On 24 March 1993 South Africa’s President, FW de Klerk, shocked the world by revealing that the government had secretly built nuclear weapons and, under his watch, decided to dismantle them. It was an astonishing confession from a state regarded as an international pariah thanks to its racist apartheid regime.
South Africa remains the first and only state to have developed a nuclear arsenal and dismantled it. This dramatic reversal transformed the country’s image overnight from global outcast to the unexpected champion of non-proliferation.
