Brig. Gen. Lawrence Smith is the general officer commanding the 43rd South African Brigade of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). He is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in the United States and of the PLA National Defense University of China. His past assignments included two stints in Burundi as commander of the South African peacekeeping forces, 15 months in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as the section commander in the east, and commander of the Southern African Development Community Standby Force. In July and August 2013, he served as force commander during Shared Accord 13, a bilateral exercise between U.S. and South African forces. He spoke with Africa Defense Forum from the exercise command center in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. This is an edited version of his remarks.
ADF: In this exercise you chose to do a wide spectrum of things. You had a marine landing, you had airborne units doing a nighttime jump, you had a humanitarian event, and you had tactical training for the infantry. What was the logic behind all these exercise components?
Gen. Smith: What’s important is Soldiers see what happens in this exercise, and you basically paint pictures in their minds. So if your plan does not make tactical and operational-level sense, they get the wrong picture.
At the tactical level, it is always a good thing to share common tactics, techniques and procedures to see how someone else does it on the ground, and thereby you can measure the quality of your own doctrine and your own way of doing things. I think the advantage that we had was to share these things, see how the Americans do it, and measure it against our own doctrine. Because doctrine is a living thing, you have to adapt and change based on the lessons that you learn; you have to adapt your tactics, techniques and procedures all the time. It is not cast in cement and set.
Secondly, it motivates people to get to know other people who do a similar job. There’s a lot of exchange of war stories whenever Soldiers get together. But these war stories have some substance to them in terms of sharing experience. Sometimes people will share experiences that may not have an immediate impact, but someday in the future you will remember what you have heard about something, and you can put it into practice.
ADF: What types of things did your Soldiers teach their U.S. counterparts in terms of operating in Africa?
Gen. Smith: One thing I think the South Africans bring to the table is we really try to outthink the enemy because we haven’t got the resources always to outgun him. So you really want to finesse the enemy by getting into his psychological frame of mind. We put a lot of emphasis on that. Never attack the enemy directly; you go in an indirect way, and you work out the sequence of events that will lead up to a culmination. And eventually you get what you want.
ADF: Many Soldiers in the SANDF have served on peacekeeping missions in places such as Sudan, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. How has that affected your fighting force?
Gen. Smith: That is basically the reality at this stage in South Africa. There is a lot of pressure on the country from colleagues here in Africa, because they say, “Listen, in Africa you are one of the richest countries, so there is an expectation that you should participate in a major way.” And currently we’ve got probably 2,500 troops deployed on a daily basis outside the country, and inside the country we’ve got probably 13 companies deployed on our border. So there are a lot of troops deployed externally and internally. And it’s not two different types of troops or units. A unit will do a stint internally –– border duty –– and then they will go into a retraining phase, rest phase and they will do a stint in the DRC. So the problem that we’re facing now is to get to a proper ratio of deployment versus time spent here in South Africa. Hopefully we’ll be able to solve that problem in the near future. But as it is now we are very much deployed. I’ve got guys in my headquarters, and you will see their medals; they walk around with a Number 7 U.N. DRC medal. It means they have done seven stints in the DRC, and we’ve been deployed there now for 10 years. So out of 18 months, they will be deployed six months. It’s tough.
ADF: South Africa is fortunate to be in a relatively safe region of the continent in terms of threats like international terror. What are the threats that most concern the SANDF?
Gen. Smith: We’re sitting with unique problems in the sense that we’ve got a very highly developed banking system. So obviously South Africa is a top target in terms of drug smuggling and money laundering. But that is out of the domain of the military per se. It is the new revolution in military affairs, looking at these asymmetric threats that will eventually have a secondary effect on the military, but it’s not purely the military’s job to get involved in it.
There is also the fact that we’re still a very young democracy in South Africa; we’re still growing, so we have an internal focus but with external obligations. So you have to balance the act. How much money are you going to spend on defense, in this case expeditionary defense? We want to create a stable region because then people will stay out of our country and not all flood to South Africa. Our schooling system and our medical system are all designed for the population of South Africa, not for 5 to 10 million more people from outlying countries. We would like to get to a situation where we can create a stable environment in our neighboring countries so they can focus on their development and we can focus on our development as well.
ADF: Also connected to transnational crime is poaching. How has that affected South African security?
Gen. Smith: This year is already looking like it will be a record [for rhino poaching]. It has become such a specialized crime that it is really tough. We are spending a lot of resources trying to curb it, and I’m not sure currently whether we’re very successful. These are the challenges of the new manifestation of conflict in the world. We’re part of it. The global village has impacted South Africa quicker than I think we were really able to absorb it. So we’ll have to get ahead of the power curve, otherwise we’re going to lose out.
ADF: People who study reconciliation often point to the SANDF as a model in some ways for integrating the military and having the military play a leading role in national reconciliation. Where is the military now in terms of racial integration and restructuring? Is there more work to be done?
Gen. Smith: We are basically close to 19 or 20 years down the line in terms of integration. I think it went fairly well. Obviously, you’ll find that there are hitches where things needed to be sorted out. We are now at the stage where we probably will need to begin reorganizing in a better structure to suit our requirements. We’ve gone from a structure that was suited to conduct mainly internal operations and external operations in Namibia. We had to go to a structure to really focus on the defense of the country and protecting the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the country. It started with peace support operations, and now we’re sort of in a crossover type of structure for the defense force as a whole to cope with these things. I think we have now realized, “Listen, this is where we need to go,” and under the guidance of the current Chief of Defence Force Gen. [Solly] Soke, I think he has spent a lot of time thinking about this. Under his guidance we started a couple of years ago to do some real introspection in terms of where do we stand now? What is required? And what is the way that we should go?
ADF: Some people might be surprised at the diversity of the SANDF. Beyond just white and black, there are numerous ethnic groups and 11 official languages. Do you think the SANDF has been successful at integrating the military at all levels and building a military that is representative of the country as a whole?
Gen. Smith: When you’re in the military, your culture and the color of your skin doesn’t make a difference. You bleed red blood when you get shot at. It’s very simple.
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