Paper short abstract:

The contribution sheds light on how the South Africans came to sign the NPT, bringing to the fore the role played by Soviet delegates in the process. This is a new perspective, which includes considering several entanglements and connections between apartheid diplomats and their Soviet counterparts.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution sheds light on how the South Africans came to accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), bringing to the fore the role played by Soviet delegates at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. This is a new perspective, hitherto absent from scholarly accounts. It includes considering several entanglements and connections between apartheid diplomats and their Soviet counterparts in various international fora, despite the absence of official bilateral relations between the two states from the early 1960s. From the mid-1980s, an unlikely close relationship developed between Pretoria’s and Moscow’s permanent representatives to the IAEA in Vienna, and the mutual trust built during various encounters towards the end of the 1980s helped bring South Africa’s nuclear infrastructure under IAEA auspices. I look at the influence of the diplomats of the NPT-Depository States (the UK, the USSR, and the US), whose officials had long attempted to drive NPT negotiations forward with Pretoria’s diplomats, and include consideration of their joint role in achieving South Africa’s accession to the NPT in 1991. I focus specifically on Soviet diplomacy between 1987, when multiparty efforts gained momentum with the aim of getting Pretoria’s leaders back at the negotiation table with the Depositories, and 1991, when South Africa finally acceded to the Treaty.