Impact of the increase in broadband access on South African national security and the average citizen

Abstract

The central argument in this paper is that the exponential increase in internet broadband will result in an increase in security threats that will also take the battlefield to the home of the average citizen in rural South Africa. The paper adopts an argumentative analytical approach with the intention to sensitise all nations on issues of national security. We draw on the South African case to demonstrate the potential impact on South Africa that could follow the planned increase in broadband access in Africa as well as on the average RSA citizen. A national security generic framework is used to analyse these threats and the impact on the average citizen. In conclusion the paper proposes the ways of addressing the threats flowing from the security threat analysis.