REMEMBER the nukes? On March 24 1993, then president FW de Klerk announced SA had developed “a limited nuclear deterrent capability” (that’s “six bombs” to you and me), which it dismantled before SA’s 1991 accession to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT as it is commonly known.
Destruction of the weapons produced, under the ironically symbolic name of Operation Kerktoring (church tower), gave SA a moral righteousness it wielded like a sceptre in the saintly Nelson Mandela’s hands. Whatever the cynical realities of the National Party government’s decision to disarm — and there were plenty, it seems — SA’s renunciation of nuclear weapons added to the miracle of 1994 and gave impetus to anti-nuke campaigners worldwide . And there the nuclear issue ended in most people’s minds, aside from noticing the odd flutter of activity as the government tried to get its planned energy-generating Pebble Bed Modular Reactor off the ground.
The issue is far from being a thing of the past, however, as two visits to SA last week showed. Nuclear technology and its exploitation are very much still on the agenda and in the run-up to a key NPT conference in May next year, SA is in the thick of it. And as the only country to give up nuclear weapons voluntarily, it faces a potential conflict between its role as a nonproliferation advocate and a country that wants to exploit its own extensive knowledge further.
It is not surprising that the developed west sees SA as a crucial ally in getting non-nuclear-weapons states to boost their flagging enthusiasm for a treaty that many of them see as dysfunctionally one-sided. Non-nuclear- weapons states signing up to the NPT agreed not to develop weapons. Nuclear-weapons states that signed up to the NPT undertook to disarm. Disarmament by the declared powers — US, Russia, UK, France, Russia and China — has been dismally slow. Israel, Pakistan and India, which all have nuclear weapons, continue to ignore the treaty and are not members. North Korea, going hammer and tongs to develop them, pulled out of the treaty. In addition, the interventionist George Bush years likely heightened, in many small states’ minds, the worth of having a nuclear deterrent.
The new US administration is making greater efforts to revive the process. And well it might — the world has an estimated 26000 nuclear bombs, with enough weapons-usable nuclear material to make another 233000.
In April, US President Barack Obama promised a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians, as well as America’s long-delayed ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
But the developed world wants SA to keep playing its role.
“There’s big pressure from the west for SA to play that compromising role again, between the nuclear weapons states and the non-nuclear-weapons states,” says the Institute for Security Studies’ Noël Stott.
But there is also a strong argument for SA to play hardball with the nuclear powers.
“If you want nonproliferation, you have to put disarmament on the agenda and seriously on the agenda. They want SA to walk into these talks and tell the developing world they should be signing up. The South Africans should say, ‘We will only on one condition: tight timelines, tight targets.’ Otherwise the South Africans shouldn’t play,” argues University of Johannesburg Deputy Vice-Chancellor Adam Habib, who hosted a talk on non- proliferation at the university last week.
But there is a question as to whether President ’s administration is as keen to play the globetrotting lobbyist role it did in the Mandela and years. The July meeting between Zuma and Obama, and the subsequent August visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are cited as evidence of the renewed relationship many hope will bring that co-operation. But it is too soon to tell. “One question … is the resources, diplomatic or otherwise, the South African government has to commit to these activities. We haven’t seen any change, although it hasn’t been long,” says one US official with knowledge of the situation.
Keeping SA on message means constant engagement. And that is where one of last week’s visitors comes in. Bonnie Jenkins is the US state department’s co-ordinator for threat reduction programmes in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. More a technician than a politician, she looks beyond just nuclear threats and, in her meetings with local officials, discussed issues ranging from border security and export controls to prevent trans-shipment of illegal nuclear material to “bioengagement” — improved monitoring of infectious diseases and security for pathogens in laboratories.
Keeping capable regional partners in the global battle is crucial, says Jenkins. “You need a government that can do that. You go to Somalia and you can’t do that.”
The second visitor was Gareth Evans, a co- chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, a body set up by Australia and Japan that will publish a report next month looking at disarmament — “who’s got to do what, when and where,” as Evans says. At the University of Johannesburg last week, Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, urged SA to take “a deep breath” — diplomatic language for “Stop it!” — over its ambition to develop a nuclear enrichment capability.
As with Canada and Brazil, South African government policy is to do more with the uranium it mines. SA wants the capacity to enrich it for use in nuclear electricity generation (which currently accounts for only 6% of SA’s power supply) and to be able to offer the service as a money-making one.
“The long-term goal is to be self-sufficient in all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle,” states a policy paper published in June last year by the then department of minerals and energy. Under the plan , SA is due to commercialise this technology between 2016 and 2025. It will not happen by then, however, and maybe not at all. A key consideration is how many more nuclear power plants SA builds, and this is not yet decided. Cost is a big issue, too. The ambitions outlined in last year’s policy paper were designed before the global economic crisis hit. SA may not build a full nuclear fuel- cycle capacity at all.
But in a world of big swinging egos, ambition to join the exclusive nuclear club and — in SA’s particular case — the wish to capitalise on a technology the country already clearly knows well, can be strong motivators. And perhaps SA has been able to preach nonproliferation advocacy because everyone knows the country has the technology — and the ability to turn it into weapons. If that technology disappears, will anyone care what SA has to say on the issue?
From a nonproliferation point of view, a handful of new countries with enrichment capacity is not a good thing, Evans says.
“We’ve learnt from the sad experience of Iran and North Korea that the development of reprocessing capacity is an avenue to proliferation if a country is minded to go down that path,” Evans says.
Is the west more worried about an African country going down that path than Canada or Brazil? Some people underplay it and it is not a question either of last week’s visitors raised. But it is one they might ask. Stripped of its Cold War-ally shell, the soft underbelly of nuclear-armed Pakistan is worryingly clear to all. The future in SA is a book that is being written every day. No wonder people are sticking close.
n Bleby is an associate editor.
‘The development of reprocessing capacity is an avenue to proliferation if a country is minded to go down that path’