Paper short abstract:

South Africa's nuclear waste disposal facility, Vaalputs, became operational in 1986. However, local communities and their relation to the facility remains an enduring and understudied instance of nuclear necropolitics.

Paper long abstract:

Apartheid South Africa produced at least six nuclear bombs but dismantled its nuclear weapons programme by 1993 on the eve of the country's first democratic elections. Nuclear waste remains an enduring legacy of the apartheid era's techno-nationalism that fostered the country's nuclear ambitions. The country's only nuclear waste depository, Vaalputs, became operational in 1986. It is located in an arid, isolated and sparsely populated rural area of the country. Original scoping reports for the site predominantly ignored the presence of villages inhabited by, for example, descendants of the Khoi and so-called Coloured (mixed race) people. Moreover, research on these 16 villages and their inhabitants' relation to and engagement on nuclear waste remains scarce. Therefore, the paper intends to address this issue as an instance of nuclear necropolitics and a sacrifice zone. The paper also intends to achieve four objectives, namely to analyse the meaning and origins of Vaalputs, and community views on and engagement with nuclear waste and the nuclear facility. In the third instance, the paper intends to outline the myths and rituals associated with nuclear waste and the site, and the implications thereof. To achieve these objectives, the paper will apply Foucault's notion of biopolitics, Mbembe's notion of necropolitics and Alexis-Martin's notion of nuclear necropolitics.