What's the worst South Africa could have done with its nuclear weapons program?

I remember reading a Larry Bond novel ages ago. Vortex. It deals with an even-more-far-right coup that takes hold of South Africa in the late 1980s, and ends up with a Cuban invasion of the country via Namibia. From what I remember the South Africans used a tactical nuclear weapon against one of the Cuban columns, which resulted in the Cubans retaliating with nerve gas, which ironically ended up hurting Cuba politically more than the nuclear strike hurt the South Africans. It ends up with NATO invading the country.

Obviously that's not real life. The original post doesn't specifically mention the apartheid government; as mentioned in the thread my hunch is that their rocket technology was probably more dangerous than their nuclear technology, because it's politically much more acceptable to sell rocket engineering abroad, it's easier to build rocket plants than refine uranium, and Mossad can't assassinate every South African rocket scientist. Does modern-day Syria have rockets that can reach Turkey?

The Israelis won't assassinate the SA scientists they would be helping them. There was a rumour that the Israelis tested a boosted fission weapon with SA help unfortunately for them the low cloud cover shifted
 
Honestly, if history is any precedent, jack shit. A.Q. Khan aside, people with nukes simply become harder to be invaded or subverted.

So not much from a geopolitical perspective, but if you're black, you're fucked because people are less likely to support your oppsition to the apartheid regime.
 
How is a radical going to nuke the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park?

How are they going to get hold of nukes?

I know they were just a bunch of dumb Boers but they didn't just leave the nukes lying around in some guy's bar at his farm.
It would obviously have to be a conspiracy involving elements of the government. And using a nuke wouldn't make as much sense as a small bombing. I was just trying to add a bit more realism to the TL.
 
RSA technology is thought to derive from the Jericho series just as the lone supposed Israeli/South African nuclear test was done off of the South African coast circa 1979. Apparently a satellite went where it was not supposed to and just happened to be in the quasi-right spot to get data.

Scenario: closet AWB member gets into cabinet in late 1980s, comes to power as Premier, puts buddies in charge of dozen nukes, uses force to put down Apartheid demostrators. Censorship en masse with focus on building up the radical and fascist elements but slowly enough as not to cause panic. By 1995 there are almost 100 nuclear weapons and a delivery system capable of worldwide power projection.

Scenario: South Africa falls into total civil war with radicals on each side gaining three nukes a piece each with RSA-3 missile or worse prototype bioweapons with a true 'nothing to lose' scenario
 
as the government collapse, it sells them to white nationalist n white Africa especially Afrikaners and in other "white countries"
 
Holy cow.



Yep, that'll do the trick.

Thanks for sharing this, that's really interesting.

The website also said:

As an ICBM, it is estimated that the three-stage version of the RSA-3 could have delivered a 340 kg warhead on Washington DC or a 400 kg warhead on Moscow. However such lightweight warheads were beyond declared South African technology. Therefore the RSA-3 was most likely purely a space launch adaptation of the RSA-2 IRBM, with the Peacekeeper-class RSA-4 fulfilling the ICBM role.

So there was no immediate threats except droping the nuke as a bomb.
 
Scenario: closet AWB member gets into cabinet in late 1980s, comes to power as Premier, puts buddies in charge of dozen nukes, uses force to put down Apartheid demostrators. Censorship en masse with focus on building up the radical and fascist elements but slowly enough as not to cause panic. By 1995 there are almost 100 nuclear weapons and a delivery system capable of worldwide power projection.

RSA economy would so tanked in such scenario that they would have difficulty to afford the R&D and production process.
 
as the government collapse, it sells them to white nationalist n white Africa especially Afrikaners and in other "white countries"

Where would all these evil white nationalists be? In what countries? I'm especially interested to hear in what other countries the Afrikaners are.
 
The Israelis won't assassinate the SA scientists they would be helping them. There was a rumour that the Israelis tested a boosted fission weapon with SA help unfortunately for them the low cloud cover shifted
great novel. i use the afrikaans term seskaapal creature when i want to be secretly mad.
 
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