South Africa and weapons of mass destruction
| South Africa | |
|---|---|
| Nuclear program start date | 1967 |
| First nuclear weapon test | Possible, 22 September 1979 (See Vela incident) |
| First fusion weapon test | Unknown |
| Last nuclear test | Unknown |
| Largest yield test | Unknown |
| Total tests | Unknown |
| Peak stockpile | 6 |
| Current stockpile | None; the programme was voluntarily dismantled in 1989. |
| Maximum range | 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) (English Electric Canberra) |
| NPT signatory | Yes |
From the 1960s to the 1990s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons under the apartheid government.
South Africa's nuclear weapons doctrine was designed for political leverage rather than actual battlefield use, specifically to induce the United States to intervene in any regional conflicts between South Africa and the Soviet Union or its proxies. To achieve a minimum credible deterrence, a total of six nuclear weapons were covertly assembled by the late 1980s.
Before the anticipated changeover to a majority-elected African National Congress–led government in the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, the first state in the world which voluntarily gave up all nuclear arms it had developed itself.
The country has been a signatory of the Biological Weapons Convention since 1975, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since 1991, and the Chemical Weapons Convention since 1995. In February 2019, South Africa ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, becoming the first country to have had nuclear weapons, disarmed them, and gone on to sign the treaty.