The recent naval exercise in South African waters involving Chinese, Iranian and Russian ships triggered considerable comment, mostly negative and mostly aimed at the South African Navy and the SANDF.
While one can certainly question the wisdom of this exercise, available information suggests that attacks on the navy and SANDF are premature and probably not justified. As the search for a scapegoat seems to have been set in motion, cautionary thoughts are called for.
The attacks are based on three assumptions:
- That senior SANDF officers — the chief of the navy is sometimes singled out — disobeyed an order from the president that Iran should not participate.
- That the SANDF is conducting its own foreign policy, to the detriment of national policy.
- That the government was “surprised” by the participation of Iran.
Request not heeded
President Cyril Ramaphosa has said in public that “we did raise with China the issue of Iran and said it would be best that they should withdraw and not participate”. So rather than an order to the navy or SANDF, there was a request to China, as the lead nation for the exercise that apparently issued the invitations. But if there was no order, there was no disobedience.
The Iranians did not withdraw and did participate in the exercise. That raises the question of why the request was not heeded. Apparently, the chief of the SANDF met Chinese and Iranian officers or diplomats, with the defence minister in the loop, after which the joint operations headquarters directed that the exercise proceed, presumably with the concurrence of the minister. If there was any disconnect, it must be looked for at this level. That is what should be determined by the board of inquiry.
Foreign policy
South Africa has long been supportive of Iran and Russia, as illustrated by former foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor’s visit to Iran in October last year, Ramaphosa’s October 2024 reference to Russia as a “valued ally”, and South Africa’s tacit backing of Russia at the UN [for instance, in April 2023 when the other Brics nations voted for a resolution that referred to “the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, and against Georgia prior to that” (77/284), but South Africa abstained].
Against that background, the August 2025 visit to Iran by the chief of the SANDF hardly seems out of line with national policy. Nor were his reported remarks much different from what visiting senior officers have in the past said about relations between their countries and South Africa.
Government ‘surprised’
The South African government was clearly kept in the loop about the military exercise, hence the decision to postpone it from November 2025 to 2026. By that time the exercise had been in the planning phase since a first meeting in Beijing in March 2025, followed by planning conferences in Simon’s Town in June and August and in Shanghai in November.
The officers travelling to Beijing and Shanghai would have used official passports, and the visits would have been managed by our embassy. The visits by the Chinese, Iranian and Russian officers for the conferences in Simon’s Town would have been arranged by their embassies and the department of international relations & co-operation, with home affairs issuing visas.
The department later issued diplomatic clearances for the ships, and the Border Management Agency provided staff to process the crews. Hardly much room for surprise.
Previous missteps
None of this is to say the SANDF has not made some grievous missteps. Most recently someone apparently decided that the US troops set to deploy to South Africa for Exercise Shared Accord could not bring weapons, as they had done for every exercise since the 1990s. The US promptly cancelled the exercise.
Previously, a Good Hope exercise with the Germans almost fell through when someone withdrew overflight and landing rights 48 hours before they launched, after they had shipped missiles to the Overberg Test Range and booked tanker aircraft.
That was remedied by a frantic minister-to-minister telephone call but did immense harm. The Italian and Turkish navies both had confirmed slots at the Overberg range cancelled while their ships were en route. So the SANDF is certainly not immune to blunders.
Fundamental question
That brings up the fundamental question of whether the SANDF should exercise with the forces of China, Russia and Iran at all. A defence force that wants to be effective must be a learning organisation. The nature of war and lower-intensity threats such as guerrilla, terrorist and even pirate attacks is constantly evolving, and armed forces must keep up if they are to be effective.
Exercises with foreign forces, and particularly with forces that have entirely different doctrines, are a particularly valuable means of honing capabilities. From a purely military perspective, then, exercising with China, Iran and Russia makes sense:
- China has a modern, growing navy that has been active in counter-piracy operations in the northern Indian Ocean.
- Iran has a doctrine of swarming attacks by small craft against larger warships, a form of attack the South African Navy might well encounter in regional operations.
- Russia has plenty of recent bitter experience of suffering attacks by uncrewed aerial and surface and subsurface vessels.
Additionally, China is not just a growing naval power but also a major maritime trading nation and major trading partner, even if the balance of trade is skewed against South Africa. So there is also a good national interest case for building relations with China and its navy.
Iran and Russia are a different case. Both countries are detested by most neighbours, and both are economically and strategically irrelevant to South Africa. More importantly, both are viewed negatively by Europe and the US, which, in turn, are key economic partners, major sources of foreign investment and countries with which we have a positive balance of trade. Antagonising them to curry favour with countries of little relevance is more than a little unwise.
The exercise made military sense, but the inclusion of Iran and Russia was contrary to the national interest. Then again, our foreign policy is equally contrary to South Africa’s national interest. Perhaps that is where we need to start.
• Heitman is an independent security and defence analyst.
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