbersome and potentially timeconsuming procedures’,77 triggering the ironic remark by one US official that ‘there were 254 pitfalls contained in the Act’.78 Keeping in mind the strong public emphasis on non-proliferation under Carter, the documents suggest that different echelons in the administration employed more flexible approaches, depending on whom they were discussing the NNPA with and whether privately or publicly. In the absence of any movement on the South African side, Carter’s officials started a fresh approach to make their non-proliferation policies work. Late in 1978, with the South Africans showing no flexibility towards securing a bilateral nuclear settlement, US officials concluded

75

76 77

78

Van der Westhuizen and Le Roux, 1997, p. 176. In mid-1977, the AEB gun-type device (without an HEU core) was rather large and bulky, because it should accommodate numerous scientific and engineering studies (Albright and Stricker, 2016, p. 74). Möser, 2019b, ‘How the Carter Administration Pursued Non-Proliferation Policies: A View from Apartheid South Africa’. ‘Report on South African-American Talks held in Washington on 20, 21, and 22 November 1978 in connection with the “Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, 197800 (NNPA)’, 30 November 1978, PV895, File: A1/K4, Vol. 15, ARCA. Ibid.

2.3 South African Accession to the NPT

61

that ‘[…] instituting a safeguards regime with a possible stockpile of HEU of unknown size would present clear political and technical difficulties’.79 With this lack of information, the prerogative was first to ascertain whether the South Africans were seriously considering the US settlement proposal or merely playing for time. Moreover, further delay would also reduce the credibility of using negotiation and cooperation to erase the uncertainties related to Pretoria’s nuclear ambiguity. Leading US officials stressed the need for immediate action, because already in July 1970, President Vorster had publicly announced that the South African nuclear industry was capable of producing HEU. As a result, any continued delay would only aggravate the uncertainties regarding the Valindaba plant, suspected of producing weapon-grade material.80 The absence of a South African reply following the renewed US State Department pressure can be interpreted as a lack of interest in concluding the settlement that had been discussed throughout 1978. Washington’s concerns increased, while the enrichment operations at Valindaba (Yplant) continued unabated, producing HEU.81 In September 1979, another event fuelled international concerns when news of the so-called VELA incident made newspaper headlines worldwide.82 In the early morning of September 22, an American satellite by the name of VELA picked up a signal that hinted at a possible nuclear explosion in the South Atlantic. While the apartheid regime was immediately in the spotlight, nothing concrete proved that it was responsible or had assisted another country. Indeed, at this time it had not yet been possible to establish without doubt that a nuclear explosion had actually occurred.83 Following these new controversies, the US administration called for immediate high-level discussions with Pretoria’s officials. Yet another attempt to reach a non-proliferation agreement with the apartheid state commenced. Based on the assessment that the white-minority regime could not indefinitely fend off UN nuclear sanctions, keeping a diplomatic channel open seemed in the US interest.84 However, Pretoria’s internal considerations concerning its nuclear policies continued to prevent a more flexible South African NPT position. 79 80 81 82 83 84

‘Further Nuclear Talks’, Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in South Africa for the Ambassador, 30 December 1978, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 350. Ibid. Telegram from the Department of State to the Consulate in Cape Town, 6 April 1979, FRUS: 1977–1980, 16: 355. Polakow-Suransky, 2010, pp. 136–142; and Richelson, 2006, pp. 283–316. See also: Albright and Gay, 1997, pp. 15–17. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 151–160. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in South Africa, 26 October 1979, FRUS: 16: 365.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

2.4

Pretoria’s Reasons for Continued Non-accession to the NPT

By the mid-1970s, it was clear that the South Africans were not easily convinced of the necessity to join the NPT and accept IAEA safeguards. Coupled with the overall criticism of the apartheid government’s racial policies, international condemnation and sanctions against the whiteminority regime became constant. Moreover in 1977, continued defiance of non-proliferation norms led to the loss of South Africa’s designation as a member for the African continent on the IAEA Board of Governors, and two years later resulted in the rejection of the credentials of the South African delegation to the Agency’s General Conference in New Delhi.85 In addition to pressure from the Carter administration, there was additional pressure from international civil society.86 A concerted move by anti-apartheid activists under the leadership of Abdul Minty aimed to expose what the Vorster and Botha governments had really been up to in the nuclear realm. In March 1979, the World Campaign Against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa was launched in Oslo, at the initiative of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement. They warned that in the absence of urgent and immediate action, the apartheid state would make even more progress in its quest for nuclear weapons. Minty claimed that the apartheid regime had been able to cross the threshold and proliferate nuclear weapons thanks to its long partnership with the West, dating back to the development and enhancement of South Africa’s peaceful nuclear capabilities, including the transfer of nuclear technology, expertise and equipment. Thus, the brochure stated, Pretoria’s Western allies had ‘[…] helped to create a nuclear Frankenstein’.87 The World Campaign lamented the lack of concrete steps to prevent the regime from progressing in the aftermath of the test shaft discovery in 1977 and the VELA incident two years later. Western collaboration, even if indirectly, had always borne the risk of contributing to the domestic South African capability of manufacturing nuclear weapons.88 Consequently, by the late 1970s, the wave of sanctions and the NNPA of 1978 had jointly led to a 85 86 87

88

Van Wyk, 2015, pp. 401–403. Liberman, 2001, p. 58; p. 69. World Campaign Against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa, 1979, ‘Report: “Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa”, United Nations Centre Against Apartheid’: London. (here: p. 12). Looking back, the pamphlet came close to many truths and probably had an impact on the rising awareness of the secret nuclear relationship(s) Pretoria entertained. Ibid.; see also Abdul Minty, interview with author, 5 March 2018, Pretoria.

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growing realization in the South African leadership that not even signing the NPT and accepting IAEA safeguards would satisfy the Carter administration and other critical voices. On the contrary, not resolving the present impasse would do nothing to resolve the deadlock around the LEU deliveries for Koeberg.89 Yet, primary documents reveal that internally the South Africans were split on NPT signature, with those officials representing the AEB resisting accession – mainly because the Valindaba plant (Y-plant) was producing enriched uranium, which could be used for the production of nuclear weapons.90 In contrast, delegates from ESKOM, South Africa’s stateowned electricity provider, favoured Treaty accession in order to ensure the uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel for peaceful civilian purposes in the future, particularly the LEU for the Koeberg power station.91 South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States, Donald Sole,92 who had consulted with the South African delegation in Washington, commented with a view to the domestic AEB–ESKOM conflict, that […] the significance of Valindaba and that of Koeberg would have to be weighed up [emphasis in original] against one another. The question that arises is whether the secrecy surrounding Valindaba, which to some extent is ensured by non-accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, should be given greater weight in the long run than the immediate needs of Koeberg. [We] naturally realize that military and strategic considerations are also important here.93

He further elaborated that in case of a positive decision, the South Africans should ask for something in return. Sole suggested linking signature to the NPT with the exploitation of American concerns to make the NNPA work, thereby accruing additional benefits for South Africa beyond the supply of fuel. He envisioned modern sophisticated weapons and nuclear equipment being made available to Pretoria and

89 90

91 92

93

Fourie, 1991, pp. 101–106. ‘Matters arising from the South African-American talks held in Washington on 20, 21 and 22 November 1978 in connection with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, 1978 (NNPA)’, 6 December 1978, PV895, File: A1/K4, Vol. 15, ARCA; see also: Jan Heunis, interview with author, 28 February 2018, Cape Town. Jan Heunis was a member of the team that went to the Washington meeting. Sam Sterban, personal correspondence, 4 November 2017, via email. Sam Sterban also participated in the Washington meeting on behalf of the South African DFA. Career diplomat Donald Bell Sole, who had earlier been Pretoria’s Ambassador at the IAEA in Vienna, was well informed about his country’s nuclear matters, having been involved in many high-level meetings over his career. ‘Matters arising from the South African-American talks held in Washington on 20, 21 and 22 November 1978 in connection with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, 1978 (NNPA)’, 6 December 1978, PV895, File: A1/K4, Vol. 15, ARCA.

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claimed that the Carter administration’s fears of a possible failure and ultimate rejection of the NNPA by the international community could not be overemphasized.94 Lastly, the South Africans realized that, in the future, US foreign policy considerations would play a far more important role in politically sensitive export applications, such as those by their own government. Moreover, they were aware that even if a new cooperation agreement subject to the NNPA was successfully negotiated with the United States, it would not include any absolute assurances regarding the actual supply of the material.95 Connected to this was the dominant view that the NPT, once acceded to, would infringe on South Africa’s autonomy to conduct its nuclear affairs and constitute a threat to its sovereignty.96 Another prerogative for the South African delegation during the diplomatic encounters with US officials was to win time, by indicating to Washington that P. W. Botha’s government had not yet arrived at a final decision on the NPT question. This strategy, leading officials hoped, would prevent the United States from interfering with other potential nuclear fuel suppliers such as France, who at that time still cooperated with the apartheid state. As South Africa’s industry was not yet able to produce nuclear fuel domestically, it was imperative to secure the fuel needed for Koeberg when the plant was completed in 1982. Moreover, playing for time might have been a viable strategy for South Africa’s officials, because in their summary of the talks they stressed that there could be a new US president in six years at the most and possibly already in two years, one who might be less hostile to the apartheid regime than Carter.97 As things stood, even if they were to take a positive decision in favour of accession, the international ostracism of South Africa over its racial domestic policies would still effectively block any possible relief from sanctions.98 Therefore, with open cooperation in the nuclear sector out of reach for Pretoria at that point, the South Africans continued to delay any decision on the matter. Moreover, safeguards inspections following NPT signature would most likely have alerted the world to South Africa’s undisclosed nuclear capabilities and growing stockpile of HEU, produced since the Y-plant started operating in 1977. As Pretoria

94 95

96 97

98

Ibid. ‘Report on South African-American Talks held in Washington on 20, 21, and 22 November 1978 in connection with the “Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, 197800 (NNPA)’, 30 November 1978, PV895, File: A1/K4, Vol. 15, ARCA. Van Wyk and van Wyk, 2015, p. 46. ‘Matters arising from the South African-American talks held in Washington on 20, 21 and 22 November 1978 in connection with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, 1978 (NNPA)’, 6 December 1978, PV895, File: A1/K4, Vol. 15, ARCA. Liberman, 2001, p. 50.

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had by then already secretly embarked on a nuclear weapons path, full international disclosure was not an option. Within South Africa in the 1970s, the position of continued NPT defiance was not supported by ESKOM and its early opposition to abstaining from the NPT soon led to disagreements with the AEB/ AEC99 over South Africa’s future NPT strategy. Joining the Treaty, ESKOM’s officials were convinced, would have important ramifications for the country’s energy sector, because by adhering to the Treaty and allowing safeguards, international cooperation would again be available for South Africa. Ultimately, this would be beneficial for peaceful domestic nuclear projects. Placing the needs of the nuclear weapons programme over domestic energy considerations annoyed ESKOM’s officials. However, lifting the veil of secrecy over South Africa’s nuclear capabilities was not feasible for the Witvlei Committee at the end of the 1970s, much to the detriment of developing nuclear infrastructure to serve the wider population in South Africa. By the early 1980s, it was clear to leading actors in the DFA and the AEC that the apartheid state’s ambiguous nuclear strategy, characterized by continued NPT defiance, crucially reduced the growth of the local nuclear energy sector. Non-accession deprived them of international collaboration, which significantly slowed down progress on domestic projects. While the Carter administration attempted to bring South Africa into the nonproliferation regime as a prerequisite for the supply of the fuel Pretoria needed for its Koeberg nuclear power reactors, the South Africans delayed any decision that could reveal its growing HEU stockpile. Such a revelation would have rendered the Witvlei Committee’s deterrence strategy obsolete, as this relied upon ambiguity about whether Pretoria was in possession of deliverable nuclear warheads. Disappointingly, it became clear that the NNPA did not lead to the anticipated policy changes by the South African government. On the contrary, by early 1980, the South African government had become significantly less inclined to accede to the NPT and increasingly used the negotiations with the US State Department as a stalling tactic to avoid the further escalation of sanctions. Employing this tactic shielded them from new criticism for as long as talks were maintained, albeit not indefinitely. At the same time, however, international responses in the wake of the aborted test in 1977 and the VELA incident in 1979 had not made the atmosphere more conducive to changing the South African NPT position. Moreover, political developments in South Africa, such as the

99

The AEB and UCOR were incorporated into the newly formed AEC in 1982.

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Towards Nuclear Weapons: The NPT Position, 1977–1981

suppressed Soweto uprising in June 1976 and the death of Steve Biko in police custody two months later,100 had left the Carter administration no alternative but to take harsh action on Pretoria. These events had international political repercussions and, with hindsight, infringed on Pretoria’s relationship with the Carter administration. This was even more so the case following the political transition from B. J. Vorster to P. W. Botha in 1978. From Pretoria’s point of view, in the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s Washington was a strategic ally of the South Africans, especially concerning peaceful nuclear cooperation and the delivery of fuel for the SAFARI-1 research reactor.101 However, the rise to power of the Carter administration in 1977 led to a marked deterioration of the once close relationship that had hitherto allowed the South Africans to rely on the United States turning a blind eye to South Africa’s nuclear ambiguity. The election of Carter and the stance he took against human rights violations, nuclear proliferation and the apartheid regime in general forced both sides to reconsider their policies, which ultimately affected their mutual relationship.102 One outcome was a diplomatic stalemate that led to a delay in US nuclear fuel deliveries destined for South Africa. On the other hand, the South Africans delayed the negotiations with the United States on accession to the NPT and the conclusion of a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. From a non-proliferation point of view, the US government, at one time the only country still to maintain a certain degree of influence over Pretoria’s leadership and its nuclear policies, ran out of steam vis-à-vis Pretoria. Moreover, the South African government completely broke off its diplomatic ties with the IAEA following the loss of its seat to Egypt in the Board of Governors, thereby giving rise to its nuclear pariah status.

100 101 102

Stevens, 2012, pp. 865–867; Mangcu, 2012, pp. 260–263. Van Wyk, 2007, p. 196. Stevens, 2012, p. 853.

3

Nuclear Diplomacy NPT Defiance Vs Non-proliferation Efforts, 1981–1988

3.1

Reagan’s First Term: Reviving US–South African Nuclear Relations

Following the advent of the Reagan administration in 1981, the relationship between the two states underwent a revival as bilateral talks ensued anew, including discussion of nuclear matters. This was a clear trend reversal, because such bilateral encounters had ceased towards the end of Carter’s term. The newly elected US government prioritized renewed engagement with the South Africans, whose industry was at that time able to enrich uranium. The mounting international criticism and the 1977 arms embargo instituted under Reagan’s predecessor had in reality increased South African efforts to spur on development of an indigenous nuclear capability. Therefore, Reagan and his advisors opted for a less reprimanding stance vis-à-vis Pretoria. The US government was not alone in lobbying for an end to South Africa’s intransigence, because the IAEA Secretariat was also at the forefront of trying to convince P. W. Botha’s government to commit to non-proliferation norms. Disentangling US non-proliferation policies from the approach taken by the IAEA Secretariat at that stage towards the government in Pretoria is difficult. This is because the South African question occupied the Agency as well as Washington’s policy circles during the early 1980s and the responses were quite similar: keep a door open for South Africa’s diplomats and invite them to negotiate NPT signature. At the same time, at the IAEA, the South Africans gradually lost their once comfortable position among other member states, but they did not lose their Agency membership despite increasingly coming under attack.1 The beginning of Reagan’s first term heralded a change in US foreign policy towards southern Africa, particularly in the approach towards the region’s last white-minority regime in Pretoria. Chester Crocker, the new Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, had formulated his vision 1

Roehrlich, 2022, pp. 159–161.

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for the region in an earlier article in which he criticized the outgoing Carter administration for its confrontational stance vis-à-vis South Africa and the sanctions it had imposed. He proposed instead that Washington encourage domestic political changes in South Africa and an end to apartheid’s racial policies by fostering positive developments and nascent reforms, avoiding sanctions and other punitive measures altogether. At the same time, this policy of ‘constructive engagement’ aimed at promoting US interests in the region.2 While careful not to defend whiteminority rule openly, Crocker argued the United States should discourage sanctions that would ultimately be detrimental to the South African population.3 A second and related objective of ‘constructive engagement’ was the position adopted to bring about Namibian independence. Crocker proposed a ‘linkage’ strategy that connected an end of Pretoria’s illegal occupation of South West Africa and the retreat of the SADF from the northern territories with a complete Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola. This should ensure the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 435 of 19784 and bring about Namibian independence, the end of the Border War, and ultimately improve the region’s security climate. Crucially though, ‘constructive engagement’ rested to some extent on secretly arming rebel groups in the region, such as UNITA, whose leader Jonathan Savimbi opposed the Marxist-oriented MPLA regime in Luanda and enjoyed the support of Crocker and Reagan.5 The new US strategy also included a focus on enhancing diplomatic non-proliferation efforts with South Africa to rebuild bilateral relations and to regain a degree of influence over Pretoria. Upon entering office, Reagan focused on countering Soviet expansionism in southern Africa, and he was less outspoken than his predecessor about Pretoria’s horrible human rights violations and nuclear ambiguity. The emerging characteristic of the State Department’s new policy towards the white-minority regime included furthering US economic and strategic interests, while at the same time preventing the Soviet grip on the region from tightening. Moreover, the goal of re-establishing US firms as reliable nuclear fuel and technology suppliers led to cooperation agreements with states that had advanced nuclear energy schemes but had not joined the NPT regime, including South Africa.6 2 3 4

5 6

Crocker, 1980, pp. 324–325. Ibid., p. 346; and pp. 350–351. The resolution called for the withdrawal of South African forces from Namibian territory, the transfer of power to the people of Namibia and independence of Namibia through free elections under the supervision and control of the United Nations. Gasbarri, 2020, pp. 21–22. Rabinowitz, 2014, pp. 117–119; Van Wyk, 2010a, pp. 54–56; Mokoena, 1993, pp. 117–118.

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An important unresolved matter obstructing the bilateral US–South African relations dated back to the Carter era and concerned the supply of LEU for the Koeberg power station under construction north of Cape Town. Although the US side was bound by an earlier contract to supply the fuel elements for Koeberg and the SAFARI-1 research reactor, President Carter had connected the resumption of supplies with Pretoria’s NPT accession and the acceptance of IAEA safeguards on its nuclear infrastructure.7 Without the fuel for Koeberg, which was to come online during 1982, the power reactor could not operate as planned and would instead amass financial losses estimated at around one million Rand per day for the repayment of loans and loss of income.8 At that time, the AEB was still occupied with the construction of its larger enrichment plant (Z-plant), destined to produce the LEU needed for Koeberg locally. It was therefore not yet able to satisfy domestic demand without foreign assistance. The decision to bolster local expertise at the Pelindaba nuclear complex was connected to the aim of becoming independent from foreign fuel supplies amid the international sanctions campaign. Thus in the late 1970s, the AEB had started to build a uranium conversion plant (U-plant) as well as a fuel manufacturing plant known as Beva (Brandstof Element Verwaardigings Aanleg).9 Since both installations were still under construction, ESKOM had earlier signed two contracts to ensure the continued fuel supply for the Koeberg power station. One of the agreements was with the US Department of Energy for the enrichment of South African natural uranium in the United States, and a second contract was with the French company Framatome for the manufacturing of the actual fuel elements. It is crucial to point out that Framatome was contractually bound to receive the South African uranium that had earlier been enriched in the United States. But because the Carter administration refused to supply this uranium, the deal could not be implemented. Due to pressure from the Carter administration, the French energy authorities decided to withhold the fuel destined for Koeberg until Washington gave its consent.10 The Reagan administration adopted quite a different stance towards the NNPA, the cornerstone of Carter’s non-proliferation policy, and criticized the Act as blocking significant nuclear commerce with Pretoria. However, this did not lead to a revision of the Act.11 Their 7 8 9 10 11

Van Wyk, 2010a, p. 54. Fourie, 1991, pp. 101–103. Auf der Heyde, 1993, p. 4; and: Fig, 1998, pp. 163–180. Fourie, 1991, pp. 101–103; Rabinowitz and Miller, 2015, p. 69. Pulcini and Rabinowitz, 2021, p. 5 and p. 38. In their article, they illuminate the domestic congressional tensions the Reagan administration had to accommodate when

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initial argument was that certain US technologies, which did not consist of sensitive material, should be exported without restrictions to maintain a degree of influence over the South African government and discourage them from making their own nuclear weapons. Bilateral discussions on nuclear issues between both governments resumed shortly after Reagan’s inauguration in March 1981. Two delegations attended secret talks in Paris with the aim of deepening cooperation and resolving the crisis around the nuclear fuel shipments, withheld by the US Department of Energy since 1976.12 During the meetings, the South Africans claimed in principle not to be opposed to NPT accession, provided that their basic requirements were met. In a similar vein, they promised to start administering their nuclear affairs in line with the NPT. However, due to the continued Soviet presence in southern Africa, they felt unable to sign the NPT at that point, because it was not in the interest of their own security.13 In essence, this was not much different from the South African stance on the NPT during the Carter years but, fortunately for Pretoria’s leadership, it resonated much more strongly with Reagan and his officials. Concerning the withheld fuel deliveries, a difficult impasse had arisen earlier: South Africa had exported uranium to the United States to be enriched at a low percentage and later be returned to South Africa for use in the Koeberg nuclear power station. The opening of the power station was imminent, and South Africa had already paid for the enrichment. Yet, the United States still withheld the fuel. The South Africans perceived this as a breach of contract, but the Carter administration maintained it could not adhere to its contractual duties as long as the apartheid regime continued to defy the NPT and did not conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA. In a complete turnabout, this deadlock was resolved under the Reagan administration.14 The South African approach was to suggest that if the United States could not supply the enriched uranium destined for the Koeberg power reactor, then instead French firms should be permitted to step in to supply the fuel loads that ESKOM, the state-owned energy supplier,

12 13

14

it came to non-proliferation policy. Despite congressional constraints, the Reagan administration approved dual-use exports that the NNPA did not prohibit to South Africa (Miller and Volpe, 2022, p. 22). Van Wyk, 2007, p. 207. ‘Directive for Discussions of Nuclear Matters with United States Authorities’, March 1981, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, South African Foreign Affairs Archives, Brand Fourie Personal Papers, Nuclear Energy, 1 January 1981 to 8 May 1981, Vol. V, Department of International Relations and Cooperation Archive (hereafter DIRCO), Obtained and contributed by Anna-Mart van Wyk, Monash South Africa. Fourie, 1991, pp. 101–102.

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was entitled to receive from the US Department of Energy. Commenting on the US–South African nuclear relationship at the beginning of the Reagan era, a former South African Ambassador to the United States remarked that ‘[…] the persecution attitude of the Carter period was absent, heralding a new approach to the supply of fuel for Koeberg’.15 In March 1981 a meeting was held in Paris during which US and South African officials tried to resolve the fuel crisis; the latter gave the US delegation certain assurances concerning the way in which they would administer their nuclear affairs. The South Africans claimed that while they would not accede to the NPT, their nuclear programme only targeted the peaceful applications of nuclear energy.16 Those who participated on South Africa’s side believed that the general agreement during the Paris encounter paved the way for a high-level meeting two months later between Foreign Minister Pik Botha and US President Reagan, in which the US side ratified the proposal made to them two months earlier.17 Thus, the Reagan administration enabled the government in Pretoria to receive the outstanding nuclear fuel shipments from France in return for a promise to refrain from testing a nuclear device.18 Part of the Reagan administration’s approach to curb the spread of nuclear weapons included the brokering of agreements and unofficial understandings with governments to prevent nuclear tests by so-called threshold states. South Africa was considered to be one of these countries, and its Foreign Minister Pik Botha promised Reagan that South African scientists would not test a nuclear weapon without informing the US State Department in advance. According to Botha, this ‘non-testing formula’ paved the way for the Koeberg fuel deal to go ahead.19 Initially, it was not anticipated that the Koeberg issue should come up during the Reagan–Botha meeting, as it had not been previously cleared with Secretary of State Alexander Haig. However, the South 15 16 17

18 19

Brand Fourie, undated, ‘Buitelandse Woelinge om Suid-Afrika, 1939–1985’, unpublished, South African Historical Archive (hereafter SAHA). Fourie, 1991, pp. 101–102. Fourie, 1991, p. 102. Donald B. Sole was instrumental in setting up the Paris meeting between the South Africans and the Americans. The encounter took place in the French capital for fears of possible leaks if the meeting were to be held in Washington. Recalling this episode, Sole regarded the meeting as much less of a success than Fourie, because the Americans continued to insist that South Africa accepted safeguards and inspections on all its nuclear sites after the encounter (Sole, undated, p. 448–449). Rabinowitz, 2014, pp. 118–122; for an account of the brokering of the deals, see Sole, undated, pp. 448–449. Rabinowitz and Miller, 2015, pp. 67–70. Over the years, doubts have been raised about whether Pik Botha was allowed to convey these undertakings to the Reagan administration, because apparently he lacked the approval of President P. W. Botha (Niël Barnard, interview with author, 21 February 2017, Gansbaai).

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African Foreign Minister skilfully brought it up during the encounter, to the consternation of Haig. In return for allowing France to ship the Koeberg fuel to South Africa, he promised that his government would refrain from testing without prior notice being given to Washington.20 Two months after the Reagan–Botha meeting, the US government issued National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) No. 6, in which it laid out its non-proliferation objectives. It made no mention of the secret understanding with the South Africans, but stated that one objective was to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries, to improve regional and global stability by addressing the legitimate security concerns of states, and to therefore try to reduce incentives to develop a nuclear capability in the first place. The Reagan administration also promised to work towards enhancing the credibility of the United States as a reliable and responsible nuclear fuel supplier. Henceforth, states interested in obtaining nuclear fuel and technological support were officially required to undergo IAEA safeguards on all their nuclear installations.21 A recently declassified secret CIA memorandum, however, sheds a different light on Pik Botha’s encounter with President Reagan half a year before. The document claimed that […] South Africa will produce additional amounts of enriched uranium some of which almost certainly will be used in its weapons program [and in the future] it will free itself from reliance on the US for the supply of its nuclear fuel by virtue of increased French assistance.22

Given the diminishing US influence over strategic decisions on South Africa’s nuclear policies and the Reagan administration’s awareness of Pretoria’s increased efforts to develop nuclear weapons, wrenching the advance warning from South Africa’s Foreign Minister might have constituted a success. Only a year later, however, another CIA memorandum containing new information on Pretoria’s nuclear programme claimed that South African scientists believed that nuclear testing was not required anyway, because of the favourable nuclear weapon modelling results they had obtained. According to the same memorandum, South Africa’s Y-plant at Valindaba had manufactured sufficient weapons-grade material

20 21

22

Papenfus, 2012, pp. 544–546. National Security Decision Directive No. 6, 16 July 1981. This would have meant that following the arrival of safeguards inspectors, the South African engineers would have had to reveal their stockpile of weapon-grade uranium produced at the Y-plant. ‘Perspectives on Nuclear Developments During 1982’, Memorandum for Chairman, National Intelligence Council, January 8, 1982, Central Intelligence Agency (hereafter CIA).

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since 1978, which was ‘[…] long enough to have produced highly enriched uranium for several nuclear weapons’.23 Thus, in hindsight, the fact that in May 1981 the South Africans agreed to provide advance warning of testing appears to have been a Pyrrhic victory, especially in light of South Africa’s unbridled parallel growth in nuclear capabilities. Yet for Pretoria, reassuring the State Department was crucial, for it allowed ESKOM to receive fuel supplies from France for the soon-to-be-opened Koeberg nuclear power station. Eventually, the Reagan administration lived up to its promises and enabled the South Africans to receive the fuel held by French companies, without Pretoria’s prior accession to the NPT or the conclusion of an IAEA safeguards agreement. The State Department also authorized nuclear dual-use technology24 destined for South Africa at a time when Congressional support for trade restrictions could still be neglected.25 However, it is important to note that these deals materialized in the wider context of the US strategy of constructive engagement towards South Africa. Crocker indeed acknowledged that the policy included discussing nuclear aspects as well, as these could not be separated from the overall issues on the table: ‘In a broad sense, the approach was consistent with constructive engagement in that the United States sought a negotiated outcome of the standoff over fuel delivery and NPT requirements including safeguards.’26 NPT issues and safeguarding matters were mostly pursued through separate channels and via other officials, such as US Ambassador-at-Large for Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Energy Affairs, Richard T. Kennedy.27 However, the issue continued to linger even after Pik Botha’s agreement to give advance warning to President Reagan. This allowed the South African nuclear industrial complex and defence sector to flourish further, while most other states, following the revelations by Abdul Minty and the ‘World Campaign Against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa’ in 1979, increasingly turned their backs on Pretoria.28 23 24

25 26 27

28

‘New Information on South Africa’s Nuclear Program and South African-Israeli Nuclear and Military Cooperation’, Directorate of Intelligence, 30 March 1983, CIA. The dual-use character of the involved technology allowed its application in peaceful and military aims and included items such as computers, valves, pumps and even furnaces, which the South Africans needed for their nuclear installations (Armscor Employee No. 2, interview with author, 19 January 2020, Irene). Rabinowitz and Miller, 2015, pp. 69–70; Frazier, p. 288. Chester Crocker, personal correspondence, 9 June 2019, via email. Rabinowitz, 2014, p. 118; see also Richard T. Kennedy, interview with Charles Stuart, 27 September 1995, The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project. Steyn et al., 2003, p. 50.

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Despite its seemingly less vocal opposition towards South Africa’s nuclear ambiguity, according to a report sent to Pretoria by the newly appointed South African Ambassador to Washington, Bernardus ‘Brand’ Fourie, the State Department still pushed South African officials to agree to full-scope safeguards and NPT accession.29 Washington very much wanted Pretoria to abide by the rules of the NPT, but the State Department lacked the instruments to apply pressure continuously. As it turned out, the newly elected US government’s approach to South Africa’s lack of NPT accession oscillated between benevolent forbearance and moderate criticism. It tolerated the apartheid regime’s nuclear ambiguity for quite some time into the mid-1980s, despite worrying signs. 3.1.1

A Delicate Balance: Emerging Nuclear Capabilities and Fending off Foreign Criticism

After P. W. Botha succeeded B. J. Vorster as Prime Minister in September 1978, he immediately brought together a high-level steering group called the ‘Witvlei Committee’. As mentioned earlier, this Committee’s tasks included deciding on strategic matters related to the nuclear weapons programme and the NPT policy. It was composed of the Prime Minister himself, the Ministers of Defence, Finance, Mineral and Energy Affairs, and Foreign Affairs. In addition, it included the Chairmen of the AEB and Armscor, the Chief of the SADF, the Director-General of the Department of Mineral and Energy, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Brand Fourie.30 By April 1979, the nuclear explosives programme had been transferred from the AEB to Armscor with the aim of designing and building a guntype nuclear device similar to the ones used by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, the construction of a suitable facility exclusively for producing the nuclear warheads was approved.31 Armscor’s subsidiary company Kentron, known for its development of missiles, became responsible for carrying out the production of the actual devices, while the HEU would be supplied by the AEB. For these purposes, a new facility was completed in 1981 under the name of Advena. By then, the team occupied with the weapons development had been augmented with people who had previously worked on peaceful nuclear explosives at Somchem in the Cape, and individuals from 29 30 31

‘Message from F.G. Moll to W. Rothkegel’, 22 February 1983, File: 137/18, DIRCO. Liberman, 2001, p. 53. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 165–166; Steyn et al., 2003, p. 80.

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Pelindaba who had been involved in the completion of the first device intended for the aborted test of August 1977.32 At Advena, all those involved in the bomb programme were grouped together in order to create synergies for the benefit of progress. The first gun-type device was ready in 1982, and a small function took place at Advena to celebrate this crucial achievement in the journey to obtain a credible deterrent.33 Named ‘Hobo’, this first military device was intended to be dropped from an aircraft but could also be used as the payload of a glide bomb, meaning that it could be released at a greater distance from the actual target.34 It took time for Armscor to develop more gun-type nuclear devices, due to further refinements relating to reliability and safety. Work on the delivery design delayed the completion of the next device until August 1987. Most importantly, the material and technical assistance available to the bomb makers was seriously limited by the international measures instituted against South Africa, such as the UN Security Council Resolutions 181 and 282 in 1963 and 1970, respectively, which led to voluntary arms embargoes. Mandatory sanctions, however, were only taken up against Pretoria in 1977 following the UN Security Council Resolution 418. This, in turn, delayed the production for Armscor. It needed to manufacture and obtain crucial parts and technology from domestic sources or via clandestine channels, often paying a premium price for the supplies.35 3.1.2

Domestic Political Turmoil: The Apartheid Regime under Pressure

From the beginning of his first term as Prime Minister in 1978, P. W. Botha, a staunch supporter of apartheid, nevertheless embarked on modest reform of the system of apartheid through gradual changes in line with the overall ‘Total Strategy’ of the government, which aimed at securing the survival of his volk, the Afrikaner. The changes targeted outdated political principles and foresaw a restructuring of race relations and a general lessening of the plethora of restrictions on the country’s majority introduced by his predecessors. Although far from granting the non-white population in South Africa full political rights, in 1982, P. W. 32 33 34 35

Von Wielligh, 1993, pp. 6–7. This document was supplied by Johann Viljoen, interview with author, 19 February 2018, Pretoria. Ibid.; Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 167; pp. 171–172; Buys, 2007, p. 10. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 167; pp. 171–172. Armscor Employee No. 2, interview with author, 19 January 2020, Irene; see also Liberman, 2001, p. 54.

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Botha’s piecemeal reforms proved too much for the conservatives (verkrampte) within the NP. In a dramatic split away from the governing party, Andries Treurnicht, erstwhile leader of the NP in the Transvaal Province, formed the Conservative Party (CP).36 Following a report by the Wiehahn Commission in 1979, further changes relating to the country’s labour policies were introduced. This culminated in the Labour Relations Act of 1981, which abolished restrictions on the mobility and training of black South African workers. Another report by the Riekert Commission in the early 1980s heralded changes to the apartheid influxcontrol system, which had been set up to manage the mobility of nonwhite South Africans, particularly in urban areas. In 1984, the Group Areas Act was amended as well. However, Botha’s reforms did not address the root causes of apartheid and, thus, were regarded as being introduced to defuse overall African grievances with the racial political system and to secure the collaboration of the growing black urban elite.37 The year 1984 witnessed two more of P. W. Botha’s ‘reform projects’ being put into practice. Firstly, in March of that year, the Nkomati Accord between South Africa and Mozambique was intended to put an end to Pretoria’s clandestine support for the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo), the rebel movement fighting the Frelimo government in Maputo. In turn, Mozambique’s President Samora Machel promised to cease Frelimo’s support for the ANC in exile. Secondly, in September 1984, a new South African constitution was introduced with the opening of the parliament in Cape Town, which basically preserved the exclusion of around 30 million Africans from any political participation, while granting roughly 2.5 million so-called Coloureds and 1 million Indians a subordinate role in Botha’s new racially segregated tricameral parliament. However, barely a year later, P. W. Botha destroyed whatever international support his domestic reform initiatives might have enjoyed.38 At the NP Congress in Durban in August 1985, P. W. Botha, in a truculent mood, unleashed his infamous ‘Rubicon Speech’.39 In it, he clearly outlined his refusal to go beyond his own discredited reforms in an act of defiance that generally dashed any hopes of meaningful change in South African domestic policies. The Rubicon disaster also alarmed international business leaders with financial interests in the country and ended short-term loans provided to Pretoria virtually overnight. In addition, around the same time, Foreign Minister Pik Botha 36 37 38 39

O‘Meara, 1996, pp. 245–256. Ibid., pp. 273–275. Ibid., pp. 320–321; and p. 277. Giliomee, 2008, pp. 1–40.

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publicly acknowledged the truth of allegations that the SADF had continuously rendered support to Renamo in a clear breach of the bilateral Nkomati Accord of 1984. All this resulted in a plummeting exchange rate for the Rand, continued domestic political unrest and the growing international isolation of the government.40 Thus, by September 1985, the twin pressures of economic sanctions and the efflux of foreign capital necessitated a review of the nuclear weapons programme. In a secret ad hoc meeting of the Witvlei Committee, it was confirmed that the number of warheads would be limited to seven, a number deemed sufficient for the purpose of deterrence. The former South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, who was present at this meeting, recalled the high costs associated with the programme in light of the overall financial limitations: ‘We thought it was a terrible waste of money and a completely unnecessary investment in armament […] it was a totally crazy idea.’41 The task for those present was all but easy, as they juggled to find a strategic balance between budget restrictions, international sanctions and the scope of the programme itself. While they discontinued the research on plutonium warheads, they nevertheless gave the go-ahead for work on the integration of nuclear weapons in a long-distance carrier (ballistic missile). Research and studies on smaller implosion devices received a green light as well.42 These strategic decisions severely restricted the apartheid government’s room for manoeuvre concerning entry into the NPT regime. 3.1.3

US and IAEA Attempts to Secure South African Accession: A Futile Undertaking

On the international scene, the continued defiance of the NPT by the South African leadership gave rise to much criticism. Throughout the 1980s, a general characteristic of Pretoria’s stance on global nonproliferation norms was to claim that its leaders were not opposed to signing the NPT and an IAEA safeguards agreement, repeatedly pointing out that the SAFARI-1 research reactor was already subject to international inspections. However, contradicting their official statements, the South Africans followed a secret strategy agreed at the highest level of decision-making in Pretoria by President P. W. Botha and Defence Minister Magnus Malan. At least from late 1983 onwards, the South 40 41 42

O’Meara, 1996, pp. 324–331. For an account of South Africa’s foreign relations following the Rubicon Speech, see Barber and Barret, 1990, pp. 320–322. Barend Du Plessis, interview with author, 1 March 2017, Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 181–182. See also Stumpf, December 1995/January 1996, p. 6.

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Africans had secretly decided to reject a full-scope safeguards agreement with the IAEA.43 As far as direct foreign pressure was concerned, in early 1983, the DFA officials working on the subject were not aware that governments other than the United States had similarly encouraged South Africa to accede to the NPT. However, the new IAEA Director-General Hans Blix raised the issue with the South African representative at the Agency in Vienna. Blix suggested that South Africa accede to the Treaty to ensure easier access to fuel and technology. To this, the South African representative responded with the aforementioned usual preconditions, citing that his government must first be convinced that its uranium enrichment process would remain absolutely secret following safeguards inspections, and that it needed assurances of equal treatment in the IAEA by other countries.44 In parallel, within the Agency, the pressure on South Africa was on the rise. At the 27th General Conference in 1983, a resolution on ‘South Africa’s Nuclear Capabilities’ was adopted, which included a demand that the South Africans put their nuclear infrastructure under IAEA safeguards inspections.45 Towards the end of the year, the US State Department reinforced its efforts to convince the South Africans to join the NPT. In December 1983, DFA officials received a letter from their embassy in Washington, informing them about the new US policy towards the export of nuclear-related equipment, materials or technology to states such as India, Argentina and South Africa. The US Congress believed the US government should disapprove ‘[…] the export of, and should suspend or revoke approval for the export of, any nuclear-related components and heavy water, to the Government of India, Argentina, or South Africa until such time as such Government gives […] stronger nonproliferation guarantees’.46 The Reagan administration tried to use its influence over the South Africans to revive negotiations between Pretoria and the IAEA. Officials from the United States acted as brokers, because the South Africans had not lived up to the promise they had made during the encounters in Paris and Washington three years earlier regarding the NPT and a safeguards 43

44 45

46

‘Overview of Discussions with the IAEA on International Nuclear Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant’, 13 November 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/ 3, ARCA. ‘Message from F.G. Moll to W. Rothkegel’, 22 February 1983, File: 137/18, DIRCO. ‘Message from F.G. Moll to C. Venter’, 22 February 1984, File: 137/18, DIRCO; See also ‘South Africa’s Nuclear Capabilities’ 27th IAEA General Conference, GC (XXVII)/ 702, 13 October 1983. ‘Challenges of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime’, Ambassador Brand Fourie to Director-General of Department of Foreign Affairs and Information, 21 September 1983, File: 137/18, DIRCO.

