The African Nuclear Landscape: Emerging Strategic Challenges and Implications
By Major Will Turner, U.S. Army
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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper are the author's own and do not reflect the position of the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
Outside Pretoria, South Africa
“There -- it’s there! Gate 3. Keep going, lekker!” He wrapped the window with his knuckles, squinting into the darkness at the spotlights by the checkpoint. The van slowed on the R104 and crept towards the shoulder of the road, the driver checking his rearview for headlights. It was just after 11:40 PM. “Masks,” the driver said. Three of the seven men in the back pulled on their ski masks. Several checked their pistols. The man in the passenger seat racked a round into the chamber, leaned forward, and stowed it in the concealed holster in the small of his back. He checked the tools in his gear bag one last time. The van rolled to a stop in the warm November night. “No cars. Shap shap!”
With practiced ease, four of the men jumped from the van and plunged south into the dust and scrub acacia. As the last door slammed shut, the van was off again, and the other four men masked up and doing their final checks. They jumped out and scrambled into the bush about two kilometers further down the R104, near Gate 2. With the final slam of the sliding door, the van continued down the highway, moving to a pre-planned location.
The first group walked in parallel with the Gate 3 access road, staying some distance off to the right. They hiked south in single file for about ten minutes, crossed a service road, moved into a small ravine, and stopped short of the 20-foot fence marking the boundary of the property. Two of them turned on their head torches, the dim red halos tracing their paths as they moved up to the buzzing electric fence. 10,000 volts. The other two followed behind and scanned the darkness while they worked at the base of the fence. With some difficulty in the dark, they assembled custom-built jack tools from their bags. Somewhat clumsily with oversized rubber gloves, they managed to move them into place beneath the fence. They both laid down behind the jacks to distance themselves from the angry hum. Spaced roughly a meter apart, the men grunted with effort, slowly turning the small levers, carefully avoiding an accidental death.
As the minutes ticked by, the jack arms, with their integrated ceramic blades, gradually lifted and cut a meter-long portion of the fence, just enough for someone to crawl under. “Howzit?” One asked. “Now now.” Donning a rubber-lined, full-torso apron, one man, with help, crawled and was pushed underneath to the other side. It was just after midnight. He quickly moved off to his left, where he knew the control box sat. Opening the box, he dismantled the magnetically sealed anti-tamper device and cut the communications trip-line to the main guard center. He cut the power to the fence. “Yebo!” he whispered back towards the others. He immediately heard bolt cutters on the fence and soon was joined by the rest of the group.
They moved up the hill, found the road, and walked to the fire station. They moved to the fire engine parked between the station and the facility Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and one man activated the ladder. He shifted it to the correct window, the loud cranking sound of the servos making him clench his jaw. It was now aligned with the second floor of the EOC. He locked it into position, and the four men clambered up the ladder, through the unlocked window, and climbed inside. The last man closed the window behind them. And then the dog downstairs started barking. Eish.
They froze. Gunshots. Faint, but without a doubt the other team by Gate 2. They hurried down the stairwell, rounded the corner and saw the door to the control center. It was cracked open, and a man was backlit by the glow of computer lights. He was on the phone, looking on with terror. “He’s no in wheelchair bruh! Why do you phone!? Why do you phone bruh!?” The man, stunned, only asked in a whispered voice, “Is this a joke?” They rushed him. The door slammed open with their blow. A woman inside too. Screaming. One of the men grabbed her by the ear and forced her to her knees. He put a pistol to her head. The dog went berserk but stayed in the corner.
One of them hit the man who wasn’t supposed to be there with a pipe. That shook him from his stupor. He knocked two of them over. A gunshot. The man who wasn’t supposed to be there collapsed in a pool of blood. Three of them started to beat him. The woman wouldn’t stop screaming. “He called! He called!” All the men disappeared into the night. The security detail, expected to arrive within three minutes of alert, arrived 24 minutes later.
Not far from the EOC, a few buildings away, sat a vault. Behind just a few more fences, a few padlocks, a keypad. All planned for. In that vault sat hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU). Enough weapons-grade fissile material to construct 25 nuclear bombs. It was the night of the 8th of November 2007 at South Africa’s Pelindaba Nuclear facility, 30 kilometers west of Pretoria. The HEU was untouched. Frans Antonie Gerber was shot, his girlfriend Miran shaken, but both made full recoveries. They were only there because the shift supervisor -- a paraplegic -- got drunk at an employee party earlier that night and asked to switch shifts. The men were never caught. Their motives were never determined.
AN OVERVIEW OF NUCLEAR AFRICA