Cabinet: Piracy strategy approved?

Cabinet has seemingly approved the South African Navy's maritime security strategy, although the wording in a statement announcing the move is ambiguous. The Joint Operations Division of the South African National Defence Force deployed the SAS Mendi to Mozambique earlier this year, in what the defence ministry has described as an information gathering exercise.

Government spokesman Jimmy Manyi says Cabinet yesterday “approved that the South African Defence Force [sic] should fine-tune its strategy to protect our waters from piracy. Being a littoral country, South Africa needs to have a balanced naval capability to effectively respond to maritime security threats affecting South Africa,” he said. “Cabinet noted the incursion of maritime crime into our waters, which might affect our trade routes through the seas.”

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