At Simon’s Town, gulls circle above the naval dockyard while four Valour-class frigates, purchased in the late 1990s and commissioned in 2007, sit motionless against the backdrop of the Cape mountains. Once symbols of regional dominance, the frigates now languish in port, short of spares and starved of maintenance. They still make an impressive sight from a distance but the reality is rust and inactivity.
The same can be applied to South Africa’s defence foreign policy. Pretoria proclaims “active nonalignment” in a multipolar world, having signed deals in 1998 with France, Pakistan, Ukraine and Russia. Decades later and Pretoria has signed agreements with Portugal in 2023, furthered ties with the UK and signed an agreement with Italy in July 2025; while claiming leadership within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and hosting the G20.
Pretoria talks like a power with global reach, signing agreements as if it were a rising star, but funds its forces as if they were in retreat.
Anthony Bizos, a lecturer in the department of political sciences at the University of Pretoria, notes that South Africa’s national interests are officially defined as “the protection and promotion of its national sovereignty and constitutional order, the wellbeing, safety and prosperity of its citizens, and a better Africa and world”.
He argues: “This speaks to the amalgam of South Africa’s security, human development, economic and world-order interests. In many ways, defence diplomacy, and the leveraging of a country’s military and defence capabilities, can serve as a tool for advancing a country’s national interest and foreign policy goals.” But Bizos cautions that foreign policy must be more than posture: “A country cannot leverage capabilities it doesn’t possess.”
Since the mid-1990s Pretoria has signed a dizzying array of defence pacts across continents. Ukraine was among the earliest partners. It offered advanced Soviet-era technology and a diversification away from South Africa’s traditional Western ties.
Britain’s role in South Africa’s defence story has been long and unusual. The first British occupation of the Cape was in 1795. The Simon’s Town agreement of 1955, on naval co-operation between the UK and South Africa, was terminated on June 16 1975, due to South Africa’s apartheid policies.
In 1994, at Pretoria’s request, London dispatched the British military advisory and training team (BMATT) to help weld together the disparate armed forces of the new democracy. About 20,000 members of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army and the militaries of the homelands were integrated with 70,000 troops from the old South African Defence Force. Recent agreements, including a 2024 accord on counterterrorism and energy transition, show that London still sees Pretoria as a useful, if complicated, partner.
In 1998 South Africa and France concluded a defence co-operation agreement covering training, intelligence sharing, peacekeeping, and personnel exchanges, with a strong focus on defence-industrial collaboration. A 2016 accord extended co-operation into the southern oceans.
With Russia, Pretoria moved just as swiftly. A 1995 military co-operation agreement laid the foundation for a 2006 treaty of friendship and a 2013 comprehensive strategic partnership. Naval drills under the exercise name Mosi, which means “smoke” in Tswana, have since brought together Russian, Chinese and South African ships in 2019 and 2023, with another scheduled for 2025. The South African Navy’s participation has been limited due to ship availability, previously limited to a single frigate.
Pretoria has also flirted with nuclear co-operation with Moscow and Tehran, running the risk of Western sanctions.
And since 2010 China and South Africa have enjoyed a strategic comprehensive partnership, including defence.
Pretoria has cultivated other Brics partners too. Ties centre on the India-Brazil-South Africa Maritime exercises, and with India extend to training and joint research in artillery, drones, cyberwarfare and AI. With Brazil, collaboration involves defence-industrial projects.
Smaller partners have also been folded in. Pakistan signed a defence co-operation agreement in 1998. The most recent addition is Italy. In March 2024, Pretoria signed a comprehensive agreement on defence co-operation. One diplomat described it as covering “basically everything”.
Together these pacts form an impressive diplomatic web, spanning Nato members, Brics, neighbours and distant partners.
Marko Svicevic, a researcher at the Centre for International Humanitarian and Operational Law at Palacký University in the Czech Republic, emphasises that such agreements carry binding weight. “Every new defence agreement South Africa concludes creates obligations under international law. They are not symbolic. They require funding, resources and logistics if Pretoria is to fulfil them.”
