National Security Focus

Helmoed Römer Heitman – December 2025

“Securing the property of all citizens and making them as happy as human nature allows: That is the duty of anyone who stands at the head of a society”.- Frederick the Great (1712 – 1786)

The starting point for any consideration of national security must be to understand the role of the nation and the state. People formed into groups and later ‘nations’ first for protection against wild animals and other groups, and then to cooperate to do things groups could do better than individuals. The ‘state’ then developed first to ensure effective protection of the group and its interests, such as hunting grounds, then to coordinate activity within the group, and then to handle interaction with other groups. The ‘state’ is the structure that administers and manages matters for the nation, not some entity of its own.

Thus, from the very beginning the primary purpose of the state has been to protect the nation and its interests to ensure ‘national security’. State security is an essential subset in that it must be secure to be effective, but it is not the goal. The goal is ‘human security’, but there can be no human security if the state is unable to protect the nation and its interests.

National Security can be considered as including:

• Territorial integrity – secure borders, maritime zones and air space;
• Protection of national interests – access to vital supplies, freedom to trade; and
• Freedom from coercion by other states and from threat of war.

Those are the functions of the diplomatic and intelligence services and the armed forces, with some overlap with the police in respect of border security and stability.

Protecting the people, the state and the national interests against bad actors within the people of the nation is the responsibility of the police, counterintelligence and the judiciary, the former supported by the armed forces in extreme cases.

National Interests – Vital and General

The second reality to grasp is that countries seldom have friends; they have interests, and their governments act in what they believe is in the best interests of their country. That was put neatly in 1848 by Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, later Prime Minister of Britain, in 1848:

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

That practical reality must govern foreign policy and defence policy and strategy, moderated only by morality and international law.

National interests can be considered in terms of general interests and those vital to the survival of the country, those for which the country is prepared to take military actions short of war or, in extreme situations, even go to war.

Like any country, South Africa has some vital interests, including some lying outside of its territory. The latter can be considered to include:

• The Highlands Water Scheme in Lesotho;
• The port of Maputo in Mozambique;
• The Cahora Basa power station and the power lines to South Africa;
• The Mozambique gas fields and the pipelines to South Africa;
• The Mozambique Channel, through which flows much of the imported oil, most trade with the Mediterranean and all trade with the Persian Gulf, Pakistan and the western seaboard of India.

In future South Africa might also have to consider the Grand Inga hydro-electric scheme in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a vital interest.

South Africa also has more general interests, not sufficiently vital to justify going to war, but certainly important enough to be a focus of foreign policy and in some cases to require military action short of war to protect them. Given that South Africa is a trading nation, those general interests could be considered to include:

• Overland trade routes into Central Africa and coastal trade with Africa;
• Safe and secure maritime trade generally and Indian Ocean security specifically (oil);
• Stable, prosperous neighbours, a stable and prosperous region and, indeed, also a stable and rules-based international community to facilitate trade.

Here it is worth recalling former President Thabo Mbeki’s remarks at the 2001 World Economic setting the prerequisite for what the African Union hoped to achieve “peace, security and stability, and democratic governance, without which it would be impossible to engage in meaningful economic activity”.

Regarding maritime trade it is important to remember that South Africa depends on foreign trade for about 60% of its GDP; more given the dependence on imported oil, and that more than 90% of that trade moves by sea. That makes piracy and maritime terrorism a problem that South Africa must take seriously and in respect of which it must cooperate with other nations.

Threats and Risks

The starting point for formulating national security policy and defence policy and strategy must be an analysis of threats and risks. Currently those can be considered to include the following.

• Insurgency in Mozambique: Potential threat to electricity and gas supplies, to Maputo port and to safe transit of the Mozambique Channel; risk of spill-over into South Africa.
• Terrorism: There have already been attacks and the country is not immune.
• Terrorist attacks against South Africans in other countries, as in Mozambique.
• Piracy/maritime terrorism in African waters and potentially the Mozambique Channel.
• Cyber-attack and crime.
• Illegal fishing.
• Cross-border crime and smuggling.
• Illegal immigration.

Risks:

• Violent service delivery, economic or political protests, as have already occurred.
• Instability in fragile neighbouring countries resulting in spill-over into South Africa.
• Conflict in or among non-adjacent SADC countries, affecting trade and resulting in refugee flows.
• Conflict spill-over into the SADC from neighbouring countries
• Interruption of oil supplies or the oil supply routes from the Persian Gulf.

Regarding conflict spill-over, it is worth recalling the remark by former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa in August 2003: “If your neighbour is not stable, you cannot be stable for long. If your neighbour collapses, the fallout will not respect the boundary between you”.

Finally, it is worth bearing in mind former Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota’s blunt statement of reality: “Without security there will be no development”.

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The Nongqai National Security Correspondent and Columnist Helmoed Römer Heitman has written and lectured on defence since 1978. He served in the SA Army reserve from 1970 to 1996, finally at the Long-Term Planning Division at Defence Headquarters. He has consulted to the Ministry of Defence, the Defence Force, political parties and defence industry companies, worked with the non-statutory forces and political parties in 1991/94 and during the 1995/96 Defence White Paper drafting and served on a work group of the 1997/98 Defence Review. He participated in Army Vision 2020 and doctrine development for the Rooivalk attack helicopter in 2005/06, drew up an airlift study for the Ministry of Defence in 2009, served on the Defence Review Committee in 2011/13, worked on through-life capability management in 2015/17, helped edit the Defence Acquisition Handbook and drafted the defence industry strategy in 2017, an intervention plan in 2019 and parts of the Aerospace and Defence Industry Master Plan in 2020. He has also briefed work sessions of the Security Cluster Directors General, the Chief of the Defence Force, the GOC Special Forces, the Standing Maritime Committee of the Inter-State Defence and Security Committee, the French Ministry of Defence and the German Army Combat Reconnaissance School. Helmoed Heitman holds economics and public administration degrees (University of Cape Town), an MA (War Studies; King’s College, University of London) and management diplomas (Stellenbosch University Graduate School of Business) and passed the junior staff course of the SA Army College.

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