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The report examines the transformation of the South African Army (SA Army) within the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), highlighting the shift toward civilian oversight and the legitimisation of the Department of Defence. It identifies significant hurdles in human resources, including a prolonged integration process for former combatants, 'transformation fatigue', and a funding crisis that has curtailed training and operational capability. The text also details structural shifts toward 'jointness' in operations and a move toward 'just-in-time' logistics, while noting that the army remains largely 'untransformed' in practice despite policy changes.

The document outlines the Towards Collaborative Peace (TCP) project, which examines how the proliferation of small arms and light weapons fuels a 'culture of violence' and undermines democratization in Southern Africa. The project employs a south-south comparative framework, contrasting trends in Southern Africa with those in South American Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay). Through field research and a series of publications, the TCP project aims to identify the dynamics of illegal weapons flows and develop regional control mechanisms and local educational packages to mitigate violence.

The research paper examines the failure to operationalize the SADC Organ for Politics, Defence and Security, noting a deadlock between member states over its legal and operational structure. It critiques a 1997 Review and Rationalisation Report for ignoring the security-development nexus and suggests that SADC's economic focus is incompatible with the sensitivities of defence co-operation. By comparing SADC to regional arrangements like L'ANAD in West Africa, ASEAN in Southeast Asia, and the OSCE and WEU in Europe, the author argues that Southern Africa should 'divorce' its security mechanism from SADC to create a dedicated, flexible security convention or union focused on conflict prevention and democratic stability.

This monograph examines the transition from traditional military-focused national security to 'new security thinking,' which prioritises human security and incorporates political, economic, social, and environmental dimensions. It argues that security in Africa must be reconceptualised through gender-sensitive lenses and an integrated approach to development, while addressing the practical challenges of institutionalising these concepts within regional bodies like SADC.

The document outlines a global analysis of light weapons proliferation, emphasizing the role of black markets, the persistence of government supply post-Cold War, and the link between small arms demand and internal conflict in Africa. It specifically highlights how ineffectual disarmament during peacekeeping operations has increased the availability of second-hand stockpiles.

The document examines how dwindling fresh water resources and population growth in Southern Africa increase the risk of resource-based conflict. It advocates for redefining security to include 'soft' non-military threats, such as ecological degradation and poverty, and suggests that regional co-operation through SADC and free trade can mitigate water insecurity. The text provides a detailed synoptic view of major river basins in the region, noting a paradox where the most economically developed areas (the south) have the scarcest water, while the north possesses abundant but under-utilised resources.

The document is a monograph titled 'New Partners in Peace: Towards a Southern African Peacekeeping Capacity', which explores the establishment of regional peacekeeping partnerships, the role of part-time units in UN duties, and the management of small arms proliferation in Southern Africa.

This document outlines the nine strategic pillars of the Critical Minerals Mission for Sustainable Strategic Advantage (CMMSSA), a framework designed to transform South Africa's critical minerals sector. The strategy focuses on moving from raw mineral exports to local beneficiation, enhancing geoscience mapping, improving infrastructure, and fostering regional integration within Southern Africa to support the global energy transition.

The document details the development of a climate change and sustainable development master's curriculum by a consortium of 23 academics from six universities in southern Africa. It identifies key pedagogical and operational challenges, recommending early alignment on curriculum principles, pilot testing of templates, and increased face-to-face collaboration to overcome the frustrations of virtual communication. The process resulted in a Curriculum Framework, a curriculum consisting of seven modules, and supporting courseware, which were praised by external experts for their logic and explicit learning outcomes.

The document explains the step-by-step process for navigating the IPCC's Interactive Atlas to analyze climate variables and presents specific projections for Africa, noting that the continent is likely to warm faster than the global average with varying impacts on rainfall and extreme weather.

The document outlines a governance framework for achieving climate-resilient development in Africa, stressing that resilience must be mainstreamed into central government planning rather than treated as a separate agenda. It identifies a hierarchy of responsibility where central governments lead coordination, line ministries implement sector-specific policies, and local communities provide essential bottom-up perspectives. A significant portion of the brief focuses on the necessity of transboundary cooperation through Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and River and Lake Basin Organisations (RLBOs) to manage Africa's 53 shared river basins. Finally, it emphasizes that successful implementation depends on engaging non-state actors, including private businesses and civil society, through financial incentives and consultation.

