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The SA Army Seminar 21, held in November 2006, served as a 'reality check' for the SA Army Vision 2020. Featuring international speakers from the USA, UK, Australia, and Africa, the seminar addressed global and internal security challenges and land operations. The event confirmed requirements for personnel, technology, and doctrine, and the SA Army plans to make the seminar a biennial event to foster collective security in Africa.

This preface describes a political seminar held in Brazzaville during South African Week, organized by the South African Embassy, IDASA, and the Institute for Security Studies. The seminar aimed to share lessons from South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy (marked by the date 27 April 1994) with representatives from the Republic of Congo. The resulting electronic publication includes session papers and speeches from four key figures in the South African democratic transition.

This report analyzes the challenges of implementing crime prevention policies in South Africa, highlighting a significant gap between high-level policy and practical execution. It argues that the adoption of Western models has failed due to a lack of local accountability and the dominance of short-term policing goals over long-term social interventions. The text further examines the failure of multi-agency partnerships, which often prioritize the process of consultation over actual project delivery, and notes a critical lack of research and evaluation to determine which interventions effectively reduce crime in the South African context.

This report examines the implementation of city-level crime prevention strategies in South Africa, focusing on the transition from punitive law enforcement to problem-solving approaches. It analyzes the experiences of major cities—Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Durban—evaluating various models such as 'Safer Cities' and Section 21 companies, while highlighting the tension between situational prevention (like CCTV and visible policing) and long-term social interventions.

This report describes a project led by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) to develop crime reduction strategies for two South African local governments, Highveld East and Uitenhage, following the 1998 White Paper on Safety. The project utilized community safety audits to identify priority crimes and resource gaps, revealing a stark divide between townships and suburbs in terms of crime types and police presence. While the project faced challenges due to political imperatives, local government restructuring, and a lack of national support, it concluded that municipalities are better suited for incremental participation in crime prevention rather than the supervisory and coordinating roles originally envisioned by national policy.

This report describes the activities of the Network of Independent Monitors (NIM) in South Africa, focusing on its transition from monitoring political violence to addressing gang crime in the KwaMashu township. It details the development of a gang monitoring system designed to provide early warnings and facilitate community-police partnerships to prevent violence.

This report chapter argues that systematic evaluation is an indispensable but underutilized component of crime prevention in South Africa. It critiques the tendency to assume that crime prevention activities are automatically successful and advocates for a 'realistic' approach to evaluation that focuses on how specific mechanisms work within particular contexts to produce outcomes, rather than relying solely on quasi-experimental methods.

This report evaluates the Community Safety Forum (CSF) project in the Western Cape, South Africa, which was launched in October 1998 to facilitate multi-agency crime prevention initiatives. While the project succeeded in establishing networks for information sharing and improving interaction between government departments and civil society, it struggled to translate these forums into concrete crime reduction activities due to a lack of decision-making authority and overly ambitious, non-actionable safety plans.

This document is an annex detailing the structural arrangement of the I Defence and Security Committee (ISDSC), outlining a hierarchical system of committees ranging from the Ministerial level down to technical sub-sub-committees.

The Mutual Defence Pact is a formal agreement among SADC Member States to operationalise mutual cooperation in defence and security, establishing frameworks for collective defence, conflict resolution, and military preparedness.

The August 2023 issue of the Peace and Security Council Report by the Institute for Security Studies examines the African Union's (AU) struggle to prevent unconstitutional changes of government (UCGs), the need to reform the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), the recruitment of child soldiers by ISWAP in the Lake Chad Basin, and the outcomes of the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit.

The October 2023 Peace and Security Council Report by the Institute for Security Studies examines the systemic weaknesses of the African Union (AU), the escalating conflict in Ethiopia's Amhara region, the challenges facing the AU Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), and the broader implications of withdrawing peacekeepers from African conflicts. It also discusses the AU's new membership in the G20.

This January 2013 report from the Institute for Security Studies provides an analysis of peace and security issues across Africa, focusing on the M23 rebellion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the performance of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the state of North African Regional Economic Communities, and the implementation of the Treaty of Pelindaba regarding nuclear-weapon-free zones.

This May 2013 report from the Institute for Security Studies provides an analysis of the African Union's Peace and Security Council (PSC) activities, focusing on the political situation in Zimbabwe, the strategic review of the AMISOM mission in Somalia, and the institutionalization of the Pan-African Network of Sages (PanWise).

This May 2013 report from the Institute for Security Studies analyzes key security issues for the AU Peace and Security Council. It details the risks of electoral violence in Zimbabwe following its constitutional referendum, the need for a multi-dimensional enhancement of the AMISOM mission to combat al-Shabaab in Somalia, and the efforts to institutionalize the Pan-African Network of the Wise (PanWise) to coordinate conflict prevention across the continent.

This August 2013 report from the Institute for Security Studies provides analysis on several African security crises, focusing on the political instability in Egypt following the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi, the stalled transition in Madagascar, and rising tensions between Frelimo and Renamo in Mozambique. It also examines the African Union's (AU) efforts to establish the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis (ACIRC) to address leadership failures in emergency responses, and the political crisis in South Sudan following the dissolution of its government by President Salva Kiir.

This November 2015 issue of the Peace & Security Council Report by the Institute for Security Studies analyzes the relationship between the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU), the fragile political and humanitarian state of Madagascar, the AU's response to the 2015 coup in Burkina Faso, and the status of UN peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This March 2016 issue of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) Report, published by the Institute for Security Studies, analyzes the effectiveness of the African Union's (AU) Peace and Security Council. It examines the limited impact of the PSC's open sessions on migration and natural resources, the socio-economic recovery and security challenges in Somalia, and the policy failures regarding the proposed military intervention in Burundi. Additionally, it features an interview with mediator Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah on the AU's capacity to resolve conflicts.

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) Report Issue 79 analyzes several African security crises, including institutional instability in Guinea-Bissau, the military approach to al-Shabaab in Somalia, contested elections in Chad and the Republic of Congo, and the AU's diplomatic efforts in Burundi. It also features an interview with Ambassador Frederic Ngoga Gateretse on early warning systems and structural conflict prevention.

This October 2015 report from the Institute for Security Studies examines the relationship between the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN), focusing on peacekeeping funding, counter-terrorism efforts, and specific crises in South Sudan, Mali, and Somalia. It also analyzes the risks associated with a series of upcoming elections across the African continent.