knowledge-based willingness and capacity to address the challenges and to establish a framework for genuine national dialogue and national ownership of a security sector transformation process in Zimbabwe. This strategy offered a negotiated alternative to continued contestation, conflict and stalemate, continued insecurity and the abdication of our collective responsibility to identify challenges to our safety and security as a nation and attempt to rectify them. Can such a strategy be implemented in the current climate and following the dramatic developments of the past year? If not what are the likely consequences? The momentous events of the last year have thrown a harsh spotlight on security sector governance in Zimbabwe. Aside from the military intervention in the ZANU (PF) leadership succession itself we have subsequently witnessed an apparent purging of state security institutions which appears to many commentators and analysts to be based on factional loyalties and criteria, and the controversial deployment of military forces in support of public order in Harare in circumstances which have necessitated investigation by a commission of inquiry. President Mnangagwa has said that we stand at a crossroads and that the ‘new dispensation’ aims to chart a new path for Zimbabwe. I do agree with the President that we are at a critical crossroads. Reform of national security policy and governance and transformation of the security sector is a critical component of the changes we need to make now because effective delivery of safety and security in a tolerant, peaceful and secure environment are essential foundations for sustainable development and prosperity in an independent Zimbabwe. Contemplating the unwelcome necessity of reform in the face of harsh realities embattled apartheid zealot, Prime Minister BJ Vorster once remarked: “The alternative [to reform] is too ghastly to contemplate”. And then he backtracked. The rest is now history. 21