The article explores the nature and development ofmilitary research in South Africa since 1994. Military research always unfolds within the idea and the broader context of security. Similar to the end of the First and Second World Wars, the end of the Cold War introduced a period of relative peace that translated into a liberal outlook on peace and security in the 1990s. Internationally, the so-called Copenhagen school of security studies suggests a deepening and broadening of the debate on security. Increasingly, strategic studies were replaced by security studies; with the debate on security in the 1990s becoming progressively normative and utopian in nature. By the end of the 1990s, especially after the 9/11 attacks, it was quite clear, however, that security still requires a careful attention of conflict, violence, and war; and that the state and the security institutions remain at the core of the idea of security. At the same time, defining security too widely, and including potentially everything that might negatively affect human affairs, the idea of security runs the risk of being too broad to be of any practical value. By the early 2000s, on an international scale, the focus on military force returned to its rightful place in International Relations (IR) as an area of research and study. South Africa in the 1990s embraced the idea of the deepening and broadening of the debate on security; and the notion of human security, in particular. As was the case under the apartheid regime before 1994, the 1996 White Paper on Defence was used to translate the idea of human security into policy. Unlike the era before 1994, however, the policy directive on human security was never really operationalised by means of an explicit national security strategy document. At face value, there was a declaratory focus by government on human security; in reality, however, thefocus shifted to an emphasis on African security under President Thabo Mbeki, regime security under the Jacob Zuma Administration, and the reality of national security under President Cyril Ramaphosa respectively. In the scholarly domain, however, the focus in research and teaching remained almost exclusively on the non-military and non-state dimensions of the idea of human security. Given this state of affairs, questions ought to be asked about the alignment between research on security in South Africa and the realities of insecurity facing the society at large; as well as to what extent the academic fraternity in South Africa is addressing the nuances of the security realities facing society in their research. As far as military research is concerned, the period after 1994 can be viewed as a period of growth and development for the Faculty of Military Science of the University of Stellenbosch at the Military Academy, Saldanha Bay. Whereas prior to 1994 the Faculty was primarily responsible for the undergraduate teaching of military officers, the focus of the institution shifted towards post-graduate teaching and research in the post-1994 era. This was predominantly due to the process of democratisation and developments in the sphere of global communications. It allowed the Faculty of Military Science to escape from its geographical and institutional isolation and to become integrated into the broader academic fraternity both in South Africa and abroad. The Faculty's research unfolded predominantly in the domain of the art of war rather than military science; with an emphasis on military history, strategic studies and international relations (IR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]