South African nuclear technology developed during the apartheid era was destroyed later under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the country’s former president FW de Klerk said on Monday.
De Klerk’s comments at a press conference were in response to speculation that uranium from South Africa’s former nuclear programme might have been traded on the black market.
South Africa had developed a number of uranium enrichment devices independently before he became president in 1989 but he ordered the dismantling of the programme after taking up office, de Klerk said.
”Every milligramme of the material that went into the six and a half devices that we developed, was accounted for,” he said, adding an audit later certified that South Africa had properly accounted for the decommissioned devices. In July 1999 South Africa signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and made its facilities available for inspection by the IAEA.
The former president — who received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize together with his successor Nelson Mandela for the country’s peaceful change to democracy — also praised South Africa’s political progress and constitutional transformation in the last decade.
However, the further transformation of the country’s economy and society would determine the long-term viability of the post-apartheid state, he said. De Klerk called for another ”great national debate” as at least half of all South Africans had still seen little change: ”In reality they have received only crumbs from the new society.”
”I have little doubt — looking to the future that the second ten years of the new South Africa will be dominated by the economic and social transformation of the country,” he said.
The country needed ”negotiations, compromises and agreements on economic and social transformation” in much the same way as it did with constitutional reform ten years ago, he said.
”Too often there is little frank debate,” he said. ”One of our problems is that whenever blacks and whites discuss transformation, they generally do so from widely differing perceptions of the realities of the new South Africa,” he noted.
Although black people now made up more than 50% of the country’s privileged classes, controlled the public and parastatal sectors and were making progress in medium-sized businesses, there were still many for whom very little had changed, he said.
South Africans of all races are preparing to vote on April 14 in the country’s third general election since the fall of apartheid.
De Klerk, former leader of the National Party dominant under apartheid, was elected state president in September 1989 and began talks with the then banned African National Congress (ANC) in a bid to start reforms. In April 1994, a black majority under the ANC came to power in a government of national unity, with Nelson Mandela elected as president and de Klerk and Thabo Mbeki his deputies.
In 1995, de Klerk withdrew from the government of national unity and retired from active politics two years later. ‒ Sapa-DPA