The role of South Africa in SADC regional integration: the making or braking of the organization

• Author: Saurombe Amos
• Position: University of South Africa Sauroa@unisa.ac.za
• Pages: 124-131

This article was originally published in Kierkegaard, S.(2009) Legal Discourse in Cyberlaw and Trade. IAITL.

Page 124

1. Introduction

Since attaining a democratic State, South Africa has regarded Southern Africa as one of the most important priority of its foreign relations. This is shown by its commitment to all spheres of the Southern African Development Community ¹ agenda including political, social and economic well being of the region. SADC is a regional governmental organization that promotes collaboration, economic integration and technical cooperation throughout Southern Africa ². This relationship with the region is a delicate one for South Africa since it has to balance its roles as a regional, continental and global player. This makes it difficult for South Africa to please all these diverse stake holders in the international arena. For this reason , the scope of this paper focuses only on trade and regional integration. South Africa has taken a leading role in the region to address such issues as closer collaboration and economic integration and has used SADC as a vehicle to drive this agenda for the region. To some extent, this has benefited the region since South Africa's spotlight on the global front helps magnify the regions potential in many respects. However, this has not always brought the desired results for the SADC region. In many instances South Africa chooses to isolate itself from the region and likewise the region may chose to isolate South Africa in its own dealings. South Africa acceded to the SADC Treaty on 29 August 1994 at the Heads of State Summit in Gaborone, Botswana. This accession was approved by the Senate and National Assembly on 13 and 14 September 1994 respectively. After joining SADC, South Africa was given a sector responsibility for finance, investment and health. This was a decision that was informed by South Africa's comparative advantage in this area. It is undoubted that South Africa is the most developed and advanced economy in SADC and on the continent of Africa. This position cannot be ignored if the possibility of regional integration is taken seriously on the continent and in the region. For this reason it is important to point out that owing to its economic strength South Africa has the potential to make or break regional integration in the region. South Africa can be described as the economic hub of the region. South Africa's role in the region is therefore Page 125 crucial and commercial relationships between South Africa and the regional economies should, on balance, deliver mutually beneficial outcomes.

South Africa finds itself in a dilemma of trying to balance its domestic, regional, continental and global interests. In the process the likelihood of conflict of interest is inevitable. The success of the SADC regional integration agenda undoubtedly depends on South Africa's willingness to support it. SADC founded the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan ³ as a linear guide for deeper integration. According to the 15 year plan, the key milestones are to reach a Free Trade area in 2008, Customs Union in 2010, Common Market in 2015, Monetary Union in 2016 and regional currency in 2018 ⁴. The RISDP remains the strongest indicator of SADC's desire for deeper integration with an objective of reaching a level of intra-regional unrestricted flow of goods, services and investment. The RISDP cannot be implemented without the support of the biggest economy of the region. SADC needs South Africa but the fear is that the same cannot be said of South Africa needing SADC. This paper will attempt to unpack the critical position South Africa finds itself with regard to the success or failure of the SADC regional integration agenda.

2. Historical background

Regional integration in Southern Africa has its roots in the sense of common destiny that developed through the involvement of African states, particularly those located in Southern Africa, in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. The resolve of these states was channelled through the aims and activities of the OAU Liberation Committee. This led to the establishment of the Frontline States who spearheaded the fight against white minority rule in the region. As more and more states attained majority rule in the region reasons for the liberation struggle became redundant. The focus of the Frontline States had to change. Following a preparatory meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, in July 1979, nine Southern African states on 1 April 1980 founded the Southern African Development Coordination Conference ⁵ in Lusaka, Zambia, when they signed a statement of strategy, Southern Africa: Towards Economic Liberation (the Lusaka Declaration) ⁶. SADCC had more elaborate aims than the FLS, and aimed at reducing economic dependence on South Africa. It did not, however, specify the form of cooperation and coordination between its members. SADCC managed to access considerable external aid, and embarked on numerous programmes and projects, but did not succeed in reversing the fundamental economic dependence of many of its members on South Africa.

When it became clear, in the early 1990s, that a democratic South Africa was becoming an irreversible prospect, and against the background of changes in the global economy and severe droughts in the sub-region, the Heads of States of SADCC on 17 August 1992 turned SADCC into the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The SADC Treaty, which the then ten members of SADCC signed on that date, entered into force on 5 October 1993, after all these states had ratified it. The focus was on deepening regional economic integration, SADC's aims are more ambitious than its predecessors.

Under the 1992 SADC Treaty, 21 co-operation clusters were identified, and each member state was given the responsibility to coordinate SADC's activities in at least one of the functional areas, such as energy (Angola), tourism (Mauritius), and food and agriculture (Zimbabwe). Starting in the mid 1990's, SADC embarked on a protracted review and rationalization process, especially targeting SADC's decentralized co-operation model, its management framework, and the lack of clarity and specificity in its goals. This process culminated in the 2001 SADC Report on the Review of the Operations of SADC Institutions, which the Summit approved in March 2001. Most of the recommendations in the review report were contained in the Agreement Amending the Treaty of the SADC, which entered into force on 14 August 2001, on the date that all member states signed it.

3. The current SADC regional agenda

In 2003, this ongoing process of transformation resulted in the formulation of the RISDP as discussed earlier. It aims, in the words of the SADC mission statement, "to promote sustainable and equitable economic growth and socioeconomic development through efficient production systems, deeper cooperation and integration, good governance, and durable peace and security, so that the region emerges as a competitive and effective player in Page 126 international relations and the world economy" ⁷. The objectives also include a desire of reaching a level of intra- regional unrestricted flow of goods, services and investment. The current SADC regional integration agenda is embodied in the RISDP.

4. South Africa's domestic aspirations and SADC

It has already been alluded to earlier that South Africa is the strongest economy in the region and on the African continent. This makes the country very attractive in the labour market. The country attracts from SADC workforce from all spheres including unskilled, semi-skilled and highly skilled labour ⁸. This has also cushioned the adverse effects of brain drain South Africa suffers at the hands of other attractive destinations like Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. South Africa has lost 25% of its graduates to the United States alone. Moreover, South Africans account for 9.7% of all international medical graduates practicing in Canada. Out of all the medical graduates produced by the University of Witwatersrand in the last 35 years, more than 45% (or 2,000 physicians), have left the country. South Africa's Bureau of Statistics estimates that between 1 million and 1.6 million people in skilled, professional, and managerial occupations have emigrated since 1994 and that, for every emigrant, 10 unskilled people lose their jobs ⁹. SADC is yet to conclude the Protocol on the movement of persons ¹⁰.

However, this has not always been viewed as an advantage by various sectors in South Africa. The trade unions are very strong in the country to the extent that they resist the employment of foreign nationals. The labour market is equally highly regulated by strict legislation like the Employment Equity Act that reserves first preference for black South Africans who were disadvantaged during the apartheid past ¹¹. This means that foreigners are only considered for employment in the country as third option after the South African Blacks and whites. This is not an unfamiliar position since any other country in the world safeguards employment for its people. The presence of strict regulations has however failed to stop the illegal employment of foreign SADC nations in all sectors of the economy, for example the foreign farm workers are known to be harder working that South Africans. They also accept less payment for the same work done. Therefore, conflict is inevitable leading to undesirable consequences like the Xenophobia attacks of 2007 that saw more...