As South Africa Integrates, Israel Cutting Military Ties

By Tim Kennedy

The close link between the nuclear arms programs in Israel and South Africa has existed for over 30 years. Starting in the mid-1960s, South Africa was Israel's principal supplier of strategic materials and fissile material, particularly a uranium ore known as yellowcake. Beginning in 1963, Israeli nuclear scientists (drawing on expertise supplied by France since the late 1950s) helped the apartheid government of South Africa create an atomic bomb.

Ties between Israeli and South African nuclear bomb programs intensified after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel was informed by French President Charles De Gaulle that Tel Aviv could no longer rely on France for technical support and know-how.

Investigative journalist James Adams' book on Israel's nuclear arms program, The Unnatural Alliance, reports that in 1968 Ernst David Bergmann, former head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, delivered a speech in Johannesburg, and spoke of the "common problem" facing Israel and South Africa: "Neither of us has neighbors to whom we can speak and to whom we are going to be able to speak in the near future. If we are in this position of isolation, perhaps it might be best for both countries to speak to each other."

Almost from the beginning of the defense alliance between Israel and South Africa, there was a symbiosis that exceeded the contribution each country could make to their respective arms programs. Both countries had been officially branded by the United Nations as "pariah" states for their official racial policies (South Africa for its apartheid laws; Israel for its Zionism). Both countries saw themselves as European settlers standing against a hostile indigenous population. Israel also needed a place to test its newly created nuclear weapons. Though Israel's Negev Desert was a suitable place to conceal its Dimona nuclear weapons facility, it was not large enough to discreetly detonate an atomic bomb. According to published sources, the CIA is confident that one of its surveillance satellites observed the first above-ground test of an Israeli nuclear device on Sept. 22, 1979 over the South Indian Ocean.

South Africa also depended on Israel for technical support of its conventional weapons programs. Several of South Africa's most commonly exported combat rifles are based on the "Galil" 5.56mm semi-automatic rifle through a licensing agreement with Israel Military Industries. Much of the artillery, mortars, air-dropped ordnance, hand grenades and landmines exported by South Africa was also developed with Israeli technical know-how.

However, South Africa's space program has been the greatest beneficiary of this cooperative relationship. Guidance, telemetry, targeting, and other sophisticated electronics on board South African long- and intermediate-range missiles were made in Israel or based on advanced American missile technology which—in the opinion of the U.S. Government Accounting Office—Israel acquired illegally from the Pentagon.

South Africa's nuclear program had Israeli fingerprints all over it.

The weapons-development partnership between Israel and South Africa began to go sour five years ago. This downturn in the relationship began in September 1990, when the CIA declassified several reports which revealed that South Africa had performed extensive research on nuclear weapons, and, by 1985, had sufficient fissile material on hand to create an atomic blast.

Political observers believe the timing of the release of the declassified documents was not accidental. Nuclear experts have long considered South Africa—along with India, Israel and Pakistan—as a member of the nuclear club that does not admit to having nuclear weapons, but "probably" possesses them. The disclosure of the CIA assessment was tantamount to the U.S. government demanding that South Africa lay its nuclear cards on the table.

South African President Frederik de Klerk, facing rising political opposition and hoping to end U.S.-imposed trade sanctions stemming from his government's apartheid policies, unexpectedly acknowledged that his country indeed once possessed six nuclear bombs. But de Klerk said the bombs had been developed during the presidency of his predecessor, P.W. Botha, and had been destroyed in 1989.

"South Africa's hands are clean," de Klerk told a special meeting of his parliament in March 1993. "We are concealing nothing...The government has decided to provide full information on South Africa's past nuclear program" to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency.

According to sources at the Pentagon, de Klerk's surprise announcement sent leaders in the Tel Aviv government scrambling for cover. The reason: South Africa's nuclear program—figuratively and literally—had Israeli fingerprints all over it. To distance themselves, Israel began a methodical phasing out of the joint Israeli-South African nuclear program.

Israeli Distrust of Mandela

The election of Nelson Mandela as South Africa's president in early 1994 accelerated the dissolution of this defense alliance. Sources at the Pentagon report that the Israelis' distrust of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) government prompted them to call an end to all sensitive cooperative relationships with South Africa, including the sharing of military intelligence and the sale of law enforcement equipment.

Sources reveal that Israel's decision to sever its ties totally with South Africa stems from Israeli fears that many members of Mandela's government were educated or received their military training in countries politically opposed to Israel. The Israelis believe there is a strong possibility such South African officials would hand over Israeli military secrets to these hostile countries.

Sources at the Pentagon say that Israel indeed has significantly scaled back its defense and intelligence missions in South Africa, and has ordered several of its state-supported military industries to close their offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

One Pentagon source told the Washington Report that Israel is particularly fearful that South Africa's new chief of its National Defense Forces Service Corps, Lt. General Lambert Moloi, may pass its military secrets to an unfriendly country because of his basic military training in Morocco, and his subsequent education in Russia and Cuba.

Many defense observers find irony in Tel Aviv's retreat from its defense alliance with South Africa. "The flow of defense technology and know-how in our military partnership with Israel was pretty much a 'one-way street,'" said a U.S. army officer who has been associated with security assistance programs with Israel. "We gave them the best we had—or their spies took it from us—and we understood that Israel's theft of our defense technology was part of the price we had to pay for having a strategic ally in the region. Now Israel's military partners are trying to steal their defense technology, and the Israelis are beginning to understand that this is a lousy way for people to treat their friends."

Tim Kennedy, an analyst based in Washington, DC, writes about defense technology and foreign affairs.