It’s been 30 years since South Africa signed the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and stuck to it
South Africa is the only country to have dismantled its own nuclear weapons programme. That is of increasing relevance in a world where the threat of nuclear conflict could be rising because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and growing world tensions.
Thirteen years ago, the United Nations General Assembly declared 29 August, as the International Day against Nuclear Tests and the South African example bears a re-examination.
Only four countries have ever surrendered their nuclear weapons, of which three — Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine — did so by returning weapons to Russia in the early 1990s. Unlike South Africa, the three countries, all former members of the Warsaw Pact, did not develop these weapons, nor did they have the capacity and know-how to maintain and control them.
The three countries gave up their nuclear weapons after they received solemn assurances in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that the Russian Federation, United States and United Kingdom would never threaten or use military force or economic coercion against them.
Why did South Africa decide to dismantle its nuclear weapons? As part of its defence programme under apartheid, South Africa spent increasing amounts on developing nuclear weapons from the 1970s onwards. Although the threat South Africa faced was mainly unconventional, in the form of guerrilla attacks from neighbouring states and an internal insurrection, there was also a potential conventional threat. With the Russians backing the ANC and the frontline states — Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Zambia — there was a concern about a foreign-supported conventional attack.
South Africa’s nuclear weapons were viewed as a means of deterring conventional attacks launched from the frontline states but it was most unlikely that they would have been used. There was certainly an absence of large, concentrated targets and Pretoria would have faced intense international opprobrium had it crossed the nuclear threshold.
Soon after FW de Klerk became president in 1989, he realised that with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, South Africa was now in a more favourable position than ever before to undertake fundamental reforms. The reforms were helped by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola in terms of the 1988 Tripartite Agreement between Cuba, Angola and South Africa, followed by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 meant that the “rooi gevaar”, the perceived threat of the South African government at the time that the country would be taken over by communist forces, had disappeared. The implosion of the Soviet Union left a weakened state that could no longer support proxy wars on the African continent that would serve its expansionist interests.
And in the immediate post-Cold War era, large-scale nuclear disarmament was discussed as a distinct possibility.
In this new era, De Klerk realised that South Africa’s nuclear arms programme had become a liability and a potential security risk. In response to the changed geopolitical reality as well as a means to restore South Africa’s international reputation, De Klerk decided to dismantle the country’s nuclear weapons and voluntarily abandon its nuclear arms programme.
In 1991 South Africa became a State Party to the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and has signed and ratified the treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2017 and 2019 respectively.
Later, De Klerk would often refer to the fall of the Berlin Wall as a “window of opportunity” that had opened the way for a democratic transition. He added that he knew then that South Africa had to seize this favourable moment. In his speech on 2 February 1990, he announced the release of Nelson Mandela, the unbanning of the ANC and paved the way for negotiations and a peaceful democratic transition.
Although fundamental changes were underway, great uncertainty over South Africa’s political future remained, and hence it was certainly perceived as a risk to hand over nuclear weapons to a successor government.
In 1993, FW de Klerk shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela for their joint effort to lead South Africa on a path of a peaceful democratic transition. But De Klerk might well have been nominated for another Nobel Prize – for his decision to abandon South Africa’s nuclear arms programme. To date, no other government has followed this example.
More than three decades after the end of the Cold War and South Africa abandoning nuclear weapons, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has rekindled the fear of nuclear warfare. Russia has denied it will use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine but ambiguity over whether they will be used remains. Nuclear weapons in the Russian arsenal mean that their use is an option. The great irony is that Ukraine, a country that transferred Russian nuclear weapons back to Moscow in the early 1990s, is now in a position where it could be subject to nuclear blackmail.
Although the threat of nuclear warfare never ceased, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and US tensions with China have elevated the nuclear threat to a level not seen since the Cold War. Countries that might have considered nuclear disarmament, are now reluctant to do so in the more tense international climate.
Although South Africans can be proud of their country’s example, many countries still believe that nuclear weapons are the key to effective deterrence and that they provide them with additional bargaining power. For leaders of such countries, the following quote by FW de Klerk should provide food for thought: “We discovered with the passage of time that our real security lay in addressing the root causes of conflict in our region and within our own society — and not in the possession of weapons of mass destruction.”
Christina Teichmann is a political consultant and board member of the FW de Klerk Foundation.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.