This is part of a global trend, he adds: “In the past five years alone, dozens of new pacts have been signed.” Yet the mismatch between global trends and Pretoria’s trajectory is stark. In 2024, global defence spending rose for the 10th straight year, up 2.5%. South Africa moved in the opposite direction: spending fell by 6.3%, its fourth consecutive annual decline. South Africa’s defence budget shrank to just $2.8bn in 2024, 0.7% of GDP. Nigeria spent $3.6bn.
The navy cannot keep frigates at sea. The air force can barely keep Gripens in the air, and flight hours will shrink further after the fleet’s maintenance contract expired on August 31 2025. The army can deploy only modest forces, struggling to muster more than 7,500 troops for an exercise, fewer for peacekeeping deployments.
The consequences have been visible. In Mozambique, South Africa contributed to the SADC mission in Cabo Delgado but withdrew in 2024 when the mission ended. Insurgent activity has since picked up.
In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Pretoria deployed troops under a SADC peace enforcement mandate, requiring a heavier combat capability than the usual peacekeeping missions — but ignored critical intelligence. The mission culminated in the six-day Second Battle of Goma in January 2024. Four months later South Africa withdrew; 24 personnel had been killed and more than 170 wounded. The exit dented Pretoria’s credibility and the SADC’s claim to be a regional security provider.
The gap between breadth and depth is growing. Agreements and exercises project ambition, but hollow forces mean Pretoria struggles to convert ambition into influence.
Pretoria insists that its policy is one of nonalignment, yet ambiguity carries risks. The 2023 Lady R scandal, when a Russian cargo ship docked at Simon’s Town amid (unproven) allegations of arms transfers, showed how quickly suspicion can take hold. An inquiry found no proof, but its conclusions were opaque. Allies remain unconvinced.
Nuclear co-operation with Russia and Iran has sharpened those suspicions. To Pretoria it may look like diversification. To Washington and Brussels, it looks like provocation, with sanctions risks attached.
Defence analyst Darren Olivier is blunter still.
“There’s a famous, probably apocryphal story of Voltaire, asked on his deathbed to renounce the devil, replying: ‘Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.’ To stretch the analogy, South Africa’s military is lying on its own deathbed. Its capabilities are atrophying under decades of funding shortages. This is certainly not the time to be making enemies.”
He argues that Pretoria is trying to mimic powers it cannot emulate. “There’s a tendency to copy the aggressive postures of Russia or China, while forgetting that those states have the heft to back it up. South Africa does not.”
Instead, he suggests, Pretoria should accept its limitations and focus on regional partnerships: SADC, IBSA with India and Brazil, and France in respect of Réunion. That framework, he says, offers a credible way to secure the southern oceans.
Practical steps are also needed. “Pretoria should work with countries that operate similar systems, such as South Korea and India, to improve availability and skills. It should act as if it understands its precarious state, militarily and economically, and form partnerships that can genuinely deliver security and growth, not leave it more exposed.”
That need is particularly acute at sea. South Africa is, in trade terms, a maritime nation. It straddles the Atlantic, Antarctic and Indian oceans and sits astride the Cape sea route, one of the oldest and busiest shipping corridors in the world. More than 90% of its trade moves by sea.
Its exclusive economic zone covers 1.5-million square kilometres, while its maritime search-and-rescue area obligation stretches halfway across both the Atlantic and Indian oceans and extends to the South Pole. The obligations are daunting: protecting fisheries against illegal exploitation, policing vast sea lanes and supporting SADC neighbours. Yet these duties fall to a navy unable to keep its frigates or submarines at sea.
South Africa’s geography ensures its relevance. Its instinct to sign agreements across divides reflects a need to hedge in a multipolar world.
Yet nonalignment cannot rest on paper. Without credible forces, and without transparency in its dealings, Pretoria’s diplomacy risks being read not as strategy but as drift.
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