South African Army vision 2020 volume 2: The South African Army relevant and ready for future security challenges in Africa
The second SA Army Seminar 21 was held from 26 to 28 February 2008 with the theme ‘An SA Army relevant and ready for future security challenges in Africa’. The SA Army was honoured by the attendance of senior military officers from the South African Development Community (SADC), members of the Portfolio Committee on Defence, representatives of the various services and divisions of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and captains of the local defence-related industry. Papers were delivered by academics, military speakers and government officials from Canada, Denmark, Ghana, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Rwanda, Singapore, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. This seminar again provided a valuable opportunity for the leaders of the SA Army to orientate themselves in relation to future challenges, mostly in Africa, and to debate strategic issues, especially with researchers and academics. Speakers presented independent views on important issues pertaining to the SA Army and this publication makes a further contribution in this regard. I wish to thank the speakers for their excellent presentations, as well as their honesty, openness and goodwill.
SA Army Seminar 21 furthermore provided the SA Army with an opportunity to update its long-term strategy, entitled SA Army Vision – Strategy. This strategy comprises a set of focused and optimised sub-strategies that will evolve over time to meet unpredictable threats and challenges. Not only will it enable the SA Army to meet future threats, but it also deals with creating an appropriate mindset and setting long-term objectives for transforming the SA Army in spheres such as doctrine, education, training and development.
The SA Army is making significant progress with Vision 2020. It is busy replacing the army office structure that is based on business principles with an army headquarters structure based on a general staff system that will be responsible for preparing, providing and sustaining combat-ready land forces for employment by the chief of the SANDF. Thereafter the three commands under the headquarters will be established, namely the land, training and support commands. This will be followed by the establishment of tactical headquarters for the motorised and mechanised divisions, the contingency brigade for rapid deployment and the engineer maintenance regiment for internal maintenance and post-conflict reconstruction tasks abroad.
Vision 2020 is, however, not only about restructuring. Several lower-level initiatives, especially in the doctrine environment, are also taking place to support Vision 2020. For example, the SA Army’s Infantry School is working on doctrine for complex operations in urban areas and the South African Armoured Corps is testing and experimenting with doctrine for more flexible and modular force
compositions, to mention only two. The SA Army’s updated website (www.army.mil.za) can be viewed for further details on how a better SA Army is being built. The SA Army Journal is now available on this web page.
I would like to thank the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) for its participation and dedicated support in presenting SA Army Seminar 21. The financial support of the Royal Netherlands Embassy also contributed to the success of the seminar. The latter’s support for this seminar facilitated valuable learning opportunities between the Royal Netherlands Army and the SA Army, which is much appreciated.
The success of Vision 2020 depends not only on the SA Army, but also on other role-players within and beyond the local defence community. I wish to reiterate that a joint, interdepartmental and multinational (JIM) approach is essential to enable the SA Army and the SANDF to work towards a sound future outcome.
SZ Shoke
Chief of the SA Army: Lieutenant General
