SADC: The Crisis of South Africa’s National Security Strategy Will Diminish What’s Left of BRIC“S” And Country’s Multipolar Dreams.
2021-05-21 12:23:54
Without basic strategic planning document defining its National Interests and Strategic National Priorities, objectives, tasks, and measures in the sphere of national security, Republic of South Africa is unlikely to meet its stated goals in energy security, communications, finance, and state and public security.
“A nation that greatly values its independence and safety, must make a vigorous effort to elevate itself as fast as possible, from an inferior to a higher state of civilization, uniting and perfecting as quickly as possible, its own agriculture, manufacturing, navigation, and commerce.”
~ Friedrich List.
In unprecedented move, the South African government has cut its 2020/21 national defence budget which is R54.2 billion by staggering 14% (significant decrease comes from the reduction of the Special Defence Account, which goes from R5.2 billion in 2020/21 to R1.005 billion in 2021/22) to R46.2 billion. The successive action prompted the Defence and Military Veterans Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula who introduced her budget vote in the National Assembly to ask her fellow MPs to apply their minds and wisdom to her previous question: “What kind of defence force should South Africa have and what can it afford?”
In analyzing the 2021/22 budget, Dr Wilhelm Janse van Rensburg, researcher for the Joint Standing Committee on Defence (JSCD), who gave a presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans on the analysis of the 2021/22 budget, observed the major reductions in the allocation to Infantry, Air Defence, Artillery, Air Combat, Maritime combat, and Special Operations as “really problematic in the maintenance of a professional military force.”
It is worth noting that the recent budget cut is on the heels of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of The High-Level Panel Review on the State Security Agency (SSA). The December 2018 Panel led by Dr Sydney Mafumadi and nine other members with a wide range of senior level experience and expertise in law, security studies, civil society, academia, the intelligence and security community and other organs of state power identified that the regional powerhouse of Southern African Development Community (SADC) lacks the basic strategic planning document defining its National Interests and Strategic National Priorities, objectives, tasks and measures in the sphere of national security, i.e., national defence, state and public security, economic growth, science, technology and education, healthcare, culture, the ecology of living systems and the rational use of national resources, and Strategic Stability and equal Strategic Partnership (soft power) aimed at strengthening South Africa’s socio-cultural-economic stability and ensuring the country’s sustainable development in the long term.
National Security or Ideological Deficit?
“A merely agricultural people in free intercourse with manufacturing and trading nations, will lose a considerable part of their productive power and natural resources, which must remain idle and unemployed. Its intellectual and political culture, and its means of defence, will thus be limited. It can possess neither an important navigation, nor an extensive trade; its prosperity, as far as it results from external commerce, may be interrupted, disturbed, or annihilated by foreign legislation or by war.”
~ Friedrich List.
Without basic strategic planning document defining its National Interests and Strategic National Priorities, objectives, tasks, and measures in the sphere of national security, Republic of South Africa is unlikely to meet its stated goals in energy security, communications, finance, and state and public security. Therefore, its regional-continental-global and “sphere of influence” will continue to diminish as new actors emerge with varying strategies. On the domestic policy sphere, the policy uncertainty which is characterized by internal difference within the ruling party will further deepen the already prevailing challenges the country is facing.
Without basic strategic planning document defining its National Interests and Strategic National Priorities, objectives, tasks, and measures in the sphere of national security, South African society will become more polarized and local government failure to deliver basic services to the ordinary citizens will further aggravate the explosive ingredient, which could be exploited by foreign intelligence and other activity by special services, organizations of foreign states and individuals that causes harm to national interests or exert undue political pressure.
Furthermore, the imbalance of national defence budget as bemoaned by the Minister of Defence is a prelude to South African national security crisis in the sphere of state and public security and economic growth, the unintended consequences of undermining the conditions for the peaceful and dynamic socioeconomic development of the region, to ensure its military security cannot be underestimated. Analyzed deeper, the Minister of Defence message is clear: the actions will not only diminish national and regional security in the long-term, but will also expose the region to “three evils” (religious extremism, separatism, and terrorism), the national financial system against the actions of non-residents and speculative foreign capital, the vulnerability of country’s information infrastructure, intensify the registration of ownership rights to a significant proportion of organizations in foreign jurisdictions, witness the deterioration in the state of the raw-materials base and its depletion, the reduction in extraction and reserves of strategically important minerals, the progression of unemployment rate and inequality, the persistence of a significant proportion of the shadow economy, of the conditions for corruption, illegal immigration (porous borders), the unequal development of provinces, and the decline in the stability of the national system of settlement – including humanitarian efforts.
Concluding thoughts
There is still hope. South African government can still reform its country’s defence strategy by aligning its Military Doctrine – by means of applying fundamental principles of military policy and the objectives for military-economic defence of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), military risks, and military threats, principles of rational sufficiency and effectiveness, including responses using non-military methods and vigorous integration of Military Skills Development Policy in the civilian sphere of influence. To achieve this goal, the South African government should seriously consider bringing together country’s top political, diplomatic, and military leaders to specifically inaugurate Pretoria Security Dialogue (PSD), aimed at unveiling country’s Grand Strategy to the world, the mechanism needs to focus on non-traditional security aspects such as climate security, regional food security, strategic culture (Military Skills Development), countering drug trafficking and related challenges to human security (UN Alternative Development Guiding Principles), and economic prosperity for the Sub-Saharan population. In so doing, the country will strategically catapult its fading global position and articulate its place in 21st-Century Multipolar World.
