Keyword: security

The Politics of South Africa's Intelligence Priorities

Picture: Boyce Duprey/Flickr Jane Duncan - The South African media are awash with stories about the recent terrorist attack on the Westgate mall in Kenya, allegedly undertaken by Al Shabaab. The State Security Agency (SSA) and the beleaguered Crime Intelligence Division of the police stand accused of having missed vital intelligence on Samantha Lewthwaite (the ‘white widow’) and others allegedly linked to Al Shabaab. There is an important debate to be had about the sources of this intelligence and their interests....

The Securitisation of Everything

Picture: An American soldier in Afghanistan courtesy DVIDSHUB/Flickr. Jane Duncan - The images of 22 year old Londoner Michael Abedowale, hands dripping with blood from his fatal attack on soldier Lee Rigby, created shock waves around the world, including in South Africa. His explanation for his actions, caught on camera, portrayed the attack as revenge for the excesses of British foreign policy in prosecuting the war against terror. This incident, and the recent bombing of the Boston marathon, have given Britain and the United States (US) the justification to continue...

Back to the Future? Securitising the South African State

Picture: PK Scoop Dale T. McKinley - If there is one thing that the ruling ANC and the government it runs hates more than anything else it is the charge that they are increasingly acting like the old National Party and its apartheid state; more specifically, that they are rapidly embracing the very securitisation of the state that the forces of liberation (including the ANC its SACP ally) fought so hard to resist and consign to the dustbin of apartheid history. Unfortunately but somewhat predictably, the way in which the ANC...

Jacob Zuma's National Security Complex

Picture: www.army.mil.za Jane Duncan - What ails South Africa’s security cluster? The military has been mired in controversy recently over the cluster’s lack of transparency. Questions that have been asked and answered in the public domain for years about the military’s use of resources are not being answered now on grounds of ‘national security’. Nyami Booi has been fired as Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Defence, for taking the Zuma administration’s professed commitment to an...