South Africa wants Africa’s wars to end, mainly because they pose a grave danger to its national security — the kind of danger that creates floods of refugees, hinders regional development, and keeps foreign investment away. So, for South Africa, assisting broken states in its own backyard, or providing indirect support to others who do, may yield rich dividends in terms of its national interests and commitment to create a “better Africa”.  

The problem that South Africa faces is to understand what form of foreign assistance is needed to stop people taking up arms during or shortly after peace negotiations. This is largely an African problem according to United Nations (UN) officials, and this despite several international and local attempts to keep conflict under control.   To improve this record, much has been said and written about ‘post-conflict reconstruction’  and the degree to which it can nurture and sustain peace agreements. While there is no common definition of the term, it is used broadly to describe a foreign intervention which aims to rebuild a country devastated by war. This kind of assistance, the experts say, extends beyond keeping peace and disarming combatants, to providing the building blocks for self-governance, security, economic exchange, and development — for creating a ‘minimally capable state’, as Hamre and Sullivan (2002) suggest.