Department of Strategic Studies

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https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/15139
Department of Military Strategy was the old name

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Browsing Department of Strategic Studies by browse.metadata.advisor "Van der Waag-Cowling, Noelle"

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    The military-strategic implications of the decline of South Africa’s Defence capability
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-12) De Jager, André; Olivier, Laetitia; Van der Waag-Cowling, Noelle; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Military Science. School for Security and Africa Studies. Dept. of Military Strategy.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The decline of South Africa’s defence capabilities is a well-documented and politically acknowledged situation that inspired the review of the South African defence policy since 2010. The Defence Review 2015 was promulgated with a detailed strategic approach to restore the South African National Defence Force’s (SANDF) credible military capacity to fulfil South Africa’s defence ambition. The Defence Review 2015 process continued for five years with a deliberate focus to achieve consensus on South Africa’s defence ambition. The implementation of this policy is yet to be financed by the South African government. This inspired a critical look at the decline of South Africa’s defence capabilities through the contemporary lenses of the concepts of military security and strategy. A contemporary theoretical discussion of the concepts of military security and strategy in the post-Cold War era demonstrated that military security and the role of militaries in nations’ and regions’ security requirements remain a central concern for polities, yet within a broader and wider security discourse academically and as security policy advice. The concept of strategic context provided the study with a framework to discuss and analyse literature related to South Africa’s declining defence capabilities with the purpose to understand this reality in a strategic context and what it means for South Africa’s military security. A qualitative, interpretive, and thematic approach extracted thematic insights into South Africa’s declining defence capabilities in a strategic context to obtain a deep understanding of the reality since 1994. An analysis of government directives for defence since 1994, using contemporary understanding of military security and strategy, demonstrated that defence directives and policy thinking in South Africa continue to reflect enduring and developing military security and strategic thinking for the military establishment. South Africa’s declining defence capabilities, in a strategic contextual discussion and analysis, however showed significant contestation in the South African defence debate since 1994. The study ascribes the lion’s share of responsibility for South Africa’s declining defence capabilities to a deliberate political and bureaucratic demilitarisation of South Africa through disinvestment and defunding of the defence function, with a commensurate growing decline in political and academic interest in South Africa’s military. Politics leads in the approach of demilitarisation due to its prominent and dominant position to decide and fund. An idealistic academic perspective fuelled the process from a trusted position of advice. With non-offensive defence (NOD) principles coded in the Constitution of 1996 and all subsequent government legal and policy provisions, the scene was set to implement the deliberate demilitarisation of South Africa. The disconnect between the NOD military approach, which holds human security as the most appropriate approach to national security, and the strategic truth that a nation utilises its military to maintain the monopoly on force (organised violence) for defence against coercive threats should after two and a half decades of the existence of the SANDF be put to bed. The South African polity must honestly ask the question: What has South Africa gained from its broad and wide security approach of human security?