ABSTRACT
There seems to be a virtual consensus among national leaders in southern Africa that the security of the area’s individual nations depends principally on establishing conditions of economic progress and socio-political stability throughout the region. This was recognised explicitly in the Programme of Nations adopted by the Southern African Development Community in 1993 and restated in numerous official documents since then. All regional parties agree that the level of interstate threat in southern Africa is currently quite low, although sub-state actors pose some degree of cross-border military threat and the region as a whole suffers from a variety of transnational problems that impact on military security, such as migratory flows and the illegal market in arms.
