Deploying soldiers on South Africa’s streets is being considered. This is despite soldiers killing Collins Khosa in his yard on 10 April 2020, and the incidents of forced exercise and humiliation soldiers inflicted during the Covid-19 deployments.
“The National Security Council (NSC) at its recent meeting realised there will be situations where indeed we might need to bring in the army,” Ramaphosa told the House. He was referring to the state security structure he reconstituted on 27 February 2020, adding later: “The NSC meets quite regularly and focuses on areas of risk.”
Exactly how the council does this in the absence of a national security strategy is unclear. Unless the basis remains the 2013 national security strategy, which is classified and thus outside public accountability.
A new national security strategy has been in the making since, well, forever. “We will also work with the Presidency and other key departments to initiate the review, consultation and ultimate adoption of the national security strategy,” said then State Security Minister Ayanda Dlodlo in 2019.
Three years later, in his 2022 State of the Nation Address, Ramaphosa urged “all South Africans through their various formations to participate in developing our national security strategy. I will be approaching Parliament’s presiding officers to request that Parliament plays a key role in facilitating inclusive processes of consultation.”
To date, there's been not much movement on this.
But, according to a recent parliamentary question by Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele, the NSC would consider the national security strategy on 27 September.
That’s a nod to some transparency not shared by Cabinet colleague Police Minister Bheki Cele who, in a parliamentary reply, said the NSC meeting dates are classified.
It remains unclear what’s become of the urgent implementation plans Ramaphosa said the NSC had asked security services to develop to address recommendations made by presidentially established expert panels. Both the 2018 High-Level Review Panel on the State Security Agency and the February 2022 report of the panel into the July 2021 riots have been scathing about the politicisation, malfeasance and lack of leadership and capacity in security services.
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But implementation plans are not strategy. Nor is outlining the current state of affairs. Strategy, at its most basic, is a series of actions to achieve a stated goal, even amid socioeconomic, global and other uncertainties. At its best, strategy is sufficiently reflexive and flexible to rapidly respond to changing circumstances.
The nub of any national security strategy can be found in the Constitution – and not only in its preamble, which impels us to “heal the divisions of the past” and to establish “a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights”, or its founding values of responsiveness, accountability and openness.
Section 198 of the Constitution on the security services sets out that “national security must reflect the resolve of South Africans, as individuals and as a nation, to live as equals, to live in peace and harmony, to be free from fear and want and to seek a better life”.
Amid few, if any, efforts to define national interest and national security, attention is drawn to the recent International Relations Framework Document on South Africa’s National Interest and its Advancement in a Global Environment. Citing the Constitution to make people central with a voice in their governance, and socioeconomic and human development, it argues that a national security strategy, by helping government to identify “potential threats”, would support the national interest.
The hierarchy is clear: people and the Constitution first, then a national security strategy. That’s in line with the Constitution’s foundational shift to safety and security, rather than today’s politicians’ love of thumping law and order in a return to the rhetoric of securocrats.
Deploying troops may temporarily placate impatience as police flail amid rising crime – from looting public infrastructure to people being murdered.
But having soldiers on the streets is a hollow show of force.
Without a public, transparent, cohesive national security strategy that actually is a strategy and not a descriptive account, it’s putting lipstick on a pig. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.
