WI: South Africa under apartheid had a working nuclear programme?

[Middlesex_Toffeeman]

Basically what it says in the title - WI the South Africans had a full nuclear programme that worked? Would apartheid survive until the modern day (perish the thought!)? Would this lead to the Rhodesian gov't winning the Bush War (ditto)? How would the Communist states in Africa react to the fact they now have a nuclear power in their back garden?

 

[BeardedHoplite]

They...did. It didn't change anything

 

[Theoretical_TJ]

The way it changes is if they decide to nuke or neutron bomb some rebellious, "uppity" part of the country to keep Apartheid in power as a brutal retaliation. Then, they become even more of a pariah state, but the threat of your entire city being exterminated by your own country could potentially keep things in power.

 

[Catsmate]

Basically what it says in the title - WI the South Africans had a full nuclear programme that worked? Would apartheid survive until the modern day (perish the thought!)? Would this lead to the Rhodesian gov't winning the Bush War (ditto)? How would the Communist states in Africa react to the fact they now have a nuclear power in their back garden?

They did. The built operational fission bombs and had the ability to deliver them, to relatively undefended targets anyway.
It didn't help.

 

[Middlesex_Toffeeman]

I more mean if they had nuclear capability equal to that of OTL North Korea - nuclear triad and generally a pain in the arse to neighbouring countries.

 

[TheKutKu]

What good would it do? They had 6 nukes and the planes to deliver them, all of their enemies were at their borders (except you know, cuba). They did have an orbital launcher in the work in collaboration with Israel but development was going slowly and it would have taken many years to make it as an ICCB.

An ICBM would send a completely different message to the rest of the world, it would be a much more message than just a few nukes for self defence

 

[Mackus]

The way it changes is if they decide to nuke or neutron bomb some rebellious, "uppity" part of the country to keep Apartheid in power as a brutal retaliation. Then, they become even more of a pariah state, but the threat of your entire city being exterminated by your own country could potentially keep things in power.

Nonsense. They'd won every conventional engagement with their neighbors or with internal rebels. Nukes weren't to be used in Africa, they were deterrent in case USA decided to invade them.

 

[Raferty]

The way it changes is if they decide to nuke or neutron bomb some rebellious, "uppity" part of the country to keep Apartheid in power as a brutal retaliation. Then, they become even more of a pariah state, but the threat of your entire city being exterminated by your own country could potentially keep things in power.

Regardless of the tendency for modern day liberation movement politicians who use camoflage garb and weapon symbolism to portray their activities as some kind of successful military struggle, it was the international bondholders and the domestic protest movements that actually made a difference.

At no point in time was the Apartheid government in military danger of having its frontiers breached, nor was it in any danger of falling to internal rebellion. The most violent part of pre-democratic South Africa was the modern day KwaZulu Natal province, where the UDF and later the ANC and the Inkatha movement fought what was essentially a paramilitary blood feud, and had the Apartheid government actually cared about that part of the country (they didn't, for reasons of racial demographics), the violence could have been substantially clamped down upon. But they were never going to nuke it.

The Apartheid government had two big problems: 1, they couldn't militarily engage the biggest danger to the state, which were international sanctions and the UDF, and 2, the writing on the wall after the Rubicon speech made corruption in the civil service radically transform from a relative non-issue to a massive one almost overnight, as it became clear that there was a limited time to loot and everyone wanted in.

None of these issues could have been solved by a nuclear bomb detonation.

Now, if a military coup by hardliners happens, things change drastically. The issue of civil unrest gets way worse and bloodshed from it would as well. Conscription resistance would actually be a problem; SADF discipline & morale in OTL was actually pretty good, despite political fractures in the white community stemming from the English/Afrikaner split; it would be much harder to paper over in this case. There would probably be multiple Marikana type incidents in labor disputes. The state would go from being a pariah to being an utter leper. And the nuclear program might, if the coup elements are extreme enough, be considered as something to start flaunting. Do I think they'd nuke Lusaka, Harare, or Luanda? Probably not. But international mediation would be much harder to bring about.

 

[Kotka]

Regardless of the tendency for modern day liberation movement politicians who use camoflage garb and weapon symbolism to portray their activities as some kind of successful military struggle, it was the international bondholders and the domestic protest movements that actually made a difference.

At no point in time was the Apartheid government in military danger of having its frontiers breached, nor was it in any danger of falling to internal rebellion. The most violent part of pre-democratic South Africa was the modern day KwaZulu Natal province, where the UDF and later the ANC and the Inkatha movement fought what was essentially a paramilitary blood feud, and had the Apartheid government actually cared about that part of the country (they didn't, for reasons of racial demographics), the violence could have been substantially clamped down upon. But they were never going to nuke it.

The Apartheid government had two big problems: 1, they couldn't militarily engage the biggest danger to the state, which were international sanctions and the UDF, and 2, the writing on the wall after the Rubicon speech made corruption in the civil service radically transform from a relative non-issue to a massive one almost overnight, as it became clear that there was a limited time to loot and everyone wanted in.

None of these issues could have been solved by a nuclear bomb detonation.

