Digital divide: a national security argumentative analysis within a South African context

Abstract

Since it was coined in the early eighties following the Maitland commission for worldwide telecommunications development, much has been written about the concept of digital divide. Everything to date in the literature about the subject point to its complexity and dynamism, resulting in efforts aimed at closing the divide contributing to widening it. It is a problem with properties of insolvability. Our aim in this paper is to illustrate that there is value in drawing from these arguments in order to stimulate scholarly debate and possible illumination of National Security issues within a South African context. We do this by following a Hegelian dialectical approach, with our illustration and argument organised in accordance with the determinants of national power