OPINION| South Africa can be proud it got rid of its nukes - Today, 29 August, is the International Day against Nuclear Tests, and the world is under increasing threat following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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