Gerard Boyce

My Broadband

With America’s unilateral attack on Syria, a Russian ally, there are reasonable fears that the worsening relations between Washington and Moscow could escalate. Africans should not imagine that these events are too far away to affect them. The US and Russia are nuclear powers. War between them endangers the whole world. Africans should explore creative ways of putting the issue of nuclear disarmament firmly back on the global agenda.

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South Africans who agree that government policies must enjoy popular support, who believe that peace is a desirable value which society ought to collectively and actively aspire towards and who admit the possibility that nuclear technology could be incompatible with the genuine pursuit of peace, should object to the government proceeding with its current nuclear plans without comprehensive public consultation.

The South African

The prospect of South Africa joining the UN Security Council as a permanent member could explain President Zuma’s reported enthusiasm for the nuclear project. Being remembered as the president who gave Africa a greater voice on the global stage and secured South Africa’s role as the continent’s megaphone is probably too tantalizing for Zuma and his administration to forego.

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South Africa’s nuclear programme will be a disaster. Besides the fallouts being witnessed in the jostling for gains by greedy politicians, the project is likely to gobble up huge amounts of public funds that will be difficult to account for as the government will cite national security concerns of nuclear power, thereby curtailing citizens’ right to accountability.

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Seventy years after commencement of the Manhattan project that developed the atomic bomb, a conscious debate on its socio-political consequences is missing when decisions are reached to adopt nuclear energy, most recently by a number of African countries. Until today, the costly projects draw on the legacy of demonstrating power, couched in language of necessity and accompanied by secrecy.

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A project that could potentially meet a number of national priorities would be if the government incorporated a new capital district somewhere in the centre of the country and moved Parliament there. Geography dictates that a site somewhere in the Free State would probably be most suitable for this purpose.

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