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agreement. Indeed, as internal assessments by the DFA in Pretoria show, by mid-1983, the South Africans were quite aware of the fact that their continued defiance of the NPT fuelled the ambiguity around their nuclear capabilities. This would likely invite even more criticism internationally.47 To counter critics, on 31 January 1984, Wynand de Villiers issued a public statement indicating that South Africa was ready to resume negotiations with the IAEA about safeguards on its semi-commercial enrichment plant (Z-plant). This brought the Agency back into the negotiations after relations had been dormant between the two sides since 1980.48 Eager for positive results showing the effectiveness of US non-proliferation policies, the Reagan administration triumphantly announced that the South African position represented an important step in the right direction. With the US Congress increasingly wary of Reagan’s ‘constructive engagement’, US officials claimed that the South African intentions as per the 31 January statement were the result of US efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons globally. The State Department in particular applauded Pretoria’s indicated willingness to resume negotiations between South Africa and the IAEA, thereby helping to extend the Agency’s safeguards to the semi-commercial enrichment plant under construction in South Africa.49 However, pressure continued to rise as the South Africans hesitated to act. Sometime after the AEC’s chairman had stressed the country’s peaceful nuclear intentions, the DFA anticipated yet more pressure coming from Washington, aimed at making the South African government abide by non-proliferation norms. Officially, foreign affairs officials claimed that their government had never committed itself to not signing the Treaty or to accepting full-scope safeguards. But the precondition of an assurance about maintaining the secrecy of their enrichment process in the event of in-plant inspections remained, as well as their focus on receiving equal treatment to all other IAEA member states under the Treaty.50 Following the above-mentioned January statement, Wynand de Villiers met with Richard T. Kennedy51 in the United States and the 47 48

49 50 51

‘Message from F.G. Moll to C. Venter’, 22 February 1984, File: 137/18, DIRCO. ‘Press Release by Dr J W L Villiers of the AEC’, 31 January 1984; see also ‘South African’s Nuclear Capabilities’, IAEA Board of Governors, GOV/INF/459, 29 August 1984, IAEA Archive. Van Wyk, 2004, pp. 226–227. ‘Message from F.G. Moll to C. Venter’, 22 February 1984, File: 137/18, DIRCO. Richard T. Kennedy became the nodal point in the US State Department for matters to do with the NPT accession by South Africa, up until his retirement in early 1993. From 1983 onwards, he was frequently approached as an interlocutor by DFA officials (Richard T. Kennedy, interview with Charles Stuart, 27 September 1995, The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project).

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latter, appointed in 1983 by Reagan as Ambassador-at-Large for NonProliferation, expressed concern that the South Africans had not yet held any discussions with the IAEA. This was in line with what Ambassador Donald Bell Sole later recalled, namely that ‘[…] notwithstanding this temporary lightening of the gloom in nuclear relations, the overall graph continued downwards’.52 He claimed that the political climate within the US Congress developed unfavourably from a South African point of view. More than ever, the country was at the focus of Washington’s political attention due to its racial apartheid policies.53 Similarly, in the IAEA, by June 1984, criticism targeting the apartheid state within the IAEA Board of Governors had mounted to new heights, as several Western countries accused South Africa of using delaying tactics and failing to keep its word.54 This had repercussions on Pretoria’s NPT policy, as it resulted in South Africa moving towards negotiations with international parties. The archival records clearly demonstrate that it was under these conditions that the ensuing discussions on the application of safeguards to the Z-Plant were entered into with the IAEA. The first round took place in August 1984 in Vienna.55 Nevertheless, it took more than half a year before, in February 1985, a South African delegation discussed safeguards with US officials. This was the starting point for a series of bilateral meetings between Washington and Pretoria’s officials, as well as between the South African representatives and the IAEA Secretariat in Vienna during the same month.56 The South Africans declared their willingness to negotiate with the IAEA concerning the application of safeguards on all its nuclear installations, mostly due to pressure from the US State Department.57 3.2

Reagan’s Second Term: Diminishing Leverage over Pretoria

By the mid-1980s, the apartheid policies of the white-minority regime still denied Africans all political rights and had led to forced removals, 52 53 54 55

56 57

Sole, undated, p. 449. Ibid. ‘South African’s Nuclear Capabilities’, IAEA Board of Governors, GOV/INF/459, (Annex 2), 29 August 1984, IAEA Archive. ‘Overview of Discussions with the IAEA on International Nuclear Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant’, 13 November 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/3, ARCA. It must be kept in mind that in parallel in South Africa, the Witvlei Committee had secretly decided neither to sign the NPT nor to agree to bring the South African nuclear infrastructure under IAEA safeguards. This reduced the chances of a swift conclusion drastically. ‘Board of Governors Meeting’, GOV/OR. 624, September 1984, IAEA Archive. ‘International Energy Agency (IAEA)’, 16 April 1985, File: 137/10, DIRCO.

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police brutality and general hardship under the racially discriminating legislation. After six years of so-called reforms under President Botha, the apparent lack of progress towards granting all South African citizens the same rights fuelled anger in the townships, as effectively not much had changed for the majority of the country’s population. Moreover, the ANC had also called upon the masses to make the country ungovernable, and domestic resistance against the white-minority regime was on the rise. The government response was mixed. Extreme repression was used to quell the violent uprisings by deploying more than 30,000 troops in the townships, but several of the reforms that had been introduced in the early 1980s were also extended. However, by May 1986, the apartheid government faced an unstable and violent impasse. The uprisings failed to be contained by the military employed in the black townships, and increasingly the white-minority regime was losing whatever little international support that it still enjoyed. Moreover, an economic crisis was looming, aggravated by growing international sanctions.58 In June 1986, overlapping with the tenth anniversary of the bloody suppression of Soweto uprising of 1976, African workers planned a three-day general strike. In response, the Botha government proclaimed a nationwide State of Emergency on 12 June without the prior approval of Parliament.59 This had international repercussions, because the daily television transmissions of images showing brutal police violence against black South Africans led to even harsher criticism and calls for the extension of sanctions and embargoes.60 This also fuelled domestic US opposition to apartheid. The political debate reached the US Congress and signalled a change in the relationship with South Africa, up to this point perceived as a long-standing ally. Disagreement between the State Department and some sections in the US Congress over how best to achieve political change in South Africa characterized the internal debate. Reagan continued to defend the US approach of ‘constructive engagement’, which did not envisage economic sanctions against Pretoria and aimed at reducing the punitive measures and prohibitions on trade with the apartheid regime. However, at that point, many in the United States and Europe were calling for more stringent sanctions on the apartheid regime. Reagan went as far as to defend P. W. Botha’s attempts to slowly reform the system from within, claiming that if further sanctions were imposed on the apartheid regime, it would limit US flexibility and end the remaining 58 59 60

O’Meara, 1996, pp. 322–326 and 337. Ibid., pp. 343 and 350. Ibid., p. 337.

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US diplomatic leverage. By mid-1986, however, brutal police violence in South African townships and the State of Emergency imposed in May of that year led to considerable political infighting in the US Congress over the issue of further sanctions. Initially, Reagan tried to block the Congress’ plans of sanctions against South Africa through an Executive Order, but was ultimately not successful. On 11 September 1986, the House of Representatives formally approved the Senate Bill, known as the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA). Reagan vetoed this decision but he was overturned, and the House subsequently passed the CAAA (with 313 to 83 votes). Moreover, in early October 1986, the Senate also overrode Reagan’s veto by voting 78 to 21 in favour of the CAAA, which led to far-reaching congressional sanctions against South Africa.61 Concerning nuclear-related sanctions, Section 307 of the CAAA was particularly significant as it barred the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from issuing any licenses for the export of nuclear material, components or sensitive nuclear technology to South Africa. In addition, it also prohibited the import of South African uranium ore and uranium oxide into the United States.62 The CAAA had an immediate impact on the nuclear relationship between Pretoria and Washington. Former Deputy Assistant of State for African Affairs, Chas Freeman Jr, recalled that when he acted as the sanctions coordinator for the measures imposed against South Africa under the CAAA: […] at no time were the South Africans offered sanctions relief in return for nuclear concessions. The issue linked to the sanctions was their institutionalized racial discrimination and disenfranchisement of their non-white population. President Reagan had had the sanctions imposed on him by Congress over his veto. The executive branch was in no position to provide relief from them.63

Following the imposition of the CAAA during Reagan’s second term, not many options were left for the State Department to ease the growing pressure on the leadership in Pretoria. This became an additional burden on the increasingly strained bilateral relationship and hardly any meetings took place between the two sides, so there was little room for discussion of nuclear matters. It seems that the US anti-apartheid sanctions risked robbing the US administration of its leverage on the non-proliferation front. With the whole apartheid regime sanctioned, Reagan could hardly promise any relief in exchange for non-proliferation 61 62 63

Van Wyk, 2004, pp. 270–271, Gasbarri, 2020, pp. 22–23. Van Wyk, 2004, pp. 266; pp. 270–271; Gasbarri, 2020, pp. 22–23. Charles ‘Chas’ Freeman, personal correspondence, 6 April 2018, via email.

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progress. However, the Reagan administration continued to display a supportive attitude towards Pretoria, because a crucial aspect of its foreign policy remained the limiting of global proliferation. In that regard, US non-proliferation policies aimed at making an entry into the NPT a credible option for the South African leadership, or at least convincing them to accept IAEA safeguards. A related objective was to make sure South Africa remained a member of the Agency and to encourage negotiations between the IAEA Secretariat and the government in South Africa, in the hope of ultimately concluding a safeguards agreement with the Agency.64 3.2.1

South Africa’s NPT Position and the IAEA Safeguards Agreement

By mid-1985, Pretoria’s leaders continued to be disinclined towards accession to the NPT. However, the exact South African position remained largely unknown at that time, because information was only sporadically conveyed through DFA officials to the IAEA Secretariat. Their Embassy in Vienna revealed that the refusal to open up South Africa’s nuclear installations for inspections reflected the wishes of the country’s political establishment, namely the Witvlei Committee, which intended to keep the world guessing about possible military applications. Opening up to full-scope safeguards would drastically reduce the current ambiguity. On the same occasion, the DFA representative claimed that the Foreign Affairs Ministry favoured NPT accession, whereas the other departments opposed it. Those against accession were mostly motivated by their expectations that double standards would be applied to South Africa following NPT signature.65 Serious reservations existed, and the Republic could not assume that it would receive benefits such as cooperation and exchange of technical information if it were to join the nonproliferation regime. This initially fuelled the government’s general reluctance to accede to the NPT. Carl von Hirschberg, the Deputy Director-General of the DFA, explained that his government would continue to review possible NPT adherence periodically, but in light of the present situation, there was no reason to argue for a change in the prevailing NPT position.66 The South Africans were only prepared to discuss the application of safeguards to the semi-commercial Z-plant, but 64 65

66

Van Wyk, 2004 p. 283. ‘South Africa: Nuclear’ Letter from CJ Ingham (Vienna to Nuclear Energy Department), 22 February 1985, File: MNF 160/1 Foreign and Commonwealth Archive (hereafter FCO). ‘NPT: Representations to South Africa’ (from Pretoria to FCO), 19 April 1985, File: MNP 083/1 (Part D).

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not to the Y-plant. The view prevailed in Pretoria that even upon conclusion of an agreement, there were too many obstacles to a resumption of nuclear cooperation with, inter alia, the US Department of Energy, so the apartheid regime would most likely still get nothing in return.67 However, from the beginning of 1985, talks between South African delegations and the IAEA Secretariat as well as the State Department, respectively, gained momentum, taking place in Washington and Vienna more frequently than in the early 1980s. These encounters continued in South Africa, with a US delegation visiting Pelindaba in May 1985. Its members were allowed into the semi-commercial enrichment plant then still under construction, but the secret technology and operations of the installation were not revealed. AEC head Wynand de Villiers conveyed his thoughts after the visit. According to him, it was clear that the US officials prioritized acceptance of nuclear safeguards by the Republic of South Africa over NPT signature, concerned as they were about the possible enrichment of uranium in the Z-Plant. Ultimately, they feared a scenario in which LEU would be fed into the pilot plant (Y-Plant) to boost the production of HEU.68 The South African officials extended a similar invitation to the IAEA in the wake of the May delegation visit to Vienna for the purpose of technical discussions. Thus, from 26 to 30 August 1985, IAEA inspectors visited the semi-commercial enrichment plant including the hot-cell facility.69 As with the US delegation, no sensitive areas were revealed. During the visit, the IAEA team were told that the greatest obstacle blocking a positive decision on the South African side was the continued threat of international sanctions and boycotts and, connected to this, Pretoria’s deteriorating position within the IAEA. Above all loomed the likelihood of a nil return for NPT signature. With the impasse seemingly unsurmountable, there was not much left to discuss, and the talks ended on the second of the five planned days. In reporting about these meetings, the leader of the South African delegation, Wynand de Villiers, indicated that the South African tactic of continuously engaging the United States and the IAEA in talks about possible NPT accession bore serious limitations. This was no surprise, because the Witvlei Committee had earlier agreed on not signing the Treaty. In informing the Minister of 67 68

69

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telegram 201 from Moberly (Cape Town to FCO), 5 June 1985, File: MNP 083/1 (Part E). ‘Overview of Discussions with the IAEA on International Nuclear Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant’, 13 November 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/ 3, ARCA. The Delegation’s leader was Dr von Baeckmann, who was joined by other IAEA officials including Thorstensen, Rautjaervi and Papadimitropoulos.

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Mineral and Energy Affairs, Danie Steyn, de Villiers argued that ‘[…] the stage has been reached where it is becoming extremely difficult to proceed with meaningful negotiations without disclosing information on the plant that is still regarded as highly sensitive and secret to the IAEA’.70 This was despite the fact that the IAEA delegation had been extremely well-disposed towards the South African officials. Although confrontation with the IAEA officials had been avoided and more time gained from a South African point of view, de Villiers nevertheless remained pessimistic. This was because the encounters had demonstrated that unless a decision was taken to place the Z-plant under IAEA safeguards, a further round of negotiations would not be possible without revealing full factual information on the enrichment plant.71 Only a few days after the IAEA team’s visit, the Witvlei Committee met again. While discussing general aspects of the South African nuclear weapons strategy, this meeting also had consequences for the government’s position on the NPT and Agency safeguards. Most important was the reaffirmation of the decision that IAEA safeguards on the Z-Plant could not be accepted. This was the result of secret discussions in Pretoria concerning South Africa’s stance towards NPT accession and acceptance of international safeguards. The high-level meeting included President P. W. Botha, Defence Minister Magnus Malan, Finance Minister Barend du Plessis, Wynand de Villiers and Brand Fourie, as well as Foreign Minister Pik Botha. It decided that: The negotiations with the IAEA should be delayed and dragged for as long as possible [and, if feasible] an attempt should be made to derail the negotiations at such a late stage and in such a way that South Africa suffers as little political damage as possible.72

Under no circumstances would it be acceptable to allow full-scope safeguards on the Z-plant. Based on these decisions, it became the underlying principle of the South African strategy on the NPT and IAEA safeguards that: […] at as late a stage as possible [the South African Government] will indicate that [it] will not permit any inspections inside the plant and will only consider peripheral safeguards. Thereafter, again at as late a stage as possible, we will demand that enriched uranium required for our own

70

71 72

‘Overview of Discussions with the IAEA on International Nuclear Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant’, 13 November 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/ 3, ARCA. Ibid. Ibid.

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This strategy remained valid for the years to come and, while it had a negative impact on the discussions between officials from the United States, the IAEA Secretariat and South Africa, it bought the apartheid leaders more time. Hence, the decisions taken on the military side of the project ultimately shaped the South African position on entry into the NPT regime. It was clear that for as long as military-strategic considerations prevailed, there would be no movement towards signing the NPT. The strong criticism directed at the apartheid state during the 1985 IAEA General Conference led AEC Chairman De Villiers to reiterate that negotiations with the IAEA should be suspended until such time when the politically motivated campaign against South Africa in the IAEA had ceased. In the meantime, however, Mineral and Energy Minister Steyn prevented an official announcement to that effect, as he was convinced that for political reasons it was not a suitable time for South Africa to unilaterally suspend negotiations with the IAEA.74 However, it was almost impossible to proceed with meaningful discussions without losing the last bit of credibility. Therefore, with all other options seemingly off the table, De Villiers suggested suspending the discussions for political reasons, for him the only acceptable alternative.75 Newly obtained archival records from South Africa illuminate for the first time the reasons behind South Africa’s reluctance to sign any binding non-proliferation agreements during the 1980s. First of all, the Yplant, used since the late 1970s for the production of the HEU for the ongoing nuclear weapons programme, never featured in the discussion around a safeguards agreement, as this was off the table for the South Africans. It was the Z-Plant, at the time under construction, which the IAEA wanted to bring into the global non-proliferation regime before it started operations. However, the Witvlei Committee’s earlier refusal to sign the NPT reduced the IAEA attempts to a fruitless affair. The South African officials engaged in the international discussions knew that they had neither a mandate nor the political backing to take a positive decision on the NPT at this point.76 73 74

75

76

Ibid. ‘Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant of the AEC: Resolution against South Africa at the General Conference of the IAEA, September 23–29, 1985’, 7 October 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/3, ARCA. ‘Overview of Discussions with the IAEA on International Nuclear Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant’, 13 November 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/ 3, ARCA. Herbert Beukes, interview with author, 27 February 2018, Somerset West.

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Internally, the decision to avoid international safeguards on the Zplant had been carefully weighed. Two scenarios had played a role in the decision, which formed the basis of De Villiers’ recommendation to stop the ongoing negotiations. If safeguards were accepted, more stringent sanctions against the Republic condemning its nuclear ambiguity would be fended off with almost immediate effect. However, this would only be the case for as long as sensitive knowledge of the Z-plant was still confined to South Africa, because as soon as information about the plant started to spread after the US and IAEA visits, the AEC would be cut off from its present sources of technology and be greatly embarrassed. Moreover, their secret suppliers would be hamstrung as the clandestine deals would be revealed. De Villers singled out the greatest danger, posed by in-plant inspections. If these were permitted: […] the IAEA inspectors would gain information on that equipment which we have nevertheless obtained, despite the embargo on nuclear cooperation, and it would be possible to ascertain the identity of the suppliers and the countries of origin as well. The consequence would be a total intensification of the boycott and this could even lead to criminal charges being brought against the suppliers by their governments.77

This, according to the AEC Chairman, would lead to the end of overseas information and flows of expertise, because the notion of South Africa keeping the identity of their sources and suppliers secret would lose credibility. The other scenario provided the reasoning for an eventual rejection of IAEA safeguards. Unilateral suspension of talks by the South African government would almost certainly lead to an immediate deterioration of the Republic’s relationship with both the IAEA and the US government, probably including total expulsion from the Agency in Vienna. It would also spark more stringent sanctions with consequences for the local energy sector. In addition, it would jeopardize the fuel for the Koeberg reactors, which French firms would not deliver under the circumstances. This was extremely problematic for ESKOM, because without the still outstanding fuel deliveries, the power reactors could not start operating on time, and this overseas reliance would continue until the AEC was able to produce enough fuel for Koeberg domestically.78 Moreover, additional technology such as reactor components would certainly be unobtainable in the future. Ultimately, this scenario would place 77

78

‘Overview of Discussions with the IAEA on International Nuclear Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant’, 13 November 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/3, Appendix A, ARCA. Ibid., Appendix B, ARCA.

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additional pressure on South Africa to pursue its own development, although at much higher costs. Nonetheless, the national nuclear programmes would be able to proceed on the basis of domestic technological development and within the limits of available funding, and without external interference. AEC Chairman De Villiers concluded that political considerations played a huge role in the attitudes of several countries towards South Africa, and even a safeguards agreement and NPT signature would be no guarantee for a change in outside perceptions. This implied that South Africa was better off in the current situation facing international sanctions than it would have been after in-plant inspections by the IAEA. The conclusion of a safeguards agreement would have most likely endangered the current clandestine technology transfers, which finally precluded a positive decision on the matter.79 In hindsight, this became the main characteristic in the thinking of those from the energy sector who were opposed to the NPT and international safeguards. By the mid-1980s, these people formed the majority opinion of those involved, a situation that limited the influence of leading DFA officials, because they were in no position to advocate an alternative and more sanguine view of the perceived Soviet threat to the apartheid regime. The so-called ‘rooi gevaar’, or ‘red threat’,80 justified the government’s total strategy, including the production of HEU and the development of nuclear weapons as a deterrent.81 According to a former Director-General of the DFA, during the mid-1980s, the military-security apparatus formed the most influential interest group within the South African government, and trumped the views of the other departments involved.82 In the meantime, pressure on the South African authorities to continue with the next round of meetings rose, and the State Department and IAEA Director-General Hans Blix issued requests for follow-up negotiations. In line with the South African objectives of gaining time and continuing to appear interested in talks, the parallel negotiations with the IAEA and the United States not only continued, but actually took place more frequently. However, given the underlying reasons influencing the South African approach, their foremost concern was determining the best time to break off the talks with the IAEA and the United States completely; careful consideration was required here in order to avoid further international punitive measures striking too early.

79 80 81 82

Ibid. Afrikaans for ‘red threat’, referring to the (perceived) growing communist expansion towards South Africa. Anderson and Bell, 2019, pp. 16–19. Liberman, 2001, p. 65 (especially footnote 78); and p. 76.

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3.2.2

89

The IAEA Secretariat Takes up a Leading Role in the Negotiations

Renewed efforts by the IAEA Secretariat and the US State Department to push the NPT issue characterized the first half of 1986. This led to a first round of meetings between US and South African delegations in Frankfurt in March 1986.83 On every occasion during the bilateral talks, US officials tried to lure the apartheid government into the nonproliferation regime.84 While the nuclear weapons programme never directly featured, the participants acknowledged that the issue was always there, the elephant in the room. This left leading DFA officials, most of them not fully briefed about the nuclear weapons programme, to work under the assumption that their government had some kind of nuclear capability.85 A pattern emerged during these encounters. Members of the South African delegations conveyed their government’s general interest in NPT adherence to enhance its international reputation. Moreover, they stressed that the domestic energy sector was interested in ways of receiving assistance for local nuclear power programmes and opportunities to increase their sales of uranium worldwide.86 The South African Mineral and Energy Minister, Danie Steyn, explained that given his country’s energy requirements in the future, he had proposed to President P. W. Botha that they explore the idea of a programme for nuclear power beyond the one existing nuclear power station. Personally, he appeared convinced of the necessity to sign the NPT to secure new international cooperation.87 The South African agenda included a wide range of political and nuclear issues, although the US officials stressed that these negotiations would not result in any quid pro quo. Reports from these meetings indicated that this was a fine line for Washington’s diplomats, as they were convinced that Pretoria had the ‘[…] means to go in the direction we do not want [but] there is an opening to steer them in the other direction, toward NPT’.88 Much to the surprise of the US 83

84

85 86 87 88

‘Vermerk: Einbestellung des südafrikanischen Botschafters Retief am 19.03.1986’, 320–321.00 SUA, 20 March 1986, Political Archive of the German Federal Foreign Office. Herbert Beukes, interview with author, 27 February 2018, Somerset West; see also Frank Wisner, interview with author, 2 May 2018; and Robert Cabelly, interview with author, 28 March 2017, via Skype. Herbert Beukes, interview with author, 27 February 2018, Somerset West; see also Malcolm Ferguson, interview with author, 23 February 2018, Pretoria. Van Wyk, 2010a, pp. 61–62. ‘Non-Proliferation Treaty: South Africa’, Telno 180 (Cape Town to FCO), 25 March 1986, File: MNF 160/1, FCO. ‘Summary of a meeting between State Department officials Richard T. Kennedy and Frank G. Wisner with South African Foreign Minister Roelof Botha regarding South

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delegation, for the first time senior South African politicians expressed their willingness to accede to the NPT. The report noted that past US attempts to engage the South Africans had failed, but now they perceived their government’s position as promising, which the State Department wanted to support to the fullest.89 However, this was not enough, as any relaxation in the US position depended on South African movement and flexibility. Obviously, a precondition to any relaxation of the US sanctions legislation was parallel domestic political reforms in South Africa, specifically abandoning the racial apartheid legislation. But Ministers Botha and Steyn ‘[…] took pains to point out that they [did] not have Cabinet approval to sign a safeguards agreement, much less adhere to the NPT’.90 The main internal opposition came from the South African military and security forces, they reiterated, whose leaders reasoned that the apartheid state should not forego an important deterrent option in return for uncertain benefits. Because Botha and Steyn really seemed genuine, the US officials believed that they had spoken to the ‘converted’ in Geneva.91 Considering the Witvlei Committee’s foregone decision to ultimately reject full-scope safeguards, it remains doubtful whether the South African delegations travelling around the world to meet IAEA and US government officials had any meaningful leverage in these negotiations. Wynand de Villiers, who had proposed suspending the parallel negotiations with the IAEA late in 1985, was a member of almost every South African delegation and personally favoured ending the talks. All the while, international expectations rose with every round of discussions that this time Pretoria’s leadership was about to sign the NPT. Washington was actively involved diplomatically at this stage, whereas UK representatives, kept informed by the US officials, acknowledged that they had left the task of negotiating with Pretoria to the State Department to avoid any interference in the negotiations at such a critical stage. UK officials, however, were convinced that the current domestic

89 90

91

Africa’s nuclear nonproliferation commitment’, Department of State, 21 March 1986, U.S. Declassified Documents Online (hereafter USDDO). Ibid. On the issue of the US Congress’ sanctions against South Africa and the limited room for US State Department flexibility, see also Liberman, 2001, p. 79. ‘Memorandum to Secretary of State George Schultz from Chester A. Crocker regarding U.S. discussions with South African officials concerning nuclear matters’, Department of State, 23 April 1986, USDDO. ‘Phillip Ringdahl provides John Poindexter with a summary of proceedings at the 4/20–4/ 21/86 Geneva, Switzerland meetings regarding South Africa’s possible accession to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and acceptance of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards measures for all nuclear facilities’, National Security Council, 29 April 1986, USDDO.

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crisis in South Africa might well delay any action by the government in Pretoria.92 This referred mostly to the prolonged State of Emergency declared by P. W. Botha to quell internal protests against the South African regime.93 However, the renewed recalcitrance of the apartheid government officials in the negotiation process soon dashed any hopes of a policy change. 3.2.3

South African NPT Defiance in Practice: A Burden to the IAEA and the US

It did not take long for Pretoria’s officials to demonstrate their reluctance to engage in more than exploratory talks, as they did not get back to the IAEA Secretariat concerning the outstanding draft of the safeguards agreement. IAEA officials had been expecting a positive reply from Pretoria to the proposals for several weeks, to no avail.94 Then, finally, the long-awaited South African response was conveyed to Vienna in August 1986. It was not the one the IAEA Secretariat had hoped for. DFA officials submitted a revised safeguards agreement and requested the inclusion of two additional clauses, which further delayed a decision by obstructing the usual modus operandi. Namely, they wanted to change the agreement in such a way that it would occasionally allow them ‘[…] the removal of nuclear material from safeguards for non-explosive military purposes subject to its later return to safeguards’.95 In addition, Pretoria requested a provision pertaining to ‘[…] the right of withdrawal from the safeguards agreement at three months’ notice if South Africa’s rights and privileges of membership were curtailed […]’.96 Unbeknownst to the IAEA Secretariat, this was a fundamental part of the South African strategy to delay the negotiations for as long as possible. As per the previous decision by the Witvlei Committee, those who negotiated were to propose unreasonable demands. Therefore, the inclusion of additional conditions was a logical step, because this effectively prolonged the negotiations but spared the South Africans the immediate criticism that an outright refusal to negotiate with the IAEA would have elicited.97 92 93 94 95 96 97

‘NPT Lobbying Campaign: Summing-up’, Letter from Miller to Gordon and Young, 19 August 1986, File No. MNF 160/1, FCO. O’Meara, 1996, pp. 322–326; p. 341. ‘IAEA: South Africa: Safeguards’, Telno 171 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 26 August 1986, File No. MNF 022/2, FCO. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Overview of Discussions with the IAEA on International Nuclear Safeguards on the Semi-Commercial Enrichment Plant’, 13 November 1985, PV203, File: PS 6/13/ 3, ARCA.

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However, IAEA Director-General Blix advised the South Africans that the additional demands stood no chance of acceptance by the Board. He lamented that the unilaterally revised draft agreement contained two clauses that fundamentally departed from the IAEA Information Circular 66 (INFCIRC/66) safeguards agreement, in particular as far as questions of access to the nuclear installations were concerned.98 If South African revisions were not withdrawn, a quick conclusion of the safeguards agreement with the IAEA was impossible, bringing Pretoria’s membership status under attack in the upcoming General Conference.99 Seemingly immune to criticism, the South Africans neither amended nor withdrew the two inserted clauses, despite Blix’s warning that this would invite a strong political reaction by other IAEA member states.100 Following the overall deterioration in the relationship between the United States and South Africa, DFA officials increasingly focused on their links to the IAEA Secretariat for negotiations and frequent meetings. In comparison, they consulted less regularly than before with the Americans. This was mainly due to Washington’s limited room for manoeuvre with regard to lessening the yoke of sanctions following the passage of the CAAA, which also terminated existing co-operation between the two countries in the nuclear field. Indeed, IAEA officials questioned the ability of the US State Department to exert any pressure on the South Africans, because they had apparently had no contacts with Pretoria over the previous few months and ‘[…] with their policy of constructive engagement crumbling, they may in any case be reluctant to renew these’.101 Thus, over several months, written exchanges between Hans Blix and the South African Ambassador in Vienna, Naudé Steyn, left those arguing in favour of safeguards on both sides a final channel through which to maintain communications.102 Once the 30th IAEA General Conference in September 1986 began, however, the determination of the African member states in the Agency to seek South Africa’s expulsion made things worse. The circulation of a 98

99 100 101 102

‘Letter from Hans Blix to Naudé Steyn’, 25 November 1986 (Annex C of GOV/INF/ 523 2 June 1987), IAEA Archive; and ‘Letter from Hans Blix to Naudé Steyn’, 9 January 1987 (Annex C of GOV/INF/523 2 June 1987) IAEA Archive. ‘IAEA: South Africa: Safeguards’, Telno 171 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 26 August 1986, File No. MNF 022/2, FCO. ‘IAEA: South Africa: Safeguards’, Telno 174 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 1 September 1986, File: MNF 022/2, FCO. ‘South Africa: Prospects for NPT accession and continuing membership of the IAEA’ (Gordon to Prendergast), 21 November 1986, File: MNF 022/2, FCO. ‘Letter from Naude Steyn to Hans Blix’, 19 November 1986 (Annex C of GOV/INF/ 523 2 June 1987), IAEA Archive.

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draft resolution that called for the suspension of Pretoria’s membership aggravated tensions for the apartheid regime and threatened its continued IAEA membership. But thanks to the lobbying of the Western states, the resolution was subsequently amended to give P. W. Botha’s government a twelve-month period to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement.103 Nevertheless, the initial breakdown of the negotiations following the additional South African demands sparked harsh reactions by IAEA member states. While South Africa was given another year to negotiate an agreement, it was recommended that the next General Conference in 1987 consider expulsion unless there were positive developments in the meantime.104 South African officials continued to indicate their general willingness to resume discussions on safeguards with the IAEA, but pointed out that this could only happen under the provision that Pretoria’s basic requirements would be met. This was a very sensitive issue, and in light of Blix’s refusal to forward their amended version of the draft agreement to the IAEA Board of Governors, South African officials started blaming the IAEA Secretariat for having itself prevented a positive outcome. According to the South African letter to Blix, ‘[…] for as long as South Africa’s special concerns and bona fides are not recognized’, it claimed, ‘the usefulness of negotiations remains questionable’.105 South Africans steadfastly stressed their genuine right to withdraw nuclear material under any safeguards agreement for use in nonexplosive military purposes. In addition, another focus was on the right to terminate the agreement in case extraordinary events jeopardized South African interests, which referred to the deterioration of regional security as seen from Pretoria’s perspective.106 Shifting the blame of the inconclusive negotiations to the IAEA Secretariat, the South Africans saw no point in proceeding with technical discussions until an agreement was reached based on their revised text.107 Without any progress before

103 104 105 106

107

‘IAEA General Conference: Regular Session, 29 September to 3 October. Summary’, Telno 192, (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 6 October 1986, File: MNF 022/2, FCO. ‘South Africa: Prospects for NPT accession and continuing membership of the IAEA’ (Gordon to Prendergast), 21 November 1986, File: MNF 022/2, FCO. ‘Letter from Werner Scholtz to Hans Blix’, 25 February 1987, (Annex C of GOV/INF/ 523 2 June 1987), IAEA Archive. ‘Aide Memoire from Hans Blix to the South Africans’, 27 February 1987 (Annex C of GOV/INF/523 2 June 1987), IAEA Archive. This was in reply to Scholtz’s letter of 25 February 1987 (see previous footnote). And: ‘South African draft’, undated, (Annex D of GOV/INF/523 2 June 1987), IAEA Archive. ‘Notes for discussion on 31 March 1987’ (South African Embassy in Vienna), undated, (Annex C of GOV/INF/523 2 June 1987), IAEA Archive.

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the IAEA General Conference in September 1986, South Africa’s Agency membership was increasingly at risk. But the IAEA Secretariat’s options to resolve this situation were limited, because movement on the part of Pretoria was necessary. Hans Blix was unable to lobby other IAEA members, predominantly the group of African states, to adopt a less confrontational attitude vis-à-vis South African expulsion.108 In a lastminute attempt and despite the dormant state of US–South African nuclear relations at that time, the State Department came out in defence of a continued South African membership. While US Ambassador Kennedy made it clear that Pretoria’s position was unacceptable, he nevertheless announced Reagan’s opposition to attempts aimed at expelling South Africa from the Agency.109 Regardless of these efforts, the South African issue overshadowed the upcoming Board of Governors’ meeting in June 1987 and sparked a clear North–South split. The Soviet Union sided with the member states from the Global South, whereas most of the Western members supported the South African case. Ambassador Kennedy, trying to prevent South African expulsion, argued that it could result in considerable long-term damage to the disadvantage of the Agency by setting a precedent for expelling other politically unpopular countries. He warned that the Iraqis were likely to press for a vote on Israel’s expulsion in the immediate wake of a decision to suspend South Africa.110 With South Africa’s suspension looming, Kennedy went on record saying that his country would feel compelled to act and lobby within the IAEA against their expulsion.111 In general, the American delegates and other Western members on the Board strongly opposed the expulsion on grounds of the universality of membership, arguing that the isolation of South Africa in the nuclear field would be detrimental to global non-proliferation targets. However,

108 109 110

111

‘IAEA: South Africa: Brief for IAEA Board of Governors meeting, June 1987’ (from UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 19 May 1987, FCO. ‘Possible Expulsion of South Africa from IAEA’, Telno 1092 (Washington to FCO), 18 May 1987, MNF 022/1 Part A1–53, FCO. ‘IAEA Board of Governors: South Africa’, Telno 77 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 11 June 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO; and ‘UK/US Bilateral in the margins of the June IAEA Board of Governors meeting, 8th June 1987’, 17 June 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B (54–122), FCO. ‘IAEA/South Africa: US views’, Letter from Newall to Beaumont, 3 August 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO. In particular, the United States did not want any comparisons or linkages between the South African issue and the Israeli one. On Israel, the US officials were not prepared to make any compromises and would react more severely than in the case of South African expulsion (‘Call on “Dick” Stratford, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Nuclear Energy and Technology Affairs’ (Washington to FCO), 12 September 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO).

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the outcome112 was a vote in favour of recommending the next General Conference should proceed with a vote on South Africa’s suspension in September 1987.113 This outcome left Director-General Hans Blix disillusioned, since nothing had come out of the six years of negotiations between the Agency and the apartheid government following his nomination as Director-General of the IAEA in 1981.114 Regardless of the Board’s recommendation, Blix pursued the issue further. A few weeks after the Board meeting, he again met with Minister Danie Steyn who, unexpectedly, conveyed that his government was prepared to resume safeguards discussions. It seemed as if the South Africans were looking for a bargain, because Minister Steyn raised the question of what they could expect from moving closer to NPT accession and a safeguards agreement. He explained that his government favoured guarantees from Western nuclear suppliers on the delivery of nuclear materials. These need not be immediate; what he sought were firm promises to convince critics back home of the advantages of NPT accession. Steyn, who claimed to have advocated the conclusion of a safeguards agreement to President P. W. Botha, conceded privately that the conditions his government had previously put forward were unacceptable, but for internal political reasons, they could not withdraw them.115 Meanwhile in Vienna, the South Africans adopted an approach in line with Minister Steyn’s views, and embassy officials continuously pressed other delegates for assurances in return for shifting their position towards accepting a safeguards agreement. They attempted to exploit Western proliferation fears for their own agenda, as they were aware of the IAEA Secretariat’s interest and Western states’ priorities in keeping them within the Agency. The South African argument was that if the country were expelled, negotiations would be a ‘whole new ball game’ for them and there would hardly be anyone who still argued for NPT accession in Pretoria.116 112

113 114 115

116

Throughout the session, the G77 countries showed no flexibility on the issue and when the proposal was put to vote, twenty-two were in favour of South African suspension, while twelve voted against, with only Chile abstaining (Fischer, 1997, p. 110). ‘IAEA Board of Governors: South Africa’, Telno 79 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 12 June 1987, MNF 022/1 Part A1–53, FCO. ‘South Africa and the IAEA’, Letter from Gordon to Fall, 16 June 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part A 1–53, FCO. ‘South Africa and Israel: Talk with Dr Blix’, Agrell to Beaumont, 17 July 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO; and ‘IAEA/South Africa’, Telno 1143 (Washington to FCO), 20 July 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO; and ‘South Africa and the IAEA’, Telno 95 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 21 July 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO. ‘South Africa and the IAEA’ (UKMIS Vienna to Nuclear Energy Department), 5 August 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO.

