Description:
The South African government’s Strategic Arms Package (SAP), has been<br />the largest public controversy of the post-Apartheid era. We synthesise the debates<br />about two dimensions of the SAP, military necessity and affordability, in order to<br />get a better understanding of civil-military relations in democratic South Africa. Our<br />synthesis shows that the economic enthusiasm about the SAP is both naïve and an<br />opportunity for government and dominant business and industry to wed their<br />interests in a way that is not that different from the Apartheid era. In military terms,<br />the SAP has equipped the South African Air Force (SAAF) and South African Navy<br />(SAN) for the most improbable of primary missions. The equipment is also not very<br />relevant to secondary missions. The way that the SAP decisions were reached<br />suggests that civil-military relations are marked by the continuing impact of past<br />compromises, corruption and the centralisation of power in the executive branch.