While working in South Africa some years before the country’s African population achieved Independence, I became embroiled in a high security situation over its then pro-Apartheid Government being offered nuclear weapons by a very closed lipped and denying Israeli Government.

On that occasion, I had heard whispers from a senior foreign diplomat, who I knew, that Israel considered Apartheid South Africa to be its only real ally as both nations were ‘on the nose’ as far as world opinion was concerned.

The Israelis believed that they would eventually have to fight for their sovereignty and lives as they were surrounded by anti-Semetic countries, just as South Africa had potentially dangerous enemies to its north who were seeking Independence and were openly claiming that they intended to destroy Apartheid and its supporters at the point of a gun.

As a result of this thinking, Tel Aviv had secretly decided that South Africa should possess sufficient nuclear firepower to protect itself from possible military incursions by anti-Apartheid forces or by Communist- inspired groups working locally and from Castro’s Cuba on behalf of the Kremlin.

As it was, Nelson Mandela by this time was a politician in waiting and, as soon as he became the leader of the anti-Apartheid African National Congress, he had, by undercover means, launched South Africa’s first Communist Party as an adjunct to the A.N.C. with ample and illegal Soviet Russian help and the aim of controlling the country’s rich resources, including its de Beers’ diamond mines and the wealth of its vast  Witwatersrand and Orange Free State gold deposits.

Mandela had also already laid plans to set up a fully equipped army of anti-Apartheid fighters to be known as ‘Umkonto We Sizwe,’ or the Spear of the Nation. In doing so, he was also provided with the righthand man assistance of Colonel Joe Slovo, of the Russian KGB, and had secretly written a book on “How to Become a Good Communist”.

In addition to these developments, Mandela had played a leading role in the formation of a “Freedom Charter” that planned a coup de état by taking over the White -controlled South African Parliament by force.

The somewhat earth-shattering nuclear bomb information I had received from my over talkative diplomat and behind-the-scenes informant was usually very accurate. As a result, I took his words to be true but was duty bound not to take them for granted and had to go about checking his story out in finite detail before it could be published to the world.

The problem in those Cold War days, of course, was that the Western World was terrified at the prospect of any foreign country obtaining nuclear armaments apart from the United States, Britain, France and Soviet Russia.

The spectre and horrors of a nuclear war were just too much for world opinion to accept and, as a result, it was almost impossible for a journalist to get any real answers to questions — or from research–involving nuclear armament.

As soon as I started asking questions of the Israeli Embassy in South Africa and the South African Government in Pretoria, I started finding myself being ostracised by many of my former official contacts.

The Apartheid Government’s Minister of Justice who I contacted for an interview on the subject told me the whole matter was a hoax with a warning that I had better forget the matter from that moment on, particularly as I was a known opponent of Apartheid. In fact, when I finally left South Africa in the late 1990s I was branded as a meddling anti – South African Afrikaner Government spy.

My enquiries did, however, reveal a series of high-level under-cover meetings having been held between the South Africans and the Israelis but I had no clear proof of nuclear warheads being gifted to Pretoria by Tel Aviv.

I did write one article on South Africa and nuclear war. This news story included a minor hint that Apartheid South Africa may eventually possess nuclear bomb knowhow.

Imagine my surprise then when I was here in Australia, and I received official word that Israel had in the 1970s formed a secret military alliance with Apartheid South Africa and had handed over its nuclear manufacturing plans and warheads.

As a result of this highly secretive and little-known history, Israel became Apartheid South Africa’s closest military ally and Tel Aviv became the most important foreign arms supplier to the South African Defence Force. In 1981, the A.D.F. also made military history as the first user of modern warhead drones developed solely in Israel.

I would like to think, however, that South Africa’s acquisition of weapons of mass destruction may have at least deterred Soviet Russia from militarily infiltrating Africa by way of the continent’s southern tip and most important resource area.

Now, since Independence was achieved and Apartheid was thankfully abolished, South Africa is a major supporter of the treaty for the non-proliferation of nuclear arms and has reportedly shut the door on any thoughts of nuclear arms but has allied itself to the new Russian-linked BRICS group of anti-Western World countries.

By contrast, however, Israel to this day continues to maintain complete silence, as far as I know, on its nuclear capabilities and is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.