Renfrew Christie Dies at 76; Sabotaged Racist Regime's Nuclear Program

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Renfrew Christie Dies at 76; Sabotaged Racist Regime’s Nuclear Program

He played a key role in ending apartheid South Africa’s secret weapons program in the 1980s by helping the African National Congress bomb critical facilities.

Jan. 14, 2026


Renfrew Christie in 1988. After Dr. Christie’s death, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa praised his “relentless and fearless commitment to our freedom.”
Reuters

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. ... The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter Camilla Christie said.

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa paid tribute to Dr. Christie after his death, saying his “relentless and fearless commitment to our freedom demands our appreciation.” ... The A.N.C., in a statement, called Dr. Christie’s role “in disrupting and exposing the apartheid state’s clandestine nuclear weapons program” an “act of profound revolutionary significance.”

From the doctoral dissertation he had written at the University of Oxford on the history of electricity in South Africa, Dr. Christie provided the research needed to blow up the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station; the Arnot coal-fired power station; the Sasol oil-from-coal facilities that produced the heavy water critical to producing nuclear weapons; and other critical sites. ... The explosions set back South Africa’s nascent nuclear weapons program by years and cost the government more than $1 billion, Dr. Christie later estimated.

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. He was arrested by South African authorities in October 1979 on charges of “terrorism,” three months after completing his studies at Oxford, and spent the next seven years in prison, some of that time on death row and in solitary confinement.

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Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

Adam Nossiter has been bureau chief in Kabul, Paris, West Africa and New Orleans and is now a writer on the Obituaries desk.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Renfrew Christie, 76, Dies; Hobbled South Africa’s Nuclear Program. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe