Post #1377007
2026-04-07 17:44 UTC
Replies (2)
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@khm@hj.9fs.net 2026-04-07 18:13
As has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there wasn't direct coercion involved, but the circumstances surrounding South Africa's denuclearization require an extremely friendly interpretation to interpret as well-motivated. The Angolan war abruptly ending, Botha getting chased out of office, de Klerk scrambling to rescue what influence he could, the unbanning of the ANC, Mandela's freedom, and denuclearization all happened in the space of like a year. Shit was happening and the Apartheid fucks could see they were running out of road. So, given the timing, did they decommission because they thought it was the right thing to do, or to keep the bomb out of the hands of the people they'd been oppressing for generations? CC: @davep@infosec.exchange
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@passenger@kolektiva.social 2026-04-07 19:10
@pixx @khm @davep Since you asked: To me, as to many people, democracy is about more than just electoralism. South Africa in 1988 was not democratic, for all that we had elections. Not only could Black, Coloured and Asian South Africans not vote, but the people who lived in the neighbouring states which we dominated could not vote. We had a small White population exercising hegemony at bayonet-point over a much larger population, both within and without the country, and the nukes were built in preparation for the day that those bayonets were insufficient. The ritual of elections doesn't change that this is fundamentally antidemocratic. Removing our nuclear blackmail ability - for all that it was done by an extremely shady leader under extremely shady circumstances - meant that we no longer had the ability to terrorise people into obeying us. We had to build a consensus, both within the country and the world at large. That is an inherently democratic step. Several years later, we also had elections with a wider franchise, but by then the nukes were gone. Disarmament was the last act of the fascist Apartheid regime.