The Domestic Security Environment

Abstract

This chapter deals with domestic threats to security during the transition from apartheid: in essence this constitutes a threat analysis. Whether such an analysis is a viable exercise on which to base security planning was vigorously disputed during the debates over the new South Africa’s security policy. Perhaps incongruously, those South Africans most committed to a holistic, less military-oriented approach to security argued most strongly that security planning should be based on the traditional Realist concept of threat analysis, even if threats were perceived as socio-economic as well as military.¹ They argued that — whatever its limitations — a threat analysis at least provided a concrete basis for force design and countered vague notions of ‘preparing for the worst’. Others advocated a ‘risk-based’ approach or a ‘contingency-based’ approach in which generic defence contingencies were proposed. These debates came to a head during the Defence Review process which followed the adoption during 1996 of the White Paper on Defence in a Democracy. Those involved in the Review — mostly senior staff officers and secretariat officials — adopted a broad approach allowing for the assessment of threats, risks and vulnerabilities² as well as strengths and opportunities within the framework of ‘national interest’.³ In this chapter I follow a similar approach embraced by the concept of a security environment within which security interests can be assessed.⁴