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This underlined that for the US administration the issue had become a delicate balancing act between not being seen as too receptive towards the South African demands and at the same time trying to keep them in the IAEA. This laid bare the few options still available to the State Department. To fend off pressure on South Africa and to achieve the anticipated objective of securing their continued membership in the IAEA, US officials used both carrot and stick tactics. They made it clear that if South Africa were expelled, they would withhold their payments to the IAEA, indicating at the same time their readiness to increase their contribution if the vote went the desired way.117 3.2.4

Movement in the South African Camp

In a last-minute attempt, the South African officials finally reached out to several Western governments only a few days before the start of the 31st IAEA General Conference. This was part of a wider initiative to resume discussions with member states. They circulated a memorandum to a number of missions at the IAEA in which they set out their position on IAEA membership, safeguards negotiations and NPT accession. Most importantly, they indicated willingness to resume negotiations with the IAEA Secretariat, only half a year after having suspended earlier talks.118 Further evidence of this turnaround in the South African position was the fact that the DFA officials had prepared a strategy on how they could alter the internal position on the basic requirements, hitherto held as non-negotiable conditions for concluding a safeguards agreement.119 On the eve of the conference, P.W. Botha issued the following official statement: The Republic of South Africa is prepared to commence negotiations with each of the nuclear weapons states on the possibility of signing the NPT. At the same time the Republic of South Africa will consider including in these negotiations safeguards on its installations subject to the NPT conditions. The nature of these negotiations will depend on the outcome of the 31st GC of the IAEA which is being held in Vienna as from 21 September. South Africa hopes that it will soon be able to sign the NPT and has decided to open discussions with others to this

117 118

119

‘South Africa and the IAEA’ (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 24 August 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO. ‘International Atomic Energy Agency’ (South African Aide Memoire), 4 September 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO; see also ‘South Africa/IAEA’, Telno 1495 (Washington to FCO), 15 September 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO. ‘IAEA and South Africa’ (Pretoria to Cape Town), 15 September 1987, File: MNF 022/1 Part B 54–122, FCO.

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end. Any safeguards agreement which might subsequently be negotiated with the IAEA would naturally be along the same lines as, and in conformity with, agreements with other NPT signatories.120

This connected the resumption of discussions with South Africa’s continued membership, although some observers argued that it was little more than a ploy to gain time. The continuation of the nuclear weapons programme that had just been secretly extended by the Witvlei Committee confirmed this suspicion, although of course the international observers were not privy to this knowledge.121 However, as the conference proceeded, South Africans did not lose their IAEA membership, probably due to the statement made by President Botha and thanks to prior informal lobbying by US and UK officials, who had a vested interest in keeping South Africa within the Agency. Therefore, the outcome of the 1987 IAEA General Conference provided DFA officials with additional time in which to further refine the NPT strategy. However, IAEA members had only just stopped short of a vote in favour of expulsion from the Agency, with the Group of 77 states and Soviet bloc countries initially supporting a resolution that called for an immediate suspension. Hence, the issue was far from being over and was only deferred to the next General Conference in 1988.122 Regarding the statement by P. W. Botha, AEC Chairman Wynand de Villiers pointed out that it was politically motivated and that he was not consulted about it before it was made public. He stressed that the normal operation of Article IV would be a non-negotiable point on the South African agenda, which they were not prepared to take on trust alone, because there was nothing to expect in that regard from the United States.123 In fact, the South African view of the Reagan administration as increasingly bound by domestic political constraints could not have been more fitting. However, Washington’s officials were convinced that it might be possible to adopt a more favourable view on South Africa provided they moved towards a safeguards agreement or the NPT. Such progress would certainly affect the US Congress’ attitude towards lifting nuclear sanctions on Pretoria in the future, because Section 307 of the 1986 CAAA continuously linked non-adherence to the NPT with the 120 121

122 123

IAEA 31st General Conference, 21 September 1987, GC(XXXI)/819 (Attachment). Liberman, 2001, p. 73. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn also raised this point, wondering what P. W. Botha thought because the weapons programme had just been extended (Von Wielligh and von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 193). ‘Letter from UKMIS Vienna to FCO’, 24 November 1987, File: MNP 083/18, FCO; and ‘South Africa’ (FCO to all EC posts) October 1987, File: MNP 083/18, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 241 (Pretoria to FCO), 18 November 1987, File: MNP 083/18, FCO.

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imposition of prohibitions on US nuclear trade with South Africa. In theory, NPT signature should lift restrictions, but whether this would happen in practice was uncertain. Moreover, South Africa’s leadership was aware of the Reagan administration’s hesitancy to lobby extensively in an election year on such a contentious issue if the US Congress showed early signs of resistance. Indeed, US officials believed that domestic pressure and sanctions against Pretoria would rather increase soon, making it simply unrealistic to offer any long-term guarantees.124 There were notable signs of internal movement in South Africa by late 1987, as some departments besides the DFA relaxed their earlier opposition to the Treaty. The Mineral and Energy Minister Danie Steyn was convinced of the value of NPT accession and had already recommended signature to President Botha. In addition, the DFA had compiled a document in which it discussed the implications to follow from a decision in favour or against the NPT. The secret paper stated that if South Africa committed to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which proscribed the detonation of a nuclear device, this would in turn remove a major obstacle under US law concerning the resumption of nuclear cooperation with Pretoria. It stressed that a positive decision would empower the US State Department to argue in Congress in favour of resuming nuclear cooperation and it would also place South Africa in what most nations in the world considered a morally acceptable position. On the other hand, if they did not accede, their membership in the IAEA would most likely be suspended in 1988, criticism would increase in international forums, and more resolutions would be tabled. In addition, their government would finally lose its total credibility concerning global nonproliferation. As a result, this would ultimately block the opportunities for the AEC to acquire nuclear equipment, such as power reactors and related supplies.125 These suggestions notwithstanding, the DFA officials argued in vain; for the time being there was no movement in the Cabinet on the issue. Moreover, some government officials still argued internally for the need of retaining the capability to develop a nuclear weapon, at least as a theoretical option.126 Although a number of Cabinet Ministers were by then in favour of NPT accession and the acceptance of safeguards, State President P. W. Botha, who in this matter listened

124 125 126

‘South Africa and the NPT: US views’, Telno 2234 (Washington to FCO), 20 October 1987, File: MNP 083/18, FCO. ‘Implications for South Africa: NPT’, 11 November 1987, File: 137/18 Vol. 36A, DIRCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Pretoria to FCO, 11 November 1987, File: MNP 083/ 18, FCO.

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closely to the SADF and his military advisors, would ultimately take the decision.127 3.2.5

The Military Perspective

Few in the SADF were privy to information about the nuclear weapons, with only the top echelons being briefed, and initially, the military was not involved in the programme’s decision-making. An attempt to bring together the views of several of South Africa’s generals, among them four different chiefs of the SADF, brought to the fore the divergent views on the programme among these senior generals.128 However, the common line was that while they had not asked for the nuclear weapons to be developed in the first place, or for them to be bestowed upon the military, they valued the progress made since the early 1980s. This was in spite of maintaining the position that the nuclear capability was inherently political in its nature. Maj.-Gen. Constand Viljoen and Maj.-Gen. George Meiring acknowledged that the nuclear arsenal had a somewhat beneficial deterrent value, which provided a certain degree of bargaining power. It emerged from their recollections that the way the nuclear weapons were given up and dismantled without receiving anything in return, frustrated Maj.-Gen. Magnus Malan, South Africa’s Minister of Defence since the early 1980s, and Meiring. Former Chief of the SADF in the 1980s, Constand Viljoen, for his part, regretted that so much money had been paid for the nuclear weapons, which could have otherwise been spent on tanks and more conventional SADF armaments.129 In mid-1987, a year after the appointment of the South African Air Force as the end user of the nuclear weapons, recommendations by an SADF briefing team to increase the number of nuclear warheads to fourteen reached the Witvlei Committee. After some discussion in April 1988, the plans were not further pursued and were ultimately abandoned. The increased number of warheads according to the new plan, if put into practice, would have included a device for an underground test and thirteen gun-type payloads to be used operationally interchangeably

127 128 129

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 241 (Pretoria to FCO), 18 November 1987, File: MNP 083/18, FCO. Hamann, 2001, pp. 168–169. And Maj.-Gen. (ret.) George Meiring, interview with author, 2 March 2016, Pretoria. Hamann, 2001, p. 166, pp. 168–169, and interviews with Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Meiring, interview with author, 2 March 2016, Pretoria; and Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Gert Opperman (who had been Magnus Malan’s Secretary during the 1980s), interview with author, 25 February 2017, Centurion.

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between air-launched weapons and medium-range ballistic missiles.130 In all probability, the Witvlei members deemed the costs associated with these upgrades too high, especially in light of the easing of the regional conflicts and the discussions to end the Border War which were well on their way by mid-1988. The Chief of Air Staff Operations, Lt. Gen. Pierre Steyn, shared the misgivings about the costs, as he believed the nuclear deterrent to be ‘foolishly expensive’ and did not like the programme, because it was a strain on his budget.131 3.3

US Non-proliferation Efforts and Attempts of Rapprochement with Pretoria

Towards the late 1980s, US–South African nuclear relations again reached a low point, not unlike the mutually distrustful climate of the late 1970s under President Carter. Much of this was owing to South African misinterpretation of US willingness to resume nuclear cooperation. By late 1987, the Reagan administration argued with regard to the South Africans that fulfilment of NPT Article IV on cooperation of peaceful uses of nuclear energy was and remained only a theoretical possibility.132 From Pretoria’s point of view, however, this Article was the most important of the eleven articles of the NPT, as it regulated the exchange of nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes among the signatories of the Treaty. It promised member states to ‘[…] participate in the fullest possible exchange of scientific information for, and to contribute alone or in co-operation with other States to, the further development of the applications of atomic energy for peaceful purposes’.133 US officials stressed that the State Department was not prepared to enter into negotiations on resuming nuclear trade as part of a benefit package before the South Africans signed the NPT.134 This was because of the strength of US anti-apartheid lobby groups. Despite the current US legislation specifying that accession to the NPT would permit resumption of nuclear trade with Pretoria, new legislation could be introduced by Congress at any time to prevent this. Assurances would have to be internationally 130

131 132 133 134

‘Programme Olympic: Corroborative Notes Following The Briefing Of The Minister Of Defence in Cape Town On 27 July 1987’, 30 July 1987, File: HS/Plan/302/6/ Dunhill, in: Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 484–485 (Appendix); see also Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 188–191; and p. 493. Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Pierre Steyn, interview with author, 2 March 2016, Pretoria. ‘UK/US Non-Proliferation Bilateral: South Africa/NPT’, Telno 2752 (Washington to FCO), 12 December 1987, File: MNP 083/18, FCO. Shaker, 1980, p. 273. ‘UK/US Non-Proliferation Bilateral: South Africa/NPT’, Telno 2752 (Washington to FCO), 12 December 1987, File: MNP 083/18, FCO.

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credible to be able to convince the public and the US Congress that concessions could indeed be made to the South Africans, based on parallel domestic reforms to end apartheid. The core of the State Department’s position came clearly to the fore: they were manoeuvring in an extremely difficult domestic political situation, trying to be more receptive to South African requests and therefore lure the country into the non-proliferation regime. With only a few months to go before the next US presidential election, it seemed that domestic sensitivities trumped Washington’s global non-proliferation goals and a more flexible approach towards Pretoria was thus abandoned.135 Moreover, the South African government’s increased distrust of the US administration’s reliability led many in Pretoria’s decision-making circles to openly discount Washington’s willingness as far as possible. Moreover, bilateral nuclear relations were almost non-existent at that time, as stated by several observers. Reports sent to the UK FCO by the British Ambassador underpin this: ‘Since arriving here, I have been struck not so much by the poor state as by the virtual absence of USSouth African relations.’136 Apparently, Chester Crocker and the Reagan administration more generally had disappointed State President P. W. Botha, and his attitude had repercussions ‘[…] at other levels of this sycophantic system’.137 Most of the South African officials shared the feeling that the Reagan administration had run out of steam, at any rate as far as southern Africa was concerned. Apparently, the United States had lost the influence it once enjoyed over the South Africans. The State Department was unable to subject them to further pressure, because the US government had already banned all non-essential imports.138 An example of the strained bilateral relations is the fact that the US embassy in Pretoria did not even have a desk officer dealing with the NPT issue.139 The impasse from Washington’s perspective was that it was virtually impossible to make substantive assurances to the South Africans in return for NPT accession and acceptance of safeguards in light of US domestic political sensitivities. Chester Crocker’s Deputy at the time, Charles Freeman, recalls that:

135 136 137 138 139

Ibid. ‘The United States and South Africa’ (Pretoria to FCO), 15 December 1987, File: MNP 083/18, FCO. Ibid. Ibid.; see also on P. W. Botha’s long-held disdain for Washington’s officials and the bureaucracy in the State Department: Beukes, 2011, p. 92. ‘South African Accession to the NPT’, Telno 70 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 10 June 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO.

102

NPT Defiance vs. Non-Proliferation Efforts, 1981–1988 […] obtaining South African cooperation on the Angola-Namibia diplomacy and managing to do so despite the growing American domestic opprobrium for apartheid trumped nuclear proliferation issues, about which we could do nothing, given the parlous state of our relations with Pretoria.140

But in fact a forthcoming US attitude on Article IV was perceived as a precondition for signature by those South Africans in favour of an agreement with the IAEA.141 Chester Crocker himself conceded that between 1985 and 1988 when US–South African relations deteriorated and experienced a long-drawn-out low, it was left to the United Kingdom to bear Western influence in Pretoria and continue the US efforts to re-engage the South African government in talks in 1988.142 He recalled it being ‘[…] not a positive environment for progress on any of the bilateral issues’.143 UK Ambassador Renwick confirmed that the State Department had a very distanced relationship with Pretoria at that time, while the United Kingdom re-doubled its non-proliferation efforts to fill the void.144 Thus, by the late 1980s, the initiative mainly originated from the British interlocutors and they conveyed it locally through Renwick, who had arrived in South Africa in 1987.145 While in the mid-1980s the Americans still kept communication channels open to discuss nuclear matters with Pretoria, by the end of the decade British diplomats had replaced them.146 Since the mid-1980s, when the US administration had to terminate the existing nuclear cooperation agreements with South Africa due to the passage of the CAAA, Washington had gradually lost its remaining influence over South Africa’s nuclear development. This trend continued until the end of Reagan’s second term in 1988. Before the CAAA, although the United States still entertained amicable relations with the leadership in Pretoria, they were nevertheless unable to prevent the 140 141

142 143 144 145 146

Charles ‘Chas’ Freeman, personal correspondence, 6 April 2018, via email. Thompson claimed that following the CAAA, US–South African relations witnessed a renaissance until the end of the Reagan presidency, partly due to a review of the ‘Constructive Engagement’ policy in July 1986. This led to the appointment of US Ambassador Edwards Perkins, the first African American to be appointed to the position in South Africa, who set out to confront the South African government on a number of issues and who did not hold back his criticism (Thompson, 1996, pp. 265–269). However, these changes had no bearing on the nuclear dimension in the bilateral relations and mainly concerned the progress in the discussions on Namibian independence and implementation of US-Res. 435. Crocker, 1993, p. 387; p. 460. Chester Crocker, personal correspondence, 9 June 2019, via email. Robin Renwick, interview with author, 16 September 2016, London. Gerald Clark, 31 May 2018, personal correspondence, via email. Landsberg, 2004, p. 80.

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South African scientists from developing their own bombs.147 Indeed, growing disappointment was the main sentiment the P. W. Botha administration displayed towards the American officials. Over the years, the US diplomatic attempts had not led to the desired results, at least not regarding the goal of strengthening the non-proliferation regime by making the South Africans a signatory of the NPT. If preventing the spread of nuclear weapons was considered as the main objective of US non-proliferation policies, then this had clearly failed, given the almost unbridled development of nuclear weapons during the second half of the 1980s. Following an early ‘honeymoon’ period of mutual trust and rapprochement during which important bilateral matters were resolved, the US diplomats who engaged with South African officials over nuclear issues steadily lost any political sway they once enjoyed. During Reagan’s first term in office, the approach by the US State Department was characterized by much indifference towards Pretoria’s nuclear capabilities, which scholars have described as an attitude of ‘keeping the bombs in the basement’ for as long as possible.148 Later, following the introduction of the CAAA and the emergence due to domestic political considerations of a general unwillingness to openly incentivize the South Africans with political backing, the Reagan administration ran out of steam in its efforts to make non-proliferation policies with Pretoria work. 3.4

Pretoria’s NPT Strategy: Prospects of Change

During the 1980s, a few select officials, such as Wynand de Villers and other members of the Witvlei Committee, shaped the South African NPT position. Their tasks included preparing the strategy and leading the discussions concerning NPT accession for more than a decade. Ultimately, they employed delaying tactics with the goal of continuing international negotiations with the United States and the IAEA for as long as possible. The underlying rationale was to gain time to become self-sufficient in terms of nuclear fuel production for domestic needs, to limit international criticism and additional sanctions, and, in the final instance, to prevent inspections at the two enrichment plants. Leading figures in the nuclear industry believed their country to be better off with the sanctions in place than it would have been after in-plant inspections by IAEA safeguards inspectors and the likely discovery of clandestinely obtained nuclear technology and HEU that had been diverted for military purposes. Thus, a key characteristic of the 1980s was the growing 147 148

Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 174. Rabinowitz and Miller, 2015, pp. 67–70.

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divergence between the official South African position on the NPT, as communicated in international diplomatic encounters, and the secret decisions taken by the Witvlei Committee regarding the strategy of clandestinely advancing the nuclear weapons programme. However, despite the apartheid regime’s growing international isolation and the increasing precariousness of its IAEA membership from the mid-1980s, the prospects of a successful multilateral approach by the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union towards the South African situation grew in the late 1980s. The gradually changing security situation in the southern African region, coupled with the willingness of certain South African politicians to negotiate, overlapped with renewed engagement on the issue by the NPT Depositary states, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. Their concerted multilateral approach helped to launch yet another new initiative aimed at bringing Pretoria into the global non-proliferation regime. In addition, selected IAEA officials in leading positions, with the support of the United States and other Western powers were eager to keep relations with the South Africans intact and helped them to remain a member in the Agency. Were it not for these continued efforts in the second half of the 1980s, the South African government under P. W. Botha would have been even more isolated and unwilling to engage in talks about the NPT and safeguards. Yet, accession to the Treaty remained elusive, because, at the same time, the apartheid leadership continued with its strategy of nuclear ambiguity. They ignored the nonproliferation regime and developed nuclear weapons, which went against the whole idea of the NPT.149 The fact that they still discussed the issue of accession and safeguards with interested parties mainly served domestic political needs as it alleviated international criticism and gave the white regime some respite, at least for the time being.

149

Van Wyk, 2018, p. 1155.

4

Towards the End of South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons and NPT Negotiations, 1988–1989

4.1

The End of the Cold War and South Africa’s NPT Position

Since the mid-1970s, South African forces had been involved in a protracted war between Angolan government forces, the MPLA, who fought alongside Cuban troops, and UNITA, an Angolan insurgent movement backed by Pretoria. In addition, SWAPO troops fighting for the independence of South West Africa, present-day Namibia, also became involved in the conflict. From mid-1987 onwards, however, the regional security climate, as seen from Pretoria’s point of view, started to change. What they had for years perceived as the ‘total onslaught’ gradually eased. Following a ‘mutually hurting stalemate’ in the same year on the battlefield at Cuito Cuanavale, a small town in southern Angola, negotiations to end the Border War ensued by May 1988. The belligerent parties came together over several rounds of negotiations in the course of the second half of the year to find a diplomatic way out.1 Brokered by representatives of the Soviet Union and the United States under Chester Crocker’s lead, the encounters led to the Angola–Namibia Accords in December 1988. This diplomatic milestone paved the way for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 435 of 1978, which ultimately resulted in the independence of Namibia, Cuban troop withdrawal from Angolan territory, the end of the SADF’s involvement and its final retreat. The loss of the SADF’s air superiority in southern Angola over the course of 1987 convinced leading strategists of the security establishment in South Africa that a military solution to the conflict would be too costly, and that instead a negotiated end to the protracted war might be a face-saving option. The start of the negotiations that led to the settlement of the conflict in Angola can in hindsight be regarded as the first sign of the winding down of the Cold War in the southern African region. At the same time, it ushered in a new era of 1

Berridge, 1989, pp. 463–479; and Saunders, 2009, pp. 225–240. For an account based on primary sources from Cuba, the United States and South Africa, see Gleijeses, 2013.

105

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engagement between South Africa and the international community.2 Pretoria’s less hostile position, in fact, had repercussions at other levels too, with consequences for the unresolved NPT issue. The generally improved regional security climate also impacted domestic South African politics, which led to a new role for the DFA under Foreign Minister Pik Botha and his staff. Over the next and final years of the apartheid regime’s existence, DFA officials, who had been at the forefront of negotiating the settlement that ended the Border War, became steadily more influential on matters pertaining to the country’s regional security. President Botha listened more attentively to foreign affairs officials including what they had to say about a strategy towards NPT accession. In fact, the DFA firmly assumed a more central position within the South African government following the negotiated peace agreement and the implementation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 435. This provided them with more arguments in favour of a less aggressive regional foreign policy over the military and security apparatus, which had previously benefited from P. W. Botha’s militaristic leadership style.3 Thus, from early 1988 onwards, when Foreign Minister Pik Botha informed the State Security Council about the prospects of talks with the Cubans and Angolans over a possible diplomatic end to the Border War, this ushered in a new pattern of foreign policymaking on behalf of the apartheid regime.4 With the steadily growing realization among the South African military and political leadership that there could only be a negotiated end to the regional conflicts, the influence of the DFA reached new heights. This provided them with more arguments about the NPT and the conclusion of a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, a goal they had long been arguing for. The official government stance on the NPT, one of being in principle not opposed to the Treaty, had earlier been trumped by the secret decisions advocated by the high-ranking government officials who formed the Witvlei Committee, of which, ironically, Pik Botha was also a member.5 However, increasingly from 1988, the Committee lost its earlier predominance over nuclear strategy, creating a void that was filled by DFA officials who internally advocated NPT accession.6 2 3 4

5 6

Saunders and Onslow, 2009, pp. 240–241. For a detailed discussion of the rise and fall of the securocrats under P. W. Botha, see Alden, 1996, pp. 30–50; pp. 265–280. ‘Agenda Item 5: Angola: Terugvoer oor Samesprekings met Dr Chester Crocker’ (State Security Council Meeting), 14 April 1988, South African National Defence Force Archive (hereafter SANDF). Liberman, 2001, p. 53. Liberman, 2001, p. 78; and McNamee, 2002, p. 189.

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Nevertheless, internal movement on the issue continued to be slow. After the 1987 IAEA General Conference, at which a favourable outcome had won the apartheid leaders another year in the Agency, six months passed before the South Africans again contacted the Depositary Powers to communicate their intention of discussing NPT adherence. This attempt to initiate talks was interpreted as yet another typical example of South African procrastination, which international observers had become used to over the years.7 However, the ground on which this initiative fell was more fruitful for negotiations than ever before, as it coincided with the progress made in the Angola–Namibia talks. Moreover, the Reagan Administration had designated South African NPT adherence as a priority issue for its remaining six months in office.8 Margaret Thatcher’s new Ambassador in Pretoria, Robin Renwick, also set out to redouble the United Kingdom’s nonproliferation efforts vis-à-vis the apartheid regime on the ground.9 Lastly, it seemed that at this time a more favourable view prevailed in Moscow as well, due to Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the policies of Perestroika. The Soviets informed the US and UK diplomatic missions in Vienna that they attached great importance to a joint meeting between the South Africans and the NPT Depositary Powers. While they could not meet with them bilaterally, Moscow endorsed a meeting in tandem with the UK and US delegations. In the absence of any direct diplomatic relations between Pretoria and Moscow, the IAEA became the arena for multilateral diplomatic action. By June 1988, the Soviet Union had further relaxed its position insofar as Moscow allowed its IAEA representative, Roland Timerbaev, to have informal contacts with the South Africans.10 He used this new opportunity to engage and communicate with the South African diplomatic personnel in Vienna to such an extent that he became a close friend of two successive South African ambassadors to the IAEA, Naudé Steyn and successor Cecilia Schmidt.11

7 8

9 10

11

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Letter from Slater to Gordon, 18 February 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO. ‘Memorandum to Paul Schott Stevens from Jerry Leach regarding international nuclear non-proliferation talks with South Africa’, National Security Council, 8 August 1988, USDDO. Robin Renwick, interview with author, 16 September 2016, London; see also Landsberg, 2004, p. 80. ‘South Africa and the IAEA’, Telno 82 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 30 June 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO; Roland Timerbaev, interview with author, 3 April 2017, via Skype. For a detailed account on Timerbaev’s encounters with South Africans, see Möser, 2023, pp. 239–258. Roland Timerbaev, interview with author, 3 April 2017, via Skype; and Cecilia Schmidt, interview with author, 19 February 2018, Pretoria.

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As the meeting of the NPT Depositary Powers with the four delegations, scheduled for August 1988, drew closer, the South Africans appeared to backtrack from their earlier promising position. While declaring their interest in discussing possible NPT accession, they cautioned that the Depositaries should not assume that agreement on Article IV, which regulated the exchange of technological cooperation and sharing of expertise between the signatory states of the Treaty, would necessarily lead to Pretoria’s signature to the NPT. Apparently, there was still domestic opposition to forgoing a nuclear weapons option altogether by succumbing to the NPT regime.12 US intelligence assessments of the prospects for South Africa’s NPT accession singled out one of the most compelling factors that dictated Pretoria’s position on the NPT, namely the security situation as perceived by the white leadership. The CIA report judged that ‘[…] the Afrikaners’ siege mentality – now more solidly entrenched than in the 1970s – will prevail because of the increasing need, as they perceive it, to maintain a self-sufficient, flexible defence’.13 Openly forfeiting the nuclear weapons option by acceding to the Treaty would curtail these defence options. Overall, the US officials remained wary of the South African motives to hold talks with the NPT Depositaries, because according to their analysis, P. W. Botha apparently considered accession ‘[…] a distasteful but unavoidable prerequisite for the long-term well-being of South Africa’s civil nuclear programme’.14 Therefore, as the conservative political opposition in South Africa favoured maintaining a nuclear weapons option guaranteed by non-accession, P. W. Botha would most likely further delay any decisions until after the nationwide municipal elections scheduled for October 1988. The imperative was to prevent a possible internal political backlash from affecting the NP’s electoral performance. To offset the domestic political costs associated with considering Treaty accession, the South Africans were believed to be again introducing unreasonable conditions to gain more time.15 Given the South African emphasis on future treatment under NPT Article IV following signature, the Depositaries’ officials worried about not having much to offer to push the South Africans towards a positive decision. For the United Kingdom and its Western European partners, the potential conflict between the sanctions legislation in place and Article IV of the Treaty limited their flexibility. The existing European 12 13 14 15

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Pretoria to FCO, 17 June 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO. ‘South Africa: Have Prospects for Accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Improved?’, An Intelligence Assessment, April 1988, CIA, p. 9. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 7–9.

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Community (EC) sanctions as well as the Commonwealth Nassau accord16, which banned new contracts for the sale and export of nuclear goods, materials and technology to South Africa, could give rise to potential conflicts between these commitments and those arising under Article IV of the NPT.17 Likewise, US diplomats cautioned that Article IV would inevitably come up at the planned meeting and that they had very little with which to meet the South African demands. Although the main sanctions legislation of the US Congress contained a provision for resuming nuclear trade if South Africa signed the NPT, US officials believed this was unlikely to materialize before the conditions under the CAAA were fulfilled, one of which was the end of apartheid. The State Department held the view that when the first technological supplies were ready to go to South Africa, the US Congress would immediately react and stop them by imposing new sanctions.18 Similarly, in mid-1988, due to the domestic political situation with a presidential election scheduled only a few months later, US officials hesitated to force a decision until after a newly elected US administration had firmly established itself domestically.19 These limitations notwithstanding, the Depositaries’ officials concluded that if a positive impression of the meeting was reported back to Pretoria’s decision-making circles, this ‘[…] would have spin-offs in the internal jockeying for the position [on NPT accession] in South Africa’.20 However, they remained very cautious regarding the sincerity of South African pledges to apply safeguards on all facilities.21 16

17

18 19 20 21

The 8th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) was held in Nassau (The Bahamas) between 16 and 22 October 1985. The so-called Nassau Accord was agreed upon, which called on the government of South Africa to end the apartheid system, enter into negotiations with leaders of the country’s black majority and stop the illegal occupation of Namibia. A special Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group (EPG) was appointed to investigate the issue and report back to a special CHOGM later that year. The EPG visited South Africa in mid-1986, led by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, but their stay in the country was overshadowed by massive SADF raids in three neighbouring Commonwealth states, which demonstrated once more that the South African regime under the leadership of P. W. Botha was at that point not willing to respond to outside pressure and start negotiations with the ANC (O’Meara, 1996, pp. 340–341 and p. 350). ‘South African Accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 112, 7 July 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO; and ‘South African Accession to NPT’, Letter from Chalker to Goulden, 2 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO. ‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation: US Views’, Washington to FCO, 11 July 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 93 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 3 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 101 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO9, 10 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO. ‘South Africa: NPT’, Telno 112 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 3 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO.

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So, for the Depositaries, it was indispensable to find a balanced strategy between encouraging South Africa to accede and at the same time making them aware of the limits in their respective positions. They wanted to align the South African expectations with the reality of what they were able to reciprocate under the sanctions still in place. For them, not acting afterwards upon promises given to the South Africans that related to a more relaxed interpretation of Article IV was thin ice, because it would provide Pretoria’s officials with a pretext for withdrawing from the NPT.22 Moreover, the Depositaries voiced concerns regarding the future credibility of the IAEA if the talks collapsed, because that would make South Africa’s expulsion from the Agency almost unavoidable. These concerns were shared by the Agency’s Secretariat, whose staff believed that the South Africans would face IAEA expulsion qua vote during the next General Conference. To fend off intra-Agency criticism directed at the South Africans, the IAEA Secretariat even suggested that if the upcoming Depositary Power talks ended inconclusively, officials from the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union should revert to a backup strategy. If the negotiations were to fail, an interim report should be sent to the Director-General of the IAEA, informing him about the discussions, coupled with a request for further time to carefully study the ideas that had been exchanged. Director-General Blix could then present these encounters in a favourable light during the 1988 General Conference, compelling critics of the apartheid regime to grant them yet more time and making it harder for opponents to muster the required two-thirds majority in a likely vote on Pretoria’s expulsion. According to Michael Wilmshurst of the IAEA Secretariat: If employed successfully, this gambit would keep the ball in play for another year and would therefore allow the advent of a new US administration and any wider developments in South Africa (e.g. the Angola Talks) to occur without the incubus of expulsion of South Africa from the IAEA.23

4.1.1

A Return to the Negotiation Table: Testing the Waters in Vienna

The unfolding talks in Vienna emanated from an initiative by DFA officials, who enjoyed a bolstered position thanks to the positive diplomatic developments towards a peace agreement to end the conflict in 22

23

‘South Africa: NPT’, Letter from Goulden to Chalker, 4 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO; and ‘Record of a meeting between UK/US/USSR 11/12 August 1988’, 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO. ‘IAEA: South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 95 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 4 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO.

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Angola. In advocating NPT accession internally, DFA officials were able to successfully resort to previous discussions and to P. W. Botha’s statement at the IAEA General Conference of 1987 only a year before. In it, he had indicated that his government was prepared to enter into multilateral discussions over NPT signature.24 Shortly before the talks, the South Africans emphasized that reinstating their rights and privileges under NPT Article IV was key and that they sought assurances in that respect before joining the Treaty. They wanted application of NPT Article IV in a non-discriminative manner, allowing for resumed exchanges of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information. Moreover, they were interested in the prospects of exporting South African uranium globally.25 Prior to the meeting in Vienna, DFA officials acknowledged that arriving at a positive NPT decision in the South African Cabinet would take more time. This was because ‘security concerns remain[ed] paramount in the minds of the military and some of the Cabinet and there is a strong body of opinion […] arguing that a nuclear deterrent is necessary given instability in Southern Africa’.26 However, in domestic politics, the military setback in Angola had repercussions as it weakened the influence of the Securocrats and the defence establishment, which ultimately shifted the fulcrum of power in Pretoria. Their regained influence over foreign policymaking provided DFA officials with more arguments vis-à-vis the military and security apparatus within the government. Their role in setting up the meeting in Vienna with the Depositary States was a case in point, because for years there had been no multilateral negotiations.27 At that stage, other Ministers in the Cabinet besides Pik Botha also became increasingly wary of the South African defiance and nonsignature to the NPT and supported accession in principle. Those who knew about it also questioned the whole rationale for the secret nuclear weapons programme. Finance Minister Barend du Plessis, who was also a member of the Witvlei Committee, strongly supported NPT accession.28 He recalled: 24 25

26 27 28

‘Statement issued by the South African State President to the General Conference of the IAEA’, GC (XXXI)/819, 23 September 1987. Van Wyk, 2010a, pp. 62–63; and ‘(South African) Agenda for Multilateral Discussions with NPT Depositary States’, undated, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1–93, FCO. This is also corroborated by Carlton Stoiber, who served from 1985–1988 at the US Mission to the IAEA in Vienna and who participated in the 1988 Depositary Power talks. Carlton Stoiber, personal correspondence, 19 March 2018, via email. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Pretoria to FCO, 17 June 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A, FCO. Möser, 2019a, p. 564. Robin Renwick, interview with author, 16 September 2016, London.

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With parallel progress achieved in the negotiations with the Cubans and Angolans during that time, those who spoke in favour of NPT accession among the South African leadership were successful in bringing the issue back on the Cabinet’s agenda. 4.1.2

The NPT Depositary Powers Meeting with South Africa, 1988

The NPT Depositary Powers meeting with South African participation finally took off in Vienna on 11 August 1988 and continued on the next day. A lengthy meeting with Ministers Pik Botha and Danie Steyn as well as their delegation of eleven people formed the start of the multilateral encounter.30 Featured at the top of the South African agenda was, as expected, the probing of the Depositaries on the possible treatment South Africa would enjoy in nuclear trade and technological cooperation under Article IV after accession. Their leitmotif was ‘What’s in it for us?’, particularly relating to unrestricted uranium sales. Clearly, their underlying determination was that no discriminatory measures should arise against them if they signed the Treaty. Foreign Minister Pik Botha, the leader of the South African delegation, yet again stressed how wrong it was to ask his government to accept international commitments without any promise of reciprocal benefits, which domestically would lead to a continued loss of votes to the right.31 The discussion soon turned to Article IV, regarded by the South Africans as the most important article of the Treaty. While accepting that the Depositary States were under no obligation to give any binding commitments, Pik Botha and his delegation nevertheless needed assurances that South Africa would enjoy the same rights under the NPT as every other signatory, regardless of whether apartheid continued or not. He emphasized the personal importance of being in a position to report 29 30

31

Barend du Plessis, interview with author, 1 March 2017, Pretoria. ‘Record of the quadrilinear meeting between the South Africans and the Depositary Powers 12 August’, 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO; and: ‘Discussions on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): 11 and 12 August 1988 in Vienna’, August 1988, File: 137/18, DIRCO. Obtained and shared by Anna-Mart van Wyk (University of Johannesburg). ‘Non-Proliferation Treaty: Talks between Depositary Powers and South Africa’, Telno 131 (FCO to Pretoria), 13 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO; see also: Eric Benjaminson (who was a member of the US delegation), interview with author, 12 February 2018, via Skype.

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afterwards to the Cabinet that the advantages of acceding to the Treaty outweighed its disadvantages. Pik Botha claimed that subjecting South African nuclear infrastructure to international scrutiny and therefore losing authority over what could be developed domestically, would have to be trumped by the benefits flowing from South Africa’s continued IAEA membership and the diminished uncertainty concerning its nuclear capabilities. John Goulden, leader of the UK’s delegation, emphasized that total assurances about South Africa’s future rights and privileges could not be given upfront. Along a similar line, taking South African accession for granted, Soviet representative Roland Timerbaev explained how Moscow’s obligations towards South Africa would be constrained by UNSC Resolution 569 of 26 July 1985. The latter condemned the repressive policies of the apartheid regime, including murders, forced removals and the state of emergency that had recently been imposed in 36 districts throughout the country. He remarked, however, that in the event of signature, his administration would look again into the obstacles in the spirit of perestroika and re-evaluate what can be done under NPT Article 4. But none of the 135 parties to the NPT had previously bargained a price for signature, Timerbaev stressed, cautioning that this was not an option.32 In maintaining a common line, all three Depositaries repeatedly stated they were unable to give substantive assurances concerning nuclear trade and resumed cooperation even after South Africa had acceded to the Treaty. They urged the South Africans to sign before the IAEA General Conference in September 1988 and to negotiate full-scope safeguards in time. Otherwise, given the long delay following President P. W. Botha’s statement in September 1987 and lack of progress towards accession in the meantime, the South Africans would almost certainly be expelled from the IAEA at the next General Conference. Pik Botha repeatedly stressed the need for his government to gain something concrete from accession with regard to its domestic political position. He was disappointed with the responses concerning assurances under NPT Article IV and continued to push hard. Moreover, he criticized the US State Department’s attitude of putting congressional considerations above NPT obligations, as he believed national legislation could not override an international agreement.33 Much to his dismay, he realized that with apartheid policies still in place, there would be no resumption of nuclear 32 33

‘Record of the quadrilinear meeting between the South Africans and the Depositary Powers 12 August’, 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO. ‘Non-Proliferation Treaty: Talks between Depositary Powers and South Africa’, Telno 131 (FCO to Pretoria), 13 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO.

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cooperation, because of the existing sanctions and embargoes aimed at bringing down the regime. The Minister for Mineral and Energy Affairs and Witvlei Committee member Danie Steyn elucidated a different problem: if all of South Africa’s nuclear plants were brought under international safeguards implemented by a hostile Agency, they at least wanted to be reassured that they could obtain crucial spare parts to keep the plants running. The Depositaries interpreted this ‘[…] as a fear that equipment now available under the counter would not be available once Agency inspectors with access to the plants could identify its origin’.34 They could not have been closer to the truth with this assessment, as it echoed the AEC’s earlier concerns made known to the Witvlei Committee in 1985. Indeed, Minister Steyn was very much aware of the ongoing secret cooperation circumventing international nuclear trade embargoes, which meant signature to the NPT would involve disclosing the identity of South Africa’s secret suppliers. Regarding the South African encounters with Soviet representatives, it had apparently been extremely difficult to persuade the Russians to participate in a bilateral meeting, but then Soviet Ambassador Timerbaev took a surprisingly accommodating position. According to him, although the Soviet Union applied sanctions under UNSC Resolution 569, this was amenable to new thinking, like everything at that point in Soviet policy. Timerbaev showed goodwill and said that if South Africa were to accede, his government would treat requests for cooperation under Article IV favourably. The Soviets wanted ‘normal life’ for the IAEA without political interference.35 Timerbaev, who in the 1960s had been involved in drafting the NPT, recalled that personally, he did not bring up political matters such as apartheid: I acted as a Depositary. […] I discussed only questions concerning [the] NPT. I explained to them any particular points, which were necessary, and they asked questions. So, I was especially concentrated on admission of South Africa into the NPT to be safeguarded and so on.36

Nevertheless, the legal constraints on the NPT Depositary Powers, namely their inability to react more positively to South African requests for a guaranteed indiscriminatory application of Article IV, coincided in the American case with a general election and the resulting domestic political constraints on Capitol Hill. Representatives would probably 34 35 36

‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): UK-South African Bilateral 12 August’, 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO. ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): UK-South African Bilateral 12 August’, 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO. Roland Timerbaev, interview with author, 3 April 2017, via Skype.

