The Establishment of SADC

The concept of regional economic co-operation was first discussed at a meeting of the FLS Foreign ministers in May 1979 in Gaborone. The meeting led to an international conference in Arusha, Tanzania two months later which brought together all independent countries — with the exception of the then Rhodesia, South West Africa and South Africa — and international donor agencies. The Arusha conference, in turn, led to the Lusaka Summit held in the Zambian capital in April 1980. After adopting the declaration, which was to become known as ‘Southern Africa: Towards Economic Liberation’, Sir Seretse Khama was elected the first chairman of the SADCC.16 The Declaration committed the signatory governments to pursue policies aimed at economic liberation (i.e. to reduce economic dependence on South Africa) and the integrated and equitable development of the economies of the region. The SADCC was subsequently formalised by means of a Memorandum of Understanding on the Institutions of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference dated 20 July 1981.

In 1989, the Summit of Heads of State or Government, meeting in Harare, decided that SADCC should be formalised to "... give it an appropriate legal status ... to replace the Memorandum of Understanding with an Agreement, Charter or Treaty."17 In 1992, the SADCC transformed itself into the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which presently consists of fourteen member countries, namely Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland and Seychelles. The SADC Treaty was signed in Windhoek and dated 17 August 1992.

The objectives of SADC, as derived from the SADC Treaty, are represented diagrammatically in Figure 1.

In recent years, much of the effort to promote a common security regime in the region has tried to do so through the SADC Treaty. Apart from the multilateral agreement on crime combating, discussed elsewhere in this monograph, the SADC Treaty is the only existing legal vehicle through which to pursue such progress. It is therefore important to review the more important characteristics and features of the Treaty.