This document is an internal appeal submitted by groundWork, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), against the deemed refusal by Eskom Holdings SOC Limited to provide records regarding its compliance with emission standards and the decommissioning of its coal-fired power stations.

The Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) has released a toolkit to guide citizens in submitting feedback on South Africa's Climate Change Bill. The guide outlines the lawmaking process, explains the role of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and identifies critical gaps in the Bill, such as the lack of urgent timeframes for emissions targets, weak transparency provisions, and the use of an outdated 2015 NDC as an interim trajectory. It urges the public to demand stronger penalties for exceeding carbon budgets and more meaningful public participation hearings.

The document outlines the severe climate risks facing Southern Africa, noting that warming in the region's interior is occurring at approximately twice the global average rate. It projects reductions in agricultural production and freshwater availability, an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves and severe storms, and a higher risk of long-duration droughts. The text highlights that these risks are significantly exacerbated in 'low mitigation futures' where global warming exceeds 3 °C, compared to scenarios limiting warming to 1.5 °C or 2 °C. Specific vulnerabilities include food insecurity, which affected 6.5 million South Africans in 2019, and the threat of extinction for thousands of species.

The report examines the escalation of extremist activity in southern Africa, highlighting the dual threats of far-right militancy and Islamist insurgency. It details the specific security challenges in South Africa, including the activities of the National Christian Resistance Movement and IS-linked cells, and provides an in-depth analysis of the insurgency in northern Mozambique. The author argues that the Mozambican conflict is fueled by transnational criminal networks, including human smuggling and the heroin trade, and criticizes the slow, bureaucratic responses of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU). The document concludes with recommendations for integrated national strategies, improved inter-agency collaboration, and a shift toward preventative governance to address the root causes of extremism.

The report examines the 'resource curse' in Southern Africa, specifically regarding LNG projects in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It highlights a gap between Africa's significant gas discoveries—accounting for nearly 40% of global discoveries in the last decade—and actual production due to socio-political instability. The document argues that without structural democratic reform and meaningful community consultation, resource wealth fails to translate into broad-based development, as seen in Angola. It recommends that governments and investors prioritize 'Free, Prior, Informed and Continuous Consent' and align mining projects with the Africa Mining Vision and SADC Protocol on Energy to avoid conflict and environmental degradation.

The document introduces the metacoupling approach as a framework for managing biosphere reserves, specifically within the context of South Africa's ten UNESCO biosphere reserves. It explains that metacoupling helps identify how resource use in one area affects distant communities and ecosystems, thereby highlighting equity issues. The text describes the three-pillar structure of biosphere reserves—conservation, sustainable economic development, and logistic support—and the three zoning areas: core areas, buffer zones, and transition areas. It asserts that applying this approach allows stakeholders to understand who benefits or suffers from natural resource decisions, facilitating collective governance across jurisdictional and sectoral levels.

The document provides a guide for using a metacoupling framework to analyze social-ecological systems (SES). It emphasizes systems thinking, the foregrounding of social justice and equity, participatory decision-making, the identification of leverage points, and adaptive management. These principles are applied by the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA) to study export horticultural value chains and transboundary fisheries in Southern Africa to identify power dynamics and leverage points for resilience.

The document introduces 'metacoupling' as a research lens to understand the interdependence of social-ecological systems (SES) across local (intracoupling), adjacent (pericoupling), and distant (telecoupling) scales. By integrating an equity lens—focusing on distributional, procedural, and recognitional dimensions—the framework reveals how global flows of resources and capital influence local inequities. Case studies in South Africa and Namibia illustrate that international market demands and certification standards often marginalize small-scale producers and riverine communities, while power imbalances between local actors and multinational entities constrain equitable resource access.

The document is a popular education toolkit designed to help Southern African activists connect lived experiences of working-class women to structural inequalities in food and climate systems. It argues that care work—primarily unpaid labour performed by women—is the invisible foundation of food provision and community survival, yet is ignored by dominant neoliberal policies. The toolkit guides users through six activities to analyze social reproduction, the power dynamics of food systems, the gendered impacts of climate change, and the development of care-centred alternatives and advocacy strategies.