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refrain from acting on an issue as contentious as reinstating nuclear cooperation with the apartheid state.37 Overall, besides the Russian representative who went out of his way to build trust, the South Africans had not been reassured that they could get a reasonably satisfying response to Article IV. Thus, they left Vienna without much to use back home to convince the sceptics in the Cabinet how NPT accession would actually be a step in the desired direction from a governmental point of view. Interestingly, playing with the possibility that the South Africans could invoke NPT Article X (withdrawal from the Treaty), Pik Botha hinted at one tactic open to them: to sign the NPT and later withdraw again if other countries did not fulfil their Treaty obligations (see Figures 4.1. and 4.2.). The Depositaries strongly cautioned against this, advising him that such a tactic would leave his country worse off than ever. Pik Botha seemed to have taken this point and used an analogy, remarking it would be similar to releasing Mandela and then re-arresting him.38 However, the problem of returning emptyhanded to South Africa remained unsolved, and this played into the hands of those in Pretoria who opposed NPT signature, such as the conservative opposition. Indeed, the CP under its leader Andries Treurnicht had repeatedly and harshly criticized President P. W. Botha for jeopardizing the nuclear programme and South Africa’s available options by considering the Treaty.39 4.1.3

After the Meeting: Facing Expulsion from the IAEA

In the aftermath of the Depositary Powers meeting, the DFA pursued the issue internally, trying to create additional movement within the government towards NPT accession. But the meeting in Vienna the previous month had not provided them with enough arguments to overcome other departments’ resistance to the Treaty. Therefore, they tasked their staff at the IAEA to seek assurances from foreign officials on whether their respective governments would be prepared to fulfil their obligations under Article IV. A detailed brief included establishing what certain European governments would be willing to do in the event of South African NPT accession. This attempt went beyond the previous one confined to the NPT Depositary States, because it now included other 37 38 39

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 211 (Pretoria to FCO), 22 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO. ‘Non-Proliferation Treaty: Talks between Depositary Powers and South Africa’, Telno 131 (FCO to Pretoria), 13 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part B 94–170, FCO. ‘South Africa: Non-Proliferation Treaty Talks Stall’, National Intelligence Daily, 20 August 1988, CIA, p. 4.

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Figure 4.1 ‘Pik says S.A. can make atomic weapon’, and Cuban soldiers ask: ‘Where is he going to test it?’ (Die Transvaler, 18 August 1988). During an international press conference after the NPT Depositary Powers meeting with the South Africans in Vienna (11–12 August 1988), the Foreign Minister confirmed that Pretoria could make nuclear weapons, but declined to say whether it had already done so. It is believed that this was a ploy to extract favourable terms in the parallel ongoing Angola–Namibia negotiations. Source: ©Frans Esterhuyse, Die Transvaler, 18 August 1988.

IAEA member states too. At this point, the DFA was pursuing a broad strategy to collect arguments in favour of the NPT.40 These follow-up talks with a number of representatives from IAEA member states also 40

‘Basic Working Document for Discussion with Outside Parties’, 29 August 1988, File: 137/18, DIRCO. Another aspect was the unhindered export of South African uranium and how the country in question would reconcile the various resolutions against South Africa (such as UNSC 569 of 26 July 1985) with the obligations under the NPT.

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Figure 4.2 After the NPT Depositary Powers’ talks with South Africa in August 1988 ended inconclusively, international concerns that South Africa possessed nuclear weapons lingered on (The Argus, 17 August 1988). Source: ©Derek Bauer, The Argus, 17 August 1988.

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served the purpose of convincing those approached of South Africa’s sincere interest in joining the NPT just before the upcoming IAEA General Conference.41 The aim was to provide assurance that there was no immediate need to vote in favour of South Africa’s expulsion from the IAEA. The DFA’s strategists hoped that maintaining the discussions, even to no avail, would be better than having no contact at all, shielding the South Africans from acute criticism. On the domestic front, it transpired from inter-agency meetings in South Africa around that time that Armscor, the apartheid state’s weapons procurement agency, as well as the AEC, both clearly favoured military and strategic factors and regarded NPT accession as incompatible with the secret nuclear weapons programme. Contrary to the DFA’s position on the NPT, they argued in favour of a continued strategy of ambiguity about the apartheid state’s nuclear capabilities, in line with the Witvlei Committee’s previously agreed NPT policy. The DFA positioned itself against these arguments of the AEC and Armscor and clearly favoured nuclear disarmament and NPT accession. From a DFA point of view, the Armscor/AEC stance neglected other pressing issues such as social, political and technological concerns and inappropriately privileged technology for new nuclear power stations.42 However, the internal political opposition to the ruling NP, manifesting itself in the stance of the CP regarding NPT accession, complicated things further. CP officials argued against NPT signature, which in turn added to the ruling NP’s reluctance to take a decision before the nationwide municipal elections were held on 26 October 1988. A secret CIA report concluded that the South African government would rather abandon its IAEA membership than be forced to sign the NPT without getting the guarantees it sought, because domestically, an unsuccessful bargain would result in empowering the opposition.43 Those in favour of continued IAEA membership and particularly NPT accession, which was the position the DFA promulgated, were left to argue in vain in the face of this impasse, especially since South Africa’s continued membership was likely to again come under threat in the Agency’s upcoming General Conference.

41 42

43

‘South African Government’s Position on Accession to the NPT’, 19 September 1988, File: 137/18, DIRCO. ‘A Balanced Approach to the NPT: ARMSCOR/AEC Concerns Viewed from a DFA Standpoint’, 1 September 1988, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, DIRCO, Obtained by Anna-Mart van Wyk. ‘Warning and Forecast Report: Sub-Saharan Africa’, National Intelligence Council, 25 August 1988, CIA.

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Indeed, during the 32nd General Conference of the IAEA in September 1988, as planned by the Depositary Powers, DirectorGeneral Blix informed the member states about the talks that had taken place between the three Depositary Powers and South Africa on 11–12 August.44 Naudé Steyn, South African Ambassador in Vienna, delivered a message to that effect in the General Conference. In it, he again referred to the previous presidential statement made by P. W. Botha a year before and reaffirmed the South African objective of acceding to the NPT under the condition that their concerns were alleviated by strategic assurances.45 This attempt at gaining time to fend off looming expulsion from the IAEA once more, a strategy in which the South Africans had gathered much experience over the years, achieved its purpose and sustained Pretoria’s IAEA membership.46 The success of this tactic was most likely due to the negotiations with the NPT Depositary Powers that had taken place only the month before. Director-General Blix presented the encounters in a favourable light, which stood in contrast to the actual achievements of the meeting. In doing so, Blix followed the earlier IAEA Secretariat’s suggestion of informing member states about the apparent progress in recent talks with the South Africans, revealing just enough to create a positive impression. Moreover, US officials at the IAEA yet again vetoed an African resolution during the General Conference, which aimed at expelling South Africa. They were backed by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in shielding the apartheid state’s diplomats against exorbitant criticism, which showed that with the Soviet Union on board, the NPT Depositary States were acting jointly to prevent the ousting of the South African government.47 4.1.4

Case Not Closed: The DFA in Search of an International Quid Pro Quo

Winning only a year of respite, the DFA continued looking for options to resolve the issue satisfactorily. No progress materialized regarding the domestic political obstacles NPT advocates faced, so DFA officials started 44

45

46 47

‘South Africa’s Nuclear Capabilities’, Note by the Director-General, 1 September 1988, Agenda Item 20 of the provisional Agenda, Thirty Second Regular Session, IAEA Archive. ‘Position of the South African Government with regard to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Negotiations on Accession to the Treaty’, communication from the Resident Representative of South Africa, 16 September 1988, Item 20 of the Provisional Agenda, GC(XXXII)/848 Attachment, 16 September 1988. ‘IAEA General Conference – 1988 Austria’, Ambassador Naudé Steyn (Vienna) to DFA (Pretoria), 16 September 1988, File: 137/18, DIRCO. Van Wyk, 2004, p. 289.

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to bilaterally approach officials of other countries to ascertain what, for example, European states were willing to reciprocate under Article IV. While previous attempts had been confined to the IAEA missions, the DFA now put together a small team for an overseas fact-finding trip. Soon after the General Conference, a joint DFA–AEC delegation travelled to Europe to hold a wide range of consultations with different governments, such as Switzerland, France, Germany and Italy.48 Upon their return, the delegation submitted a report to President P. W. Botha summarizing their takeaways from the trip. Most importantly, DFA officials lamented that the South African government was busy playing a ‘cat and mouse game’ with the IAEA, in that nothing substantial had followed Botha’s statement in September 1987, when he had voiced the intention of signing the NPT. The subsequent lack of progress left the DFA’s credibility damaged. Apparently, all the governments consulted, in Europe and at the IAEA, were well disposed towards South Africa. In particular, the Soviet representative49 to the IAEA, Roland Timerbaev, had made a huge personal effort to convince others of South Africa’s good intentions. But there was still internal resistance, as Chairman Wynand de Villiers of the AEC continued arguing against accession, because he did not see any benefits resulting from NPT signature. Apparently, the AEC did not need a further nuclear installation until the early 2000s and was therefore not seeking foreign technological assistance in the near future.50 Earlier in 1988, the Z-plant had started to produce LEU and the first local fuel arrived at the Koeberg reactors in September that year, shortly before the above-mentioned overseas trip to Europe in September 1988 took place.51 In addition, the uranium conversion plant (U-plant) and the fuel manufacturing plant (Beva) at Pelindaba, the construction of which had also begun in the late 1970s, were operational by 1988,52 and that might have fuelled the AEC’s optimistic assessment that no outside technical assistance was presently required. 48 49

50 51 52

‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’, 28 October 1988, PV203 (unindexed collection), ARCA. Roland Timerbaev played a crucial role in the process of getting the South Africans back into negotiations. In an attempt to overcome the absence of any direct diplomatic relations between Moscow and Pretoria during that time, he invited the South Africans for the first time to the Soviet Mission in Vienna (Roland Timerbaev, interview with author, 3 April 2017, via Skype). Ibid.; and interview with Errol de Montille (January 2017, via Skype). ‘Proposed Contribution to the Opening Speech of the State President 1988’, undated, PV203 (unindexed collection), ARCA. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 200–204; see also: Auf der Heyde, 1993, p. 4.

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Nevertheless, the DFA suggested to President Botha that the government’s NPT position should be reconsidered. The report stressed the need for a clear and rational strategy to proceed. In light of the impressions gained, they suggested: Early signing of the NPT and thereafter continue, for as long as possible, to delay the negotiations on a comprehensive safeguards agreement. At the same time, the goodwill of other signatories to the Treaty must be tested, to meet their Article IV obligations to SA in relation to exchange of technology and information. This period can last from 18 months to even years and during this time, SA can make it clear that if it feels discriminated against by countries not complying with Article IV, then SA reserves the right to withdraw from the NPT in terms of Article X.53

Early NPT signature, they stressed, would result in several benefits. It would include a period during which it would be possible to find out whether the attitudes of other members developed positively towards South Africa and it would give the South African government a boosted moral position, while nuclear installations would not have to open immediately as a safeguards agreement could be negotiated later. In addition, Pretoria’s leaders could withdraw from the NPT by invoking Article X or at the very least threaten to do so. The only caveat the report foresaw was that other NPT members and the IAEA Secretariat could link the granting of Article IV rights after signing the NPT to the immediate conclusion of a safeguards agreement. Then, the DFA’s report predicted, a stalemate situation would arise, which could once again bring South African integrity into question.54 Furthermore, although the foreign officials they talked to were very friendly and assured them of being supportive of continued Agency membership, they also made clear that they could not reciprocate with a relaxed interpretation of Article IV as long as apartheid laws were still in place. Overall, the DFA–AEC delegation learned from everyone they spoke to, including IAEA DirectorGeneral Blix, that continued South African membership in the IAEA was an important objective to secure.55 In parallel, Pretoria instructed its Ambassador in Washington, Piet Kornhoof, to elicit the prospects of renewed US nuclear cooperation

53 54 55

‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’, 28 October 1988, PV203 (unindexed collection), ARCA. Ibid. Errol de Montille, interview with author, 29 January 2017, via Skype. De Montille was responsible for handling multilateral affairs in the DFA, including IAEA and NPT issues.

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with South Africa in the event of NPT accession. Kornhoof confided the South African nuclear priorities to Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker. These included their rights under NPT Article IV, the unrestricted marketing of South African uranium internationally and the end of resolutions banning nuclear cooperation with Pretoria.56 Such engagement with well-disposed contacts formed part of the DFA’s wider strategy of reviving the dormant NPT discussions, and the obtained information continued to shape South Africa’s NPT policy. For the time being, the DFA recommended NPT signature sooner rather than later, subsequently prolonging the conclusion of a safeguards agreement with the IAEA. This would effectively adjourn the issue, granting the South Africans more time to test the sincerity of the international community’s pledges of resuming nuclear cooperation following NPT signature. The DFA only resumed discussions in the following year, after George H. W. Bush had taken over from Reagan. In that regard, the declassified National Security Review No. 15 on South Africa of April 1989 demonstrates that the incoming Bush Administration pondered how to best solve the proliferation threat posed by the apartheid regime. Bush’s new policies included continued consultation with the Soviets on the issue as well as ascertaining what incentives would be available to the State Department to lure the South Africans into the non-proliferation regime.57 4.2

Into 1989 – Domestic Political Changes

Starting in early 1989, the three Depositary Powers, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, renewed their efforts to convince the South African government to sign the NPT. They jointly pushed to convene a follow-up meeting with the South African officials to discuss possible accession.58 These renewed attempts met the DFA’s willingness to make a fresh start on the issue, also domestically, where they were trying to persuade the rest of the Cabinet of the necessity to sign the NPT.59 With the DFA leading on the NPT issue within the 56 57 58 59

‘Discussion with Crocker on the NPT’ (Ambassador Dr Piet Koornhof to Errol de Montille), 22 September 1988, File: 137/18, DIRCO. ‘National Security Review – South Africa’, National Security Review 15, 9 April 1989, USDDO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 8 (Washington to FCO), 4 January 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part A, FCO. ‘Mr Waldegrave’s meeting with Mr Pik Botha’, 9 January 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part A, FCO.

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South African Cabinet, they created a momentum conducive to furthering their agenda. They were at the forefront of formulating and trying to implement a policy achieving accession, arguing strongly at that point for a change in the government’s position that was stalling the Treaty signature.60 They increasingly made use of the embassy officials in Vienna as intermediaries, trying to remain in close contact with all three Depositary Powers’ officials. This was especially the case after early 1989, when the new South African Ambassador to the IAEA, Cecilia Schmidt, took over. Schmidt and the number two at the embassy, Pieter Bezuidenhout, had several official and informal meetings with other representatives of IAEA member states. They continuously tried to convince foreign officials of their government’s positive approach, but at the same time highlighted limits in their position. This also served the related purpose of advocating in support of South Africa’s membership in the Agency.61 However, concrete positive changes in the South African position remained elusive and since November 1988 the DFA had not made much progress in obtaining support for NPT signature from other government departments. This was in part because the officials concerned and the Cabinet Ministers had been preoccupied with concluding the Angola–Namibia Accords.62 The main impediment slowing down progress towards accession resulted from the DFA’s inability to demonstrate clear benefits for the government that would stem from NPT signature. In particular, the AEC’s influential chairman Wynand de Villiers stressed that his corporation saw only one advantage arising from NPT accession, namely the opening of international markets for enriched uranium of South African origin, and, thus, prevented a change in the governmental position. Added to these problems was the AEC’s reiterated reluctance to close down the pilot enrichment plant at Valindaba (also known as the Y-plant), which continued to produce unsafeguarded HEU. The AEC argued that this was the only available possibility of producing HEU in South Africa, which provided them with a degree of independence in strategic decisions. In the face of these domestic objections voiced by the AEC and the armament industry, the DFA continued trying to make signing the NPT more attractive for domestic observers. To solve this conundrum and to mitigate military leaders’ fears concerning a possible 60 61 62

Errol de Montille, interview with author, 29 January 2017, via Skype. Pieter Bezuidenhout, interview with author, 1 March 2018, Pretoria; and Cecilia Schmidt, interview with author, 19 February 2018, Pretoria. ‘Pik Botha’s Visit: NPT’, Telno 104 (FCO to Cape Town), 17 March 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part A, FCO; see also: ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Letter from Clark to Goulden, 14 April 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part A, FCO.

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future deployment of Soviet missiles in the region, accession could be linked with the prospects of a NWFZ in southern Africa.63 The timing also seemed conducive, because starting in 1989, the AEC suddenly indicated its preparedness to discuss accession to the NPT. Their longstanding opposition towards IAEA safeguards gradually gave way to a greater openness to the idea of allowing inspectors to visit the country’s nuclear infrastructure. However, the delay in the internal processes led DFA officials to decline an invitation for a second round of talks with the Depositaries in Vienna. They claimed to have nothing new to say about NPT accession, because powerful individuals in South Africa remained unconvinced of the value of signing the Treaty. Additionally, a shake-up was underway in the domestic political arena, with P. W. Botha suffering a stroke and his political future hanging between resignation and comeback. This delayed further decisions on the matter.64 Before President P. W. Botha could take any decisions on the future of the nuclear weapons programme and the NPT, including whether to act on the aforementioned DFA recommendations, he had to recover fully. While still in hospital, he proposed separating the offices of State President (which he had become in 1984, with the position taking on the executive role he previously enjoyed as Prime Minister) and leader of the NP. He called on his party to elect a replacement for him, indicating that he would remain president of the country himself until the general election later that year. In the final round of the intra-NP election for P. W. Botha’s successor, only Finance Minister Barend du Plessis and Minister for Education, F. W. de Klerk, remained. It was a contest between a reformist (du Plessis) and a conservative candidate (de Klerk). In the end, by a very close margin of sixty-nine to sixty-one votes, de Klerk emerged as P. W. Botha’s successor at the helm of the NP. This automatically meant that the fifty-six-year-old F. W. de Klerk would enter the upcoming general election in September 1989 as the NP presidential candidate.65 However, the leadership vacuum in the domestic political arena, when it was not clear whether P. W. Botha would come back on a full-time basis or whether he would resign, represented a crucial element of uncertainty in several areas.66 It began seriously delaying any internal 63 64 65 66

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Pretoria to FCO, 20 January 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part A, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 95 (Cape Town to FCO), 28 March 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part A, FCO. Giliomee, 2012, p. 280; see also Geldenhuys and Kotzé, 1991, p. 37. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 95 (Cape Town to FCO), 28 March 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part A, FCO.

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progress towards a solution to the NPT question, because the DFA decided not to force any decision within the government for as long as Botha officially remained President of the country. They anticipated that chances to push through a positive decision would be much better once de Klerk had taken over, but this would not be the case until the end of September 1989. This view was supported by de Klerk’s initial sympathetic reaction to the DFA’s approach regarding NPT accession even before he was elected president, although he had not then spoken to the security forces about the topic.67 The prospect of a new president entering office played into the DFA’s strategy, centred as it was on making NPT accession palatable to members of the government. What, however, complicated this aim was the realization by DFA officials that the Depositary Powers were unlikely to adopt a more lenient position on Article IV without general reforms aimed at ending the apartheid system already being underway. With the DFA in need of further arguments to overcome the domestic sceptics, those responsible for the NPT strategy envisioned moving towards accession as far as possible and then, once a certain momentum had been achieved, counting on the Depositary Powers to show sufficient flexibility regarding Article IV. Such a scenario, they believed, would be enough to convince domestic parties that the NPT was worth signing.68 Therefore, DFA officials tried to bargain for some commitments from the Depositaries that they would make concessions on nuclear trade, precisely during the interregnum before they had concluded a safeguards agreement. This argument was in line with the above-mentioned DFA position on an early NPT signature, as suggested in late 1988 to then President P. W. Botha. However, the political developments around the end of Botha’s time in office delayed meaningful progress. By June 1989, DFA Deputy DirectorGeneral Herbert Beukes cautioned that it was no longer realistic to arrive at an internal decision before the 1989 general election. His department would not force the issue if it believed it might get a negative answer, because this could result in outright rejection of NPT signature.69 In retrospect, Beukes described his department’s task as follows: Ours was to analyse and assess the comparative adverse implications of continuing to resist the international community and the possible advantages of cooperation – all against the larger back drop of South 67 68 69

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 1620 (Washington to FCO), 12 June 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part B, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, UKMIS Vienna to FCO, 17 April 1989, File No. SEE 083/ 1 Part A, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 351 (Cape Town to FCO), 5 June 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part B, FCO.

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Towards the End of SA’s Nuclear Weapons & NPT Negotiations Africa’s isolated position in the international community at the time. And it was no secret what [the] DFA’s viewpoint was, but for a very long time we were a lone voice within government structures in favour of signing the NPT.70

4.2.1

Walking a Fine Line: Balancing International and Domestic Pressure

F. W. de Klerk, not yet elected but amid his presidential campaign, increasingly engaged with foreign leaders and travelled overseas. The NP presidential candidate exposed himself to foreign opinions on apartheid when visiting the United Kingdom, Italy and France in June 1989. Most importantly, and unlike the still-in-office President P. W. Botha, de Klerk was able to get along well with a number of leaders, such as US President George H. W. Bush71 and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, building personal rapport. He set out to convince them of his serious intentions to end apartheid. Contrary to his predecessor, de Klerk actively sought contacts with these leaders, supported by leading figures in his Cabinet such as Foreign Minister Pik Botha, ascertaining the degree to which they were prepared to support his reform course.72 De Klerk was aware that resolving the NPT issue would hold political advantages globally, and he tasked the DFA with pursuing the possibility of making signature to the NPT dependent on the creation of a formal NWFZ in Sub-Saharan Africa.73 He argued that this would be politically very attractive while at the same time removing concerns within the defence establishment about the country’s security situation, because such a zone would effectively prevent Soviet nuclear weapons deployment in the region. Hence, the DFA reassessed earlier ideas of a regional NWFZ, but further movement on the NPT had to wait until after the election on 6 September.74 Several meetings between de Klerk and foreign leaders took place in the course of 1989 following his election as the NP’s head, reviving the US–South African relationship and encompassing nuclear matters. The driving force behind these efforts to give de Klerk the chance to meet Western leaders was Foreign Minister Pik Botha, supported by his key 70 71

72 73 74

Herbert Beukes, personal correspondence, 31 March 2017, via email. Whom he did not meet until September 1990, but frequent telephone calls are testament to their good (working) relationship and several transcripts can be found in the Bush Presidential Library, College Station (hereafter BPL). Landsberg, 2004, p. 64. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Pretoria to FCO, 17 July 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part B, FCO. Ibid.

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officials.75 De Klerk thus became the focal point for Western efforts to convince the South African regime that it had to reform its racially discriminating political system of white-minority rule. When Pik Botha met US Secretary of State James Baker in Rome in May 1989, the latter made it explicitly clear that de Klerk, once elected, had to introduce domestic reforms quickly. Similarly, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen (Chester Crocker’s successor), travelled to South Africa two months later to meet de Klerk in Durban, where he assessed the NP’s plans and whether they were genuine and committed to reforms.76 With the basis for repeated contacts with de Klerk firmly established, Bush, Baker and Cohen jointly communicated two innovative US policy responses to de Klerk and DFA officials, hoping to induce a reform process in South Africa.77 Firstly, this included the offer that, in exchange for initiating reforms and allowing political change in South Africa, the State Department would argue domestically for a prompt lifting of the CAAA, which was still in place with the aim of sanctioning the South African economy. Members of the US Congress, however, were not convinced by what Cohen reported about his encounters with de Klerk and his suggestion to roll back US punitive measures against the apartheid regime. Much to the contrary, they called for further escalating the sanctions against South Africa in the absence of a clear reform commitment from Pretoria. Secondly, and this can be seen as having had a direct impact on the Congressional criticism of and weariness with the South African regime, the Bush Administration tried to persuade members of Congress and antiapartheid groups that while eventually firm deadlines would be imposed on de Klerk, the newly elected government should initially be given sufficient time to act. As a result, de Klerk and his government received a loose six-month deadline until around February 1990, by which point they should have set in motion far-reaching domestic reforms. In case no such changes to the political system materialized, severe sanctions would immediately be imposed by the State Department after the six-month period. And while the South Africans complained publicly about this ultimatum, they privately conceded that the lines were clearly drawn.78 In terms of how to best deal with the non-proliferation threat posed by Pretoria, Bush and his advisors chose to work with the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, countries of the EC and others ‘[…] to respond to 75 76 77 78

Landsberg, 2004, p. 64. Ibid., p. 65: see also Cohen, 2015, pp. 172–173. Landsberg, 2004, p. 65. Ibid., pp. 65–66.

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[South Africa’s] demand for increased nuclear commerce in the context of NPT adherence’.79 Crucially, from a South African perspective, this approach granted the new head of state and the reshuffled Cabinet time, as had been anticipated in the plans of Bush, Baker and Cohen.80 These attempts had an early impact on de Klerk following P. W. Botha’s internal political sidelining, and they came to form a larger pattern of Western efforts to initiate a domestic reform process in South Africa from abroad. In the middle of 1989, US and UK officials reached out several times to de Klerk, the presidential candidate, mostly through their diplomatic staff, a fact which he endorsed and gladly accepted. The approach of these two Western states included lobbying de Klerk and his key officials on several issues, increasingly so after P. W. Botha resigned from the Presidential office in August 1989, only a month prior to the nationwide elections.81 However, while internationally courted by the Thatcher and Bush governments, de Klerk’s administration had to walk a tightrope at home regarding domestic political pressure from the CP and a looming right-wing threat emanating from the security apparatus (military and police), as well as paramilitary groups, the biggest of which was the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) under the leadership of Eugène Terre’Blanche. These alienated conservative forces combined to challenge the government’s reform plans; indeed, their opposition entailed the threat of a coup.82 On one of his first overseas visits, de Klerk met Margaret Thatcher, who was eager to use this opportunity to influence the new NP leader in line with British foreign policy objectives.83 De Klerk also met the British Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, who urged him to authorize NPT signature once he became president. According to Howe, this would be important in signalling to the rest of the world that changes were imminent in Pretoria’s policies. In reply, de Klerk referred to the logistical side of the problem, because he would not assume office as President until September and then needed time to consider the matter.84 Thatcher was quick to share her impressions with US President George H. W. Bush: generally, the two leaders agreed on influencing de Klerk’s course of actions early on. She explained:

79 80 81 82 83 84

‘Minutes of the DC Meeting of NSR-15 (South Africa)’, Meeting of the Deputies Committee, 20 September 1989, BPL. Herman ‘Hank’ Cohen, interview with author, 9 November 2018, Washington; and Robert Kimmitt, interview with author, 2 May 2019, Washington. Landsberg, 2004, p. 70. Welsh, 1995, pp. 239–264. Landsberg, 2004, p. 67. ‘Visit of de Klerk: NPT’, Telno 130 (FCO to Pretoria), 23 June 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part B, FCO.

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[…] not that he is likely to have much to offer immediately, but because the more we can get over him the realities of the situation with which he will have to deal when he becomes President, the better the chance of his moving quickly towards a genuine dialogue. It is very important to influence him at this formative stage of his thinking.85

Overall, Thatcher made sure that de Klerk understood the window of opportunity, but […] as expected, De Klerk did not show many cards. He was acutely conscious of the fact that he is not yet State President and has to fight and win an election before he can take any decisions and start any reforms. […]. He seems prepared to give up white domination but does not want to go to black domination.86

Generally, the British Prime Minister arrived at the conclusion that F. W. de Klerk ‘came across as a man willing to listen and to take on board advice given to him frankly and in private’.87 Thatcher’s erstwhile Private Secretary, Charles Powell, holds that she ‘[…] saw South Africa as being under threat, even if remotely, from the Soviet Union. Although [Thatcher] never said so publicly, she probably had some sympathy with the white regime’s right to defend itself in the last resort by any available means’.88 Arguing with the benefit of hindsight, Chris Landsberg claims that this early international exposure formed the beginning of a process of ‘[…] democratisation through international exposure for De Klerk’. He concludes that this might have lured de Klerk towards the normalization of South Africa’s political landscape, which also included putting an end to South Africa’s nuclear ambiguity.89 It is, however, crucial to separate NPT accession from the overall political course, which could broadly be characterized as pleasing the international community with reforms. On some policy issues, however, de Klerk and his advisors just could not move as quickly as they wanted. This included the NPT conundrum, because de Klerk’s domestic political gamble with the CP outweighed the general importance of assuring the world of South Africa’s good intentions in this particular matter. Although he acted rather hesitantly on the NPT for years, on other issues, he came up with early decisions within the six-month deadline imposed on his government by the Bush administration. Two cases in point were the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of political 85 86 87 88 89

‘From the Prime Minister to the President’ (Letter from Thatcher to Bush), 28 June 1989, National Security Council, File: David Passage, BPL. Ibid. Ibid. Charles Powell, personal correspondence, 19 November 2020, via email. Landsberg, 2004, p. 70.

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parties such as the ANC and the PAC in early 1990, actions that won him support internationally. On a mission to convince the world of his government’s intention to reform, de Klerk and Foreign Minister Pik Botha understood that the expectations of Western countries had to be satisfied in order to maintain their goodwill and continued support of the domestic reform course.90 However, this did not apply to the decision to end the nuclear weapons programme, to accede to the NPT and to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Could de Klerk have acted in a different way? Would it have been feasible to move more swiftly towards Treaty accession and a safeguards agreement? With hindsight, given the developments in the domestic political realm, it was imperative to proceed carefully by delaying any announcement of such steps. 4.2.2

A New President in Favour of NPT Accession

De Klerk emerged as the winner of the South African election in September 1989. While his party failed to muster the same share of votes and lost to the CP compared to the previous election in 1987, the NP nevertheless became the strongest party. However, the outcome left de Klerk with almost no room for manoeuvre with unpopular decisions such as NPT signature. On the domestic front, de Klerk’s moves towards reforms resulted in significant opposition from the CP and loosely aligned right-wing groups. While the incumbent NP-led government won votes from the political left, it increasingly lost them to the right. In the process, it became more alienated from its traditional Afrikaner support base.91 In the following months, de Klerk and his Cabinet had to act extremely carefully on the NPT issue, because the conservative opposition and the right-wing spectrum would interpret and criticize any NPT accession without visible benefits for the South African government as giving in to international pressure. As a result, the NP-led government cautiously deliberated the decision about whether to sign the NPT against the backdrop of developments in domestic politics. They were mainly concerned about political groups to the right of their own. De Klerk and his new Cabinet were careful about not overruling the military-security establishment, because these people were known for their conservative political opinions and possessed the military connections to impact the 90 91

Landsberg, 2004, p. 70. Geldenhuys and Kotzé, 1991, p. 28 and p. 39; also: Koos van der Merwe (leading member of the CP), interview with author, 4 July 2019, Pretoria.

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reform process and, ultimately, derail it.92 He expressed these concerns repeatedly in diplomatic exchanges with UK and US officials. In the meantime, the IAEA’s 33rd General Conference progressed without a vote calling for South Africa’s expulsion from the Agency. However, the issue was once again postponed to the next year. In all probability, the effect of de Klerk’s election victory only two weeks before and the prospects of change in South Africa connected to this, had secured the country yet another year of membership in the IAEA.93 In fact, when he took office in September 1989, the NP was not yet ready to relinquish power to the ANC or any other political movement. Instead, de Klerk was initially confident in his ability to form a powerful coalition that would emerge victorious in the first general election under a new constitution after the end of white-minority rule.94 Interestingly, it was not so much the ANC that the NP politicians anticipated would become the major competing party in the immediate future, but rather the CP under its leader Andries Treurnicht. While the NP had easily won the general election in 1987, it faced a challenge in the run-up to the 1989 polls. For the first time in the history of the Republic of South Africa, the NP, though unlikely to lose the whites-only election, could have been forced into a coalition. De Klerk was acutely aware of the threat emanating from the CP, because in his Transvaal home province he competed against Andries Treurnicht, who had gained votes, putting de Klerk under pressure in his own constituency.95 Soon after de Klerk’s election, the US administration reiterated its earlier position that he and his Cabinet only had until early 1990 for initiating reforms. This included the release of all political prisoners, the unbanning of the liberation movements and the lifting of the State of Emergency.96 4.2.3

The NPT Depositary Powers Meeting with South Africa, 1989

Soon after de Klerk’s rise to President of South Africa, the South Africans via the Department of Foreign Affairs tried to resume negotiations with the three NPT Depositary Powers (the United Kingdom, the 92 93

94 95 96

Geldenhuys and Kotzé, 1991, p. 28 and p. 33. ‘South Africa and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’, UKMIS Vienna to FCO, 2 October 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part C, FCO; and ‘South Africa and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’, Telno 77 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 29 September 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part C, FCO. Geldenhuys and Kotzé, 1991, pp. 26–27. Giliomee, 2012, p. 268 and pp. 287–295. Landsberg, 2004, pp. 73–74.

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United States and the Soviet Union). This initiative culminated in a second meeting between the South Africans and the NPT Depositary Powers on 11–12 December 1989. Most of the South African delegation was composed of leading DFA officials, among them Foreign Minister Pik Botha, accompanied by the new Mineral and Energy Minister Dawie de Villiers, a confidant of President de Klerk. While in principle favouring signature to the NPT and acceptance of full-scope safeguards, the South Africans still needed concessions from the Depositary States to overcome the domestic sceptics. Pik Botha, the delegation’s leader in pursuing the DFA’s NPT strategy, wanted to be able to argue afterwards in Cabinet that the government could actually realize some material benefits from accession to the Treaty, enabling him to convince opposition parties of the NPT’s value.97 In the domestic struggle over NPT accession, the DFA and Minister Pik Botha, together with Minister of Finance Barend du Plessis and the Minister of Mineral and Energy Dawie de Villiers endorsed accession. However, the search for a quid pro quo was made more complex by the US State Department’s position in response to South Africa’s internal policies. Due to the US Congress’ resistance to any relaxation of sanctions targeting apartheid, US firms were barred from the chance of resuming nuclear technological cooperation even after accession to the Treaty.98 This constituted a problem, in part because those arguing for NPT signature back in South Africa had not yet secured a positive decision, and there was still strong opposition to the notion of an unrequited NPT signature from Defence Minister Malan, Head of the NIS Niël Barnard and Chairman of the AEC Wynand de Villiers. These people continued to argue that even if South Africa signed, they would still get no benefits under Article IV of the Treaty. In an effort to overcome this resistance, DFA officials prioritized obtaining a statement from the Depositaries that there would be improved prospects of reciprocity concerning nuclear cooperation after signature. This, so their reasoning, would help convince others that accession was in the government’s own interest. Concerning the internal political jockeying, President de Klerk needed to know exactly what South Africa could 97

98

‘South Africa and the NPT’, UKMIS Vienna to FCO, 17 April 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part A, FCO. The Depositary Powers meeting started with a trilateral ‘warm-up’ on 11 December 1989 with UK, US and Soviet representatives in Vienna. The respective teams were led by John Goulden (UK), Richard Kennedy (US) and Roland Timerbaev (Soviet Union), all of whom had already been involved one and a half years earlier, when they last met with the South Africans in mid-1988. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 520 (Pretoria to FCO), 31 October 1989, File: SEE 083/1 Part C, FCO.

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expect under Article IV to overcome the resistance of those opposing the NPT; otherwise, accession would not be an option.99 However, communication among the Depositaries prior to the encounter revealed that the US delegation, headed by Ambassador Kennedy, still regarded Article IV as a facilitating article and not as an obligation to resume nuclear cooperation and trade with the apartheid state.100 Likewise, the Soviet representative Timerbaev joined Kennedy in explaining that the Soviet government was not in a position to move substantively on the issue. Therefore, both the Soviet and the US leaders welcomed the British stance, whose officials apparently were less constrained domestically in their approach vis-à-vis Pretoria, especially in advocating the relaxation of nuclear sanctions provided they joined the NPT and maintained the momentum of domestic political reforms.101 During the following UK–South African bilateral meeting, Assistant Under-Secretary of State (Defence), John Goulden, maintained that existing restrictions on nuclear trade with South Africa could be relaxed, but only if three conditions were fulfilled: firstly, signature to the NPT and the conclusion of a safeguards agreement; secondly, sustained political momentum in South Africa itself; and thirdly, a suitable number of other countries prepared to join the United Kingdom in their call for a relaxation of sanctions. For them, this would lessen the impression that the Thatcher government stood alone in helping the South Africans.102 Predictably, Foreign Minister Pik Botha regarded the merging of the NPT issue with the overall abolition of apartheid as uncalled for. He lamented instead that the British position did not differ much from the previous meeting, except that it now imposed even more obstacles. Following these exchanges, Pik Botha drew the conclusion that the United Kingdom was moving closer to the position of the US Congress, which he regarded as unhelpful. Any link between political reform in South Africa itself and nuclear sanctions would certainly make it more difficult for him to argue in Pretoria in favour of the NPT. Goulden remarked that the above-mentioned conditions had always been implicit, because international sanctions against South Africa had

99 100 101

102

‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 10 (Cape Town to FCO), 23 January 1990, File: See 083/1 Part A, FCO. ‘Record of a meeting between representatives of the NPT Depositary Powers’, 11 December 1989, File: See 083/1 Part D, FCO. ‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Meeting between depositary powers and South Africa’, Telno 114 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 12 December 1989, File: See 083/ 1 Part D, FCO. ‘Record of a bilateral meeting between South Africa and the UK’, 11 December 1989, File: See 083/1 Part D, FCO.

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not been imposed solely due to the lack of NPT signature, but also for reasons to do with the internal political situation. The Depositaries could not credibly argue for the relaxation of sanctions unless there was sustained political progress in South Africa and a foreseeable end to apartheid.103 Overall, Pik Botha rejected these arguments and accused the UK officials of introducing new and unhelpful conditions by connecting resumption of nuclear trade and technological cooperation under Article IV with ‘one man, one vote’ in South Africa; hence, shifting the debate away from the NPT to apartheid.104 Seemingly on a mission to convince the Depositaries of the progress already made in dismantling the apartheid system, Foreign Minister Botha highlighted the internal reforms that had been introduced following de Klerk’s election. The government’s goal was to contribute to a new atmosphere of peace, development and regional cooperation in southern Africa, and he claimed that ‘[…] the seasons of white domination and apartheid’ were over.105 He hoped for an end of the condemnation and called for greater encouragement by the international community.106 He explained the main incentives for his government: participation in international scientific exchanges of technology, access to equipment and materials and being able to sell South African uranium globally without restrictions. Moreover, Pik Botha stated that his government was not yet able to announce any decision on the NPT, stressing that only three months had passed since F. W. de Klerk’s election. He also hinted at an undisclosed nuclear weapons programme, conveying that ‘[…] “certain capacities” had been developed in nuclear technology’.107 This could be interpreted as calling for understanding to grant de Klerk more time to bring to an end what his predecessors had started. Lastly, together with the new Minister for Mineral and Energy Affairs, Dawie de Villiers, he promised recommending the closure of the pilot enrichment plant at Valindaba (Y-plant) to the South African Cabinet. Afterwards, it transpired that the South African delegation had come to Vienna collecting arguments in favour of NPT signature for presentation 103

104 105

106 107

‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Meeting between depositary powers and South Africa’, Telno 114 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 12 December 1989, File: See 083/ 1 Part D, FCO. ‘Record of a bilateral meeting between South Africa and the UK’, 11 December 1989, File: See 083/1 Part D, FCO. ‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Meeting between depositary powers and South Africa’, Telno 114 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 12 December 1989, File: See 083/ 1 Part D, FCO. ‘Record of a meeting between representatives of the NPT Depositary Powers’, 11 December 1989, File: See 083/1 Part D, FCO. Ibid.

