ABSTRACT
South Africa’s role in the transition into a Third Nuclear Age appears to be dominated by normative concerns focused on accelerating nuclear disarmament and the distribution of nuclear technologies for civilian use in the Global South. While the Apartheid government was closely aligned with the “West” during the First Nuclear Age and even built an independent nuclear weapon capability, post-Apartheid South Africa became a – if not the – disarmament champion in the Second Nuclear Age after giving up the bomb and joining the NPT in the 1990s. South African officials leverage this prestige, and Pretoria has become an outspoken supporter of nuclear disarmament, nuclear technology transfer and stronger non-proliferation mechanisms. It has effectively leveraged its new-found moral authority on issues of nuclear disarmament to increase its political footprint in the global nuclear order and especially in Africa and the Global South. South Africa’s role in the global nuclear order should be contextualised within the wider trend of state and non-state actors increasingly participating as norm entrepreneurs that are eager to shape the normative contours of the emerging global nuclear landscape.