Now, if a military coup by hardliners happens, things change drastically. The issue of civil unrest gets way worse and bloodshed from it would as well. Conscription resistance would actually be a problem; SADF discipline & morale in OTL was actually pretty good, despite political fractures in the white community stemming from the English/Afrikaner split; it would be much harder to paper over in this case. There would probably be multiple Marikana type incidents in labor disputes. The state would go from being a pariah to being an utter leper. And the nuclear program might, if the coup elements are extreme enough, be considered as something to start flaunting. Do I think they'd nuke Lusaka, Harare, or Luanda? Probably not. But international mediation would be much harder to bring about.

At Konrad Sartorius story Crisis in the Kremlin, South Africa nukes Soweto, Luanda, Maputo, Harare and other African cities are nuked as part od a "Sampson Option" while the apartheid government falls as part of a civil war.

 

[Alanith]

Nonsense. They'd won every conventional engagement with their neighbors or with internal rebels. Nukes weren't to be used in Africa, they were deterrent in case USA decided to invade them.

So you'll... what again? Lose most of those jets against a US navy carriers airwing, and then maybe get through with one of them only to ensure that your personal command bunker is target of a minuteman within 30 minutes?

 

[TheKutKu]

So you'll... what again? Lose most of those jets against a US navy carriers airwing, and then maybe get through with one of them only to ensure that your personal command bunker is target of a minuteman within 30 minutes?

The US wouldn’t answer a South African nuclear attack with a minuteman...

 

[Alanith]

The US wouldn’t answer a South African nuclear attack with a minuteman...

Depends on who’s in the Oval Office.

 

[Mackus]

The US wouldn’t answer a South African nuclear attack with a minuteman...

Make that counterattack: they wouldn't bomb USA unless they invaded them first.

So you'll... what again? Lose most of those jets against a US navy carriers airwing, and then maybe get through with one of them only to ensure that your personal command bunker is target of a minuteman within 30 minutes?

You're missing the point of deterrent - it's made so it wouldn't have to be used. South Africans only had bombers before they scrapped their program, they'll certainly move on to develop ICBM or sub-launched missiles, precisely because they'd be harder to intercept.
And again, the point wasn't to attack America, but to discourage Americans from attacking them.
Sure, their situation would be bad if invaded by US (but that's the case whether they have nukes or don't), but the point of having nukes is that they drastically reduce odds of being invaded by USA in the first place. Because even stupidest warhawks know (at least, by God, I hope they know), that if you invade nuclear capable country, they'll get desperate, and nuke your own.

 

[Catsmate]

The US wouldn’t answer a South African nuclear attack with a minuteman...

US policy was and is to respond with nuclear weapons to attacks on US forces with WMDs.

 

[Alanith]

Make that counterattack: they wouldn't bomb USA unless they invaded them first.



You're missing the point of deterrent - it's made so it wouldn't have to be used. South Africans only had bombers before they scrapped their program, they'll certainly move on to develop ICBM or sub-launched missiles, precisely because they'd be harder to intercept.
And again, the point wasn't to attack America, but to discourage Americans from attacking them.
Sure, their situation would be bad if invaded by US (but that's the case whether they have nukes or don't), but the point of having nukes is that they drastically reduce odds of being invaded by USA in the first place. Because even stupidest warhawks know (at least, by God, I hope they know), that if you invade nuclear capable country, they'll get desperate, and nuke your own.

Does South Africa even have the capability to hit the American Mainland with what they had in service? I'd assume any nuclear strikes would be against US troop concentrations or naval assets.

 

[Blue cat]

Does South Africa even have the capability to hit the American Mainland with what they had in service? I'd assume any nuclear strikes would be against US troop concentrations or naval assets.

As far as I know (based on what I have read over the years..)

South Africa didn't have any realistic ability to strike the U.S. mainland.

The South African nuclear program wasn't intended to be used against U.S. forces. But I seem to recall reading that there was a concept that it could be used in a round about way to pressure the U.S. / West into supporting South Africa, if South Africa was facing a serious military threat.

As I seem to recall the theory was that on balance the U.S. / West would rather support South Africa than see South Africa use nuclear weapons.

Edit to add:
IMHO the South African nuclear weapons program probably provides a reasonable template for what other western aligned nations might do if the they felt sufficently threatened that they needed to embark on a nuclear weapons program. A secret program that creates simple gun type fission weapons that are almost certain to work without a test and a plan to use the threat of revealing their existence thru a test to pressure other nations into helping you sounds like a reasonable plan to me.

If push comes to shove I expect most first world nations with real air forces could probably get a few aircraft to their bomb release points if need be although intercontinental range missions would likely pose a problem.

A secret program that produces a modest number of free fall fission bombs is also likely to be a lot less expensive than North Korea type program and is probably a lot easier to hide.

An F35 for example with a simple fission bomb would likely be very hard for most nations to stop, I also suspect F16's F18's etc could get the job done as well.

 

[Blue cat]

I more mean if they had nuclear capability equal to that of OTL North Korea - nuclear triad and generally a pain in the arse to neighbouring countries.

My understanding was that South Africa wanted better relations with at least the western world (or at least wanted to stop relations from getting any worse) when they embarked on their secret nuclear program. I don't see a North Korea style nuclear program helping them achieve those goals.