South Africa risks becoming a failed state

  • Thread starter Thread starter Shaun Jacobs
  • Start date Start date
It is a failed state by one simple measure: the monopoly on the use of force. The police and military do not have that in South Africa.

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The significance of that number is best understood against the classical definition of a state. The state is defined by its monopoly on the legitimate use of force, exercised through the police and the army. In South Africa that monopoly now exists mostly on paper. The SAPS fields roughly 148 000 sworn police officers. The SANDF fields roughly 69 000 uniformed members, a force that has itself shrunk by more than a fifth since the late 1990s. Together they muster about 217 000 people. PSiRA's registers list 608 977 active private security officers.

The private industry therefore deploys more than double the combined workforce of the police and the defence force, as shown in the graphic below.
Click to expand...

https://www.thecommonsense.co.za/Politics/enclavisation-south-african-security

Not to mention they are better organised, better paid, more capable and have better equipment.

Which actually means in very simple terms that the SA government is permitted to exist by the private sector. If the private security industry decided together that SA would be better run by them, they would be able to take power basically overnight.

What is the SA government going to do? Deploy its massive military to quell it?
  • The South African Air Force has only two fighter jets, one helicopter and three fighter jet trainers as operable military aircraft.
  • More than 330 fighter jets, helicopters and planes used to rescue wounded soldiers have been lying idle for years awaiting repairs.
  • This has left troops on combat operations without any air support and the country’s airspace unprotected.
Click to expand...

Literally routine now for people to break into military bases:

The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans, Mr Dakota Legoete has expressed discomfort on the report from the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) that weapons have been stolen at its Tekbase in Lyttelton through a break-in at a corrugated iron storeroom where a burglar door had been forcefully opened.

Mr Legoete has expressed his disappointment that the weapons stolen included three R4 rifles and two 40mm multiple rocket launchers, as reported by SANDF. “We are surprised that we have such brazen criminal elements that can target a military facility and remove weapons.”

He added that it is concerning that there are weapons such as R4 riffles and rocket launchers that are now in unknown hands and could be used for criminal or even terrorist activities against citizens or the state itself.

He said what is even more disappointing is that this is not the first such incident happen at the SANDF bases. He cited Cape Town 9 SAI Battalion, and Simons Town Naval Base where this criminality happened in the recent history.
Click to expand...
https://www.parliament.gov.za/press...frican-national-defence-force-tekbase-tshwane

If a bunch of barely organised criminals can do this, then what would happen if an organised force decided to take that base? They wouldn't be able to stop it.
 
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