SIMWA

SIMWA (SADF-IDF Mutual Wartime Agreement) was a military cooperation agreement drawn up between the South African Defense Force (SADF) and the Israel (IDF). According to Ari Ben-Menashe, it took two years to work out after Ezer Weizman, then Israeli Defense Minister, visited Pretoria in 1978 and agreed with P.W. Botha, Prime Minister of South Africa, on a wartime alliance as the price for continuing nuclear tests.¹

The agreement stipulated that if either country faced a shortage of matériel during war or military operations, the other country would provide supplies from its own stockpiles. It also included a provision for an annual meeting of the deputy chiefs of general staff, alternating between Israel and South Africa.¹

Under this agreement, Israel sold 175mm artillery that could carry small nuclear devices to South Africa. South Africa also agreed to invest in Israel's nuclear program and provide testing grounds in the Indian Ocean for Israeli nuclear tests.¹

Ben-Menashe wrote that in 1979 Israel carried out a number of Indian Ocean tests, "one of which was detected by satellite because its big flash occurred during a break in the otherwise cloudy weather." He wrote that the South Africans denied the flash was theirs and that the Israeli government "has refused to comment on this test."²

Lieutenant Colonel Shimon Lavee, head of the Special Assistance Branch (SIM) of the External Relations Department of Israeli Military Intelligence, prepared the Israeli version of the agreement.¹

The 1975 agreement

A top secret agreement between the two defense ministers is dated March 30, 1975 in the South African record. The South African History Archive holds a copy released under South Africa's access-to-information law. It is signed by P.W. Botha and Shimon Peres and contains a clause stating that "the very existence of this agreement" is to remain secret.³ Press reporting on the same documents describes a covert agreement governing a military alliance known as Secment, signed some weeks before Peres's 1975 offer of nuclear warheads to Botha.⁴ The office of President Shimon Peres has denied that any such nuclear negotiation took place.⁵ Ben-Menashe dates the SIMWA negotiation to the two years after 1978.¹