~ Friedrich List.
In unprecedented move, the South African government has cut its 2020/21 national defence budget which is R54.2 billion by staggering 14% (significant decrease comes from the reduction of the Special Defence Account, which goes from R5.2 billion in 2020/21 to R1.005 billion in 2021/22) to R46.2 billion. The successive action prompted the Defence and Military Veterans Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula who introduced her budget vote in the National Assembly to ask her fellow MPs to apply their minds and wisdom to her previous question: “What kind of defence force should South Africa have and what can it afford?”
In analyzing the 2021/22 budget, Dr Wilhelm Janse van Rensburg, researcher for the Joint Standing Committee on Defence (JSCD), who gave a presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans on the analysis of the 2021/22 budget, observed the major reductions in the allocation to Infantry, Air Defence, Artillery, Air Combat, Maritime combat, and Special Operations as “really problematic in the maintenance of a professional military force.”
It is worth noting that the recent budget cut is on the heels of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of The High-Level Panel Review on the State Security Agency (SSA). The December 2018 Panel led by Dr Sydney Mafumadi and nine other members with a wide range of senior level experience and expertise in law, security studies, civil society, academia, the intelligence and security community and other organs of state power identified that the regional powerhouse of Southern African Development Community (SADC) lacks the basic strategic planning document defining its National Interests and Strategic National Priorities, objectives, tasks and measures in the sphere of national security, i.e., national defence, state and public security, economic growth, science, technology and education, healthcare, culture, the ecology of living systems and the rational use of national resources, and Strategic Stability and equal Strategic Partnership (soft power) aimed at strengthening South Africa’s socio-cultural-economic stability and ensuring the country’s sustainable development in the long term.
National Security or Ideological Deficit?
“A merely agricultural people in free intercourse with manufacturing and trading nations, will lose a considerable part of their productive power and natural resources, which must remain idle and unemployed. Its intellectual and political culture, and its means of defence, will thus be limited. It can possess neither an important navigation, nor an extensive trade; its prosperity, as far as it results from external commerce, may be interrupted, disturbed, or annihilated by foreign legislation or by war.”
~ Friedrich List.
Without basic strategic planning document defining its National Interests and Strategic National Priorities, objectives, tasks, and measures in the sphere of national security, Republic of South Africa is unlikely to meet its stated goals in energy security, communications, finance, and state and public security. Therefore, its regional-continental-global and “sphere of influence” will continue to diminish as new actors emerge with varying strategies. On the domestic policy sphere, the policy uncertainty which is characterized by internal difference within the ruling party will further deepen the already prevailing challenges the country is facing.
Without basic strategic planning document defining its National Interests and Strategic National Priorities, objectives, tasks, and measures in the sphere of national security, South African society will become more polarized and local government failure to deliver basic services to the ordinary citizens will further aggravate the explosive ingredient, which could be exploited by foreign intelligence and other activity by special services, organizations of foreign states and individuals that causes harm to national interests or exert undue political pressure.
Furthermore, the imbalance of national defence budget as bemoaned by the Minister of Defence is a prelude to South African national security crisis in the sphere of state and public security and economic growth, the unintended consequences of undermining the conditions for the peaceful and dynamic socioeconomic development of the region, to ensure its military security cannot be underestimated. Analyzed deeper, the Minister of Defence message is clear: the actions will not only diminish national and regional security in the long-term, but will also expose the region to “three evils” (religious extremism, separatism, and terrorism), the national financial system against the actions of non-residents and speculative foreign capital, the vulnerability of country’s information infrastructure, intensify the registration of ownership rights to a significant proportion of organizations in foreign jurisdictions, witness the deterioration in the state of the raw-materials base and its depletion, the reduction in extraction and reserves of strategically important minerals, the progression of unemployment rate and inequality, the persistence of a significant proportion of the shadow economy, of the conditions for corruption, illegal immigration (porous borders), the unequal development of provinces, and the decline in the stability of the national system of settlement – including humanitarian efforts.
Concluding thoughts
There is still hope. South African government can still reform its country’s defence strategy by aligning its Military Doctrine – by means of applying fundamental principles of military policy and the objectives for military-economic defence of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), military risks, and military threats, principles of rational sufficiency and effectiveness, including responses using non-military methods and vigorous integration of Military Skills Development Policy in the civilian sphere of influence. To achieve this goal, the South African government should seriously consider bringing together country’s top political, diplomatic, and military leaders to specifically inaugurate Pretoria Security Dialogue (PSD), aimed at unveiling country’s Grand Strategy to the world, the mechanism needs to focus on non-traditional security aspects such as climate security, regional food security, strategic culture (Military Skills Development), countering drug trafficking and related challenges to human security (UN Alternative Development Guiding Principles), and economic prosperity for the Sub-Saharan population. In so doing, the country will strategically catapult its fading global position and articulate its place in 21st-Century Multipolar World.
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