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to the Cabinet in Pretoria. These had to be confined to NPT issues only, not merged with the general domestic political situation. They made it clear that the South African government could not openly acknowledge conditionality resting on external perceptions and judgement of political progress within South Africa itself. In reporting to the Cabinet, Pik Botha would need to list the benefits of accession for his government. Thus, what was required in order to enable de Klerk to take a positive decision, were guarantees that accession would be regarded as evidence of the serious nature of South African reform intentions and would therefore improve the country’s image and international standing. The ideal message Pik Botha wanted to deliver included a green light by the Depositary Powers that they would not stand in the way of other countries wishing to engage in nuclear cooperation with the Republic of South Africa. To this, Ambassadors Kennedy, Goulden and Timerbaev were fully supportive.108 Pressed on the conclusion of the safeguards agreement and the eighteen-month period within which the South Africans had to conclude it after NPT signature, Pik Botha washed away the concerns brought forward by the Depositaries by stating for the record ‘[…] we as Boers would honour our commitment’.109 Given the cumbersome negotiations in 1986–1987 concerning the safeguards agreement, it had now been a surprisingly easy achievement. Wynand de Villiers of the AEC confirmed that the South Africans envisioned no deviation from the anticipated INFCIRC/153-type agreement, which further eased the situation.110 Upon reflecting on the foregone encounter, Goulden admitted that probably all three Depositaries had misinterpreted South African intentions and, resultingly, played their cards wrong. Prior to the meeting, they had all assumed that the South African delegation would come to Vienna looking for further concessions under Article IV. However, they seemed to have been more concerned about any rhetorical mixing of NPT accession with political developments in South Africa itself. Having earlier misread Botha’s objectives, Goulden now concluded that his delegation had underrated the degree to which ‘domestic tactical factors’ dominated the approach the South African delegation pursued during the Depositary Powers meeting. Pik Botha had conducted the main meeting with the Depositary Powers ‘[…] as an exercise in registering

108

109 110

‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Meeting between depositary powers and South Africa’, Telno 114 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 12 December 1989, File: See 083/ 1 Part D, FCO. ‘Record of a meeting between representatives of the NPT Depositary Powers’, 12 December 1989, File: See 083/1 Part D, FCO. Ibid.

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points with his own delegation for presentation back in Pretoria’. The three Depositaries, Goulden judged, were ‘little more than pegs on which to hang these points’.111 4.3

Indefinite Stalling or Meaningful Progress: Pretoria’s NPT Approach under de Klerk

Following these two high-level diplomatic meetings in Vienna, in 1988 and 1989, respectively, the South Africans neither signed the Treaty nor concluded an IAEA safeguards agreement afterwards. Instead, Pretoria’s delegations were at pains to get something in return for NPT accession, because domestically, de Klerk faced fierce rightwing resistance threatening the reform course on which he and his newly composed Cabinet had embarked. So, the South Africans not only had to consider international opinion and pressure in the form of sanctions and embargoes, but they also had to take into account the risks of domestic unrest and right-wing pressure, which would further delay the decision to accede. Therefore, the multilateral encounters were characterized by the Depositary officials’ attempts to lure the South Africans into the global non-proliferation regime and bring all their nuclear facilities under international safeguards, and the South African attempts to derive benefits from accession to convince domestic opposition parties that the NPT was worth signing. The latter was uppermost on their agenda, because they feared a right-wing coup d’état at home and fierce criticism by the conservative electorate that the government was giving in to outside pressure in a matter perceived to relate to national security. Thanks to the impressions gained during the two disappointing encounters with the Depositary States in 1988 and 1989, overshadowed by almost no movement in their respective positions, DFA officials, who were pushing domestically for NPT accession at the time, realized their government was unlikely to get immediate benefits. This had mostly to do with the respective states’ domestic sanctions legislation, such as the CAAA in the United States, which critics had long used as an argument against NPT signature. The clash of these positions led to an impasse that precluded any decision. While an expulsion of the South Africans from the IAEA was prevented in September 1989, the chances of a negative vote by the African member states would become an even more acute reality in the future. 111

‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: South Africa’, From Goulden to Waldegrave, 13 December 1989, File: JSS 083/1 Part D, FCO; and: John Goulden, personal correspondence, 6 June 2018, via email.

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Furthermore, the IAEA’s legitimacy and the general implications for the non-proliferation regime were high on the Depositary’s agenda. In addition, the Agency’s Secretariat with its Director-General Hans Blix also had considerable interest in shielding South Africa from exorbitant criticism, as was shown by Michael Wilmshurst’s attempt to initiate a ploy to rescue the South Africans, which they called a ‘damage limitation scenario’.112 Thus, the Depositaries were arguably more concerned about South Africa’s future in the IAEA than the government officials in Pretoria themselves, mostly because it was believed that the Agency’s legitimacy and the Treaty’s credibility would suffer enormously should South Africa be expelled. The negotiations, which had resumed since the first NPT Depositary Powers meeting with the South Africans in August 1988, were a slowly meandering bargaining process: Pretoria’s leaders refused to sign the NPT and agree to a safeguards agreement without receiving anything in return. The international community, on the other hand, could not reward NPT accession by reinstating the nuclear trade and cooperation under Article IV of the Treaty as long as apartheid was still the political system in South Africa. With the majority of the population subjected to racially discriminating policies, those willing to help de Klerk and his administration to facilitate an internal change in the NPT position could not be convinced to meet his demands concerning acceptance of Article IV as it stood. Thus, crucially for the new South African president, this quandary would have to be resolved before he could act on the NPT. While embarking on a domestic reform course right after his election, more time and different arguments were needed to overcome the NPT impasse. The DFA officials continued to search for them.

112

‘IAEA: South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 95 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 4 August 1988, File: MNP 083/9 Part A 1-93, FCO.

5

South African Movement towards NPT Signature, 1990–1991

5.1

The Interplay between the Domestic and International Dimensions

On 2 February 1990, the new President de Klerk opened the Parliament in Cape Town with a speech that had tremendous implications for the future of all South Africans. He announced negotiations with the goal to end apartheid, and a reform process, promising a new and just constitutional dispensation. Political prisoners would be released, and the ban on political movements such as the ANC and the Pan-African Congress (PAC) lifted. These decisions would be flanked by a general openness towards reforms by the government in several realms, heralding huge changes within the country and ultimately the end of whiteminority rule.1 The global political changes underway during this time, and in particular the diminished Soviet threat from South Africa’s perspective, also impacted the regime’s relations with other states whose leaders had long been opposed to apartheid. By early 1990, according to Landsberg, de Klerk and his advisors had developed three foreign policy objectives. First, ending the government’s international isolation with the aim of becoming reintegrated into the international community. Second, persuading other governments to end sanctions against the Republic and in turn support de Klerk’s reform course with resumed trade and investments. Third, the NP set out to secure international backing for its domestic goals, such as a political system that also upheld white minority rights in a majoritarian system.2 Interestingly, records pertaining to a meeting between UK Ambassador Robin Renwick and de Klerk just a few days before the announcement of these tremendous changes reveal that on the NPT issue, he could not 1

2

Saunders and Onslow, 2009, p. 241. For a transcript of de Klerk speech, see: https:// omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02104/ 06lv02105.htm (accessed: 15 December 2022). Landsberg, 2004, p. 88.

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139

move so swiftly. This was despite the fact that joining the NPT would have resolved a point of international concern. In explaining his position to Renwick, de Klerk stressed that this was a subject on which he had difficulties with his own electorate. He had already introduced broad changes towards ending apartheid in a rather short period since his election and could not tackle issues as sensitive as the NPT. He conveyed that in the immediate future, he would follow the path laid out in his February speech, but simultaneously committing his government to international non-proliferation norms would infringe on the general reform process. De Klerk foresaw considerable stress within the political system, affecting the attitudes of the military and police in South Africa. De Klerk and Renwick jointly assessed how much NPT signature would actually help reduce the government’s international isolation and how high the matter ranked in relation to other pressing issues. The President repeatedly brought up the question of what tangible benefits South Africa could hope to enjoy in return, because he was aware of the US State Department’s difficulties in loosening sanctions. He therefore hoped the British government could be supportive in this regard. Renwick stressed that signing the Treaty would be another important step in normalising Pretoria’s relations with Western countries and help secure its continued IAEA membership. However, the United Kingdom could not offer a relaxed interpretation of NPT Article IV and give de Klerk his much-wanted quid pro quo.3 This lack of movement convinced DFA officials of the necessity to alter the internal NPT strategy to enable the South African government to solve the impasse. Former DFA Director-General Neil van Heerden recalled de Klerk’s belief that solving the NPT conundrum would be crucial in winning him international sympathy in favour of the NP’s arguments for a domestic South African settlement.4 Indeed, de Klerk acted almost hastily on dismantling the nuclear weapons, but he could not immediately reap the benefits of this fundamental decision. Even though terminating the programme was agreed upon very soon after de Klerk took office, announcement thereof had to wait until early 1993, almost three and a half years after the decision. If de Klerk had been willing to cash in the ‘disarmament dividend’ by announcing the decision he had taken to forego the nuclear weapons programme, he could have just gone ahead, as this would surely have bolstered his image internationally. He refrained from doing so, as he could not afford to announce it 3 4

‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 12 (Cape to FCO), 24 January 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part 1–36, FCO. Liberman, 2001, pp. 80–81.

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publicly, because in his view there were too many domestic obstacles. This was similarly true of the decision to sign the NPT, which was carefully delayed until the domestic situation was deemed conducive to this step.5 By early 1990, those in favour of NPT accession in the South African government lacked room for manoeuvre: right-wing criticism was growing and the lack of support by foreign governments meant there was almost nothing to counter it. Former AEC chairman Waldo Stumpf, who headed the dismantling committee, recalls that de Klerk moved ahead cautiously, as he ‘[wanted] to buy some time to progress further along the internal political reforms’.6 De Klerk had several informal exchanges with leaders abroad, such as President George H. W. Bush, with whom he had a good working relationship.7 The latter, while supporting de Klerk’s reform course, warned him about the criticism that prevailed in Washington’s political circles and that he could not do much to act openly in support. However, he assured the South African President that his administration would not come around ‘with a check list’8, referring to the steps that had to be taken in South Africa before all sanctions under the CAAA could be removed. Bush also promised to invite de Klerk to Washington, as the State Department believed that in the wake of Nelson Mandela’s release, an accession to the NPT was imminent. Indeed, US sources at the time judged that under its new President South Africa was ready to sign the Treaty, as this would be congruent with Pretoria’s new agenda of reducing its international isolation and securing access to nuclear technology.9 However, this analysis neglected domestic political considerations high on de Klerk’s agenda, which prevented the NPT matter from being resolved early on. It was clear that those in favour of the NPT had to be in a position to sell this step politically to supporters as well as adversaries in South Africa, as de Klerk would have to be able to deal with the broader criticism that his country would not secure many benefits in return for signing the Treaty.10 In echoing these concerns, the Minister for Mineral and Energy Affairs Dawie de Villiers confided that his government had just taken a number

5 6 7 8 9 10

Heald, 2010, p. 48. Waldo Stumpf, personal correspondence with author, 9 July 2017, via email. Transcripts of several phone calls between F. W. de Klerk and George H. W. Bush, BPL. ‘Telephone Conversation with State President de Klerk of South Africa’, Memorandum of Telephone Conversation, 10 February 1990, BPL. ‘Special Analysis: South Africa ready to accede to NPT’, National Security Council, 8 February 1990, File: Daniel Poneman, BPL. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 36 (Cape Town to FCO), 1 February 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part 1–36, FCO.

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of quite important internal decisions, which were generating a very strong right-wing reaction. If the government moved closer towards joining the NPT, they would need to demonstrate the benefits flowing from signature and present it in a favourable light. If not, de Villiers claimed, their domestic political opponents would accuse them of making further concessions in return for nothing. The Minister explained the difficulties caused by the expected reactions of the white electorate to de Klerk’s announcements, and underlined that they needed to be careful not to proceed too fast for the time being. South African government officials worried that if Bush repealed the relevant provisions of the CAAA after NPT signature, the US Congress would immediately counter this by imposing new nuclear sanctions. This scenario would be very damaging politically for the new South African government.11 It seemed that releasing Mandela and fellow political prisoners, unbanning the ANC and other political movements, coupled with the general reform course de Klerk laid out in his speech on 2 February, were too much to bear for the white electorate. As pointed out, this prevented fundamentally changing the NPT position. Indeed, in early 1990, there continued to be resistance towards NPT accession without benefits from Defence Minister Magnus Malan, Head of the National Intelligence Service Niël Barnard and Head of the AEC Wynand de Villiers.12 In February 1990, coinciding with the momentous domestic developments underway, there was another move towards resolving the nuclear ambiguity hitherto displayed by the regime: the AEC announced the discontinuation of operations at the uranium enrichment plant at Valindaba (Y-plant). This decision effectively precluded any option for the government to produce additional HEU in the future, although since the 1970s this had been one of the key objectives of heavy investment in the nuclear infrastructure.13 De Klerk had given these orders and the Cabinet endorsed them, supported by Finance Minister Barend du Plessis, Foreign Minister Pik Botha as well as Mineral and Energy Affairs Minister Dawie de Villiers. This troika had earlier positioned themselves as advocates in favour of NPT accession,14 and du Plessis recalled ‘[…] when F.W. [de Klerk] put 11 12 13 14

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 81 (Cape Town to FCO), 12 February 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part 1–36, FCO. ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 10 (Cape Town to FCO), 23 January 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part 1–36, FCO. Nic von Wielligh, interview with author, 27 February 2016, Pretoria. ‘South Africa: Nuclear Facilities’, Telno 23 (Cape Town to FCO), 29 January 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part 1–36, FCO; ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 36 (Cape Town to FCO), 1 February 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part 1–36, FCO.

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that matter of dismantling on the table, we came out obviously very strong in support of it’.15 Keen to let the US and UK officials know of this decision, de Klerk and his advisors announced it immediately.16 However, compared to the tremendous decision de Klerk took at the same time in utmost secrecy, discontinuing uranium enrichment at the Y-plant amounts, in hindsight, to little more than cosmetic tinkering. 5.1.1

Dismantling the Nuclear Weapons

Even before entering office, de Klerk was well aware that priority had to be given to dismantling the nuclear weapons programme.17 In his autobiography, he recalled that he believed the nuclear weapons to be a burden to his government after the atomic bombs had lost their deterrence purpose following the end of the conflicts in the region.18 In fact, one of de Klerk’s first actions after assuming office in September 1989 was to summon an expert committee composed of senior officials from Armscor, the AEC, the SADF and Government Ministers, to discuss ending the programme. De Klerk prioritized termination and tasked the group to produce plans on how best to dismantle it.19 Notably, Ministers endorsing NPT accession and the termination of the programme prevailed: Finance Minister Barend du Plessis, Mineral and Energy Affairs Minister Dawie de Villiers and Foreign Minister Pik Botha all advocated such aims. While the expert committee fulfilled the earlier task of the Witvlei Committee, there were, however, a number of changes in its composition, which altered the character of the group compared to that of the mid-1980s. The task of reporting to de Klerk about the progress made in the dismantling project fell on the new head of the AEC Waldo Stumpf, who worked well together with the Armscor representative Hannes Steyn.20 At an ad hoc Cabinet meeting in November 1989, de Klerk instructed the AEC, Armscor and the SADF to terminate the nuclear weapons programme immediately. Only three months later, in February 1990, de Klerk gave the final order to dismantle the weapons. 15 16 17

18 19 20

Barend Du Plessis, interview with author, 1 March 2017, Pretoria. ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 10 (Cape Town to FCO), 23 January 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part 1–36, FCO. F. W. de Klerk, interview with author, 20 February 2017, Cape Town; see also R. F. Pik Botha (South African Minister of Foreign Affairs), interview with Sue Onslow (Commonwealth Oral History Project), 13 December 2012. De Klerk, 1999, p. 274. Waldo Stumpf, interview with author, 22 February 2016, Pretoria; see also: Burgess and Purkitt, 2005, pp. 123–126. Waldo Stumpf, personal correspondence, 23 February 2016, via email; and Hannes Steyn, interview with author, 5 March 2018, Pretoria.

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Called the ‘Mantel Project’, the process of dismantling was scheduled to be completed before the end of September 1991, which included the destruction of all proliferation-sensitive documents related to the programme.21 Crucially, de Klerk also appointed an independent auditor, retired nuclear physicist Prof. Wynand Mouton, to oversee the dismantling from beginning to end.22 There was no debate about the decision as such, only about its implementation. De Klerk’s intention and careful planning beforehand concerning the rollback decision becomes evident by looking at the composition of the committee. All except Defence Minister Magnus Malan had no loyalty to the nuclear weapons programme, and their views could rather be associated with the opposite end of the spectrum: ‘The dismantlement decision followed a change in the advisors and agencies involved in nuclear policy decision-making. Pro-NPT foreign and economic advisors outnumbered military advisors in de Klerk’s ad hoc Cabinet committee.’23 With a view to the military threat facing his country, F. W. de Klerk recalled that ‘[…] the whole picture had changed and that helped me, or let me rather put it differently, that robbed those who might have been against my decision [to end the nuclear weapons programme] of arguments to advance why we should keep it’.24 Moreover, the timing also seemed conducive to pushing through a decision with regard to overcoming possible internal adversaries. Apparently, none of those present openly rejected de Klerk’s sketched-out plan for ending the weapons programme.25 By then, Armscor was no longer committed to the nuclear weapons, because it believed an emphasis on the satellite and conventional delivery programmes might be more viable in the future. In addition, the AEC had also gradually moved towards NPT signature, partly because they believed there was a good chance to re-establish themselves on the global market for enriched uranium after years of isolation under apartheid rule, should the restrictions on South African uranium sales be lifted following accession. Moreover, at that point, Armscor and the AEC hoped not only to access overseas markets but also to tap into technical cooperation.26 For obvious reasons, these aims could not be reconciled with continuing the nuclear weapons programme 21 22 23 24 25 26

Albright, 1994; See also: Van Wyk and Möser, 2019, pp. 45–61. Reiss, 1995, pp. 17–18. Liberman, 2001, pp. 74–75. F. W. de Klerk, interview with author, 20 February 2017, Cape Town. Ibid. ‘Main Points Arising from Luncheon on 14 November 1989 with Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC)’, 17 November 1989, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, DIRCO, obtained by Anna-Mart van Wyk.

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and repeatedly defying the NPT and safeguards. Much to the contrary, prolonging the programme would have been a strain on scarce resources and the surrounding ambiguity would have blocked any cooperation on defence and civil nuclear research that ESKOM, South Africa’s stateowned electricity provider, desperately needed.27 As a matter of fact, the AEC’s position had developed from the NPT’s outright rejection to discuss accession based on the condition that South Africa would enjoy its rights under Article IV of the Treaty. At the same time, the improvements in the regional security environment, brought about by the end of the Border War and the withdrawal of Cuban soldiers from Angola, reduced Pretoria’s rationale for the nuclear weapons programme drastically. This generally affected Armscor and the defence sector, because the settlement of regional conflicts heralded a reduced military budget and ushered in a transformation of the defence and nuclear industry.28 The looming takeover by the ANC or any other liberation movement likely to win open democratic elections has often been suspected as another motivation for the NP Government to dismantle the nuclear warheads. Without the programme’s termination, a successor government would have inherited a small nuclear weapons arsenal.29 Was such a scenario a decisive factor in the minds of de Klerk, Pik Botha and other NP leaders? While there is almost nothing in the records obtained from South African archives that suggests that this aspect had much relevance for de Klerk and his advisors, US records at times considered this to be a factor from the apartheid government’s perspective. In fact, an assessment by the US State Department mentioned the ‘[…] fear of exposing (or transferring) covert stockpiles to any future majority-rule government’ as one aspect of the decision contributing to the rollback of the nuclear weapons programme.30 However, with relevant records pertaining to the decisionmaking missing from the South African archives, there can be no certainty. Moreover, most of those in power and involved in the rollback decision denied motivations to that effect in their oral accounts.31 It would be wrong to altogether dismiss that the prospect of the ANC inheriting nuclear weapons influenced the decision of the South African leadership

27 28 29 30 31

Liberman, 2001, p. 77 (here in particular footnote 135). Steyn et al., 2003, pp. 97–99; and see Liberman, 2001, p. 72. See also: Albright, 1993, pp. 8–11; and: Buys, 1993. For an overview, see Albright and Hibbs, 1993, pp. 32–37. ‘State Department Secret Assessment’, 18 September 1991, U.S. Department of State Virtual Reading Room Documents (hereafter VRRD). F. W. de Klerk, interview with author, 20 February 2017, Cape Town; see also R. F. ‘Pik’ Botha (South African Minister of Foreign Affairs), interview with Sue Onslow (Commonwealth Oral History Project), 13 December 2012.

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to terminate the programme and sign the NPT. There is evidence that such an argument did come from the AEC.32 However, this was apparently not the dominant view, and actors such as de Klerk, Pik Botha and Waldo Stumpf have in fact publicly argued against such an interpretation. When pressed in interviews, former officials stated that this was never a consideration although foreign diplomats, especially from the United States, raised it.33 Officials from the United Kingdom also assumed that the transition to an ANC-ruled government might have been a reason for the nuclear rollback, because the ‘[…] prospect of a majority government coming to power in the not too distant future and discovering a cache of weapons or HEU was surely not something that the present regime wanted’.34 One can argue that passing over the nuclear arsenal into the hands of the ANC was an undesirable outcome from the perspective of the NP, but also for the United States, the United Kingdom and other states, and it might have been, arguably, one of the reasons in the first place that compelled them to act and exert pressure on South Africa. As it turned out, however, the incoming ANC government was presented a fait accompli with the nuclear weapons dismantled before Mandela was elected President. Whether intentionally or not, the decision deprived a black-majority government of the power and leverage associated with nuclear weapons. 5.1.2

Reverting to the Region: In Search of a ‘Fig Leaf’ for de Klerk

In South Africa, much to the dismay of those pushing for change through reforms, recent developments in the country had weakened de Klerk’s resistance to the demands of right-wing groups and military circles. These groups insisted on conditions for signing the NPT in order to get benefits above and beyond being simply reaccepted into the international community.35 Leading figures in the military-security establishment argued in favour of a ‘shopping list’ being included among benefits for the South Africans in return for accession and giving up the nuclear weapons. Niël Barnard remarked that he and others from the defence industry favoured such an approach. While not against NPT accession per se, Barnard mourned this missed opportunity, because ‘[…] we 32 33

34 35

‘Main Points Arising from Luncheon on 14 November 1989 with Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC)’, 17 November 1989, DIRCO, obtained by Anna-Mart van Wyk. F. W. de Klerk, interview with author, 20 February 2017, Cape Town; and Waldo Stumpf, interview with author, 22 February 2016, Pretoria; and R. F. ‘Pik’ Botha (South African Minister of Foreign Affairs), interview with Sue Onslow (Commonwealth Oral History Project), 13 December 2012. ‘South African Nuclear Capability’ (Washington to FCO), 20 November 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO. Albright and Zamora, 1991, p. 27.

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should have known that Washington and London and everybody else was so eager for us to dismantle this issue before the ANC taking over, […] we had quite a few aces in our hand, I believe’.36 Likewise, in interdepartmental discussions, Armscor and AEC officials often raised the matter of getting something in return from the international community, such as military technology and cooperation for the SADF. However, leading DFA officials believed this was uncalled for, because South Africa would be embraced as a respected member of the international community following NPT accession; thus, no additional demands should be introduced.37 In line with this reasoning, convincing the critics and breaking their resistance towards NPT accession became the DFA’s imperative. The time had come for a change in strategy. The two South African delegations that went to Vienna in August 1988 and December 1989 had tried negotiating the terms for NPT accession and in the process attempted to elicit assurances from the Depositary Powers of resumed nuclear cooperation as stipulated under NPT Article IV. However, following the impressions gained during these two encounters with almost no movement in the Depositaries’ positions, Pretoria’s officials realized that the three were unlikely to resume nuclear technology exchanges and cooperation immediately. This was mostly because of the continuation of these countries’ domestic sanctions legislation targeting apartheid, such as the CAAA in the United States. Therefore, to break the deadlock in the negotiations, DFA officials revised their strategy in such a way as to eventually enable the South African Cabinet to take the step towards endorsing the NPT openly. As a result, their initial emphasis on rights under Article IV gave way to making parallel NPT accession by the FLS a prerequisite. This strategic change was driven by the necessity to be able to demonstrate some benefits arising from the Treaty, in order to justify signature in the domestic political arena. Getting the neighbouring states to join the NPT as part of a regional initiative brokered by Pretoria’s leaders, so the argument ran, would lessen the image that de Klerk and the NP-led government were giving in to outside pressure in what was perceived to be a domestic affair. Moreover, from a security point of view, a regional NWFZ ruled out any possibility of Soviet nuclear missiles being deployed in the region. Hence, leading DFA officials explained this shift as emanating from domestic political imperatives:

36 37

Niël Barnard, interview with author, 21 February 2017, Gansbaai. Former Defence Minister Magnus Malan held similar views (Malan 2006, pp. 218–219). Hannes Steyn, interview with author, 4 March 2018.

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Since the De Klerk Government had come to power during 1989, it had been moving at breakneck speed on the domestic reform programme. Along this road the government had picked up a large number of debits, which had the effect of eroding its domestic power base. The nuclear issue is perceived domestically to relate to national security and it would therefore be political suicide for the President to take on another controversial domestic political issue at the present time. [President De Klerk] felt that nothing tangible had been forthcoming from foreign governments and that he is close to reaching the threshold of what voters will tolerate.38

It was against this background that the South Africans first proposed the regional accession idea during their exchanges with the NPT Depositary Powers in February 1990. Part of the revised strategy included requesting the three Depositaries to lobby on Pretoria’s behalf in Lusaka, Harare, Maputo, Dar es Salaam and Luanda, to convince the respective governments to similarly join the Treaty. Regardless of their respective accessions and Pretoria’s own NPT signature, the South Africans now also declared themselves willing to open up all nuclear facilities for IAEA safeguards inspections by August 1991, including the semi-commercial enrichment plant, even if NPT accession had not taken place by that time.39 This new position had not come out of the blue, because it followed a careful assessment of the limits on how far the Depositary States might be prepared to go on South Africa’s behalf. Using all available diplomatic channels, DFA officials strongly advocated this new position. At the IAEA in Vienna, in various capitals and in Pretoria, they were busy presenting it as an important leap forward vis-à-vis foreign diplomats.40 Likewise, in Washington, South African officials ascertained whether the State Department would lobby the FLS to the point of getting them to accede at the same time, so that they could collectively form a regional NWFZ. However, the State Department was of the view that first the South African government had to act unilaterally, without introducing any preconditions. Only after Pretoria’s leadership had announced its 38 39

40

‘Netherland Demarche: RSA Accession to NPT’ (Shardelow to Naude Steyn), 9 August 1990 File: 137/18, DIRCO. ‘Non-Proliferation Treaty: Position of the South African Government on the Question of Accession to the NPT and Related Matters’ (Director-General to Ambassador Cecilia Schmidt), 12 March 1990, File: 137/18, DIRCO. The governments of the remaining FLS – Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho – were not lobbied because they had already signed the NPT in the late 1960s or early 1970s immediately after the Treaty opened for signature. Cecilia Schmidt, interview with author, 19 February 2018, Pretoria; also: ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Washington to FCO, 16 February 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part B 37–44, FCO.

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accession, would the State Department approach the FLS.41 But this categorical rejection soon gave way to a concerted multiparty lobbying on behalf of Pretoria, as it transpired that the UK and US officials who had initially been approached were in general prepared to lobby the FLS, taking the Soviet officials on board in this exercise.42 5.1.3

Lobbying the FLS

With the new NPT policy made known, DFA officials hoped that lobbying could begin soon. A Foreign Affairs strategy paper claimed that once there was certainty about the FLS governments’ intentions to join the NPT, the road to accession from Pretoria’s point of view would no longer be blocked. De Klerk had already confirmed that the South Africans would be joining the non-proliferation regime, provided that the other non-signatories in southern Africa, namely Angola, Zambia, Mozambique and Namibia, made a similar move.43 The whole idea of concerted regional accessions was less about assurance that South Africa’s neighbouring states will not acquire nuclear weapons, but a political price exerted for the sake of domestic political audiences. Those in favour of accession claimed that domestic NPT opponents argued it was a one-sided and unjust Treaty and that the government would be in a better position not having signed it. However, Foreign Minister Botha argued internally that a signature was key in legitimizing South Africa’s peaceful nuclear programme and therefore constituted an important step in the process of normalizing the country’s relations with the rest of the world. De Klerk hoped that the Depositaries would be prepared to lobby the concerned FLS on Pretoria’s behalf, as this would play into the hands of those pushing the issue domestically.44 Demonstrating its seriousness, the South African government had given firm assurances that it would accede to the Treaty pursuant to the other four non-signatory southern African states making a similar

41 42

43

44

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Washington to FCO, 13 February 1990, File: See 083/1 Part C 45–70, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, R. H. Smith to P. Yaghmourian, 27 February 1990, File: See 083/1 Part C 45–70, FCO; and Robert Cabelly, interview with author, 28 March 2017, via Skype. ‘Non-Proliferation Treaty’ (Director-General to Amb. Schmidt), 12 March 1990, DIRCO. Interestingly, while only those four states were mentioned, the Depositaries also lobbied in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and in Harare (Zimbabwe). ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 191 (Cape Town to FCO), 13 March 1990, File: JSS083/1 Part A 1–41, FCO.

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commitment.45 While simultaneous accession was a priority from Pretoria’s point of view, a firm public commitment by the four FLS concerned, in which they clarified their imminent decision to accede at an early date, would be sufficient to allow the South African government to take the same step. However, in light of the prevalent domestic political circumstances, de Klerk could not hope to accede unilaterally, because his right-wing opponents would interpret such a move as giving in to international pressure, ultimately putting his political position at risk.46 After initial reluctance, the UK, US and Soviet officials set out to lobby the FLS. The Depositaries’ officials jointly finalized a draft lobbying text with which to approach the governments of the FLS.47 The memorandum produced formed the basis of the trilateral lobbying in the capitals concerned.48 However, the Depositaries could not be seen as advocates for a bargain in exchange for South Africa’s NPT signature, because Treaty accession was non-negotiable.49 These constraints notwithstanding, the Depositaries made the FLS aware that they too had a role to play in encouraging de Klerk’s government to take the decision to accede by calling on their willingness to sign likewise, thereby providing a key impetus for the South Africans to take this important step.50 From the DFA’s perspective, it was important that the recent changes in their position towards the regional accession idea were not perceived by international critics as another attempt to play for time. Usually, South Africa’s adversaries in the IAEA took such alterations as a sign of continuous delay and might well regard the attempt to bring the FLS along as purposefully obstructing the negotiations. However, the Depositaries understood that de Klerk had real political difficulties and that ‘[…] he could not afford further alienating the military and security 45

46 47 48

49 50

‘Non-Proliferation Treaty: Position of the South African Government on the Question of Accession to the NPT and Related Matters’, Director-General to Ambassador Cecilia Schmidt, 12 March 1990, File: 137/18, DIRCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 14 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 14 March 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part A 1–41. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 612 (Washington to FCO), 15 March 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part D 77–108, FCO. It was also agreed that the United Kingdom should speak for the United States in Angola, because they had no diplomatic relations at that time (‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 611 (Washington to FCO), 15 March 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part D 77–108, FCO. ‘South African Accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’, Telno 408, 15 March 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part D 77–108, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 590 (Washington to FCO), 14 March 1990, File: See 083/1 Part C, FCO; and ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 612 (Washington to FCO), 15 March 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part D 77–108, FCO.

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complex by acceding to the Treaty without bringing the FLS along as well’.51 Subsequently, the three Depositary States expended their efforts not only once but repeatedly between 1990 and 1991, in a well-planned and concerted tripartite attempt. In the following months, the Depositaries’ officials did not refrain from lobbying at the highest possible level, as exemplified by the approach of the FCO, which engaged the Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano on the issue while the latter was on a state visit to London.52 Similarly, the Soviet diplomats used a high-level visit of their Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, to southern Africa, during which Shevardnadze personally met the Angolan President dos Santos to, inter alia, raise the NPT issue, urging him to decide positively on accession.53 Shevardnadze subsequently continued to discuss the issue with his counterparts during his visits to Dar es Salaam and Harare and similarly advocated accession.54 In the meantime, the South Africans did not watch idly. They took bilateral action as well with the FLS. De Klerk himself discussed the matter with Presidents Nujoma, Kaunda, Chissano and dos Santos, all of whom had given a generally positive response when he approached them during the Namibian independence celebrations in Windhoek in March 1990.55 Thus, a situation emerged in which de Klerk and his administration were in firm control of the issue internationally and overall regarded as being in favour of NPT accession, while at home they had to walk a tightrope with regard to domestic political constraints emanating from the right-wing establishment. 5.1.4

The NPT Depositary Powers Meeting with South Africa, May 1990

On 2 May 1990, five months after the previous Depositary Powers meeting in December 1989 in Vienna, the next encounter between South African diplomats and the other three states was scheduled to take 51 52

53 54 55

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 21 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 6 March 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South African Accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Mozambique Accession’, Telno 110 (FCO to Cape Town), 16 March 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part D 77–108, FCO. ‘Shevardnadze’s Talks on NPT in Luanda’, Telno 93 (Luanda to FCO), 21 March 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part A, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 489 (Moscow to FCO), 23 March 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part A, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 235 (Cape Town to FCO), 27 March 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part A, FCO.

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place at the UN in Geneva. Hopes were high that the South African government was close to deciding positively on the NPT.56 Indeed, the South Africans argued that they had moved beyond consideration of whether to accede to the NPT, and for the first time made a firm commitment to sign the Treaty. However, they reiterated their conditions that such a step could only be taken pursuant to the FLS making an equal commitment. When the discussion turned to making a possible public commitment in the meantime, giving more substance to their intention to accede, they backtracked because such a statement introduced a point of irreversibility, which would prove domestically difficult. Foreign respectability gained via accession was not enough, argued Herbert Beukes, the leader of the South African delegation, and the international community had to understand his government’s political sensitivities.57 The DFA officials argued that bringing the FLS into the equation and therefore advancing concrete non-proliferation objectives in the region might help set off a dynamic that could lead to the proverbial ‘fig leaf’ that was exactly what de Klerk needed.58 In contrast, the Depositaries lamented the new conditionality introduced by making NPT signature dependent on similar moves or public statements of intent by the FLS’s governments. The Depositaries’ officials argued the other way around: announcing South Africa’s accession to the Treaty would place pressure on the FLS, whose leaders had themselves always called for a regional NWFZ.59 However, South African officials claimed they could not move as things stood, because none of the FLS had so far made a firm public declaration. While de Klerk was much in favour of acceding to the Treaty, his reform policies had come under huge pressure from the right-wing spectrum; therefore, he needed help to justify a positive decision. When the idea of FLS commitments had been voiced earlier, de Klerk had only hesitatingly accepted such a regional approach, as he was not sure whether this would provide him with strong enough

56 57 58 59

‘Depositaries meeting with South Africans’, UKDIS Geneva to FCO, 30 April 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part A, FCO. ‘Depositary Power Meeting with Representatives of the South African Government’, 2 May 1990, File: See 083/1 Part F, FCO. Ibid. ‘Meeting between NPT Depositaries and South Africans’, Telno 88 (Geneva to FCO), 3 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO; and: ‘Summary, Evaluation and Recommendation on Discussions between Delegations of the USA, UK, Soviet Union and the RSA on Accession by the RSA to the NPT: Geneva 2 May 1990’, 4 May 1990, File: 137/18, DIRCO. Obtained and shared by Anna-Mart van Wyk (University of Johannesburg).

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arguments.60 DFA officials argued for firm assurances by leaders of the FLS that they would follow suit, because their initial reactions, although generally encouraging, had not been made in the form of a public statement.61 Ultimately, those in the DFA advising de Klerk on foreign policy matters aimed to demonstrate to their domestic critics a regional NWFZ, brought into being by Pretoria’s own accession.62 A few months later, seemingly not prepared to adopt a less demanding view, a paper circulated by the South Africans at the IAEA in Vienna laid bare Pretoria’s most recent position on the NPT. Namely, the South African government’s ‘[…] accession date will be determined by the date when the Front-Line States make an equal commitment to accede to the NPT’.63 Moreover, the date they had themselves earlier committed to concerning the opening up of their nuclear installations for international safeguards inspections, was pushed back from August to November 1991.64 Generally disappointed, by mid-1990, the Depositaries were of the view that they had done enough lobbying with the FLS and believed they would certainly accede to the Treaty provided Pretoria did the same. They saw no further barrier for the South African officials to accede and expressed their disappointment about the latter’s stalling behaviour.65 This increased the pressure to act for de Klerk and his advisors, because the momentum achieved so far could easily be lost again. 5.1.5

FLS Responses to the NPT Depositary States’ Lobbying

By late April 1990, the NPT Depositary officials had compiled a report with the initial responses to the lobbying to show what had been achieved so far. Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos was favourably inclined towards accession and had written letters to his FLS colleagues, in particular the Presidents of Mozambique, Zambia and Namibia, advocating a concerted move. Apparently, Angolan officials strongly favoured 60 61 62

63 64 65

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 307 (Cape Town to FCO), 7 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’, 9 May 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part E 109–144, FCO. ‘Visit of President de Klerk to UK: Senior Official Talks, 18 May’, Telno 213 (FCO to Cape Town), 18 May 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part E 109–144, FCO; and ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Cape Town to FCO, 9 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘Position of S.A. Government on the NPT’ (Naudé Steyn to Herbert Beukes), 8 August 1990, File: 137/18, DIRCO. Ibid. ‘South Africa and the NPT: Meeting of Depositaries with South Africans’, Telno 177 (UKDIS Geneva to FCO), 24 August 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO.

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NPT accession.66 The Zimbabwean authorities conveyed that they were still considering NPT accession but they looked favourably on the issue. They displayed astonishment about why they had to make a commitment at all, if it was South Africa that had a nuclear programme and a sizeable nuclear infrastructure. Neither the Zimbabwean government nor any of the other FLS had capabilities in this field. In alleviating their concerns, the British officials called for understanding of President de Klerk’s position. The latter needed something to show, such as a commitment by the FLS, which would cost them nothing, but would enable him to placate his critics and ensure his government’s course would meet a positive response. Enhancing overall regional security from Pretoria’s perspective was important for domestic reasons.67 Following the meeting with the South Africans on 2 May, the Depositaries instructed their missions in the respective FLS to enquire whether these governments would be prepared to adhere to the NPT once South Africa had done so. The goal was to bring them to a point of displaying more flexibility in the sequence of events, because this could lead to the much-desired South African accession.68 Within a short time, new information trickled in. Apparently, Luanda’s position had developed as the Angolan stance had continued to change very favourably towards NPT accession. However, they wanted to consult first with the other FLS before making a definitive decision.69 A similar message arrived from Windhoek, in which the Namibian Foreign Minister explained that he saw no obstacles preventing his government from signing the NPT, but they preferred to make a decision on a regional basis after consultation with the other FLS officials.70 The Mozambican government explained that its recent decision in favour of accession, regardless of action by the other FLS, stood firm. However, they could not yet issue a public statement before a full meeting of the People’s Assembly had finally ratified NPT signature, although they did allow the Depositaries to pass on the information to the

66 67 68 69 70

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 121 (Luanda to FCO), 19 April 1990, File: JSS 083/ 1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 167 (Harare to FCO), 23 April 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 109 (FCO to Luanda), 10 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 142 (Luanda to FCO), 11 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 259 (Windhoek to FCO), 13 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO.

