South Africa: Defusing the apartheid bomb

A grassroots campaign is gaining momentum in its drive to cut off U.S. assistance to South Africa's nuclear program, which is widely believed to be producing nuclear weapons. Called "Stop the Apartheid Bomb," the campaign was launched a year ago by the Washington office on Africa (WOA), a Washington, D.C.-based lobby for black majority rule in southern Africa.

The organizing effort grew out of concern over mounting evidence that South Africa, with considerable technical and financial assistance from Western corporations and governments, has developed the capability of manufacturing nuclear weapons on a large scale and has actually exploded nuclear bombs in secret tests. Jean Sindab, WOA executive director, notes that "even though the Pretoria government has reached an advanced state in its ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, it is still dependent on the West for high technology, enriched uranium, and technical training."

"It is for this reason that we call on the Reagan administration to cease all forms of nuclear assistance to South Africa and to use its leverage with our European allies to do likewise," she says.

WOA is supporting legislation sponsored by Representative Charles Rangel (D-New York), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. The Rangel bill prohibits U.S. nuclear cooperation with South Africa. Last fall, an amendment to the Export Administration Act sponsored by Representative Howard Wolpe (D-Michigan) that closes loopholes regarding U.S. nuclear exports which affect South Africa passed the House of Representatives, partly through the lobbying efforts of the campaign. Congress is about to act on working out the differences between the bill and a similar but weaker version passed by the Senate.

The organizing effort comes at a time when the Reagan administration has circumvented the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act passed by Congress in 1978, which bans foreign sales of enriched uranium, the raw ingredient of nuclear weapons, to countries which have refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, South Africa among them. Reagan has allowed Pretoria to acquire the substance from Europe through U.S. brokering companies.

While South Africa denies that it is building a nuclear arsenal, the development and direction of its nuclear program has convinced many that the opposite is true-not least of all the Central Intelligence Agency. In the fall of 1979, the CIA briefed selected lawmakers on Capitol Hill that an intense double flash, characteristic of an atomic blast, was observed off the coast of South Africa on the night of September 23, 1979. Many scientists also concluded that the flash was a bomb test.

U.S. assistance to South Africa, which began with purchases of South African uranium in the 1950s, was justified as legitimate help for Pretoria's civilian nuclear energy program. The U.S.-based Allis Chalmers Corporation won the contract to construct South Africa's first nuclear research reactor, Safari I, under President Dwight Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" plan, a program that promoted the transfer of U.S. nuclear expertise and technology. Under the same program, the U.S. agreed to supply enriched weapons grade uranium to fuel the reactor.

As the result of U.S. and other outside technical assistance, Pretoria built a second research reactor, Safari II, in 1967. A pilot uranium enrichment plant capable of producing weapons grade uranium was completed in 1975 with U.S. and West German help. South Africa's first commercial nuclear power reactor at Koeburg, which started up in March 1984, is now generating electricity-and enough plutonium to manufacture one nuclear weapon every two weeks.

Pretoria has refused to allow the uranium enrichment plant to be inspected by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that international safeguards are in place to prevent the diversion of nuclear materials to weapons production.

Numerous U.S. corporations have collaborated with South Africa's nuclear program through construction work or providing technology. Those involved in the enrichment plant include Boeing, Foxboro International, Honeywell, IBM, and ITT. Construction of the Koeburg power plant drew in Combustion Engineering, General Electric, and Westinghouse among others.

While South Africa obtains uranium from its own mines, Pretoria's main source of uranium is Namibia, which South Africa has occupied illegally since World War I. Experts predict that Namibia will become the world's fourth largest uranium supplier by the 1990s. Even if current negotiations for Namibian independence are successful-an event many observers believe is unlikely-South Africa will probably retain considerable control over the area's mineral resources.

"Uranium from Namibia is cheaper than that mined in other countries because of the racial discrimination in wages, the low taxation rate and the freedom from social, political, ecological, or any other legal restraints in Namibia," according to the findings of the 1980 hearings held by the United Nations Council on Namibia. "The illegal occupation of Namibia, is therefore, a boon to the sellers and buyers of Namibian uranium."

In a recent development, a British researcher who travelled to Namibia in March to investigate uranium mining for the U.N. has just been released from three weeks in a Namibian prison. The researcher, Alun Roberts, became known for his 1980 book The Rossing File, which exposed British imports of Namibian uranium that were not previously known. Roberts was arrested and held on minor charges after South African security officials became aware that he was probing further into corporate involvement in uranium mining.

In southern Africa, the connection between nuclear arms and the black majority's struggle for self-determination is stark. Jean Sindab stresses that "South Africa hopes to gain great political and military benefits by simply possessing nuclear weapons and developing an extensive nuclear industry." Sindab adds that the atomic bomb allows Pretoria to resist international pressure to get out of Namibia and to eliminate apartheid in South Africa.

Jack Colhoun is a co-chair of the National Committee Against Registration and the Draft. He writes frequently on U.S. foreign and military policy.