Reforming Intelligence: South Africa After Apartheid

Issue Date July 2006
Volume 17
Issue 3
Page Numbers 43-57
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South Africa has made a remarkable transformation of its intelligence sector from what had been a militarized, and highly repressive, instrument of internal control during the apartheid regime into a more transparent and democratically accountable civilian-led intelligence community designed to inform policy. Lessons learned from the South African case show that reform of the intelligence sector is a key element of the democratization process and that intelligence reform should begin earlier rather than later in the overall progression of democratization. However, operationalizing the legislative mandates of this transformation has proven to be more difficult than anticipated.

About the Author

Kenneth R. Dombroski is lecturer in civil-military relations in the School of International Graduate Studies at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His book Peacekeeping in the Middle East as an International Regime is forthcoming from Routledge Press.

View all work by Kenneth R. Dombroski