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South Africans in confidence.71 The Zimbabwean position fluctuated, as the cautious stance taken up by Foreign Minister Nathan Shamuyarira, who also held reservations regarding the conditionality introduced by the South Africans, gave way to an increasingly favourable sentiment towards a regional move. Indeed, on a more positive note, Shamuyarira conveyed that there had been a general agreement among the FLS governments about acceding to the Treaty – a step now fully endorsed by Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, his government wanted to avoid that its NPT accession appeared to be linked with the South African signature.72 In contrast, reports from Lusaka did not reveal anything new, but instead suggested that the Zambian officials had allowed the NPT matter to get stuck in the government’s bureaucracy. The British embassy in Lusaka recommended that a useful way to push it back onto the agenda would be a bilateral message from UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to President Kaunda. This, so the idea, should be sent shortly before the upcoming FLS summit, as President Kaunda was then acting as FLS Chairman, increasing the likelihood of the NPT issue being put on the summit’s agenda.73 Yet, it proved difficult to get a helpful statement from the Tanzanian officials. Firstly, they had longstanding objections to the NPT, which stemmed directly from the attitude of former President Julius Nyerere, who still had great influence on Tanzanian politics. Secondly, the Tanzanians continued to be very suspicious of de Klerk and his government.74 When approached again, the Tanzanian Foreign Minister Ahmed Diria explained their view and claimed that it was not justified for the United States, the United Kingdom and others to seek to use the FLS as leverage in their dealings with the South African government. Rather, the lobbyists should talk to the South Africans directly if they wished to secure their NPT accession.75 Despite seeming not fully satisfied with the conditions put forward by the South Africans, and probably also due to a lack of alternative possible approaches with which to resolve the situation satisfactorily, the 71 72

73 74 75

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 239 (Maputo to FCO), 30 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 203 (Harare to FCO), 28 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO; and ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 287 (Harare to FCO), 16 July 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 271 (Lusaka to FCO), 29 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 180 (Dar es Salaam to FCO), 28 May 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Oslo to FCO, 21 June 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO.

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Depositaries continued lobbying unabatedly to extract more forthcoming statements from the FLS officials. In yet another attempt to elicit positive responses, in June 1990 Prime Minister Thatcher sent a letter addressed to the Chairman of the FLS, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. She stressed the existing prospects of luring the South Africans into the NPT regime, which she claimed constituted the ‘major prize’. She called on the FLS leader to help resolve the current impasse, which had arisen since de Klerk and his newly elected government had shown a sincere interest in accession, by making a statement of intent demonstrating the Zambian willingness to accede. Thatcher explained that de Klerk needed a commitment from the FLS to counter his domestic critics and in this particular case ‘[…] a political commitment could have a value far beyond its immediate practical significance’, thereby further encouraging South African NPT accession. Thatcher urged Kaunda to recommend a public endorsement of the NPT to his FLS colleagues.76 The upcoming IAEA General Conference fell in this period, and the South Africans relied heavily on efforts by officials from the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union for intra-agency lobbying as Pretoria was still not prepared to openly announce that their position had shifted in favour of IAEA safeguards. However, without issuing a public statement, the representatives of the Depositaries could not really act in support of de Klerk’s agenda. They questioned whether a confidential statement would demonstrate anything to the IAEA members and the international community if it was not prominently announced. A strong reaction from the Group of African States, among them Egypt and Nigeria, was anticipated, which could in turn trigger calls to suspend South Africa from the Agency. While it was widely known that the FLS were in principle ready to accede if the South Africans did the same, the most recent statement from Pretoria was a step in the wrong direction in light of the latest movement in the positions of the neighbouring states.77 Overcoming the political difficulties of indicating his intention publicly, de Klerk resolved this deadlock by releasing a carefully crafted statement just before the conference began, referring to the announcement made by his predecessor P. W. Botha to the IAEA General Conference in 1987.78 In fact, invoking and making visible the trajectory 76 77 78

‘Letter from the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia)’, 29 June 1990, File: See 083/1 Part C, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 193 (UKDIS Geneva to FCO), 5 September 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 260 (Pretoria to FCO), 5 September 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO.

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and connectedness of these two initiatives, Foreign Minister Pik Botha circulated this message among the IAEA General Conference participants, stating that the government in Pretoria trusted that ‘[…] in the near future talks with the IAEA could be held to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement for the country’s nuclear facilities’.79 Although this statement lacked any commitment to an accession date, it was successful in deferring the vote on South Africa’s suspension from the Agency to the next General Conference in 1991, most likely due to Pretoria’s diplomats expressing their interest in acceding to the NPT. 5.2

US Non-proliferation Policies and de Klerk’s Visit to Washington

In early 1990, the US State Department was still wrestling with the issue of how best to reciprocate a possible South African entry into the NPT. Preventing a more relaxed interpretation of the restrictive measures applied against Pretoria, was the realization that even if the South Africans signed the Treaty, the US Congress would most likely prevent any relaxation of nuclear sanctions.80 Hence, US non-proliferation policies vis-à-vis South Africa ran into problems as long as the apartheid regime stopped short of ending its racially discriminating domestic system. US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, was optimistic about the prospects for negotiations with regard to ending apartheid. In line with Bush’s agenda, he wanted to encourage de Klerk to act. The State Department, however, was in no position to offer something concrete until the conditions laid down in the CAAA were met, including the release of all political prisoners, the repeal of the state of emergency, the unbanning of political movements and the entering into good faith negotiations with representative members of the black majority. Until then, the only options available were high-level visits and possible openness towards advocating access to IMF loans. During Cohen’s visit to South Africa in January 1990, he gained the impression that the government was normalizing political life and trying

79

80

IAEA 31st General Conference, ‘Communication Received from South Africa’, GC (XXXIV)/INF/290, Attachment, ‘Statement on South Africa’s Position on Accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, issued by the Minister of Foreign Affairs on September 17, 1990’, IAEA Archive. ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 10 (Cape Town to FCO), 23 January 1990; and ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 191 (Cape Town to FCO), 13 March 1990, File: JSS083/1 Part A 1–41, FCO.

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to prepare the nation psychologically for the unbanning of the ANC and other reforms.81 Highlighting the limited options available to de Klerk even half a year after the 1989 South African elections, a US intelligence assessment concluded that de Klerk would ‘[…] have to walk a fine line to maintain his support in the caucus and in the electorate, but as substantive talks approach, the possibility of a significant and embarrassing white backlash looms large. The Conservatives are poised to make political hay.’82 According to this assessment, de Klerk’s moves had pushed the NP leftwards, almost up-surging the reformist credentials of the Democratic Party, which translated into fierce opposition from the CP. In general, a pattern emerged, which showed that while de Klerk’s party was winning votes from the left, they increasingly lost to the right-wing spectrum.83 The Bush administration tried to encourage change in South Africa, while at the same time it seemed to be aware of the limited options available for the NP-led government. All parties thus regarded the upcoming visit by President de Klerk to the White House as an important opportunity. In particular, it seemed to be a chance to demonstrate that the internal reform progress and their seriousness about ending apartheid were indeed acknowledged by the international community. A de Klerk visit to Washington had been discussed early in 1990, but then been postponed for some months to allow for a visit of Nelson Mandela to meet with President Bush.84 However, regardless of the delay, the incumbent President’s trip ranked high on the DFA’s agenda, because no South African head of state since Jan Smuts had visited Washington for an official meeting with the US President. In addition, a visit to Washington was regarded as a source of support for the overall reform course initiated by the de Klerk government. Moreover, the South Africans hoped to negotiate something about the lifting of sanctions under the CAAA.85 But it was not just the DFA who displayed enormous interest in the visit, because the US State Department similarly had its own 81

82

83 84 85

‘UK-US Talks on Africa: South Africa’, Telno 242 (FCO to Washington), 30 January 1990, File: SEE 083/1 Part 1–36, FCO; Herman ‘Hank’ Cohen, interview with author, 9 November 2018, Washington D.C. Recent polls showed that this translated into the following numbers: 48% NP, 32% CP, 19% DP (‘South Africa: De Klerk’s Negotiations with Black Leaders’, CIA Directorate of Intelligence, 4 April 1990, National Security Council, File: John M. Ordway, BPL). Ibid. Jeffrey Davidow, personal correspondence, 25 May 2020, via email. Malcolm Ferguson, interview with author, 23 February 2018, Pretoria; and: William L. Swing, interview with author, 16 June 2017, via telephone. For more on the visit of de Klerk to the United States and how this political precursor unfolded in Washington D.C., see: Baker, with DeFrank, 1995.

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agenda.86 The US administration’s main goal was to use this opportunity to forge a personal relationship between Bush and de Klerk, which could form the basis of a more active role for Washington in southern Africa. In addition, a successful visit by de Klerk could help prepare the stage for subsequent congressional decisions on sanctions, as a positive outcome from the encounter could be used to lobby in Congress for a lifting of US sanctions vis-à-vis South Africa.87 Moreover, they cautioned that the trip should have its own merits and be de-linked from the CAAA sanctions.88 This did not meet the expectations on the South African side, as de Klerk was concerned that for domestic political reasons, he could not be seen returning empty-handed from the United States. He needed to be able to withstand the pressure from the domestic right upon his return to South Africa.89 Showing some flexibility, the US State Department suggested examining the contents of an earlier letter by Foreign Minister Pik Botha and considering options to assure de Klerk.90 In this letter, referred to by the Americans as ‘the wish list’, Pik Botha had argued that if a visit were afterwards not regarded as a success, President de Klerk’s adversaries would further erode the government’s power base. On the NPT in particular, Pik Botha stressed that given the progress that the South Africans had made towards accession to the Treaty, the US government should consider the possibility of making a public statement that it would change the legislation that still hindered Pretoria from enjoying its full rights of NPT Article IV following accession.91 Indeed, State Department officials assessed available options carefully. While much of Botha’s list was prohibited by law and the sanctions legislation in place, it was suggested in a memorandum to Secretary of State Baker that the US administration could consider ‘[…] being more forward leaning about our intention to engage in peaceful nuclear cooperation 86

87

88

89 90

91

‘Summary of a Letter by Pik Botha to Secretary Baker’ (Secretary Kimmitt to Secretary of State James Baker), 25 August 1990, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. ‘Possible Visit of de Klerk to Washington’ (U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, William Lacy Swing), 23 August 1990, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. ‘Summary of a Letter by Pik Botha to Secretary Baker’ (Secretary Kimmitt to Secretary of State James Baker), 25 August 1990, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. ‘Text of Botha-Baker Letter, August 20, 1990’ (from US Embassy Pretoria to Washington), 21 August 1990, VRRD. ‘Memorandum for the Secretary: Letter from Pik Botha’ (Robert Kimmitt to Secretary James Baker), 25 August 1990, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. ‘Text of Botha-Baker Letter, August 20, 1990’ (from US Embassy Pretoria to Washington), 21 August 1990, VRRD.

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should the SAG adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (pursuant to Article 4 of the Treaty)’.92 From a South African perspective, the US trip had to be seen as a real achievement for de Klerk. Therefore, DFA officials requested some encouraging signs ahead of the presidential visit, to the effect that the US administration would look more favourably on the sanctions applied considering the recent political progress in South Africa. In general, the DFA officials hoped that something could be done in that regard, as it would provide de Klerk with more political sway over his domestic critics upon return.93 In addition, prior to the visit, via a personal letter to President Bush, de Klerk admitted that he could not take a quick decision on the NPT. The South African head of state pointed out that his government would accede to the NPT ‘[…] upon certain Southern African Front-Line States making an equal commitment’.94 Also, de Klerk alluded to the obstacle NPT accession currently posed for his government, in a situation in which he, as a political leader, was dealing with a tense domestic situation in the absence of encouragement by foreign governments. This was further complicated, because foreign demands were linked to punitive measures vis-à-vis the Republic of South Africa. Justifying his stance, de Klerk indicated that a regional accession initiative by the FLS could create the context his government needed to accede.95 As the visit drew closer, Herman Cohen again travelled to South Africa to discuss the upcoming overseas trip. When the subject turned to the NPT, Cohen reiterated the State Department’s view that South Africa would get enormous credit in Washington’s decision-making circles if its leaders would sign the Treaty.96 In the meantime, President Bush had been briefed about the NPT issue, and he was to stress vis-à-vis de Klerk the US hopes of achieving a positive outcome on the NPT question while he was in Washington.97 The American records pertaining to the 92

93 94 95 96 97

‘Memorandum for the Secretary: Letter from Pik Botha’ (Robert Kimmitt to Secretary James Baker), 25 August 1990, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. National Security Archive (Washington): ‘Possible Visit of de Klerk to Washington’, 23 August 1990. W. L. Swing. ‘Letter from De Klerk to George H W Bush’, National Security Council, 31 August 1990, File: Daniel Poneman, BPL. Ibid., see also Van Wyk, 2014, pp. 134–135. ‘Assistant Secretary Cohen discusses State President’s visit with SAG Officials’ (Secretary of State to US Mission Vienna), 11 September 1990, VRRD. ‘Meeting with South African President De Klerk’, 24 September 1990, Memorandum to the President on the De Klerk visit (Davidoff to Secretary Baker), File: South Africa 10255 September 21, 1990, De Klerk Visit to the US, Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C.

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preparation of the encounter between Bush and de Klerk show the US officials’ eagerness to bring South Africa into the non-proliferation regime.98 Generally, the Bush administration seemed to understand the right-wing threat looming over de Klerk’s presidency as well as what was at stake for him. Officials from the United States realized that these internal constraints precluded any quick fixes on the NPT position, as reflected in the briefing paper for Bush shortly before de Klerk’s state visit: The South African government needs help. President de Klerk has boldly initiated a program of reform and negotiations that has opened an historic opportunity for a peaceful end to Apartheid. But, he is paying a political price. The ruling National Party is steadily losing support while gaining neither respite from the violence that stokes white fears nor tangible recognition from the international community.99

The US officials were aware of the visit’s strategic importance for the South Africans, as it would send a strong signal to de Klerk’s internal opposition, left and right, that the reform process initiated by his government enjoyed US support. While in general sympathetic to de Klerk’s efforts, the Bush administration’s inability to be more forthcoming was due to a number of issues, such as a domestic policy consensus on this topic. Indeed, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Robert Kimmitt, recalled three areas where the incoming Bush administration wanted to find common ground with the Democrats in the US Congress, of which one concerned the transition in South Africa. Kimmitt held responsibility for issues to do with the South African transition, with a particular focus on ending the regional conflicts and getting the Cubans out of Angola and Mozambique, and the SADF returning all forces to South Africa. Talks with the Democrats in Congress were called for, because the ongoing disagreement prevented a meaningful common policy on southern Africa. The basic idea was to reassure the government in Pretoria that the State Department would work towards supporting the political transition with a gradual relaxation of sanctions. US officials envisioned making de Klerk’s administration feel more at ease regarding the security situation in the region, thus supporting them in preparing the nation for the momentous decisions 98

99

‘Memorandum of Conversation between President Bush and President De Klerk’, 24 September 1990, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. ‘Official Working Visit of South African President F. W. De Klerk’ (Memorandum for the President from Secretary of State James Baker), 20 September 1990, File: South Africa 10255 September 1990, De Klerk Visit to the US, Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C.

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that lay ahead. Detailed bilateral discussions centred on Angola and South West Africa (Namibia). On South Africa, Secretary of State Baker argued internally that the new Bush administration had to undertake confidence-building measures with the South African leadership first and, as a second step, make their revised policies acceptable in the United States domestically. For this, Kimmitt had to get support from Congress, a process during which the latter encountered a lot of differences with the Democrats over the sanctions against South Africa, the lifting of which, so the argument went, would incentivize the NP government to allow internal changes. The Bush administration was constrained by this Congressional infighting, which made it difficult to demonstrate a clear link between the easing and ultimately lifting of sanctions, as had to be made visible to de Klerk’s government. State Department strategists tried to produce an integrated strategy on South Africa, covering Angola, Namibia, the NPT, the release of political prisoners and other issues, whereby the main leverage would be through a gradual lifting of CAAA sanctions. Kimmitt, Cohen and others from the State Department were busy arguing in Congress that they understood and took seriously the reservations of the Democrats, while on the other hand they needed the latitude to negotiate with Pretoria on the above-mentioned issues.100 On the NPT, Bush’s brief included encouraging de Klerk to accede to the Treaty during the 1990 visit. Upon accession, the State Department officials promised to enhance peaceful nuclear cooperation with South Africa, while encouraging other governments to follow suit. The State Department was eager to connect the issue with a possible lifting of sanctions targeting South Africa, which they knew was an issue at the heart of de Klerk’s concerns. They stressed that progress on the NPT would enable the Bush administration to establish a precedent of being responsive to positive actions and reforms by the South Africans.101 However, for de Klerk and his advisors responsible for the NPT strategy, this was still not enough. Thus, the issue did not come up in the presidential one-on-one meeting between George H. W. Bush and

100 101

Robert Kimmitt, interview with author, 2 May 2019, Washington D.C.; and Herman ‘Hank’ Cohen, interview with author, 9 November 2018, Washington. ‘Official Working Visit of South African President F.W. De Klerk’ (Memorandum for the President from Secretary of State James Baker), 20 September 1990, File: South Africa 10255 September 1990, De Klerk Visit to the US, Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. Interestingly, no records could be located in the South African Foreign Affairs Archive pertaining to de Klerk’s White House visit in 1990.

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F. W. de Klerk; indeed, neither the NPT nor any nuclear issue was raised at all.102 De Klerk’s resistance to the US objective of bringing him to the brink of NPT signature while in Washington reflected the importance of the domestic situation in South Africa in de Klerk’s strategic considerations. The latter clearly outweighed the value of pleasing the international community with an early accession to the NPT. It served also as a case in point of how the South Africans pursued their own agenda with their pressing domestic political priorities trumping outside interference.103 As a result, the decision continued to be carefully dragged out until the FLS responses were deemed sufficient to placate domestic opinion in South Africa. The domestic political realities conveyed by de Klerk were met with understanding in the State Department, and its officials continued pressing the FLS to accede to the NPT. While the visit could be regarded as an overall success, it did not do much in terms of accelerating the decision-making process in Pretoria.104 It did, however, lead the United States to internally review its strategy for South Africa. However, for domestic and foreign policy reasons, the Bush administration could not be too forward in its support for the white regime. On the contrary, it needed to be among those states pressing for internal reforms in South Africa and an end to apartheid. Yet, after repeated upscaling of unilateral US sanctions in previous years, the leverage in economic terms was limited. In any event, the election of de Klerk had led to significant internal changes and reforms in South Africa, which prevented the United States from introducing additional punitive measures that could discourage this positive trend. Such action would only impinge on work towards a national consensus on the reform process especially during a time when the South African leadership was moving towards dialogue. Therefore, the State Department’s policy foresaw a six-month ‘game plan’ for South Africa. This thinking conveyed a sense of urgency regarding future US involvement in the transition process, because 102 103

104

André Kilian (who acted as de Klerk’s notetaker during this meeting), personal correspondence, 12 November 2018, via email. While F. W. de Klerk maintained that he was not aware of particular American pressure (interview with author, 20 February 2017, Cape Town), former Finance Minister Barend du Plessis (interview with author, 1 March 2017, Pretoria) and Niël Barnard (interview with author, 21 February 2017, Gansbaai) hold different views, namely that there was huge bilateral US pressure to disarm during the early 1990s. ‘Our South Africa policy after the De Klerk visit’ (Herman Cohen to Secretary James Baker), 5 October 1990, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C.

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events of historical significance were fast unfolding in South Africa. State Department officials thought in terms of a two-year window ‘[…] to put in place the basic principle and building blocks of a new politico-socioeconomic order’.105 As a fundamental part of this regional strategy, nonproliferation policies were integrated into the broader US approach and efforts aimed at bringing about South African NPT accession intensified.106 Towards the end of 1990, the State Department regarded the chances for South African NPT accession as generally improving, mainly because of the region’s stability due to the settlement of the Namibian conflict and de Klerk’s election. However, US officials lamented the absence of a breakthrough regarding NPT signature and a safeguards agreement, because the Depositary Powers meetings with the South Africans could not go on indefinitely. While those in South Africa favouring the NPT continued to look for ways to derive benefits from Treaty accession, US officials claimed the State Department could not appear to offer nuclear assistance in exchange for South African NPT adherence.107 A seemingly unresolvable impasse had arisen. 5.3

Continued FLS Lobbying and Movement in the South African Position

Despite the lack of development in the South African position, which regarded movement by the FLS as a key priority, the NPT Depositaries decided to lobby the regional states again.108 However, this time, the elicited reactions were not as positive as before, and it seemed that the Depositaries had missed the point of getting a forthcoming message from the FLS governments, which they could then have conveyed to Pretoria. In Harare, there had not been much progress. The Zimbabweans were in principle ready to accede to the Treaty, but wanted to announce this in concert with the other FLS, a point which needed further coordination and, above all, time.109 Similarly, the government in Windhoek reported that they were following their own priorities in the relationship with

105

106 107 108 109

‘Next Steps in South Africa’ (Ambassador W. Swing to Washington), 4 October 1990, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. Ibid. ‘Soviet views on select non-proliferation topics’, File: Incoming FOIA, FLS/SA, Box: No. 7, National Security Archive, Washington D.C. ‘South African Accession to the NPT’, Telno 276 (FCO to Luanda), 2 November 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO. ‘South African Accession to the NPT’, Telno 494 (Harare to FCO), 7 November 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO.

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Pretoria and the NPT110 and, despite their general willingness to accede, they were not going to take a unilateral decision on the Treaty in the near future.111 Moreover, the Tanzanians would in due time elect a new Cabinet and therefore have a new Foreign Minister soon. As a result, lobbying them was postponed.112 Lastly, the government of Angola was focusing almost entirely on the current peace talks between the MPLA and UNITA. The Depositaries therefore did not stand a good chance of achieving anything with an additional lobbying exercise.113 In general, despite Mozambique, which had already acceded to the NPT in early September 1990, it seemed that the South Africans had missed the favourable moment when the FLS leaders were more inclined to consider NPT accession in a positive light. They increasingly found de Klerk’s requests too demanding against the background that South Africa possessed unsafeguarded nuclear installations, while the FLS had nothing to hide. Following the signing of the Groote Schuur Minute between the ANC and the NP in May 1990, the domestic South African transition towards a new political dispensation accelerated further.114 In addition, Pretoria’s NPT position also developed, because in early 1991 DFA officials announced they would send a team to Vienna to begin negotiations on an agreement to bring all their facilities under safeguards.115 The three Depositary Powers once again agreed to the South African request and planned a meeting. A secret DFA position paper compiled shortly before the encounter gave the impression that nothing had changed in their NPT position, because they were still searching for a quid pro quo to placate public opinion in South Africa. However, the paper acknowledged that some success and positive developments had been attained following the Depositaries’ lobbying efforts with Mozambique, whose leaders had signed the Treaty in September 1990.116 Stressing this step 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

‘South African Accession to the NPT’, Telno 434 (Windhoek to FCO), 8 November 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO. ‘Letter from Buchannan to Yaghmourian’ (Washington to FCO), 21 December 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO. ‘South African Accession to the NPT’, Telno 394 (Dar es Salaam to FCO), 6 November 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO. ‘South African Accession to the NPT’, Telno 404 (Luanda to FCO), 14 November 1990, File: JSS 083/1 Part C, FCO. Barnard, 2017, pp. 44–46; for another account of the South African transition, see Sparks, 1996. ‘Letter from Yaghmourian to Poston’ (FCO to Pretoria), 4 January 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘South Africa’s Position with regard to: (a) The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), (b) The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’, 22 February 1991, File: 137/18, DIRCO.

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in the desired direction, the Depositaries argued that NPT accession could well be to South Africa’s own advantage. During the meeting on 25 February 1991, the South Africans conveyed the excellent progress that had been made in the government’s internal discussions since the last meeting with the Depositary Powers over eight months ago. Apparently, the position on accession was now qualitatively different. However, de Klerk remained adamant, singing once again the same tune of insisting that accession to the Treaty could only occur if the FLS followed suit.117 Despite the recent progress and Mozambique’s accession, it was for this reason that the South Africans requested yet a further round of lobbying. They wanted the Depositaries to explore the possibility of a specific formula with the FLS, so that they could provide firm assurances that demonstrated their intention to accede within a reasonable timeframe of six to twelve months after South Africa had done so. A qualitative change in the South African position was that rather than requiring public statements from the FLS, they now stressed that private messages issued by the governments concerned would be enough. Such private assurances would then enable DFA officials such as DirectorGeneral Van Heerden to convince de Klerk to take a positive decision soon. In turn, the Depositaries maintained there could be no apparent link between Pretoria’s accession and that of its regional neighbours; rather, the South Africans should take the lead. Moreover, they communicated their reluctance to undertake further lobbying efforts with the FLS.118 However, the leaders of the Depositaries felt that the apartheid officials were genuine in their assurances. In fact, the move from public to private FLS statements of NPT endorsement represented an advance from the previous South African position. Following this logic, the FLS would not be publicly regarded as acting at the behest of Pretoria. The UK representative cabled euphorically to London that it now seemed the Depositaries were very close to achieving South African accession, ‘[…] and that all that is needed is a private assurance [from the FLS] which will allow de Klerk’s advisers to convince him that South African’s accession will lead to a de facto NWFZ in Southern Africa’.119 117

118 119

‘Discussions in Vienna on 25 February 1991 with the Representatives of the Depositary States and the IAEA’, 21 March 1991, DIRCO; and: ‘NPT: Meeting between South Africa and the Depositaries’, Telno 501 (Washington to FCO), 20 February 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty’, Telno 30 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 25 February 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. Ibid. A hand-written note on a document pertaining to the encounter explained that the idea behind these assurances was ‘[…] not to give de Klerk ‘cover’, but to allow his

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The DFA’s Director-General Van Heerden needed to demonstrate to his President that it was highly probable that if the South Africans signed the Treaty, those FLS that had not already done so would follow suit.120 In light of the recent shift in the South African position from public to private FLS statements, the Depositaries decided to lobby once again in the regional capitals, regardless of their earlier hesitance.121 In the end, the three Depositaries agreed on a text mentioning the recent positive developments in South Africa’s attitude and urging the FLS governments to issue private and firm assurances of their intention to accede to the NPT within a reasonable period after Pretoria’s leadership had done so.122 Not long thereafter, a promising development occurred in Dar es Salaam, where the previous objections of the Tanzanian government towards the Treaty had fallen away. Apparently, Foreign Minister Ahmed Diria was told by the State House to prepare the papers for NPT signature.123 In Harare, while the Zimbabweans continued to reject giving any form of assurance to South Africa, they appeared to have moved towards a formal decision to accede. While disapproving of any link between the Zimbabwean and the South African decisions, they nonetheless favoured accession for their own reasons.124 Similarly, the government in Lusaka informed the Depositaries of its intent to sign the Treaty, although without mentioning a date.125 Increasingly, the joint lobbying efforts were paying off and produced encouraging responses. Except for Angola, all FLS signalled willingness to accede in the near future. A joint Depositary statement reflecting the most recent developments in the FLS positions was secretly handed over to the South Africans in the hope that it would be enough to convince President de

120 121 122 123

124 125

officials to argue with confidence that the FLS will follow suit’ (‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’ (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 26 February 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO). ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 77 (Cape Town to FCO), 27 February 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’, Telno 30 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 25 February 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 112 (FCO to Harare), 4 April 1991, File: NPF 083/ 1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘NPT: The African Dimension’ (Pieter Bezuidenhout, Vienna to DFA Pretoria), 5 March 1991, DIRCO; see also ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 144 (Dar es Salaam to FCO), 5 April 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 152 (Harare to FCO), 8 April 1991, File: NPF 083/ 1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT: Zambian Accession’, Telno 97 (Lusaka to FCO), 7 March 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO; and ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 146 (Lusaka to FCO), 10 April 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO.

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Klerk and his advisers that NPT accession could no longer be postponed.126 The United States took the lead in drafting such a joint statement, but the Soviets and some British officials voiced concerns on whether the US draft accurately reflected FLS positions as reported by their respective embassies. If forwarded in this form to Pretoria, it entailed the risk of conveying positions too optimistically.127 The State Department officials working on the issue had the most positive view of the three Depositaries regarding the interpretation of the obtained statements.128 They wanted to use whatever they had to convince Pretoria, even if this meant stretching the semantic boundaries of the secret FLS statements to an extent that appeared unreasonable. Upon receipt of the Depositary statement containing the FLS responses, leading DFA officials were still not completely satisfied and instead called for an even more forthcoming statement. Because of the deadlock in the drawn-out negotiations with the South Africans, UK Ambassador Renwick accommodated the South African demands and joined the DFA officials in calling for a statement that would accurately address their domestic political requirements.129 This meant that in order to finally bring about Pretoria’s accession to the NPT, Robin Renwick invited the DFA’s Director-General of the DFA, Neil van Heerden, to suggest amendments to the statement to be jointly crafted out of the reported FLS responses, which would convey the wording he thought indispensable to convince President de Klerk.130 The available archival sources suggest that the Soviet officials were still suspicious of the South African intentions and tactics, generally doubting the value of a joint Depositary statement in this complicated scenario.131

126 127 128 129

130 131

‘South Africa and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’ (Letter from Yaghmourian to Goulden), 16 April 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 164 (Cape Town to FCO), 18 April 1991, File: JSS 083/1 Part B 42–111, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, (Letter from Buchanan to Wooff ), 18 April 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. ‘South Africa: Secretary of State’ Meeting with Mr Wessels: NPT’, (Summary Report), 22 April 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part 1–79, FCO. Ambassador Renwick even shared a draft version of the text containing the FLS replies with the DFA in Pretoria, which the Depositaries intended to send back to the South Africans (‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 204 (Cape Town to FCO), 10 April 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO). ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 234 (Cape Town to FCO), 29 May 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 923 (Moscow to FCO), 29 April 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO; see also: ‘South Africa and the NPT, Telno 1465 (Washington to FCO), 31 May 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO.

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In the meantime, however, the United Kingdom and the United States had managed to agree on the contents of a document to be sent to Pretoria. This was to state that after prolonged contact between the Depositaries and the representatives of the FLS, all of them, if not already NPT signatories, had indicated an intention to accede in the immediate future, irrespective of a similar action by the South African government.132 5.4

Signature to the NPT and South Africa’s Return to the IAEA

Finally, by February 1991, there was additional movement in the positions of the FLS and their responses were deemed to be reasonably forthcoming from a South African perspective. Mozambique had already become a signatory of the NPT in September 1990, while Angola, Zambia, Tanzania and Namibia all stressed they were on the verge of accession. The only exception was Zimbabwe, whose leaders planned to sign the NPT soon after Pretoria had done so.133 Pressure on de Klerk continued unabated when a few weeks later he again met Margaret Thatcher in London. As the NPT issue came up during their talks, she reassured de Klerk that he had already done a lot and that the United Kingdom would continue supporting his reform course. Nevertheless, she was convinced he had one more ace to play, namely accession to the NPT. Taking this step, she claimed, would buy him a lot of goodwill in the United States and in Europe and be disproportionally effective, especially given the concerns about arms proliferation following the Gulf War. De Klerk agreed and declared himself ready to play that ace.134 By mid-June 1991, in addition to Mozambique a year earlier, Zambia and Tanzania had also acceded to the NPT, thereby considerably changing the non-proliferation landscape in southern Africa.135 The saga of South Africa’s NPT accession finally ended on 27 June, when Minister Pik Botha briefed foreign officials about the latest developments. In light

132 133

134 135

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 77 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 12 June 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO. ‘South Africa’s Position with regard to: (a) The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and (b) The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’, 22 February 1991, File: 137/18, DIRCO. ‘Prime Minister’s Working Dinner for President De Klerk’, 22 April 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part A, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 77 (Vienna to FCO), 12 June 1991, File: NPF 083/ 1 Part B, FCO.

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of what the Depositaries had conveyed to Pretoria about the positions of the FLS, coupled with NPT accession by the Zambian and Tanzanian governments, de Klerk had decided in favour of signing the NPT, a step still regarded as being unpopular in certain sections of the white community.136 Pik Botha stressed it was a logical step in the irreversible process of normalizing South Africa’s international position, because by acceding to the NPT, the government reaffirmed its commitment to becoming a respected member of the international community. Moreover, in his announcement made in Pretoria on the evening of 27th June in 1991, F. W. de Klerk referred to recent NPT accessions by other states in the region and declared that: ‘We are therefore hopeful that these developments, including South Africa’s own accession to the Treaty will now make it possible to achieve the longstanding goal of a nuclear weapons-free zone in Southern Africa.’137

Interestingly, in the same speech, de Klerk referred to ex-President P. W. Botha’s 1987 statement, in which the latter initially indicated a possible NPT accession. De Klerk explained his decision stating ‘[…] major events in Central and Eastern Europe have changed the world order dramatically. The Cold War has subsided.’138 The decision to sign had been influenced by a number of factors, such as de Klerk’s wish to prepare the ground for an amendment of the European Council (EC) sanctions. Moreover, the positive decision helped the US State Department strengthen President Bush’s hand visà-vis the US Congress in the lifting of the CAAA sanctions.139 A few days later, on 10 July 1991, the South African Ambassador to the United States, Harry Schwarz, deposited an instrument of accession in Washington and signed the NPT. This step, which the South Africans had postponed since the inception of the Treaty more than twenty years ago, finally brought them into the IAEA non-proliferation regime. In a press conference afterwards, Schwarz promised that South Africa would continue working actively to help establish a NWFZ in southern 136 137 138

139

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 97 (Pretoria to FCO), 27 June 1991, File: NPF 083/ 1 Part B 80–159, FCO. ‘Statement by State President F. W. De Klerk: RSA Accession to NPT’, 27 June 1991, File: 137/18, DIRCO. Ibid. Interestingly, P. W. Botha’s statement served twice as a reference point: firstly, when Pik Botha referred to it in September 1990 in his message to the IAEA, and now with de Klerk invoking the process that P. W. Botha initiated towards NPT accession, which had now finally culminated in NPT signature. ‘Secretary of State’s meeting with South African President and Foreign Minister’, Telno 138 (Pretoria to FCO), 9 July 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO.

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Africa.140 However, still outstanding was the conclusion of the Safeguards Agreement between the IAEA and the South Africans, as well as their return to the General Conference of the Agency, in which they had shown much interest. Throughout the negotiations with the Depositary officials, the South African government had been in search of assurances and steadfastly tried to secure benefits in return for NPT accession. It did so with the aim of preventing its domestic opposition from labelling accession as yet another unrequited concession following foreign pressure. By early 1990, however, after two fruitless diplomatic encounters with the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union, they internally revised the NPT position and included a change in priorities. This policy change did the trick, as it injected new momentum into the high-level encounters and revived them before they collapsed altogether. The shift in focus of the South African strategy, namely from getting international assurances of resumed nuclear cooperation towards statements of intent to enter the global non-proliferation regime by the neighbouring FLS, proved crucial. This was portrayed to the Depositaries and the FLS governments as the necessary step towards a shared goal: the establishment of an NWFZ in southern Africa, as envisioned by de Klerk and his DFA advisors. Within the domestic political spectrum, resistance mainly stemmed from the CP, whose leaders rejected the NPT as it would infringe on the regime’s available security options. Moreover, de Klerk’s reforms were pursued in the face of looming right-wing sentiment, which also had to be taken into account by those pushing for a safeguards agreement. This was the domestic South African and international backdrop against which NPT accession and an IAEA safeguards agreement were negotiated. Being intricately entangled, both dimensions mutually influenced each other with regard to the timing of certain steps. In addition, it is important to distinguish between two parallel processes that unfolded in South Africa, involving several at times overlapping actors and institutions, namely the dismantling decision on the one hand, and the step of acceding to the NPT and signing an IAEA safeguards agreement, on the other. The decision to terminate the nuclear weapons programme and to dismantle the existing devices was taken in utmost secrecy by only a very small number of people who were privy to 140

‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): South African Accession’, Telno 1853 (Washington to FCO), 10 July 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO; see also ‘Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Accession by South Africa’, 7 July 1991, DIRCO.

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this information. Following the end of P. W. Botha’s reign, these people experienced less resistance to an end of the programme than before, coupled with the generally diminishing influence of the Witvlei Committee over matters relating to nuclear strategy. Upon his election, de Klerk was able to act decisively on this secret issue and with the help of government Ministers such as Pik Botha, Barend du Plessis and Dawie de Villiers, secured a decision that brought an end to the nuclear weapons programme. By July 1990, de Klerk had initiated the dismantling of a total of six nuclear warheads developed since the late 1970s. Procedures to ensure the safety of involved personnel and the security of the material were put in place once the dismantling programme was approved by the President. The nuclear devices were taken apart in secret between July 1990 and October 1991, and the recast HEU was returned to the AEC in four lots during the night in March and September 1991.141

141

Von Wielligh, 1993, pp. 6–7.

6

Post-NPT Accession Champion of Non-proliferation Norms – Or Recalcitrant Proliferation Hotspot?

6.1

Signing the Safeguards Agreement

Despite the signing of the NPT, the saga of South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme was far from over, as the government still had to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement1 with the IAEA. Thereafter, an enormous task awaited: the compilation of an initial inventory report2 and its verification by the IAEA. This challenging task included assessing the declared amount of enriched uranium and other materials, equipment and facilities. According to the requirements of a comprehensive safeguards agreement, an itemized list of nuclear programmes, including quantitative data on the various types of nuclear material from the respective facilities, had to be submitted to the IAEA. This initial inventory report needed to be scrutinized afterwards by IAEA inspectors as part of the physical inventory verification, and it had to be made available to the Agency before the actual inspections in South Africa could commence.3 However, despite Pretoria’s accession in July of that year, the Depositaries first had to secure South African attendance in the General Conference of the Agency. Anything less than full membership would result in a domestic setback for President de Klerk, delaying the implementation of full-scope safeguards by strengthening the hand of those in the South African government who had always opposed NPT signature. Therefore, UK officials promised to work discreetly behind the scenes to ensure a South African return to the General Conference. Similarly, US officials were also prepared to lobby against any attempt to 1

2

3

As pointed out in the Introduction, they are considered ‘comprehensive’ because they allow the IAEA’s inspectors to ensure that safeguards be applied on ‘[…] all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within the territory of the State, under its jurisdiction, or carried out under its control anywhere’ (INFCIRC/153). After a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA has been concluded, the member state provides the Agency with an initial inventory report on the nuclear material it holds, itemizing its nuclear inventory. Von Baeckmann et al., 1995, pp. 42–48.

