About the publication

defenceWeb was established in September 2008 to provide defence professionals as well as specialists interested in defence matters in Africa a consolidated source for news, information, research and insight. Our focus audience is the key opinion-former and decision-maker in Parliament, the executive, officialdom, the military, industry, academia, the media and the broader public.

The publication was, in part, inspired by the words of an Australian defence minister who some years ago said: “There is no area where public understanding and informed debate is more important. Yet there is not a lot of that debate in the community... There is even less debate on what the public is prepared to pay for defence.” This is certainly also the case in South Africa where less than four cents of every Rand government spent in the 2010/11 financial year went to national defence.

defenceWeb had a Nielsen-audited readership of more than 43 000 in June 2011 with about half of this number in South Africa. defenceWeb also has significant audiences elsewhere in Africa, in Europe and North America. Through “word of mouth” as well as “word of mouse”, it has seen spectacular growth – roughly 1000% from an audited 3305 unique readers in January 2009. Page impressions have grown from 17 000 to more than 110 000 over the same period.

We are part of the ITWeb family.


About our people

Acting editor

A graduate of Rhodes University with a Bachelor of Journalism, Guy Martin has been writing in the field of defence, with a focus on military aviation, since 2004. Guy has been published in over a dozen aviation and defence magazines, such as Air Forces Monthly, International Air Power Review, Combat Aircraft and Military Technology. He also has considerable html experience and has set up several websites.

Senior reporter

Kim Helfrich has been actively involved in defence and military reporting for more than 17 years, starting as a specialist defence reporter for the Pretoria News in the mid-1990s. He also covered the defence beat for The Citizen and The New Age prior to joining defenceWeb. His experience and knowledge has seen him address a number of SA National Defence Force training seminars on “The Military and the Media”. He was presented with the Chief of the SA Navy’s Commendation for his reporting on naval affairs. Environmental reporting is his other specialist area and he is a merit award winner in the annual Environmental Reporting Awards sponsored by SABMiller.

Client relations manager

Phillipa Carlin is defenceWeb's client relations manager.

Sales executive

Robert Mace is sales director.

Michelle Pillay is the sales representative
 
Reporter

Slindo Mbuyisa joined defenceWeb in July 2010 after obtaining her BA in political science.