At 17, he was drafted into the South African Army. A stint of guard duty at the Lenz ammunition dump south of Johannesburg confirmed his suspicions that the government was building nuclear weapons. “From the age of 17, I was hunting the South African bomb,” he said at the conference.

After attending the University of the Witwatersrand, he received a scholarship to Oxford, which enabled him to further his quest. For his doctoral dissertation, he chose to study South Africa’s history of electrification, “so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium,” he told the BBC.

https://archive.is/TZ2Hs

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Dr. Christie handed over everything he learned to the African National Congress. He was arrested and tortured by the police. He wrote down even more details about how the South African nuclear weapons program could be, uh, disrupted in his full confession, knowing it would likely be read out in court during his trial. It was.

His colleagues in the ANC’s paramilitary wing took very good notes and used his suggestions to damage the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station while it was still under construction, setting back the nuclear weapons program by several years. Renfrew spent six years of a 10-year sentence in prison, listening to other inmates being hanged and racking up seven months in solitary confinement. He was eventually freed under an amnesty.

https://balloon-juice.com/2026/01/15/today-in-lives-lived-well-renfrew-christie-anti-apartheid-saboteur/

The African National Congress (ANC) mourns the passing of Comrade Professor Renfrew Christie, a former operative of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a solidly uncompromising opponent of apartheid, and a revolutionary intellectual who placed his knowledge, courage and life in the service of the people of South Africa.

Professor Christie belongs to that rare generation of cadres who understood that the struggle against apartheid was not only waged in the streets and on the battlefield, but also in the strategic centres of power where the apartheid regime sought to entrench its domination.

His role in disrupting and exposing the apartheid state’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme was an act of profound revolutionary significance. By helping to undermine this dangerous project, Comrade Christie struck at the heart of a regime that sought to preserve white supremacy through weapons of mass destruction and terror.

For this courageous act of service to humanity, Comrade Christie paid a heavy personal price. He was detained, tortured and sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment under the draconian apartheid security laws. Yet, like many patriots before him, he emerged from prison unbroken in spirit and unwavering in his commitment to justice, equality and freedom.

https://www.anc1912.org.za/statement-of-the-african-national-congress-on-the-passing-of-comrade-professor-renfrew-christie/