Ricardo Teixeira
Ricardo Teixeira, who has joined the Daily Friend as Associate Editor, is a journalist, defence analyst, and national security advocate. He champions integrity, competence, and long-term reform in South Africa’s security and defence architecture. With a multidisciplinary background, he combines rigorous research with clear communication to deliver practical, insightful analysis.
Articles By This Author
Ramaphosa: Sacrifice knows no colour
There is a particular discipline required of a head of state standing at a war memorial: to say something adequate about a debt that cannot be repaid, but deserves to be acknowledged. President Cyril Ramaphosa did exactly that while visiting the commemoration marking 110 years since the 1st South African Infantry Brigade was fed into the wood beside the village of Longeuval, which the brigade was ordered to hold regardless of cost. Partway through the ceremony, a UNESCO commemorative plaque was unveiled, formally recognising the memorial’s historical significance, an acknowledgment that what happened in this wood has outgrown any single nation’s private grief.
They shall live for evermore: Delville Wood 110 years later
On 15 July 1916, the 1st South African Infantry Brigade advanced into a square kilometre of wood on the outskirts of the village of Longueval, during what became known as “the battle of the Somme”. Six days later, of the 3,153 men who had entered the wood, 780 were able to walk. The rest were dead, wounded or missing, buried under earth that days earlier had been a stand of beech, oak, maple and hornbeam; with a name few South Africans had heard before: Delville Wood.
Mr Du Toit, SANDF does not get R100 billion, that is the problem
There is a particular confidence that comes from spending one’s career on a trading floor, and Hendrik du Toit has it in abundance. The Ninety One chief executive, a man who built a global asset manager from a Johannesburg desk, looked at the South African National Defence Force this month and reached for the only verb his profession really trusts: close it. The defence force, he told an audience of fruit farmers, wastes R100 billion a year “on nothing.” It is “defending nothing.” If he had the chance, he would wind the whole thing up.
SANDF, the ANC’s employment force
Thirty years ago, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) existed for one primary reason: to defend the Republic, it’s people and territorial integrity against external threats and, if necessary, fight and win wars on behalf of the state. That was its constitutional purpose, its strategic justification. Everything else was secondary.
Freedom Day and functional legitimacy
Thirty-two years into democracy, African National Congress (ANC) rule finds itself confronting a myriad of problems, some more fundamental than electoral decline. While it may not realise it, the ANC is beginning to lose its functional legitimacy. The first duty of a state is to defend its citizens and its territorial integrity; this is what justifies a government’s authority.
More than an air show: a lesson in air power
As fans of the hit Tom Cruise films of the “Top Gun” series can surely attest, air power lends itself to spectacle. Jets roar overhead at high speed, drop devastating amounts of ordnance, which explode spectacularly. Then, just as quickly as they arrived, the jets depart in seconds, leaving behind little but dust, noise and the suggestion of overwhelming force.
News Focus: A widening war, a narrowing margin for error
The war involving Iran, the United States and Israel has entered a more dangerous phase, defined less by decisive victories than by expanding reach, blurred accountability and mounting global costs. Events over the past 48 hours, from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean, suggest a conflict that is no longer contained geographically, militarily or economically.
A carrier of ambition
If the International Fleet Review off Visakhapatnam illustrated the reach of India’s naval diplomacy, stepping aboard INS Vikrant revealed something deeper: the strategic thinking shaping India’s maritime policy.
Why South Africa still needs naval diplomacy
In mid-February I was among a group of 28 international defence journalists invited to India to observe a series of exercises hosted by the country’s
SA’s long war in the DRC is ending – the reckoning should begin
After nearly three decades, South Africa is preparing to withdraw its troops from eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). By the end of 2026,