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exclude the South African delegation from the annual meeting.4 First and foremost, the United Kingdom and the United States wanted to avoid the tabling of a resolution to suspend South Africa from the Agency, and they hoped that Pretoria’s recent accession to the NPT would ensure that their membership credentials were no longer questioned.5 However, this proved difficult, because despite South Africa’s NPT signature, some IAEA member states tried to submit a resolution aimed at suspending the country from the Agency. Foreign Minister Botha once again requested the help of the Depositaries in suffocating these attempts. Furthermore, de Klerk’s domestic opponents still posed a threat to his reform course and any unfriendly or overly critical treatment by the international community following NPT accession meant the incumbent government had to justify the steps it had taken to join the non-proliferation regime. If it came to a vote on a resolution affirming South Africa’s expulsion from the Agency during the upcoming General Conference, de Klerk would find himself in an indefensible position visà-vis his own domestic electorate.6 In the final instance, expelling the South Africans now, after such a scenario had been avoided despite two decades of non-adherence, would surely weaken de Klerk’s standing at home. There was also a risk that South Africa would invoke Article X of the NPT, which enshrined the right to withdraw unilaterally if the supreme interests of a country were jeopardized; an option still available to Pretoria’s leaders and earlier raised by Pik Botha. For as long as the safeguards agreement with the Republic of South Africa was neither signed nor implemented, this was a very sensitive issue. It could have easily put the South African nuclear infrastructure beyond the reach of the IAEA safeguards regime, as had happened with the People’s Republic of North Korea at that time, whose leaders signed the NPT but then failed to conclude a safeguards agreement with the Agency.7 On the crucial question of timing, the Depositaries were convinced that the initial INFCIRC/153 safeguards agreement should ideally be submitted to the Board of Governors and DFA officials should sign it between the Board meeting and the start of the General Conference. If the agreement was approved by the Board, an immediate South African signature would leave no arguments for those IAEA member 4 5 6 7

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 40 (FCO to UKMIS Vienna), 9 August 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO. ‘South Africa’s Nuclear Capabilities’ (Report by the Director General, GC (XXXV)/966, 8 August 1991. ‘South Africa and the IAEA’, Telno 245 (Pretoria to FCO), 29 August 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO. Roehrlich, 2022, pp. 212–215.

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states still nurturing doubts about Pretoria’s intentions.8 Indeed as planned, in the run-up to the 1991 IAEA General Conference, the South Africans informed the IAEA Secretariat that they would be able to submit a draft INFCIRC/153 safeguards agreement in time for approval by the Board of Governors meeting on 11 September 1991.9 Nic von Wielligh from the AEC recalled that some people in South Africa resented the speed of the process which leading AEC officials were conducting with the IAEA. In particular, this referred to the signature to the safeguards agreement barely two months after having acceded to the NPT. Those still suspicious of the IAEA’s involvement in South Africa regarded this as a too hasty attitude of capitulation, especially because the NPT allows for up to 18 months after accession before a safeguards agreement must be concluded. Moreover, at that time, President de Klerk felt that the former nuclear weapons programme should not be revealed.10 Regardless of these domestic misgivings, the South African delegation that came to Vienna to attend the 35th IAEA General Conference in September 1991 felt it would be prudent to demonstrate its government’s intentions by not delaying signature to the safeguards agreement any further. Von Wielligh recalled that eventually they got in touch with Foreign Minister Pik Botha, who agreed that Ambassador Cecilia Schmidt should sign the safeguards agreement before the conference began. Schmidt and Blix carried out this task half an hour before the conference commenced, and on 16 September 1991, the South Africans finally signed a standard INFCIRC/153 safeguards agreement with the Agency (see Figures 6.1. and 6.2.).11 In announcing it prominently in his opening speech, IAEA’s Director-General hoped to alleviate intraAgency pressure on South Africa from countries of the NAM.12 Thus, after years of delay, it seemed that the South Africans could not sign the safeguards agreement quickly enough, because they hoped that the positive news would be spread in the opening session of the IAEA General Conference, defusing the confrontational stance displayed by several IAEA members. In this way, they hoped to regain a seat in the General

8 9 10 11 12

‘South Africa and the IAEA’, Telno 111 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 5 September 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO. ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 101 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 2 August 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 231–234. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 231–234, see also Cecilia Schmidt, interview with author, 19 February 2018, Pretoria. ‘South Africa’s Nuclear Capabilities’ (Report by the Director General, GC (XXXV)/ 966, 8 August 1991.

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Figure 6.1 IAEA Director-General Hans Blix and South Africa’s Ambassador to the IAEA Cecilia Schmidt gathered in Vienna to sign the comprehensive safeguards agreement, 16 September 1991. Source: IAEA Archives/B0312-006. 1991. Credit: IAEA/Pavlicek, Petr.

Conference and subsequently apply for future membership on the IAEA Board as Africa’s most nuclear advanced state. This was part of the wider South African strategy to return to respectability within the international system.13 This tactic seemed to pay off. Ambassador Schmidt recalled that during the first two years of her posting to Vienna, South African diplomats were mostly shunned and bypassed by most other foreign officials in the Agency due to apartheid and their ambiguous nuclear policies. However, this changed rapidly after Pretoria’s leaders decided to join the NPT and conclude a safeguards agreement. Then, she mused, ‘We were the taste of the month’.14 In the aftermath of the General Conference, South Africa’s reintegration into the IAEA took the desired course and they submitted a full inventory declaration on 29 October 1991. Those involved trusted that

13

14

‘IAEA Safeguards Agreement with South Africa’ (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), August 7, 1991, File: FCO; and Pieter Bezuidenhout, interview with author, 18 October 2017, via email. Cecilia Schmidt, interview with author, 19 February 2018, Pretoria.

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Figure 6.2 IAEA Director-General Hans Blix (center left), South Africa’s Ambassador to the IAEA Cecilia Schmidt (center right), Political Counsellor at the South African Embassy in Vienna Pieter Bezuidenhout (far left) and the AEC’s Chairman Waldo Stumpf (far right) celebrate the signing of the comprehensive safeguards agreement, 16 September 1991. Source: IAEA Archives/B0312-011. 1991. Credit: IAEA/Pavlicek, Petr.

the AEC had disclosed the full amount of uranium in its declaration, because if the South Africans were caught withholding or diverting HEU, a heavy political fallout would follow. Furthermore, the Americans had warned Pretoria’s leaders that if they did not come forward ‘[…] squeaky clean in this exercise, then the US government would be the first to blow the whistle’.15 This would also have grave consequences for the process of being accepted back into the international community. Upon signing the agreement, the South Africans submitted an initial inventory report based on the information available to them as of 30 October 1991, which was well before the 18 months normally allowed after the signing of a comprehensive safeguards agreement. The amount given in the report was to be updated and corrected along the way should additional information become available to AEC personnel. The initial report would serve as the basis for the IAEA inspectors assessing if the 15

‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 112 (UKMIS Vienna to FCO), 16 September 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO.

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stated inventory was correct and complete.16 However, despite the helpful attitude of the South African authorities, the IAEA had no experience of how to conduct a verification mission and safeguard nuclear material in an ostensibly non-nuclear-weapon state (NNWS) that had produced a significant amount of HEU and whose scientists and engineers were assumed to have progressed to a fully-fledged military nuclear weapons programme.17 In South Africa itself, the new Chairman of the AEC, Waldo Stumpf, recalled that back then two different options were discussed with the Agency, namely concluding an INFCIRC/66 or an INFCIRC/153 (referred to as the ‘classical’ NPT arrangement). All NNWSs that accede to the NPT are required to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA on the basis of INFCIRC/153 (corrected),18 but South African officials only had experience with the SAFARI-1 research reactor and the Koeberg power plant under INFCIRC/66 safeguards.19 Stumpf, then head of the AEC, recalled that after the nuclear devices had been dismantled in June 1991, there was some discussion about whether the government should sign the NPT or negotiate an INFCIRC/66 agreement. According to him, the AEC favoured revealing everything, because they thought that there was no longer any reason to hide anything and the INFCIRC/153 was the precondition for joining the NPT. Only accession to the Treaty and full disclosure would entirely remove suspicions about a possible nuclear weapons programme.20 6.2

The IAEA Verification Mission in South Africa

Due to the extensive South African nuclear fuel cycle, the task of verification that lay ahead was enormous, according to IAEA officials. It was clear that this required many inspection visits and considerable cooperation from the South African side to gauge all the nuclear installations in the country, including nuclear waste storage sites.21 Moreover, when discussing the termination of the nuclear weapons programme after 16 17

18

19 20 21

Rautjärvi, 2014, p. s6. ‘Special Analysis: South Africa ready to accede to NPT’, National Security Council, 8 February 1990, File: Daniel Poneman, BPL; see also ‘South Africa and the NPT’, Telno 97 (Pretoria to FCO), 27 June 1991, File: NPF 083/1 Part B 80–159, FCO. The Structure and Content of Agreements between the Agency and States required in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: www.iaea .org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/infcircs/1972/infcirc153.pdf (accessed: 13 December 2022). Tillwick et al., 2011, pp. 8–9. Waldo Stumpf, interview with author, 22 March 2016, Pretoria. Von Baeckmann et al., 1995, p. 42; p. 45.

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F.W. de Klerk became President, the South Africans initially had no intention (and indeed no obligation) to reveal the full scope of its nuclear history, as the NPT was not concerned with the past. According to a summary of a November 1989 AEC meeting, South African officials only needed to admit that uranium had been enriched to weapons grade, but not that six weapons had in fact also been produced, because these could be dismantled before IAEA safeguards inspections commenced.22 Even though the IAEA lacked institutional knowledge because it had hardly any experience with safeguards in states that had earlier enriched uranium to weapons grade, the Agency’s verification mission in South Africa began in due time. After years of having only very limited access to South Africa’s nuclear infrastructure, the first visit of appointed senior IAEA safeguards inspectors to South Africa took place in November 1991.23 A team of senior safeguards officials appointed by Hans Blix started carrying out the correctness and completeness investigation of the nuclear material declared. The team’s leader was Dimitri Perricos, and they lost no time with their first visit to South Africa taking place at the end of that month.24 The initial report compiled by the AEC officials was handed over to the IAEA team. Here the South Africans declared the few hundred kilogrammes of weapons-grade uranium (HEU) that had already been removed from the warheads (unbeknownst to the IAEA) and safely returned to the AEC.25 Therefore, the AEC officials had only to ensure that the quantity of enriched uranium presented was indeed correct but were under no legal obligation to disclose what it had been used for. Possessing HEU as a state under the NPT is not illegal, provided it is declared and made accessible to the safeguards inspectors. The task of verifying the amount stated in the report also involved the examination of historical operating records of the Y-plant and Z-plant, to make sure that no material had been diverted.26 In hindsight, what seems most interesting is the question of how the IAEA inspectors might have interpreted the substantial amount of HEU in the initial report. The inspectors never once asked the South African AEC officials whether they had, as internationally suspected for over two decades, been engaged in a nuclear weapons programme – not even in light of the existence of more than a quarter 22

23 24 25 26

‘Main Points Arising from Luncheon on 14 November 1989 with Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC)’, 17 November 1989, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, DIRCO, obtained by Anna-Mart van Wyk. Van Wyk, 2015, p. 411. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 238. Stumpf, December 1995/January 1996, p. 6. Von Baeckmann et al., 1995, p. 43; p. 45. The Z-plant balance was also assessed and found consistent with the report (p. 46).

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ton of weapons-grade uranium.27 Interestingly, Waldo Stumpf related that he had received permission from F. W. de Klerk to disclose the truth about the real purpose of the HEU, but only if directly asked, which nobody did.28 What made the whole affair even more complex was that, simultaneously, the IAEA’s safeguards and verification system ran the risk of losing its credibility, due to the discovery of the clandestine nuclear weapons programme initiated by Iraqi authorities under Saddam Hussein.29 The conundrum, from the Agency’s perspective, was how a country whose nuclear infrastructure had been under IAEA safeguards could still have embarked on a nuclear weapons programme. The confrontational IAEA Iraqi mission therefore served as a reminder of what to avoid in the South African scenario. According to some observers, the reason for the IAEA’s very existence had been seriously compromised by the discoveries in Iraq. The Agency hardly needed another verification mission that uncovered a secret nuclear weapons programme or large HEU stocks not reflected in the initial inventory report.30 As a result, new ground had to be covered by the inspectors, for which close cooperation with the AEC officials was required. Therefore, right from the beginning, Juha Rautjärvi, an experienced IAEA safeguards official, was assigned the task of working together with the AEC’s senior staff to discuss their report beforehand. Throughout the task, his emphasis was on cooperation to avoid a confrontational situation of the sort that had just been seen in Iraq. He recalled that he interpreted his job as focusing on building trust between the Agency and the South Africans: ‘The assignment was not about declaration-verification dialectics. It was about genuine cooperation, about implementation in good faith.’31 Replicating this cooperative attitude, the South African officials confidentially let Rautjärvi know that the initial report acknowledged a considerable stockpile of HEU, which had not been mentioned during their previous encounters with IAEA officials.32 The challenge that arose, therefore, was not so much whether the initial inventory report was correct, but rather, as Rautjärvi indicated, that sufficient cooperation and mutual trust could be established, so that ultimately the final report accurately 27 28 29

30 31 32

Von Baeckmann et al., 1995, p. 46. Waldo Stumpf, interview with author, 22 February 2016, Pretoria. Rautjärvi, 2014, p. 1. Waldo Stumpf stated that the South African officials did not want to create a second Iraq scenario (Waldo Stumpf, interview with author, 22 February 2016). Rautjärvi, 2014, p. 3; Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 228–229. Rautjärvi, 2014, p. 4. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 235.

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reflected the proliferation-sensitive material.33 This included the verification of material, equipment and facilities, in order to make sure that the South Africans would not constitute a proliferation threat in the future or that they had not retained a secret HEU stockpile. Subsequently, between November 1991 and September 1993, there was a near-continuous presence of IAEA inspectors in South Africa. In total, Agency inspectors carried out twenty-two inspection missions in the country, averaging about six per month, which included more than 150 visits to nuclear facilities.34 Blix, IAEA Director-General at that time, recalled that ‘South Africa was proactively helpful. “Do you want to see more? Just ask! Do you want more documentation? Just ask!”’, and this helped to ease the course of the whole mission.35 6.2.1

De Klerk’s Revelations in 1993: The Second Phase of the Verification Mission

On 24 March 1993, sixteen months into the IAEA’s mission, President F. W. de Klerk surprised the world by acknowledging that a nuclear weapons programme had existed during the apartheid years. In a special parliamentary session, he announced that his predecessors had developed nuclear weapons during the Cold War and had successfully completed six nuclear warheads. A seventh was under construction at the time he ordered a halt to the programme in 1989. He further acknowledged that all the devices had been safely dismantled and the HEU returned to the AEC. No cooperation with other states had apparently occurred during the lifespan of the programme. De Klerk concluded by expressing his wish that once and for all, speculation around South Africa’s nuclear capabilities could be laid to rest.36 A CIA memorandum a day after de Klerk’s announcement, while applauding his actions, claimed that this was not the full truth. It concluded that de Klerk wished to resolve the lingering questions about the nuclear weapons programme, and therefore he came ‘[..] clean on some major aspects of the weapons programme without revealing others’.37 Observers back then agreed that his speech triggered more questions than it answered.38 Moreover, de Klerk’s revelations 33 34 35 36 37 38

Rautjärvi, 2014, p. 5. Van Wyk, 2015, pp. 411–412. Hans Blix, personal correspondence, 26 January 2018, via email. De Klerk, 1993a, col. 3465–3478. ‘South Africa: Nuclear Weapons Program Disclosed’, National Intelligence Daily, 25 March 1993, CIA-CPAS-NID-93-069JX, CIA. Albright, 1993, pp. 3–5.

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tremendously complicated the task for the IAEA safeguards inspectors, because he now invited the IAEA to view the remnants of a defunct nuclear weapons programme, without having formerly admitted to its existence. The CIA regarded this as a potential challenge for the IAEA, as never before had the Agency been tasked with verifying a dismantled nuclear weapons programme. This called on the expertise of nuclear weapons states (NWS). Also, as IAEA inspectors were bound to uncover sensitive nuclear weapons information, it would require much more stringent security measures than the IAEA normally applied. This, according to a CIA memorandum, was particularly acute from a nonproliferation point of view, because ‘[…] such countries as Iran and Libya [were] Agency members’.39 De Klerk’s revelations did not come out of the blue, but were preceded by careful planning. The evening before the announcement, Jannie Roux, South Africa’s new Ambassador to Vienna, officially informed Hans Blix about what would transpire the next day.40 South African officials also made sure that the senior IAEA inspectors who were in the country at the time would be on standby at the AEC premises during the announcement, so they could immediately visit the hitherto undisclosed nuclear weapons facilities, if requested. They had also been briefed prior to de Klerk’s revelation.41 On the morning of 24 March 1993, de Klerk shared the news with the heads of the domestic political parties and even P. W. Botha was informed by former AEC Chairman Wynand De Villiers, at his retirement home. Moreover, foreign Ambassadors were asked to assemble before the parliamentary session to be addressed by Waldo Stumpf (AEC) and Jeremy Shearar (DFA).42 The latter, who also wrote the speech for de Klerk based on the notes in Afrikaans he had received from Wynand de Villiers, recalled that an hour before the special parliamentary session, they gathered in de Klerk’s office. According to Shearar, the President apparently considered not making the announcement at that point, but then went ahead and informed the public.43 His hesitancy can be taken as another case in point that de Klerk was very sensitive about not further antagonizing the CP in parliament and conservative South Africans in general, including his very own electorate, with an announcement about the termination of 39 40 41 42 43

‘South Africa: New IAEA Role Developing’, National Intelligence Daily, 30 March 1993, CIA-CPAS-NID-93-073JX, CIA. Jannie Roux, interview with author, March 1 2018, Pretoria. Jonathan Fourie, interview with author, 11 May 2021, via Zoom. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 261, see also Jeremy Shearar, interview with author, 11 February 2017, Pretoria. Jeremy Shearar, interview with author, 11 February 2017, Pretoria.

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the nuclear weapons programme. South Africa’s accession to the NPT almost two years earlier in 1991 had not made the domestic climate more conducive to the announcement of 24 March 1993. The CP’s vehement reaction in parliament following the disclosure of the fate of South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme can be regarded as a manifestation of what that particular political spectrum felt.44 Especially revealing in this sense was the reaction of a CP member of parliament following de Klerk’s revelations: m r s p e a k e r : Order! Did I hear an hon member to my left refer to treason? [Interjections.] Which hon member did so? m r s p v a n v u u r e n : Mr Speaker, I did. m r s p e a k e r : Order! What did the hon member for Ventersdorp say? m r s p v a n v u u r e n : Mr Speaker, I said the hon State President was a traitor. m r s p e a k e r : Order! The hon member for Ventersdorp must withdraw that. m r s p v a n v u u r e n : No, Mr Speaker, I will not withdraw it. [Interjections.] m r s p e a k e r : Order! The hon member must withdraw from the Chamber.

[Whereupon the member withdrew.] The Joint Sitting rose at 17:23.45

Two days after de Klerk’s announcement, the Deputy Leader of the CP and former Minister of Education, Ferdinand Hartzenberg, used his right to speak in Parliament for yet another attack on de Klerk and Pik Botha, condemning them for having secretly destroyed the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal: It was unnecessary to destroy these nuclear deterrent devices [sic], because they were manufactured before the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was signed. He [referring to Foreign Minister Pik Botha] could simply have said he would not continue with that programme, we had manufactured them, anyone could come and inspect them, but they were our assets and we would be keeping them. He did not do so, however. He had them destroyed. [Interjections.].46

Hartzenberg also accused de Klerk of rendering South Africa powerless and open to foreign intervention. He concluded that this was ‘[…] the greatest crime which has ever been perpetuated against South Africa’.47 In a similar vein, Koos van der Merwe, back then a leading figure in the CP, recalled that he had often informally discussed the retention of a nuclear deterrent, which in theory was perpetuated by the continued 44 45 46 47

Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 264, see also Liberman, 2001, p. 81. De Klerk, 1993a col. 3478. Ferdinand Hartzenberg, 1993, Debates of Parliament (Hansard), 26 March 1993, col. 3692–3696 (here col. 3694). Ibid., col. 3695.

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Figure 6.3 ‘I’m prepared to admit we did make mistakes. We should have dropped one on Frikkie [F. W. de Klerk].’ (Sunday Times, 28 March 1993). This cartoon appeared shortly after F. W. de Klerk revealed South Africa’s nuclear past in 1993. ©Tony Grogan, Sunday Times, 28 March, 1993.

South African non-adherence to the NPT, with the leaders of the CP, Andries Treurnicht and Hartzenberg. Their main argument in favour of maintaining the government’s nuclear ambiguity was that it could not abandon its capacity in light of the regional and domestic security situation. Van der Merwe claims that ‘[the issue] was thin ice for de Klerk [and he knew] if he moves too fast, he’s gone’.48 Apparently, he was aware that if he gave up South Africa’s nuclear capacity, the media and the people would start thinking he had surrendered the country to the ANC (see Figure 6.3.).49 However, signing the NPT while secretly keeping nuclear devices was not an option for the South African leadership of the time. If detected, a secret nuclear weapons programme would have been disastrous for the de Klerk government, especially as disarmament was in part driven by a wish to enhance South Africa’s international standing. It would also have created a huge conundrum for the NPT, because the Treaty does not 48 49

Koos van der Merwe, interview with author, 4 July 2019, Pretoria. Ibid.

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make provision for any state to accede while in possession of nuclear weapons, except the original five NWS (United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, China and France). Moreover, the IAEA’s verification regime would have seriously lost credibility if the South Africans had tried retaining a nuclear option undetected by the Agency. In hindsight, it becomes clear that for de Klerk, the decision-making process was a balancing act of careful juggling between the fear of a farright backlash and attempting to assure the international community of South Africa’s good intentions.50 Given his awareness of the conservative political spectrum and their criticism of the initiated reforms and cutbacks in defence spending, it is quite telling that de Klerk waited until after the whites-only referendum in March 1992, before disclosing the existence of and the end to the nuclear weapons programme. In the referendum, the NP asked the white electorate to vote ‘Yes’ if it wanted the ruling party to continue with its reform course. Leading NP politicians and the President thought that disclosing information about the termination and dismantlement of the nuclear weapons programme too early would have a negative impact on the voting in this milestone of de Klerk’s reform agenda. They therefore delayed an announcement until pressure by the ANC to come clean about the nuclear past became too strong to ignore.51 From the point of view of the AEC officials, de Klerk’s revelations also ended a period during which they had to remain silent about the nuclear weapons programme in their encounters with the IAEA inspectors. Since the arrival of the Agency’s verification specialists in the country, the AEC staff had been concealing the former existence of the nuclear weapons even after the South African government had signed the NPT. An intimate observer holds that during the sixteen months of tightrope walking by the President, the AEC staff, who had to interact with the IAEA team almost on a daily basis, had a complicated time. In fact, the task of the verification mission in South Africa was made even more complex after the announcement by de Klerk, prompting the IAEA Secretariat to augment its safeguards team with additional staff. Among them were nuclear weapons experts, as the team had earlier included no capacity in that regard.52 Moreover, the sites and facilities used for the weapons programme had initially not been declared by the South Africans and were only shown to 50 51

52

Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 265. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 255–257; and Pauly, 2021, p. 9. For a detailed overview of the ANC’s position on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, see Van Wyk et al., 2020. Ibid., pp. 265–268; Von Baeckmann et al., 1995, p. 42; and: Robert E. Kelley, interview with author, via Skype, 31 July 2019.

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Figure 6.4 Enduring rumours that Pretoria was hiding nuclear weapons were fuelled again after F. W. de Klerk’s announcement about South Africa’s nuclear past in March 1993 (Diamond Field Advertiser, 31 March 1993). ©Dov Fedler, Diamond Field Advertiser, March 31, 1993.

the IAEA safeguards inspectors after de Klerk had revealed the former existence of nuclear weapons (see Figure 6.4.).53 Despite the announcement very late into the verification process, and thanks to the cooperation of the South African authorities, the joint IAEA safeguards and weapons experts team was able to compile its concluding report just in time for the IAEA Board of Governors in June 1993.54 Ultimately, the safeguards mission concluded that ‘[…] there were no indications to suggest that the initial inventory is incomplete or that the South African nuclear weapons programme had not been completely terminated and dismantled’.55 In consequence, South Africa was now officially declared free of nuclear weapons. The destruction of blueprints and classified records pertaining to the nuclear weapons programme, during what was named ‘Operation Masada’, 53 54

55

Von Baeckmann et al., 1995, pp. 46–48. IAEA Archive, GOV/2676, 8 June 1993. 810th Board meeting. ‘The Agency’s verification activities in South Africa: Report by the Director-General’, IAEA Archive. For a detailed account of the nuclear infrastructure the IAEA visited in South Africa, see Kelley, 2020. Von Baeckmann et al., 1995, p. 42.

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meant that no sensitive documents were retained, including those relating to dismantling procedures. Burning the technical documentation in the furnaces of a steel-making plant to the West of Pretoria avoided the sensitive information falling into the hands of those seeking knowledge on how to make a nuclear bomb.56 This process was at least partly driven by the wish to avoid revealing the country’s nuclear weapons track record and proliferation-sensitive information. It was completed a few days before the de Klerk announcement in March 1993.57 While beneficial in terms of preventing the spread of sensitive information, it complicated the task of the safeguards inspectors. Nevertheless, by mid-1993, the IAEA verification team and the weapons experts were able to conclude that the status of the safeguards agreement between South Africa and the Agency was ‘satisfactory’ and that the nuclear weapons programme had indeed been terminated.58 6.2.2

Drafting Non-proliferation Legislation

Despite the successful IAEA verification in South Africa, an important task still remained: the writing of the relevant non-proliferation legislation that had hitherto been missing from the South African Constitution. A team of Armscor engineers (some of whom had earlier been involved in the nuclear weapons programme) began drafting the new legislation from scratch. In particular, they wrote the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act (No. 87 of 1993). The objective of the act was to legally provide control over weapons of mass destruction and to manage matters relating to proliferation. In 1993, the NonProliferation Act was considered unique in the world, in that it addressed all four areas relating to weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as well as the delivery systems for such weapons. Subsequently, Parliament approved the draft bill.59 In addition, the Nuclear Energy Act (131 of 1993) was approved, which 56 57 58

59

Piet Beukman, personal correspondence, 13 July 2018, via email. See also Gould, 2009, pp. 88–121. F. W. de Klerk, interview with author, 20 February 2017, Cape Town. Van Wyk, 2012a, p. 184; and: Board of Governors, GOV/2684, 8 September 1993. ‘The Agency’s verification activities in South Africa: Report by the Director-General’, IAEA Archive. ‘Engineers play “Legal Eagles” and win’, 1993, Salvo 2 (internal Armscor publication). Surprisingly, none of them had any legal training or experience with these matters. See also Johann Viljoen, interview with author, 19 February 2018, Pretoria; Beukman Piet, undated, ‘Some Experiences with Drafting Legislation: Memories of Twenty Years Ago’. Viljoen and Beukman were among the four people who drafted the NonProliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act (No. 87 of 1993).

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together with the Weapons of Mass Destruction Act was key in terms of compliance with the IAEA’s global non-proliferation regime. The Nuclear Energy Act provided for the continued existence of the AEC and determined the objects, powers and functions of that corporation. Crucially, the Act also provided for the implementation of the NPT and the IAEA safeguards agreement in South Africa. The aim of the two bills was to address the lacuna in the South African legislation and associated proliferation risks, and therefore the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act was also, for example, key in facilitating compliance with the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) export guidelines. For this to materialize, the domestic legal framework had to be put in place to provide assurances that the manufacture of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and especially the export of dual-use technologies related to delivery systems, would be regulated and controlled. Drafting these legal acts was intended to bring South Africa’s legislation in line with international best practice. It was also intended to convince the world that the South Africans had become responsible actors and did not secretly maintain weapons of mass destruction. This was all in line with the general dismantling of facilities and related equipment in the country where during apartheid weapons of mass destruction had been produced and experimented with. General cutbacks in defence spending were also seen once F. W. de Klerk took over from P. W. Botha.60 6.3

Scaling Down the Nuclear Industry and the AEC–ESKOM Relationship

The demise of the apartheid regime heralded not only financial curtailment of the armament industry, but also changes in the country’s energy sector. While the Y-plant had already been shut down in February 1990, the AEC soon had to undergo additional cutbacks. The decision to scale down the atomic energy sector in South Africa must be seen against the regional and international developments that had contributed to ending the country’s apartheid policies. This allowed South African energy companies, such as ESKOM, to re-enter the global market to obtain fuel for the two Koeberg power reactors from other suppliers besides the AEC. This had been impossible during the height of apartheid, due to sanctions and embargoes instituted against the regime. A few years after the Y-plant had seen its end, the next target was the Z-plant, which had

60

Nuclear Energy Act (No. 131 of 1993); See: Viljoen and Smith, 1999, p. 16.

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initially been designed to serve commercial uranium enrichment purposes to derive an additional income.61 In his speech on 24 March 1993, de Klerk praised the technology developed by the AEC under apartheid as ‘an important asset for South Africa’, claiming that in the future, it would ‘[…] contribute significantly to the ultimate success of the AEC’s peaceful commercialization programme’.62 However, this was far-fetched and the AEC’s uranium enrichment infrastructure and large parts of its open nuclear fuel cycle, including the fuel conversion plant (BEVA), had to be phased out shortly after. In fact, during an AEC Board of Directors meeting in November 1994, the Z-plant’s imminent shutdown was discussed, and a proposal was presented which recommended early closure by 31 March 1995. This was a year before its final shutdown had originally been envisaged, and the main reason was that, according to the Board, the plant’s operation was no longer economically justifiable.63 Therefore, in 1995, five years after the closure of the Y-plant, the second of South Africa’s two uranium enrichment plants also reached its end, after less than seven years in operation. Regaining access to international nuclear suppliers by adhering to the NPT had turned both the South African enrichment plants into ‘embarrassing white elephants’.64 Next in line for closure was the BEVA plant, which produced the LEU fuel elements for the Koeberg power station. The AEC Board members argued that BEVA was technically competent to maintain Koeberg’s fuel supplies, but could not compete pricewise against the international offers made by Siemens from Germany and British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). In particular, BEVA’s output was not significant enough to make it an internationally competitive contender, and with ESKOM as its sole client, the domestic market was too limited and did not justify a continuation of operations.65 After the closure of the second enrichment plant (Z-plant), according to an AEC Board report, the foundation for BEVA’s continued existence was increasingly at risk. While it was clear that the Z-plant could no longer be financially justified, if BEVA were to suffer a similar fate, the scope of the AEC tasks would effectively be

61

62 63 64 65

For a brief discussion on the shift in emphasis from ‘strategic’ to ‘commercial’ objectives within the AEC, see also Venter and Fouche, 1994, pp. 79–85; as well as a more detailed report by Auf der Heyde, 1993, pp. 1–39. De Klerk, 1993a, col. 3465–3478. ‘AEC Board of Directors Meeting, August 8, 1994’ (Report by Jeremy Shearar to Tom Wheeler), 2 September 1994, DIRCO. Liberman, 2001, p. 77. ‘AEC Board of Directors Meeting, November 7, 1994’ (Report by Jeremy Shearar to Frank Land), 8 November 1994, DIRCO.

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curtailed by both a reduced budget and less infrastructure to operate. Indeed, a case in point for the lack of competitiveness of the AEC’s enrichment services was the purchase of LEU by ESKOM from a Russian supplier. This exacerbated the mutual distrust between ESKOM and the AEC, which had its origins in the 1970s, because the AEC accused the energy provider of having negotiated with foreign competitors without prior notice.66 Historically, ESKOM was the AEC’s client and during apartheid had received all its nuclear fuel from them. However, following the end of the apartheid regime and renewed access to the global fuel market, purchasing LEU from Russia was cheaper than the fuel provided locally. Therefore, lacking any prospect of change in the future, the AEC’s Board had no alternative but to accept the Z-plant closure even earlier than planned.67 Similar to the Z-plant, BEVA also operated at a loss, prompting the suggestion that it should be shut down permanently. While one reason for not being competitive was the small throughput in comparison with other countries such as France and the United Kingdom, the main reason can be traced back to the corporation’s apartheid past. Thus the report stated: ‘[…] the strategic incentives for operating the AEC’s plants have dissipated as a result of political changes in South Africa, and the AEC’s stakeholders are now tending to evaluate performance on purely commercial terms’.68 A report written by the Working Group of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Initiative illuminates the AEC’s impasse at the start of the new democratic South Africa. It critically remarked on the AEC’s dependence on foreign services for improving its technology, while at the same time pointing out that its industrial base was subject to rapid technology obsolescence resulting from keen international competition. Moreover, BEVA, the AEC’s fuel fabrication plant, had lost its strategic leverage and faced very severe barriers to entering the international fuel market, which ruled out any prospects of exports, even in the long run.69 In fact, with the end of apartheid, the sole reason for running these costly and electricity-intensive plants had fallen away. They had already lacked financial competitiveness during white-minority rule, but their strategic political value was significant enough to keep the plants 66 67 68

69

Ibid. ‘AEC Board of Directors meeting, August 8, 1994’ (Report by Jeremy Shearar to Tom Wheeler), 2 September 1994, DIRCO. ‘Urgent Issues in the South African Nuclear Fuel Cycle Industry: Policy Options for their Resolution: Report by the Working Group of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Initiative’, May 1995, File: Nuclear Energy. Ibid.

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operating, enabling the production of atomic energy at Koeberg and upholding the production of HEU for the nuclear weapons programme and the SAFARI-1 research reactor. By 1994, following the cessation of sanctions and embargoes, ESKOM had regained free access to international markets and the fuel deals offered by the AEC had become a burden on its budget, even more so in light of newly available alternative sources of supply. Thus, ESKOM was clearly no longer dependent on the AEC’s expensive services and wanted to break free of its apartheidera contractual shackles. Years later, former AEC Chairman Waldo Stumpf acknowledged that one of the biggest disappointments in the history of nuclear energy in South Africa had been the realization that the Z-plant could never be commercially competitive. The simple reason was that it consumed far too much electricity. This was a particularly ironic setback, because the AEC’s reason for promoting the Z-plant during the late 1970s had initially been to add value to the country’s uranium resources on a commercial basis. The plant was technically functional, but it could never compete with overseas technologies and other enrichment processes.70 6.4

Becoming a Global Disarmament Champion

Following the successful IAEA verification mission, Pretoria regained a prominent position within the Agency, including retaking its seat on the Board of Governors, occupied by Egypt since South Africa’s suspension in the late 1970s. Their status in other arms control forums was further bolstered by the achievement of being the first country ever to have developed and destroyed an indigenous nuclear weapons arsenal, not to mention subsequently inviting the IAEA to verify the disarmament. South African officials were recognized internationally for these achievements, and the IAEA praised their helpful cooperation during the verification mission. The disarmament expertise gained in the process by South African nuclear scientists was also highly sought after by the Agency’s Secretariat, and soon South African nationals filled the ranks of the staff in Vienna.71 This was because of their experience with what it took to build nuclear weapons locally and knowledge of how to set up clandestine support networks. In light of the ‘War on Terror’ following the events around 11 September 2001 in the United States, the fear of a terrorist nuclear attack was a scenario the world dreaded. It is therefore no surprise that a team of South African nuclear weapon experts was sent 70 71

Stumpf, 2011, pp. 138–140. Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, p. 306.

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to Iraq to persuade Iraqi authorities to open up to international safeguards as the South Africans had done a decade earlier.72 In addition, after de Klerk admitted in 1993 that the nuclear weapons had been dismantled, South African officials increasingly reached out to neighbouring states and were invited to join several meetings. In rapid succession, they participated in the African Regional Cooperative Agreement (AFRA)73 meetings in Harare, Addis Ababa and Windhoek, where their nuclear energy expertise was embraced. The head of the DFA’s Multilateral Department, Jeremy Shearar, also wanted to use these visits to make contact with the ‘Group of Experts’ responsible for drafting a convention for an NWFZ in Africa, ‘[…] so as to informally provide a South African input into their work’.74 Moreover, the dismantlement of nuclear weapons in South Africa removed a major obstacle preventing a continental NWFZ. South Africa’s re-integration into regional and continent-wide forums gave further momentum towards officially declaring the African continent free of nuclear weapons. This culminated on 11 April 1996, when representatives of several African governments met in Cairo for the signing ceremony of the Treaty of Pelindaba.75 The coming into being of the African NWFZ was the realization of an idea that was almost 35 years old.76 The earliest attempts in that regard can be traced back to 1961, when several African states supported the adoption of the UN General Assembly Resolution 1652 (XVI), which included a ban on testing, storing and transporting nuclear weapons throughout the continent. The diplomatic support for the establishment of such a denuclearized zone gained momentum in the 1960s, but lost its drive in the early 1970s when the NPT entered into force. Cold War hostilities and the nuclear ambitions of individual African states, in particular the ambiguity of the apartheid regime, delayed the idea of such an NWFZ considerably. Negotiations that included the South Africans only resumed slowly after their government 72

73 74 75

76

Ironically, the team was partly composed of experts who had dismantled the South African nuclear weapons and included Armscor and DFA officials as well as former SADF and AEC staff, but also some who had helped to construct the bombs (van Wyk, 2003, pp. 200–201); see also Kelley, 1996, pp. 27–38. AFRA encompassed matters such as research, development and training related to nuclear science and technology. ‘An African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone: Invitations to attend meetings in Harare’ (from Jeremy Shearar to Leo H. Evans), January 1993, File: 137/37, DIRCO. The Treaty was later named after the location of the headquarters of the South African AEC to the West of Pretoria, where the negotiators concluded the drafting process. Interestingly, this was the place where the South Africans, who defied non-proliferation norms through the entire apartheid era, produced under utmost secrecy the HEU needed for their nuclear weapons programme. Ogunbanwo, 2003, p. 132.

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acceded to the NPT in 1991, but proceeded remarkably swiftly following de Klerk’s revelations in 1993.77 In addition, in 1995, the DFA’s delegation led by Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo played a widely credited role in the negotiations leading to the indefinite extension of the NPT during the five-yearly Review Conference.78 In general, the South Africans were praised for their bridge-building role, which helped rally NAM’s support in favour of an indefinite extension. However, the support displayed by the South African delegation in New York did not stem from longstanding traditions, but rather from their desire to hold the five NWS accountable to their disarmament commitments under the NPT’s Article VI.79 However, there was another pressing proliferation concern in the eyes of the international community, and in particular the United States. This was related to South Africa’s missile capabilities. Whereas de Klerk had secretly rolled back the nuclear weapons programme, advanced missile development by Armscor’s engineers had gained momentum, particularly so since the mid-1980s. The project rested on cooperation with the Israeli defence sector and medium-range missiles were successfully launched from the Overberg Testing Range in the Cape in 1989 and 1992. Therefore, the aim of the incoming Clinton administration entailed convincing the South African government to terminate all its missile and satellite projects and to adhere to the MTCR’s guidelines.80 The MTCR does not impose legally binding obligations on its members, but instead encourages an informal political understanding among states. The objective is to limit the proliferation of missiles and related technology by following a common export policy that includes a list of items such as software and equipment. The South Africans officially adhered to the MTCR guidelines and surrendered their missile capabilities, much to the chagrin of leading officials in the defence and armament industry.81 On a diplomatic level, the phoenix-like rise of Pretoria’s leaders on the global non-proliferation scene following the end of its programme and NPT accession, is an example of how the post-apartheid nation was 77 78 79

80

81

Van Wyk, 2012b, pp. 264–265; p. 270. Du Preez and Maettig, 2010, pp. 302–335. Onderco and Van Wyk, 2019, p. 24; p. 40. For an overview of South Africa’s disarmament and non-proliferation policies in the first decade after the end of apartheid, see Markram, 2004. Sokolski, 1993, pp. 1–5. See also Von Wielligh and Von Wielligh-Steyn, 2015, pp. 318–321; and Princeton Lyman, personal correspondence, 17 March 2017, via email. Gideon de Wet, correspondence with author, September 2018, and Hannes Steyn, interview with author, 5 March 2018, Pretoria. See also: Gottschalk, 2010, pp. 35–48.

