African weapons

During the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Six nuclear weapons were assembled. With the anticipated changeover to a majority-elected government in the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, the only nation in the world to date which voluntarily gave up nuclear arms it had developed itself.
The country has been a signatory of the Biological Weapons Convention since 1975, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty since 1991, and the Chemical Weapons Convention since 1995
South Africa built its nuclear weapons at the Circle facility near Pretoria that was run by the South African armaments corporation Armscor. The building contained a high security vault which stored highly enriched uranium awaiting processing into weapon components and the finished nuclear weapons. South Africa also had other storage vaults for nuclear weapons, but these vaults were not used during the height of the program in the 1980s.
South African developed an elaborate set of security, safety, and control mechanisms over their nuclear weapons, prototypes, and test devices. This short report focuses on the storage of South Africa's nuclear weapons and the procedures, weapon design philosophy, and hardware that increased the ability to control access to these weapons. This information is drawn from ISIS archives and will be included in a ISIS report on South Africa's nuclear weapons program and its subsequent dismantlement.