Before F.W de Klerk disclosed the nature of South Africa’s nuclear programme, more than 12 000 documents associated with the programme had been destroyed. One estimate is that SA had enough 90% enriched uranium to build 12 Hiroshima-type fission bombs.

“If nothing impedes its development, Pretoria will be capable of equipping 100 nuclear warheads, enough to keep the large African agglomerations under control… [T]hus when all the bourgeois gentlemen presidents will have finished the transformation of African states to private properties, to instruments of literary promotion, to means of obtaining phony distinctions of all sorts… and will have ceased to occupy the centre stage, while brimming with the blood of all their people like translucent leeches, they will withdraw amongst their motley ‘trophies’, the veil will tear, the dramatic realities will emerge in their tragic nakedness.”[1]

[1]Cheikh Anta Diop: ‘The Pretoria Bomb and the Future of our Species’: 1977