South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Capability

Abstract

South African leaders have generally insisted that her nuclear programme is peaceful. However, leaders as far back as Prime Minister Verwoerd in the 1960s (before the announcement of the development of her enrichment technology) have frequently stated that South Africa was developing or had developed the capability to produce nuclear weapons.¹ Such statements have usually been followed by qualifications or denials, often by Atomic Energy Board officials wishing to preserve external nuclear cooperation, that this was South Africa’s intention. (The intentions behind South Africa’s nuclear programme are discussed in the next chapter.) Thus, in 1971, the head of the Board, Dr A. J. A. Roux, stated that, with her own enrichment technology, South Africa had a nuclear weapons capability, although it was her policy to use her enriched uranium for peaceful purposes. He stated that it would have been difficult to produce a plutonium bomb because material and equipment would have had to be imported and these would then have come under safeguards.² Similarly, the vice-chairman of the Board, Dr Louw Alberts, claimed, after the 1974 Indian nuclear explosion, that South Africa could also produce atomic weapons and that her nuclear programme was more advanced than that of India.³