Sunday, January 18, 2026

Obituary for Renfrew Christie, who helped sabotage South Africa's nuclear program

NYT:

Renfrew Christie, a South African scholar whose undercover work for the African National Congress was critical in hobbling the apartheid government’s secret nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, died on Dec. 21 at his home in Cape Town. He was 76.

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By the time the bombs began going off, planted by his colleagues in uMkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary wing of the A.N.C., Dr. Christie was already in prison. 

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Terrorism was a capital offense, and Dr. Christie narrowly escaped hanging. But as he later recounted, he was deliberately placed on the death row closest to the gallows at the Pretoria Maximum Security Prison. For two and half years, he was forced to listen to the hangings of more than 300 prisoners.

“The whole prison would sing for two or three days before the hanging, to ease the terror of the victims,”