To Sign or Not to Sign: Pretoria's Flirtation with the NPT, 1970–76

This paper analyses why South Africa decided not to sign the NPT when it came into force in 1970. It seems rather contradictory in lieu of the fact that South Africa was a founding member of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957 and had supported the notion for a non-proliferation treaty in the United Nations during the 1960s. Recent primary source research highlights two considerations. First, Pretoria perceived itself worthy of joining the nuclear club by virtue of its regional “great power status.” Second, by the mid-1970s, Southern Africa had become the new Cold War battlefield. Widespread communist support of black liberation movements in Southern Africa escalated, threatening Pretoria’s position of power in the region and thus also the image of white invincibility. Pretoria responded to this perceived communist onslaught by becoming actively embroiled in a conflict with communist backed forces on the Namibian-Angolan border, with initial American backing, while simultaneously fighting guerrilla insurgents attached to the exiled South African liberation movements. In further consequence, Pretoria decided to develop and test a Peaceful Nuclear Explosive, with the hope that such a ‘bomb in the basement’ would give them some degree of leverage in their relations with the outside world and within the geopolitical dynamics of Southern Africa. Primary evidence also suggests that while Washington seemingly attempted to convince Pretoria to sign the NPT, it actually viewed Pretoria’s nuclear development through the prism of the latter’s fierce anti-communism. Indeed, Pretoria played a significant role in the Cold War objectives of the United States at least until 1976, when the first tiny step was taken by the Gerald Ford Administration to limit U.S.-South African nuclear collaboration.