The Decay of State Capacity: HIV/AIDS and South Africa’s National Security
by Andrew T. Price-Smith, Matthew Tubin, and Robert L. Ostergard, Jr.
Introduction
As the specter of apartheid fades into the past, many had hoped for an “African renaissance,” led by the nascent democracy
and regional economic power of South Africa. South Africa possesses abundant natural resources, established legal, financial,
transport, energy and communications infrastructure, and a major stock exchange. Despite its advantages, however, South Africa
remains troubled by exceptionally high rates of unemployment, and much of its populace still does not have access to adequate
education, housing, and medical care. Moreover, in recent decades the global HIV/AIDS pandemic has extended its shadow over most
of southern Africa and promises increasing disruption of South Africa’s society, economy, governance structures, and national
security.
While it is now increasingly understood that the AIDS pandemic constitutes a threat to the security of all nations, the process
by which the disease actually destabilizes societies, economies, governance structures and the national security apparatus remains
opaque.
1
One of the greatest problems in understanding the threat posed by the pandemic emanates from the fact that studies typically
1
In prescient fashion Richard Ullman redefined national security in a manner that transcended traditional definitions that focused exclusively on military threats.
Ullman argued that “defining national security in purely military terms conveys a profoundly false image of reality [and] causes states to concentrate on military
threats and to ignore other and more harmful dangers.” He redefined threats to national security as “an action or sequence of events that (1) threatens drastically
and over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality of life for the inhabitants of a state, or (2) threatens significantly to narrow the range of policy
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Convention