Security failure is rarely sudden. It unfolds as a series of small collapses that become irreversible. South Africa faces two interacting risks: external capture and internal fracture.

By Joan Swart Defenceweb 18 December 2025

South Africa’s security environment is entering a decisive and dangerous phase, not because of a single event or adversary, but because the state itself is losing the structural capacity to govern, defend, and project stability.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is increasingly expected to fulfil roles that no longer align with its resources, equipment, or institutional health. What results is not a stable state with a weakened military — it is a weakening state whose internal decay directly accelerates military and security collapse.

The common narrative is that South Africa aspires to high constitutional ideals but struggles to implement them. In reality, those ideals have become a form of political currency rather than a coherent national project. The language of rights, sovereignty, and rule of law is invoked when convenient but not backed by sustained investment, institutional discipline, or strategic foresight. As a result, sovereignty is becoming performative. And performative sovereignty is fragile.

The SANDF’s decline is well documented: chronic underfunding, ageing platforms, collapsing infrastructure at bases, a shrinking technical core, and low operational readiness. This trajectory was already recognised a decade ago in the Defence Review 2015, which explicitly warned of “critical decline” if funding and capability were not restored.

But this is only one layer of the crisis. The deeper problem is that South Africa is now too weak institutionally to sustain a modern military at all.

Electricity, water systems, ports, railways, and communication infrastructure — all essential to military readiness — are deteriorating faster than they can be repaired. The security cluster is riddled with corruption, factionalism, and unprofessional political interference. Intelligence structures have neither the cohesion nor the credibility to provide accurate warning, as exposed in the 2021 unrest. This was confirmed by the Expert Panel Report on the July 2021 Civil Unrest.

Armscor and Denel, once strategic assets, are sliding into irrelevance, and procurement has become riskier, more politically distorted, and less aligned with operational needs.

South Africa does not only have a struggling defence force. It has a defence force embedded in a failing state ecosystem. No amount of military reform can succeed inside a governance environment unable to maintain even the minimum conditions for defence capability.

Internal Stability at Risk: A State Losing Its Monopoly on Violence

Domestically, the state is steadily losing its monopoly on violence — the most basic requirement for sovereignty.

Organised crime syndicates, political militias, and gang-controlled zones exercise de facto authority in provinces like KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, and the Western Cape. Critical infrastructure is routinely sabotaged or extorted without meaningful consequence.

Border security remains largely symbolic, with porous crossings exploited by smugglers, human-trafficking networks, and criminal groups. The Border Management Authority’s own reporting acknowledges persistent operational gaps and rising transnational crime.

The July 2021 riots were not an anomaly — they were a systems test, and the system failed. The state could not deploy intelligence, command structures, or rapid response forces with any coherence. It took days to restore basic order. The SANDF’s slow mobilisation and limited operational effect revealed the gap between mandate and capability.

South Africa is now in the phase where internal fragmentation becomes self-reinforcing: weakened state capacity allows alternative power centres to emerge, and those power centres further weaken the state.

This is how fracture begins.

External Actors Exploiting South Africa’s Vulnerabilities

As the state weakens, foreign powers move into the vacuum — not necessarily with hostile intent, but with opportunistic strategy. The result is rising external influence that erodes sovereignty from the edges inward.

China’s involvement in South Africa has shifted from commercial investment to strategic presence. The overhaul of the De Brug military facility and expanded cooperation agreements illustrate the deepening relationship. DefenceWeb has repeatedly reported on these developments, including concerns raised about the opaque nature of Sino–South African engagements.

Chinese contractors embedded in critical energy, port, and digital infrastructure create dependencies that South Africa is not structurally capable of managing. Beijing does not need coercion — dependency is its leverage.

Despite political rhetoric, South Africa remains economically and ideologically closer to the West than to any BRICS partner. The United States remains one of South Africa’s top trade partners, and AGOA access continues to underpin large export sectors. The U.S. government’s own trade data highlights this strategic interdependence.

But Washington’s foreign policy operates on leverage. It does not destabilise South Africa directly; instead, it uses existing fractures to influence outcomes: trade pressure, diplomatic signalling, security concerns around Russia, and narrative warfare on corruption and terrorism financing.

South Africa’s defence procurement history — from the 1999 Arms Deal to more recent opaque weapons transfers — continues to erode international confidence. The Zondo Commission laid bare how procurement distortions undermine state institutions.

Procurement misaligned with operational reality invites foreign intelligence penetration, misallocation of resources, and obligations to actors whose strategic aims diverge from South Africa’s own.

A State Ripe for Capture or Fracture

Security failure is rarely sudden. It unfolds as a series of small collapses that become irreversible. South Africa faces two interacting risks: external capture and internal fracture.

State capture is not only internal corruption — it is external influence over critical systems, political factions, infrastructure, ports, digital networks, and military partnerships. As dependency deepens, sovereignty erodes.

State fracture arises from internal incoherence: regional governance divergence, failing service delivery, collapsing infrastructure, rising violence, and declining public trust. When the state can no longer guarantee safety, essential services, or economic stability, regions and communities begin to decouple from national authority.

South Africa is exposed to both trajectories simultaneously. Few states survive such dual vulnerability without major reform or major rupture.

The SANDF’s Strategic Trap

The SANDF is expected to guarantee national sovereignty while being denied the basic conditions required to function: adequate funding, operational platforms, secure infrastructure, skilled personnel, and a competent security cluster. It is increasingly a symbolic defence force — expected to project authority it does not possess.

External actors, organised criminal networks, and internal political factions see this clearly, even if the public does not. South Africa has become a soft target not for invasion, but for coercive diplomacy, influence operations, infrastructure exploitation, intelligence manipulation, and strategic dependency.

The country risks losing sovereignty not through war, but through erosion.

Final Thoughts

This analysis is alarmist — because the situation justifies alarm.

South Africa’s strategic decline is neither abstract nor reversible through symbolic reforms. A defence force embedded in a failing state cannot secure sovereignty, maintain territorial integrity, or protect critical assets.

Every month of drift deepens dependency on foreign powers, accelerates internal fragmentation, and increases the cost of recovery.

If the country does not act, the fracture will come from within, and the capture will come from without.

The warning signs are already here.

Dr Joan Swart is a psychologist, author, researcher and director at the CapeXit non-profit organisation.