Southern African Development Community

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Southern African Development Community (SADC)


(In Detail)	(In Detail)

Headquarters

Gaborone, Botswana

Membership

14 member states

Working languages

English, French and Portuguese

Formation
- As SADCC
- As SADC

April 1, 1980
August 17, 1992

Executive Secretary

Tomaz Augusto Salomão

Official Website

http://www.sadc.int

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is an inter-governmental organization. It furthers socio-economic cooperation and integration as well as political and security cooperation among 14 southern African countries. It is one of the pillars of the African Union.^{[citation needed]}

1 History
2 Member states
3 Challenges facing member countries, and aims of SADC
4 SADC structure and decision-making procedures
5 SADC in practice
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] History

The origins of SADC lie in the 1960s and 1970s, when the leaders of majority-ruled countries and national liberation movements coordinated their political, diplomatic and military struggles to bring an end to colonial and white-minority rule in southern Africa. The immediate forerunner of the political and security cooperation leg of today's SADC was the informal Front Line States (FLS) grouping. It was formed in the mid-1970s.

The Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) was the forerunner of the socio-economic cooperation leg of today's SADC. The adoption by nine majority-ruled southern African countries of the Lusaka declaration on 1 April 1980 paved the way for the formal establishment of SADCC in July 1981.

The membership of the FLS and SADCC sometimes differed.

SADCC was transformed into SADC on 17 August 1992, with the adoption by the founding members of SADCC and newly independent Namibia of the Windhoek declaration and treaty establishing SADC. The 1992 SADC provided for both socio-economic cooperation and political and security cooperation. In reality, the FLS was dissolved only in 1994, after South Africa's first democratic elections. Subsequent efforts to place political and security cooperation on a firm institutional footing under SADC's umbrella failed.

On 14 August 2001 the 1992 SADC treaty was amended. The amendment heralded the overhaul of the structures, policies and procedures of SADC, a process which is ongoing. One of the changes is that political and security cooperation is institutionalised in the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security (OPDS). One of the principal SADC bodies, it is subject to the oversight of the organisation's supreme body, the Summit, which comprises the heads of state or government.

The headquarters of SADC is in Gaborone, Botswana.

[edit] Member states

SADC-only members SADC and SACU members

SADC has 14 member states, namely:

Angola
Botswana
Lesotho
Malawi
Mozambique
Swaziland
Tanzania
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Namibia - since 31 March 1990 (since independence)
South Africa - since 30 August 1994
Mauritius - since 28 August 1995
Democratic Republic of the Congo - since 8 September 1997
Madagascar - since 18 August 2005

Seychelles also joined SADC, on 8 September 1997, but left on 1 July 2004.

[edit] Challenges facing member countries, and aims of SADC

SADC countries face many social, development, economic, trade, economic, education, health, diplomatic, defence, security and political challenges. Some of these challenges cannot be tackled effectively by individual members. Cattle diseases and organised-crime gangs know no boundaries. War in one country can suck in its neighbours and damage their economies. The sustainable development that trade could bring is threatened by the existence of different product standards and tariff regimes, weak customs infrastructure and bad roads. The socio-economic and political and security cooperation aims of SADC are equally wide-ranging, and intended to address the various common challenges.

SADC's aims are set out in different sources. The sources include the treaty establishing the organisation (SADC treaty); various protocols (other SADC treaties, such as the corruption protocol, the firearms protocol, the OPDS protocol, the health protocol and the education protocol); development and cooperation plans such as the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) and the Strategic Indicative Plan of the Organ (SIPO); and declarations such as those on HIV and AIDS and food security. Not all of the pre-2001 treaties and plans have been harmonised with the more detailed and recent plans such as the RISDP and SIPO.

In some areas, mere coordination of national activities and policies is the aim of cooperation. In others, the member states aim at more far-reaching forms of cooperation. For example, the members largely aim to coordinate their foreign policies, but they aim to harmonise their trade and economic policies with a view to one day establishing a common market with common regulatory institutions.

[edit] SADC structure and decision-making procedures

The organisation has eight principal bodies:

The Summit, comprising heads of state or heads of government, is at the top.
OPDS, the
Council of Ministers,
Tribunal,
SADC National Committees (SNCs), and the
Secretariat.

Except for the Tribunal (based in Windhoek, Namibia), SNCs and Secretariat, decision-making is by consensus.

[edit] SADC in practice

SADC is a weak organisation. It is under-resourced, and the member states are not happy to give it the powers that they agreed to give it when they launched the overhaul of the organisation in 2001.

A major problem is that member states also participate in other regional economic cooperation schemes and regional political and security cooperation schemes that undermine SADC's aims. For example, South Africa and Botswana belong to the Southern Africa Customs Union too, and Zambia also belongs to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.

[edit] See also

List of Trade blocs
Southern African Customs Union (SACU)
Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS)
East African Community (EAC)
Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)

[edit] References

Gabriël Oosthuizen, The Southern African Development Community: The organisation, its history, policies and prospects. Institute for Global Dialogue: Midrand, South Africa, 2006.
John McCormick, The European Union: Politics and Policies. Westview Press: Boulder, Colorado, 2004.
Ramsamy, Prega 2003 Global partnership for Africa. Presentation at The human rights conference on global partnerships for Africa’s development, Gaborone: SADC