Washington, DC — The debate over weapons of mass destruction and inspection protocols in Iraq has focused attention on South Africa's decision to dismantle its secret nuclear weapons programs more than a decade ago.
Senior Bush administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security advisor, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz have cited the South African example in high-profile defenses of American policy towards Iraq. South Africa was the first nation to take this action unilaterally, although Ukraine and Kazakhstan have made similar moves since that time.
In "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying," an op-ed article published in the New York Times on January 23, Rice said:
"In 1989 South Africa made the strategic decision to dismantle its covert nuclear weapons program. It destroyed its arsenal of seven weapons and later submitted to rigorous verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Inspectors were given complete access to all nuclear facilities (operating and defunct) and the people who worked there. They were also presented with thousands of documents detailing, for example, the daily operation of uranium enrichment facilities as well as the construction and dismantling of specific weapons."
Speaking on the same day before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Wolfowitz said:
"South Africa allowed U.N. inspectors complete access to both operating and defunct facilities, provided thousands of current and historical documents, and allowed detailed, unfettered discussions with personnel that had been involved in their nuclear program. By 1994, South Africa had provided verifiable evidence that its nuclear inventory was complete and its weapons program was dismantled."
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The action received little notice at the time. "We don't think we have received sufficient credit for disarming," Tokyo Sexwale, a former anti-apartheid campaigner and African National Congress leader, told a business conference in Houston last November. He said the bold move, along with the ANC government's economic policies, should have brought South Africa more international backing than it has gotten.
Sexwale, who now heads a large mining company headquartered in Johannesburg, was imprisoned with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island for more than a decade, where, he says, the disarmament idea was thoroughly debated by the jailed ANC leadership." We knew we had to take this step once we took power," he said.
President F.W. de Klerk came to the same conclusion in 1989 at about the same time as he agreed to free Mandela and open talks with the ANC. During the 1970s and 1980s, the white regime in Pretoria had managed to produce weapons-grade uranium, construct a research and development facility and produce six nuclear devices. Dismantlement of the program began in mid-1990 and was completed a year later. In July of 1991, South Africa agreed to abide by the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty and in September signed a full-scope safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
