South Africa once had nuclear weapons but then disassembled them.
What kind of threat made South Africa think a nuclear arsenal was necessary?
An officially racist state, surrounded by countries filled with people with good reason to hate it, isolated from the world community, disliked by the communist bloc, getting no support except from the US…
Yeah, that’s my understanding as well. The scenario they were trying to avoid was essentially “black insurrection, with assistance from neighboring countries.” A nuclear arsenal could help prevent the second part, at least.
I wonder how they thought a nuclear detonation would differentiate its victims by any of the precepts of Apartheid philosophy. Soweto was right in the middle of Johannesburg, and a couple of WWII bombs dropped from a Lancaster would have been enough to quell any uprising there.
I’m with everyone else. Living in Africa is enough reason to have a nuclear arsenal. The consequences of detonating said arsenal was probably not the first thing on their minds.
Presumably they needed protection from TROA (The Rest Of Africa). In the mid-70’s and early 80’s, Nigeria was a country with massive oil revenue and more population than South Africa. If it could pull a South Korea and become a major regional power, if it decided that helping the countries around SA was good for prestige and influence - well, it too might develop nuclear weapons. (After all, if Iran or Iraq might do it, if Taiwan or Israel could, India and Pakistan did - it doesn’t take much)
it never hurt to be prepared; it was also a good intimidation tactic if neighboring countries got too bold in harboring guerilla groups.
You guys are putting too much emphasis on the racial aspect. They didn’t build them just to ‘nuke the darkies’ as it were, that’s ridiculously simplistic. Africa was/is a fucked up continent, pretty much the worst in the world. Regardless of anything else South Africa was the most developed nation on it, and the only Western one. And they had plentiful natural resources i.e. gold, diamonds, and as it happens Uranium. Any other African nation (most of which were despot-ruled hellholes) would have drooled over conquering them.
They were in a similar situation as Israel, completely surrounded by hostile enemies. A couple of Little Boy-style nuclear weapons was a logical contingency plan and an effective bargaining chip if the shit hit the fan…Not surprisingly, they most likely exchanged Israel some Uranium for their scientific expertise.
Not sure if you’re sarcastic, but I’m sure the nukes wouldn’t be used on South African soil.
Jesus H. Christ! Can this be embroidered on a pillow? LOL
Nuclear weapons were/are a status symbol of sorts. What better way for a middling level unloved State to punch above its weight on the world stage than to obtain nukes. It was probably also a way of ingratiating itself with the US; and a not so subtle warning to the USSR not to interfere in South Africa.
South Africa wanted nukes for the same reasons that every nation on the planet wants nukes.
Was South Africa even on USSR’s radar?
Of course. The USSR(just like the US) had its tentacles in much of Western Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. I dont see why South Africa would have been off limits in this worldwide game of geo-politics.
There was concern at the time that South Africa, as a country with an oppressed and disenfranchised majority population, would have been vulnerable to outside communist influence.
…“South Africa gets two, that’s right. One for the Black and one for the White. Who’s next?”-Tom Lehrer
South Africa had no strategic need for nuclear weapons. It was not a direct competitor in the NATO/Warsaw Pact conflict (“Cold War”), and any threat from Soviet-backed regimes in Africa was insignificant. South Africa was never a major strategic target and even if it had been, it would not have a significant enough size arsenal to be of any deterrence value in a global conflict. (Nor is it clear how they would or could develop a delivery system that would be capable of reaching the Northern Hemisphere.) The desire just happened to be coincident with Israel also developing their second generation of weapons and needing a source of high grade natural uranium for enrichment into weapons-grade HEU, so the two nations (allegedly but widely accepted) shared technology and test data.
South Africa wanted to possess nuclear weapons for the same reason that nations like Brazil, Argentina, and Libya wanted nuclear weapons; as a status symbol of a country in the first tier of nations on the world stage. Frankly, the same argument could be made for France and Great Britain as well, although to be fair, it was the British which provided a lot of the initial information and intellectual labor on the US Manhattan Project, so it is somewhat understandable that they would want their own independent capability after being essentially excluded from the US inventory despite the “special relationship”.
It is important to understand that nuclear weapons are not “weapons” in the conventional battlefield sense; they’re really diplomatic bargaining chips. If you actually have to resort to the use of nuclear weapons against a power with rough parity (e.g. no ability for a disabling first strike), you’ve already lost, because the result will be as destructive to the aggressor as it will to the defender. Even so-called “tactical” or “battlefield” nukes will almost inevitably lead to escalation just because of the sheer destructiveness and vulnerability of conventional warfighting assets to nuclear attack. In other words, once you pop the cork, you’re not going to get the champaign back into the bottle.
Stranger
It’s really not.
I must have missed the part where South Africa was at war once a decade with all of its hostile neighbors until it got the bomb. Surely you can point me to the great South African-Namibian/Botswanan/Zimbabwean/Mozambiquean Wars of the 1940-70s. Aside from that the situation was completely similar to Israel’s. Unless of course you mean apartheid South Africa was administering Namibia in defiance of the UN for 23 years causing [del]Namibia[/del]South West Africa it to be surrounded by nations hostile to it - who all happened to be ‘darkies’ as it were, which no doubt led to nightmare scenarios in the apartheid government of ‘the darkies’ rebelling from within being supported by an invasion of ‘the darkies’ from without.
Or how did they put it in RoboCop back in 1987?
It wasn’t just a matter of race. Ideologies can divide countries without race being a factor - just look at NATO and the Warsaw Pact or the two Koreas. South Africa had a right-wing regime which looked across its borders to Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe and saw other countries in which right-wing regimes had been overthrown by left-wing revolutions.
Well, they were at war in Namibia, eventually Cuba was helping Angola rebels and IIRC Mozambique too (speaking of USSR interest). SA was on the other side of these post-colonial wars, and to his credit, Jimmy Carter declined to get involved in these, but South Africa obviously felt it had no choice. Plus, IIRC, from the time, they had constant skirmishes with guerilla groups crossing the borders from neighboring states, including Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Eventually, even the ghettos (or concentration camps) like Soweto were in full revolt.
Presumably a nuclear weapon would have gotten respect - ultimately, a way to ensure the adjacent states listened. The ultimate weapon if a neighbor pushed too far, gave the SA resistance too much help, was to let them know they could definitely take out the entire upper echelon of the country with one well-placed nuke.
But the escalating sense of being under siege probably had an effect; similarly, the peace offer to Mandela did not come out of the inherent goodness of the Afrikaner heart. The writing was on the wall. They were just clever enough to read it.
Am I the only one who reads these posts as a little too enthusiastic?