Ambition and reality

The main issue is money. There’s not enough of it—and what cash the armed forces do possesses, they usually mismanage. South Africa spends less than 1.2 percent of its GDP on the military, putting it in the same class as New Zealand and Sweden, two countries with fewer nearby threats.

This level of spending might still be acceptable, if South Africa had no military ambitions beyond directly defending its own territory, explains Helmoed Heitman, a South African military expert, who helped write the 2014 review.

Territorial self-defense may have been the military’s original mandate in the ANC era, but that’s no longer realistic, Heitman says.

At present, South Africa maintains substantial military contingents in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur—both as part of African peacekeeping forces.

The SANDF also participates in anti-piracy operations off the Mozambican coast.

South Africa is “already involved as a regional player and our defense force plays a huge role in that,” explains John Stupart, editor of the online African Defense Review.

South Africa has assumed leadership of all of southern Africa—if not the whole continent. As Africa’s largest democracy, it’s vying for a permanent seat on the U.N. security council and is equally invested in the African Union.

“We may want all this [political aim],” Heitman points out, “but our neighbors say you are not performing peacekeeping-wise.”

“Of the 25 countries involved in peacekeeping operations in Africa, we are the ninth largest in terms of troop contributions,” Heitman explains. “But if you compare our troop commitment to the size of our economy, we are the 23rd out of 25.”

This mismatch has led the South African government to step up its commitment to peacekeeping forces, but it has also strained the SANDF.

Sutpart and Heitman agree that the mismatch between ambitions and resources is the result of the government never defining a coherent foreign policy. “It was up to the Defense Review Committee to define what the Defense Department and the South African state’s foreign policy is,” Stupart says.

“Within the government, there is no real concept of what national interests are,” Heitman says.

“There is an ever-widening gap between the missions given to the defense force and the funding available,” Heitman adds. This proved tragic when, in March 2013, rebels attacked a contingent of South African soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic—an incident that became known as the Battle of Bangui.

Rebels almost completely overran the South African positions. The SANDF relied on commercial airlift services to provide ammunition and reinforcements in Central African Republic, and these contractors were not able to provide the necessary capacity on short notice.