The Legacy of the Front-line States

The evolution of regional security mechanisms and structures in Southern Africa has a history that predates decolonisation. For the first decades since the start of such co-operation in the late 1950s, the focus of efforts was on decolonising and ending minority regimes in the former Rhodesia, South West Africa and South Africa. Only since the start of the 1990s could Southern Africa turn its attention to the process of building a security community from a divided and war-torn subregion.

Two national leaders were to play a decisive role in the war for the establishment of majority rule in Southern Africa. The one was Julius Nyerere, whose death has only recently been mourned by Tanzania and Africa. The other is Kenneth Kaunda, the former and long serving president of Zambia and the only surviving member of the liberation presidents.

The FLS alliance was formed from the remnants of the short-lived ‘Mulungushi Club’.2 Most of its members once belonged to PAFMECSA (the Pan-African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa).3 PAFMECSA, in turn, grew out of PAFMECA (the Pan-African Movement for East and Central Africa), established in 1958, which changed its name and Constitution in 1962 to accommodate newly independent countries outside its original Anglophone region. PAFMECA/PAFMECSA had a series of eight conferences before it was eventually overtaken by the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in May 1963.4 At continental level, the OAU Liberation Committee took responsibility for much of the work that PAFMECSA had engaged in, but the feeling remained that this was too formal and broad an institution to cater for the particular and special needs of the subregion. As a result, and subsequent to the dissolution of PAFMECSA, a series of Conferences on East and Central African Countries (CECAC) were initiated by Tanzania and Zambia to fill the vacuum left by PAFMECSA.5 Together with President Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaïre, Nyerere and Kaunda were the most active in the region.

For most of the time the region reflected an uncompromising commitment in support of the armed struggle as opposed to dialogue. Yet, the fifth CECAC issued the Lusaka Manifesto in 1969, which was later adopted by both the OAU and the UN and, for a limited period, provoked a debate on dialogue in Southern Africa. The seventh CECAC subsequently issued the Mogadishu Declaration that reassessed the situation and concluded that the white minority regimes in Southern Africa had not only rejected the Lusaka Manifesto, but were not amenable to negotiation. The Lusaka Manifesto and the Mogadishu Declaration laid a basis for the future alternative strategies of independent Southern African countries. Dialogue and peaceful settlement of Southern African conflicts were only to be revived by the Harare Declaration (1989) in a very different, post-Cold War context and at a time that both Namibia and Zimbabwe had joined the ranks of the FLS.6

The Mulungushi Club was the most short-lived of the groupings preceding the FLS and there was a degree of co-existence between CECAC and the Club. Operating approximately between 1970 and 1974, the Club was the immediate predecessor of the FLS alliance. Its original four members were Tanzania, Uganda (until Idi Amin replaced Milton Obote in a 1971 coup), Zaïre (Mobutu attended meetings from 1973) and Zambia. Its name reflected its nature — that of an informal group of respected heads of state rather than an interstate institution.7 Like the previous groupings and others such as CECAC, the Club also had its focus on the liberation of Southern Africa. Its relatively small size allowed it to meet frequently and at short notice. "Also, like all other regional and sub-regional groupings, leaders of active liberation movements in Southern Africa were being frequently invited to the Club summits. Most of these features were carried over to the FLS alliance."8

Within a subregional context, the FLS was the most important and indeed most recognised structure to emerge in the mid-1970s at a time when the anti-colonial struggle was the most important concern in the subregion. The FLS was constituted as an informal forum9 for the discussion of mainly political and, to a lesser extent, military problems common among the liberation movements, and the problems faced by newly independent governments in Zambia, Mozambique and Angola. Security issues were discussed in the ISDSC, the informal substructure of the FLS. At Summit level, the FLS was not only a club of national governments, but included representatives from the various liberation movements in its meetings and, for a time, the head of state of Nigeria as a type of informal associate. The heads of state of Botswana (Sir Seretse Khama), Tanzania (Julius Nyerere) and Zambia (Kenneth Kaunda) can be considered to be the founders of the FLS in 1975, together with Samora Machel of Mozambique. Angola joined in 1976, Zimbabwe in 1980 and Namibia in 1990. South Africa briefly joined in 1994 before the demise of the FLS later that same year.10 Lesotho was never a member of the FLS, although representatives of the government of Chief Leabua Jonathan attended a number of ISDSC meetings.11

The FLS alliance would play its most important role in the final years leading up to the end of white rule in the former Rhodesia and the creation of Zimbabwe in 1980.12 Thereafter, the alliance lost a degree of impact — compounded by economic decline among its members and South Africa’s aggressive destabilisation policies.13 Economic issues loomed as the next primary challenge for the region and, as a result, the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC) was founded in 1980, resulting in the further erosion of the influence of the FLS.14

As long as there were still states under colonial rule or minority regimes, the SADCC and the FLS remained separate forums, respectively accepting responsibility for economic co-ordination and for mutual political and military support.

When the anti-colonial struggle ended and apartheid was abolished in South Africa in the early 1990s, the security and political concerns of the subregion changed. The Declaration and Treaty of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), signed by Heads of State and Government in Windhoek in 1992, expressed confidence that recent developments, such as the independence of Namibia and majority rule in South Africa, "... will take the region out of an era of conflict and confrontation, to one of co-operation; in a climate of peace, security and stability. These are prerequisites for development ..."

The Declaration also called for "... a framework of co-operation which provides for ... strengthening regional solidarity, peace and security, in order for the people of the region to live and work together in peace and harmony ... The region needs, therefore, to establish a framework and mechanisms to strengthen regional solidarity, and provide for mutual peace and security."15

In response to these changes, the approaches and emphases of both the SADCC and the FLS had to change. The SADCC became SADC and after a failed proposal for the FLS to be transformed into the Association of Southern African States (ASAS), discussions commenced on the creation of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security.

But before discussing institutional development in the region, it is important to recognise that Southern Africa is an extremely fragile region that includes two failed states within its boundaries, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In the 1999 Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Angola was ranked at 160 out of 174 countries. Angola has not seen peace in thirty years, yet the UNDP considers that the quality of life in this tragic country is better than in Mozambique — a country only five places above Sierra Leone. The UNDP considers Sierra Leone with its thousands of traumatised war victims to be the worst place in the world to live, yet no SADC member country rank within the top 100 countries in terms of the quality of life for its people. South Africa, who does the best, is placed at number 101. With a population of roughly 40 million people, South Africa is a giant within SADC and indeed in Africa. Its gross national product (GNP) is more than twice that of Egypt and more than four times that of Nigeria, the most densely populated country in Africa with roughly 105 million people. Indeed, the majority of SADC countries are ranked between 122 (Botswana) and 160 (Angola). Collectively, the GNP of all of SADC with its 150 million people is roughly equal to that of Belgium with 10 million inhabitants.