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welcomed back by the international community. Their leaders emerged as global players in the non-proliferation community, in part thanks to the ‘disarmament dividend’ bestowing them with a plethora of moral and normative arguments. The South African government also became a member of the New Agenda Coalition (NAC) in June 1998, when the Foreign Ministers of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Slovenia and Sweden jointly launched a declaration calling for a world free of nuclear weapons. The NAC criticized the NWS, China, United States, United Kingdom, France and Russia, as well as the nuclear weapons-armed states, Israel, India and Pakistan, and called on them to take measures aimed at giving up their nuclear arsenals.82 6.5

American Attempts to Obtain South African HEU Stocks

With the nuclear weapons dismantled and the HEU returned to the AEC, South Africa suddenly had a considerable stockpile of weapongrade material devoted to peaceful civilian purposes. This was reason enough to get the Clinton Administration going. The first attempts made by the US State Department to obtain the South African HEU stored at Pelindaba, which was earlier used in the nuclear weapons programme, occurred in the early 1990s following South Africa’s accession to the NPT. Records from a meeting between a South African and a US interagency delegation in Washington in July 1993 demonstrate the importance the State Department attributed to this issue. They informed their counterparts about the US government’s policy of eliminating the use of HEU and reducing the stocks of fissile material globally. With a special reference to the SAFARI-1 reactor, which back then was still running on HEU, the Clinton administration pursued a policy of converting reactors worldwide to the use of LEU instead of HEU under the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) programme.83 Most importantly, the US delegation, under the leadership of Robert Einhorn (US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation), pointed out Washington’s interest in purchasing as much of South Africa’s HEU stockpile as Pretoria’s officials would be willing to sell. However, the South Africans maintained that they had no surplus HEU to give away, because they still needed what was left to run SAFARI-1 until it could be converted. Any other stocks unsuitable for use in the research reactor had already been converted to LEU as fuel intended for 82 83

Green, 2000, p. 25. Van Zyl de Villiers, personal correspondence, 15 June 2020, via email.

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Koeberg.84 The 1993 meeting in Washington was only the start of a series of attempts made by US officials to convince the leadership in Pretoria to transfer the remaining HEU at Pelindaba into US custody. In 2009, the two countries launched a new bilateral initiative85, dubbed the ‘Non-proliferation and Disarmament Dialogue’. The first meeting took place in Pretoria from 26–28 August of that year. The main objective from the US perspective was to persuade the South Africans to work with them to shore up the global non-proliferation regime.86 The second day of the encounter was devoted to discussions of issues the US officials, according to a report of that meeting, regarded as sensitive. It touched upon the topic of the spent fuel of US origin still under South African authority, which Pretoria was obligated to send back to the United States to be safely disposed of. This repatriation would prevent the theoretical risk of this material, from which plutonium could be extracted, falling into unauthorized hands. Apparently, progress was made on this subject, which ranked high on the US priorities as their policies then emphasized the repatriation of US-origin spent fuels globally. In fact, the South Africans indicated that they would return around 50 HEU fuel assemblies of American origin, used earlier in the SAFARI1 reactor, to the United States by early 2011.87 It can be concluded from the accompanying documentation that one reason for the initially unsuccessful attempt to repatriate the spent fuel was that ‘certain elements’ within the South African government had first to be persuaded of the benefits of such a return. Chief among these benefits was the creation of additional storage space and knowledge transfer in the process. According to the US summary of the bilateral encounter, the South Africans were running out of on-site storage space, which could be eased by shipping the spent fuel out of the country.88 But this was not the end of the US-led initiatives, because the State Department under President Barack Obama continued in a similar vein. Although the HEU spent fuel of US origin had been safely returned to

84

85 86 87

88

‘Report of a meeting between South African and US officials’, 22 July 1993, supplied by the State Security Agency of South Africa, 7 June 2018. See also Robert Einhorn, personal correspondence, 25 July 2018, via email. From these records, it becomes clear that the previous bilateral meeting had been held in 1998. ‘U.S.-South Africa Nonproliferation and Disarmament Dialogue: Nonproliferation and Disarmament Policy Topics’, 2009, Sensitive SIPDIS. ‘Day 2: U.S.-South Africa Nonproliferation and Disarmament Dialogue: Nuclear Security and Sidebar Meetings with SA DOE, NECSA’, 25 September 2009, Sensitive SIPDIS. ‘Next Steps for U.S.-South African Agreement to Take back U.S.-origin spent fuel’, 2009, Sensitive SIPDIS.

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the United States in 201189, Obama continued trying to persuade President Jacob Zuma to relinquish the HEU stockpile. In a letter addressed to Zuma, he urged the South Africans to blend down all their HEU and offered US assistance in the process.90 This was part of a broader US-led initiative of obtaining fissile material from other states as well. Apparently, during a state visit to South Africa, Obama offered a deal that amounted to a free shipment of 350 kg of fresh, non-weaponsgrade low-enriched reactor fuel for either Koeberg or SAFARI-1, at a value of about 5 million US dollars. Two years later during Mandela’s funeral in December 2013, Zuma was again pressed to agree to the offer, but the South African President and his advisors remained steadfast in declining to act.91 According to an observer, the remaining HEU stored at Pelindaba has much more than purely commercial value, because the fissile material continues to be a symbol of South Africa’s sovereignty in nuclear matters. Since the end of the nuclear weapons programme, Pretoria has not been too eager to give up the HEU from the erstwhile nuclear weapons. This was something the US officials needed to learn when they argued in vain for South Africa to relinquish its leftover HEU. Nothing came of the US initiatives, and the South African government to this day has its hands on an estimated amount of half a metric ton of HEU (of various grades; not all enriched to weapons-grade material).92 Generally speaking, the almost three decades since the South Africans under F. W. de Klerk signed the NPT can be characterized as having seen three different phases. In the early 1990s up until the announcement by de Klerk in 1993, the South Africans started out by being a pariah on the international scene and, more particularly, within the IAEA itself. Subsequently, over the rest of the 1990s, they were regarded as a disarmament champion until well into the post-apartheid era. Under Mbeki’s rule, they assumed a more daring stance in global disarmament discourses and set out to challenge the existing and inherent imbalances in the non-proliferation regime. This became most apparent in their encounters with US delegations under Presidents Clinton and Obama. To this day, the HEU continues to be stored at Pelindaba to the West of Pretoria under IAEA real-time surveillance and regular inspections. It remains to be seen if this changes in the future. 89 90

91 92

Stott, 2011. Obama Letter to Zuma, 16 August 2011, https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/ south-africa-rebuffs-repeated-u-s-demands-that-it-relinquish-its-nuclear-explosives/ (accessed: 15 December 2022). Fabricius, 2015. Fabricius, 2015; see also: Albright, 2015, pp. 1–11. Noël Stott has remarked that putting up precise estimates is very complex (‘Eliminating the use of highly enriched uranium for civil purposes: losing momentum?’, in: T&V – Trust & Verify, No. 170, Summer 2022).

Conclusion

This analysis of the South African government’s non-proliferation policies during the Cold War and its position on the NPT, from the Treaty’s inception in 1968 until the Republic acceded in 1991, has highlighted the various entanglements between domestic, regional and global spheres. By casting a wider lens on the regional and domestic dynamics of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including their impact on the NPT-related decision-making of the last white-minority regime, it has been possible to illuminate several parallel processes and the often divergent intentions of those involved. Normatively, NPT entry provided the South African leadership with an enormous reputation boost. To this day, it is the only country whose officials have taken the step of dismantling an indigenously developed nuclear arsenal – and as such is paradigmatic in the history of nuclear weapons. In-depth consideration of these processes of negotiation and decisionmaking has revealed five major and striking findings. The first concerns the importance allocated to domestic political imperatives by the South African leadership when deciding whether to accede to the NPT. The de Klerk regime was overall cautious about giving in to what was perceived as pressure emanating from the West, mainly from the United States and the United Kingdom, but they were also vitally worried about losing too many votes to the political right, such as the domestic Conservative Party, after they had embarked on their reform course. Indeed, while de Klerk’s agenda generally included reassuring the United States, the United Kingdom and other European governments of South Africa’s serious interest in internal change, he was very hesitant to act on the issue of NPT accession and the conclusion of an IAEA comprehensive safeguards agreement. The second major theme uncovered by the research concerns the way in which the South Africans continuously tried to bargain about the terms of entry into the global non-proliferation regime (signing the NPT and concluding an IAEA safeguards agreement). During their international encounters with the NPT Depositary Powers (the United 196

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Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union) in 1988 and 1989, they struggled to elicit assurances of resumed nuclear cooperation and the supply of technology, but from 1990 onwards this initial focus on their rights under Article IV gave way to making NPT accession by the FLS a prerequisite for their own. South Africa’s insistence on the FLS accession was not out of fear that they might develop nuclear weapons outside of the NPT, but to deliver a visible ‘win’ for those domestic political forces that pressured to see ‘benefits’ from Treaty accession. Indeed, getting the neighbouring states to join the NPT as part of a regional initiative brokered by Pretoria and thus making regional accession a reality, avoided creating the impression that the de Klerk government had succumbed to outside pressure in what was perceived as a domestic affair, and thus also strengthened de Klerk’s position versus domestic opponents. The third striking finding is also related to this later phase of South Africa’s nuclear story. The strategy for persuading neighbouring states to accede to the Treaty included requesting the three NPT Depositary States, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union, to lobby political leaders in Lusaka, Windhoek, Harare, Maputo, Dar es Salaam and Luanda on behalf of the South African government. In this period at the end of the Cold War, it is remarkable to see the way in which the two superpowers acted together (supported by the United Kingdom) to convince the FLS governments of the necessity of accession to create a conducive regional atmosphere in which Pretoria’s leaders would take the same step. Between 1990 and 1991, DFA officials repeatedly convinced the Soviet, UK and US diplomats to lobby on their behalf with the aim of eliciting FLS statements confirming their intention to accede to the Treaty. The fourth and perhaps surprising finding concerns the discovery that it was much harder for de Klerk and his advisors to make the decision to accede to the Treaty than it was for them to decide to dismantle South Africa’s nuclear arsenal two years earlier. This is demonstrative of the normative pressures of the NPT. The decision to terminate the nuclear weapons programme was reached relatively swiftly and in secrecy, but NPT accession soon proved a more complicated matter. In need of a Cabinet decision, it involved considerable media attention and a wide range of stakeholders. Indeed, the domestic political situation and the threats emanating from the right-wing establishment and the conservative party meant that the de Klerk government felt unable to take a positive decision on NPT accession and an IAEA safeguards agreement until quite some time after coming to power in September 1989.

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Conclusion

Lastly, a final point concerns the workings of sanctions and international isolation in South Africa’s case. If there are several issues in addition to nuclear proliferation that a country is sanctioned for, then achieving non-proliferation through reassurance of sanction relief can be difficult. Sanctions will be maintained if the regime itself continues to be unsavoury. This goes to show that for sanctions to work, there needs to be a clear reassurance of the conditions under which they could be lifted. Nuclear cooperation and exchange of technology under NPT Article IV could not resume as a response to Pretoria’s accession to the Treaty, because the sanctions imposed predominantly targeted the regime’s apartheid policies and the suppression of the country’s black majority. Therefore, selective lifting of punitive measures and embargoes in return for non-proliferation commitments was off the table. Over the years, this proved to be a dilemma for the United States and other Western countries. Their officials found it increasingly difficult to manipulate sanctions relief in such a way as to encourage disarmament, without touching the nature of the entire regime. This tension is today apparent again with Iran, and possibly North Korea. Towards an Alternative View: Elucidating the NPT Trajectory The research presented in this book brought to the fore a nuanced and augmented account of South Africa’s position on the NPT and the process of accession. The main findings evolve around a domesticregional dialectic involving two interconnected points that merit disentangling: the termination of the nuclear weapons programme and subsequent signature to the NPT. The latter decision, I argue, has been revealed to be a separate issue from disarmament and a far more challenging one to achieve in the political arena of the final apartheid years. The balancing of dual objectives, namely between domestic and international audiences, became the overarching constraint that dictated the action of several South African governments with regard to nuclear issues and global non-proliferation norms. Sweeping changes to regional security, a more empowered DFA following the negotiated end of the Border War and a change in national leadership compelled South Africa to move away from its strategy of indefinite stalling. But the political pressures that the de Klerk government faced because of its ambitious reform agenda precluded any quick decisions on the NPT front. Some creativity on the part of the decisionmakers was required to get around this obstacle. In early 1990, the push

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for Treaty signature throughout the southern African region came to occupy a pivotal position in the government’s diplomatic strategy, replacing the earlier focus on gaining assurances of access to nuclear technologies. This approach proved acceptable to the NPT Depositary States, whose leaders were willing to take up the subject with neighbouring governments, to good effect. There was thus a remarkable change in emphasis at the international encounters where NPT accession was discussed between the South Africans and the Depositary Powers. While earlier negotiations included a strong emphasis on nuclear cooperation and resumed technological exchanges with the Republic, revolving around NPT Article IV, it was in 1990 that DFA officials finally brought to fruition the idea of enlisting UK, US and Soviet officials to lobby for parallel NPT accessions by the FLS as a prerequisite for South Africa’s own accession. The logic behind this, as DFA officials argued at the time, was to create the fundamental basis for a NWFZ in southern Africa and thus to reduce the threat of Soviet nuclear missiles being stationed in any of the FLS. In addition, if de Klerk and his advisors could be seen to broker a deal in which the neighbouring states became NPT signatories as part of a regional initiative, thus improving the overall security situation in the region, this would in turn strengthen de Klerk’s position in the domestic political realm. It is striking to see how the United States and the Soviet Union worked closely together on matters relating to the South African proliferation conundrum. Officials from both states, in tandem with those from the United Kingdom, displayed very little hesitation when asked to jointly lobby the FLS governments on Pretoria’s behalf. They became active in several of the FLS capitals, attempting to convince the FLS heads of state to join the Treaty. While rapprochement between the two superpowers regarding nuclear non-proliferation gained momentum around the Geneva and Reykjavík Summits in 1985 and 1986, it is revealing that they also began to closely align on the matter of dissolving the South African nuclear threat. The significance of the role played by Depositary lobbying in the creation of a NWFZ in Africa remains a matter of speculation. Nonetheless, the initiative at least led to the coordination of the various FLS accessions to the NPT and the Depositary lobbying efforts can be perceived as a diffusing foreign influence. The narrative of ‘Disarming Apartheid’ also elucidates the importance of how the international community of states regarded South African nuclear policies for Pretoria’s decision-making circles. In the 1950s and

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1960s, international goodwill proved crucial in obtaining the necessary know-how to advance in the atomic energy sector and to get support under the US Atoms for Peace programme. Later, as the Cold War progressed, South Africa’s latent nuclear capabilities served as a catalyst for general criticism directed at the apartheid regime. After the NPT came into being in the late 1960s, South Africa’s relationship with several US administrations largely determined Pretoria’s international action in terms of furthering its nuclear ambiguity. The ongoing relationship between Washington and Pretoria fluctuated between benign tolerance and outright criticism of apartheid’s nuclear policies. Following President Eisenhower’s launch of the Plowshare Program and Atoms for Peace initiative, several US administrations subsequently tried to curb the spread of dual-use and fissile materials in an attempt to correct past failures.1 This can largely be attributed to an earlier credulous stance on the application of shared technology for military purposes. The overarching US grand strategy in that regard was played out vis-à-vis South Africa in the long run, as several US administrations attempted to buy back the HEU obtained by the AEC, converted reactors to run on LEU and, most importantly, tried to convince apartheid leaders to sign the NPT. The greatest change in the bilateral relationship came when Reagan succeeded Carter and pursued somewhat less forceful non-proliferation policies vis-à-vis Pretoria, apparently aiming to ‘keep the bombs in the basement’.2 The situation changed again under President H. W. Bush, after he and F. W. de Klerk were inaugurated and the Cold War had almost reached its end. When newly elected, F. W. de Klerk intended a swift return to normal political relations with other states of the international community. He and his Cabinet therefore needed to be able to assure the world that the South African government did not possess nuclear weapons or was trying to develop them. This aim could best be achieved by adhering to international treaties (the NPT, and afterwards an IAEA safeguards agreement), thereby ending the speculations about South Africa’s nuclear capabilities after defiance of non-proliferation norms for more than two decades. However, and this is crucial, de Klerk could not achieve this aim by acknowledging that in 1989, upon becoming South Africa’s President, he had given orders to dismantle the six

1 2

Scholars who have published extensively on this aspect include Krige, 2006, pp. 161–181; Drogan, 2019, pp. 441–460; and Hamblin, 2021, pp. 1–10. Rabinowitz and Miller, 2015, pp. 67–70.

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nuclear warheads which South Africa possessed, nor could he risk a premature positive decision on the NPT, as this could have domestic political repercussions among the white electorate. Clearly, the interaction between domestic and regional political developments played a decisive role in South African leaders’ considerations, also with regard to the timing of the decision to join the NPT in mid-1991. Moreover, international influence in the form of diplomatic pressure on the final NPT decision can hardly be distinguished from the overall international push to convince apartheid leaders that the time to reform the system had arrived. Indeed, in 1989 the newly elected government embarked on a reform process that would inevitably lead to a transition to majority rule and, inadvertently, almost completely change the fulcrum of power in Pretoria. However, when F. W. de Klerk took over in 1989, the NP was not yet ready to relinquish power to the ANC or any other political movement. In hindsight, it can therefore be argued that the secret dismantlement of South Africa’s nuclear warheads, which was a precondition for entering into a safeguards agreement and signing the NPT, mainly served domestic political aims, enabling the minority-ruled state to extend its longevity or at the very least form a basis from which favourable terms could be negotiated before a multiparty election took place. This included securing foreign support for the reform course on which de Klerk had embarked. De Klerk and his strategists took the trouble to assure the world that South Africa favoured becoming a NNWS, using this rhetoric as a bargaining chip to obtain global support for their domestic reforms and encourage international goodwill. Addressing these divergent domestic views contributes to a better understanding of the process and the decision-making related to South Africa’s entry into the NPT, thereby closing a gap in the scholarly debate. Moreover, the actions of the South African government and the NPT Depositary Powers in the discussions around the NPT analysed in ‘Disarming Apartheid’ help broaden our perspective on the end of the Cold War and its implications for global disarmament. This explication not only adds an important aspect to the discussion of global non-proliferation, but also sheds light on the early years of the political transition in South Africa, which was set against the winding down of the Cold War and the new world order emerging after 1991.3

3

Westad, 2007, pp. 1–4; Greiner, 2010, pp. 2–4.

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Ramifications of South Africa’s Nuclear Reversal It is a fact that the South Africans came full circle: from being instrumental in the creation of the IAEA and one of the founding member states of the Agency; to increasingly presenting a challenge to the nascent non-proliferation regime in the 1970s; to totally defying the global arms control norms throughout the 1980s; and then finally adopting a less hard-line stance following talks with the NPT Depositary States in the early 1990s, a shift which culminated in the decision to sign the Treaty. It should be noted that this went hand in hand with a significant scaling down of the domestic nuclear industry as well as the defence sector in general.4 In this unique process, the F. W. de Klerk government managed to skilfully exploit international proliferation fears to advance its own agenda, which changed rapidly at the end of the Cold War, thereby connecting South African NPT accession with that of the neighbouring FLS coalition of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. While this strategy predominantly served to overcome the regime’s internal white opposition to succumbing to foreign pressure, enlisting the world’s major powers in a campaign of encouraging NPT accessions across the southern African region laid the groundwork for the establishment of the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (ANWFZ) a few years later through the Treaty of Pelindaba. This tactic of reverting to the region helped negotiations to proceed meaningfully, and between 1990 and 1992, six out of the seven states in the southern African region that had not previously signed the NPT, acceded. In other words, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and President Joaqium Chissano of Mozambique understood the historic opportunity and signed the Treaty. South African diplomats furthermore played a positive and supportive role in international fora in the post-apartheid era, decisively helping to shape global nuclear disarmament norms.5 Moreover, as was repeatedly stressed in interviews with former officials, the successful IAEA verification mission to South Africa bolstered the NPT regime in the immediate post-Cold War era following the problems of the Iraq mission in the early 1990s.6

4 5 6

Fourie, 1990, pp. 25–30; and Flint, 1998, pp. 169–185. Onderco, 2021, pp. 63–81. John Goulden, personal correspondence, 6 June 2018, via email; and Gerald Clark, 31 May 2018, personal correspondence, via email.

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Country

Date of NPT signature

Botswana Swaziland Lesotho Malawi Mozambique Zambia Tanzania South Africa Zimbabwe Namibia Angola

18 April 1969 11 December 1969 20 May 1970 18 February 1986 4 September 1990 15 May 1991 31 May 1991 10 July 1991 26 September 1991 2 October 1992 14 October 1996

Six out of the seven states in the southern African region which previously were not signatories of the NPT acceded between 1990 and 1992, paving the way for a continental NWFZ (author’s compilation).

Following the reversal in South Africa’s nuclear policy, a burgeoning number of articles appeared analysing and discussing the end of the country’s nuclear weapons programme. Policymakers were especially interested in assessing the applicability of this particular nuclear reversal and its possible transferability to other cases of nuclear-armed states, including most prominently Iran.7 Indeed, President de Klerk expressed the hope that the South African case would inspire other nations to follow this example, but to date the world has not witnessed any open renouncement of nuclear capabilities by states in possession of nuclear weapons or with the means to build them.8 Clearly, the South African case is idiosyncratically specific – given the change in leadership from P. W. Botha to F. W. de Klerk and the end of the Cold War in southern Africa with its tremendous ramifications for the region’s geostrategic environment.9 This facilitated the imminent transition, which started to gain momentum under de Klerk’s leadership as he embarked on a reform course that ultimately resulted in democratic majority rule. It seems that a multitude of factors brought about the end of the programme and NPT 7

8

9

Busch and Pilat, 2014, pp. 236–261; Pabian, 2015, pp. 27–52; McNamee’s and Mills, 2006, pp. 329–335; Long and Grillot, 2000, pp. 24–40; Horton, 1999, pp. 1–52; Kutchesfahani and Lombardi, 2008, pp. 289–306; and Babbage, 2004, pp. 1–20. The situation was different for Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan’s post-Cold War governments, who also decided to give up nuclear weapons, returning them to Moscow for dismantlement, as they had inherited these weapons rather than indigenously developing them. For a detailed account, see Budjeryn, 2015, pp. 203–237; as well as Kassenova, 2022, pp. 208–242. Engel, 2014, pp. 331–348.

204

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accession, first and foremost the underlying political will to disarm, and this is apparently missing in other states. As a result, more than thirty years after the South African nuclear rollback, international efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons have so far not led to a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons states on a global scale. On a different note, it is interesting to consider the way in which de Klerk’s dismantling of South Africa’s nuclear weapons capability was received, both domestically and internationally. Over the years, and especially in the last decade before his passing in November 2021, he was invited to speak internationally on South Africa’s nuclear disarmament, as well as on matters of peace building and reconciliation.10 However, from today’s perspective, in times of ICAN11 and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), it seems almost unthinkable that in 1993, when de Klerk was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, not a word was mentioned regarding his decision to end the nuclear weapons programme. This observation applies to both the Committee’s laureate speech and his acceptance speech on 10 December 1993 in Oslo, Norway.12 While de Klerk received the Nobel Prize mainly for his role in the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, relinquishing the nuclear weapons, which were perceived by many as a pillar of power of the white regime and synonymous with apartheid,13 helped a new democratic South Africa to come alive. Was de Klerk’s anti-nuclear stance born from strategic foresight, distaste for the nuclear warheads or opportunistic awareness of the necessity to destroy them? The world may never know. Still, unlike his predecessor P. W. Botha, he had the courage to act on a nuclear disarmament opportunity when he saw it. So, to this day, de Klerk remains the only president to have presided over a country that gave up its indigenously developed nuclear weapons. This alone, I argue, would have merited a mention during the ceremony, but he has never gained much credit for it, least of all in South Africa. In fact, this only mirrors the general tenor of the early years of de Klerk’s presidency: while he was courted internationally and praised as the one who had ended apartheid and released Mandela and other political prisoners, his reform course was not well 10 11

12 13

F. W. de Klerk, 2014, pp. s3–s9. Also, he was invited to Dresden (Germany) to give a speech in the Frauenkirche on 3 April 2017. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a global coalition with the aim of promoting adherence to and full implementation of the NPT, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. De Klerk, 1993b, and Sejersted, 1993. Abdul Minty, interview with author, 5 March 2018, Pretoria.

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received by sections of the white South African population, especially the Afrikaners. He is still regarded by many white South Africans as a traitor to his own people, whereas he was for a long time courted internationally to speak overseas in his capacity as head of the F. W. de Klerk Foundation on matters concerning peace, security and reconciliation. Overall, he did not receive much credit domestically for having steered the country towards NPT accession. Today, the unique South African case continues to stand as both an illustration and inspiration that disarmament and the creation of NWFZs are possible. Moreover, it demonstrates that in order to forgo nuclear weapons, an awareness of domestic political preconditions and a conducive international context are necessary. However, it remains to be seen whether such developments can also be induced in other parts of the world and whether the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea eliminate their arsenals. The world can only hope that – in time – they do.

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Interviews Please note that not all interviewees are cited in the text; some interviews were cut from the final version. I give only the position(s) held by the interviewee that are relevant for the study. Unless otherwise noted, the interviews took place in person. Barnard, Niël, Head of National Intelligence, 1979–1992 (21 February 2017 and 26 February 2018, Gaansbai, Western Cape). Barnard, Willem, Armscor Senior Manager (26 February 2018, Stellenbosch). Benjaminson, Eric, US State Department, Office of Southern African Affairs, 1986–1989, 12 February 2018 via Skype. Beukes, Herbert, Department of Foreign Affairs (South Africa), Ambassador to the US, 1985–1987; Deputy Director-General, 1987–1992 (27 February 2018, Somerset West). Bezuidenhout, Pieter, Department of Foreign Affairs (South Africa), Political Counsellor, Embassy in Vienna, 1989–1993 (1 March 2018, Pretoria). Buys, André, Armscor General Manager (24 February 2016, Pretoria).

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Index

Advena Central Laboratories, 8, 59, 74–75 African National Congress, 15, 76, 81, 130, 131, 138, 141, 144–146, 157, 164, 184, 201 African Regional Cooperative Agreement for Research, 191 Angola, 5, 9, 14, 41–43, 44, 68, 105–106, 112, 144, 148, 150, 152–153, 160–161, 164, 166, 168, 202 Angola–Namibia Accords, 102, 105, 107, 116, 123 Anti-Apartheid Movement, 62 apartheid racial policies, 1, 27–28, 33, 44, 62, 64, 68, 76, 80–81, 82, 90, 127, 137, 156 referendum of 1992, 184 regime survival, 1, 4, 41–42, 58, 75 sanctions against, 15, 27, 37, 38, 41, 43, 50–52, 55, 62, 68–69, 75, 77, 81–82, 84, 87–90, 92, 98, 103, 108–110, 114, 127, 132–133, 136, 138, 140, 146, 157–159, 161–162, 187, 190, 198 Armaments Corporation of South Africa, 8, 13, 49–51, 57–59, 74–75, 118, 142–144, 146, 186, 192 Atomic Energy Corporation, 8, 13, 46, 65, 69, 74, 79, 87, 98, 114, 118, 120, 123–124, 141–146, 171, 174, 175–179, 180, 181, 184, 187–190, 193, 200 Baker, James, 126–128, 158, 161 Barnard, Niël, 132, 141, 146 Beukes, Herbert, 125–126, 151 Bezuidenhout, Pieter, 123, 176 Biko, Steve, 66 Blix, Hans, 14, 78, 88, 92–94, 95, 110, 119, 121, 137, 174–175, 178, 180, 181 Border War, 5, 14, 41, 51, 68, 100, 105–106, 142, 144, 160, 163, 198 Angola, 110–111 Cuito Cuanavale, 105

220

Botha, Pieter Willem administration, 62, 67, 81, 93, 101, 103, 104 defence minister, 40–43 IAEA statement, 96–97, 113, 119, 155, 169 president, 2, 5–7, 14, 28, 56–58, 64, 66, 74–77, 85, 89, 91, 95, 97, 98, 106, 108, 111, 115, 120–121, 124–125, 128, 171, 181, 187, 203, 204 reforms, 76, 81 Botha, Roelof ‘Pik’ foreign minister, 49, 76, 85, 90, 106, 112–115, 126–127, 130, 132, 133–136, 141, 142, 144–145, 148, 156, 158, 168–169, 171, 173, 174, 182 Reagan–Botha meeting, 71, 73 Bush, George H. W., 122, 126–128, 140–141, 156–161, 169, 200 administration, 122, 127, 128, 129, 157, 160–162 Carter, Jimmy, 14, 44–45, 47, 53–54, 56, 60–61, 64, 66, 69, 100, 200 administration, 44–48, 52–53, 62–63, 66, 68, 70 non-proliferation policy, 52, 53, 60, 64, 65, 69 presidency, 52, 54, 60, 66, 67, 69, 70–71 Chissano, Joaquim, 150, 202 Cohen, Herman, 127–128, 156, 159, 161 Cold War, 5, 22, 28, 37, 46, 52, 196 academic approaches to, 10–11 end of, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 105, 169, 197, 201–203 nuclear weapons development, 3–4, 8, 180, 200 southern Africa, 4, 9, 191 Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique, 29–32, 37 Conservative Party, 76, 115, 118, 128–131, 157, 181–182, 196, 197

Index Constructive Engagement, 68, 73, 79, 81, 92 Crocker, Chester, 67–68, 73, 101–102, 105, 122, 127 Cuba, 4, 42–43, 105, 106, 112, 116 troop withdrawal, 5, 68, 105, 144, 160 de Klerk, Frederik Willem announcement of 1993, 1, 3–4, 6, 186, 188, 191–192, 195 Bush–de Klerk meeting, 140, 156–163 disarmament decision, 7, 8, 139, 141–143, 171, 192, 201, 204 election of 1989, 6, 138, 139 Minister for Education, 124 Minister for Mineral and Energy Affairs, 57 Nobel Peace Prize, 204 reforms, 7, 8, 126–131, 133–141, 147, 151, 157, 160, 162, 168, 173, 184, 187, 196, 198, 201, 203, 204 Thatcher–de Klerk meeting, 128–129 de Villiers, Dawie, 132, 134, 140–142, 171 de Villiers, Wynand, 79, 84–88, 90, 97, 103, 120, 123, 132, 135, 141, 181 dos Santos, Eduardo José, 150, 152 du Plessis, Barend, 77, 85, 111, 124, 132, 141–142, 171 Egypt, 22, 38–39, 66, 155, 190, 193 Einhorn, Robert, 193 Fourie, Brand, 56, 74, 85 France, 30, 34, 36, 37, 72, 73, 126, 189, 193 Freeman, Charles, 82, 101–102 Frontline States, 9, 51, 146, 147–155, 159, 162–170, 197, 199, 202

221 comprehensive safeguards agreement, 4, 7, 14, 15, 27, 46, 54–55, 62, 63, 66, 69–73, 78–79, 80, 83, 85–88, 90, 91–97, 103, 106, 121–122, 124, 125, 130, 133, 135–136, 137, 147, 155–156, 163, 170–179, 186–187, 196, 197, 200–201 General Conference, 5, 21, 39, 62, 78, 86, 92–95, 96, 97, 107, 110–111, 113, 118–120, 131, 155–156, 170, 172–176 INFCIRC/153, 135, 173–174, 177 INFCIRC/66, 92, 177 inspectors, 84–85, 87, 103, 114, 124, 172, 176, 178–181, 184–186 membership, 5, 21–22, 62, 67, 83, 91–98, 100, 104, 113, 118–119, 121, 123, 131, 139, 173, 175, 202 Secretariat, 11, 14, 67, 80, 83–84, 86, 89, 91–92, 94, 95–96, 110, 119, 121, 174, 184 verification mission, 96, 172–173, 177–180, 184–186, 190, 202 Israel, 94, 192–193, 205 Kaunda, Kenneth, 150, 154–155, 202 Kennedy, John F., 20 Kennedy, Richard T., 73, 79, 94, 133, 135 Kentron, 74 Kimmitt, Robert, 160–161 Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, 73, 85, 87, 120, 177, 187–190, 194, 195 Kraftwerk Union, 29, 34–35, 36

Haig, Alexander, 71 Hartzenberg, Ferdinand, 182–183 Howe, Geoffrey, 128

Machel, Samora, 76 Malan, Magnus, 77, 85, 99, 141, 143 Mandela, Nelson, 1, 115, 129, 140–141, 145, 157, 195, 204 Meiring, George, 99 Miller, Jamie, 42 Minty, Abdul, 62, 73 Missile Technology Control Regime, 187, 192 Mouton, Wynand, 143 Mozambican Liberation Front, 58, 76 Mozambique, 9, 42, 76, 148, 150, 152–153, 160, 164, 168, 202 Mugabe, Robert, 202

International Atomic Energy Agency, 4, 5, 7–8, 9, 15, 21–22, 26, 27, 39, 46, 56, 66, 67, 70, 78–80, 83–98, 102, 103–107, 110–120, 123, 137, 147, 149, 152, 156, 169, 172–181, 186–187, 190, 195, 202 Board of Governors, 5, 21, 38–39, 62, 66, 80, 92, 93–95, 174–175, 185, 190

Namibia, 9, 105, 148, 152–153, 161, 168, 202 independence, 68, 105, 150 South West Africa, 68, 105, 161 South West Africa People’s Organisation, 58, 105 UN Security Council Resolution 435 of 1978, 68, 105–106

Germany, Federal Republic of, 13, 28, 35–36, 52, 120, 188 Gesellschaft für Kernforschung, 29, 30 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 107 Goulden, John, 113, 133–136

222

Index

National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola, 42, 68, 164 Nigeria, 155 Non-Aligned Movement, 22, 174 NPT Depositary States, 104, 107, 111, 122–125, 136, 146, 147, 150, 163, 164, 167, 170, 196–197, 199, 202 1988 meeting with South Africa, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 117–119, 137 1989 meeting with South Africa, 131–136 1990 meeting with South Africa, 152 1991 meeting with South Africa, 165–167 Nuclear Suppliers Group, 36 Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, 15, 124, 126, 147, 151–152, 165, 169, 191, 199, 202, 205 Nujoma, Samuel, 150 Nyerere, Julius, 154, 202 Nzo, Alfred, 192 Pelindaba, 18, 69, 75, 84, 120, 193–194, 195 Perricos, Dimitri, 178 Pik Botha, 106, 111 Portugal, 38, 42, 58 Powell, Charles, 129 Reagan, Ronald, 14, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 80, 81–83, 94, 122, 200 administration, 67, 69–73, 78–79, 83, 97, 100, 101, 103, 107 first term, 67, 71, 103 Reagan–Botha meeting, 71–72 second term, 82, 102 Renwick, Robin, 102, 107, 138–139, 167 Roux, Abraham, 17, 20, 25, 28, 31–32 Roux, Jannie, 181 SAFARI-1 research reactor, 18–20, 24, 27, 33, 66, 69, 77, 177, 190, 193–195 Savimbi, Jonathan, 68 Schmidt, Cecilia, 107, 123, 174–175 Sharpeville massacre, 17 Shearar, Jeremy, 181, 191 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 150 Sole, Donald, 63, 80 Somchem, 46, 74 South Africa disarmament, 4, 5, 7, 10, 118, 139, 141–143, 183, 190, 193, 198 general election 1989, 5, 7, 125–131, 134, 137, 139, 157, 163, 171 NPT accession, 7–11, 13, 14, 56, 69, 70, 74, 83, 85, 98, 101, 103, 106, 112, 118, 122, 123–125, 129–132,

135–137, 140, 141–142, 145–147, 150, 155, 159, 163, 165, 167, 168–170, 196–199, 202, 204, 205 nuclear weapons programme, 2–10, 12, 15, 37–38, 41, 51, 56–60, 65, 72, 74, 77, 85, 86, 88–89, 97, 99, 103, 104, 111, 115–118, 124, 130, 134, 139, 142–145, 153, 170–172, 174, 177, 178–186, 190–195, 197, 198, 203–204 right-wing threat, 15, 128, 130, 136, 140–141, 145, 149, 150, 151, 157, 160, 170, 197 State of Emergency, 81–82, 91, 113, 131, 156 South African Defence Force, 13, 41, 42–43, 49, 57–58, 68, 74, 77, 99, 105, 142, 146, 160 Operation Savannah, 43 Soviet Union, 4, 5, 8–12, 15, 22, 42–43, 46–48, 51, 58, 68, 70, 88, 94, 97, 104, 105, 107, 110, 114–115, 119, 122, 127, 129, 132, 133, 147–150, 155, 167, 170, 184, 197, 199 nuclear weapons, 126, 146, 199 Soweto uprising, 37, 66, 81 State Security Council, 106 Steinkohlen Elektrizitäts AG, 28–32 Steyn, Danie, 85, 86, 89–90, 95, 98, 112, 114 Steyn, Hannes, 142 Steyn, Naudé, 92, 107, 119 Steyn, Pierre, 100 Stumpf, Waldo, 140, 142, 145, 176–177, 179, 181, 190 Tanzania, 9, 164, 166, 168–169, 202 Thatcher, Margaret, 11, 107, 126, 128–129, 133, 154–155, 168 Timerbaev, Roland, 12, 107, 113–115, 120, 133, 135 Total Onslaught, 42, 105, 138 Treaty of Pelindaba, 191, 202 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968), 5, 8, 26, 27, 196 Review Conference 1995, 192 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 204 Treurnicht, Andries, 76, 131, 183 United Kingdom archives, 8, 9, 12 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 11, 90, 97, 101, 107, 113, 128, 131, 133–134, 142, 145, 148–150, 172, 197, 199

Index United States Atoms for Peace, 14, 17, 18, 44, 200 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 72, 108, 118, 181 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, 82, 97, 102–103, 109, 127, 136, 140–141, 146, 156, 157–158, 161, 169 Congress, 52, 56, 60, 73, 78–79, 80, 82, 98, 101, 109, 113, 127, 132, 133, 141, 156, 158, 160–161, 169 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978, 52–54, 60, 62, 64, 65, 69 State Department, 13, 15, 45–46, 52, 61, 65, 68, 71–74, 79–82, 84, 88–90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100–103, 109, 113, 122, 127, 132, 139, 140, 144, 147–148, 156–163, 167, 169, 193–194 Uranium Enrichment Corporation, 25, 29–33, 36–38

223 Valindaba, 25, 54, 55, 61, 63, 72, 123, 134, 141 van der Merwe, Koos, 182–183 van Heerden, Neil, 139, 165–166, 167 Vastrap, 46–48 VELA incident, 61, 62, 65 Verwoerd, Hendrik F., 19, 43 Viljoen, Constand, 99 von Wielligh, Nic, 174 Vorster, Balthazar Johannes, 25, 42, 46, 51, 54, 57, 58, 61, 62, 66, 74 Westad, Odd Arne, 11 Witvlei Committee, 57, 59, 65, 74, 77, 83–86, 90, 91, 97, 99, 103–104, 106, 111, 114, 118, 142, 171 Zambia, 9, 148, 152–155, 202 Zangger Committee, 36 Zimbabwe, 9, 153–154, 163, 166, 168, 202