By Gabriël H Oosthuizen

In two respects the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) differs little from most regional cooperation organisations the world over. Things happen slowly. And appearances are deceptive.

In 2001 the organisation started overhauling its structures, operations and cooperation plans in both the political and security cooperation and the socio-economic spheres. This overhaul could be the key to boosting the region’s ability to achieve the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) but it has run up against formidable challenges.

The decision to revamp SADC was as much an effort to break with the divisive, ineffectual 1990s as it was the outcome of an honest stock-taking of the institutional, policy, management and implementation shortcomings and failures of SADC’s earlier attempts at cooperation.

The dawn of political freedom in South Africa and elsewhere in the region during the first half of the 1990s held much promise. Stakeholders were hoping for concerted intergovernmental action to tackle the region’s stark socio-economic underdevelopment, as well as peace, democracy and rule of law deficits.

The promise was dashed. Enlargement fatigue set in. Free-roaming South Africa, the region’s economic giant, and older regional powers struggled to see eye to eye on trade and other issues. ‘‘Africa’s world war’’, centring on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, split the members. SADC in effect became paralysed.

Thus the overhaul. Included was the preparation of a comprehensive regional socio-economic development plan. After years of labour the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) was launched in March 2004.

An ambitious 15-year plan, it is meant to give strategic direction to SADC, aligning its policies and programmes with its long-term objectives and priorities. SADC also developed more detailed implementation and project plans spanning one, five and 15 years to supplement the RISDP.

The RISDP identifies a number of interlinked priority intervention areas, of which many overlap with the MDGs. They include poverty eradication; combating HIV/AIDS; gender equality; information and communication technologies; the environment; trade and economic liberalisation and integration; infrastructure development; food security; and human-resources development.

It sets out strategies and timeframes for achieving area goals. Laudably, it is in alignment with the MDGs as it views poverty eradication as the overarching long-term objective and main priority.

More controversially, it considers trade and economic liberalisation and integration as chief catalysts for achieving it.

In preparing the plan, SADC held half-hearted and limited consultations with some organised sections of business and other non-state communities. It also considered the organisation’s existing treaties, policies, as well as multilateral initiatives such as the MDGs and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Officially, SADC regards NEPAD as one of the frameworks for achieving the MDGs. The RISDP has been referred to as ‘‘SADC’s NEPAD programme”, highlighting the linkages between the two plans. The secretariats of SADC, NEPAD and the African Union attempt to coordinate their NEPAD and MDG activities.

The preconditions to the realisation of the RISDP, and therefore the MDGs, are many. SADC’s leaders recognised that good political governance is among them, and that sustainable socio-economic development ‘‘will not be realised in conditions of political intolerance; the absence of the rule of law; corruption; civil strife; and war’’.

In order to bring about such conditions, the equivalent plan of the RISDP in the political and security cooperation sphere, the Strategic Indicative Plan of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security (OPDS), and other instruments vaguely map the route for the OPDS and the Summit of Heads of State—the top SADC decision-making body—for bringing about these conditions.

The leadership is forthright about the other challenges to the RISDP’s successful implementation. For example, the securing of the ‘‘significant’’ human and financial resources is regarded as a key challenge.

Furthermore, they see the enhanced interaction and involvement of the members as ‘‘critical’’ to the success of the RISDP. SADC members have to ensure that the SADC National Committees (SNCs) function. These are new bodies which are supposed to include non-state representatives, and to coordinate and oversee the plan’s implementation while linking national and regional SADC structures.

The SADC leadership is also aware of the mammoth task that is involved in managing and coordinating the interests and roles of all the various implementation agencies. In these processes, the SADC Secretariat, closely guided by the members, is supposed to play a facilitative and coordinating role as government authorities and other actors implement the plan at the national level.

The leadership acknowledges that this ‘‘poses a major challenge that may require capacity strengthening at the Secretariat’’. Moreover, the RISDP and the (unnecessarily numerous) national, regional, continental, global, donor and lender initiatives must be coordinated and aligned. These challenges are even more pronounced today than in early 2004 when the RISDP was adopted.

Five years after the commencement of the overhaul, it remains incomplete. The requisite institutional structure is not in place, and the SADC Secretariat lacks authority and sufficient human resources. The RISDP and its implementation plans largely remain just that—plans. Little has been done to address the identified challenges. With this, SADC’s hopes of achieving the MDGs suffer.

There is now talk of further refining SADC’s structures, and of recommitting to establishing ‘‘effectively functional’’ SNCs. This ‘‘refinement’’ includes narrowing the scope of cooperation facilitated and coordinated by the Secretariat to focus on a few core areas of cooperation. Added to this is a renewed push in diplomatic halls to speed up trade and economic liberalisation and integration.

While it is unclear exactly what effect further structural and policy refinements and changes would have on the RISDP and its implementation plans, it is questionable whether such steps would help improve SADC’s performance.

Something else is amiss in SADC. This ‘‘something’’ seems to go beyond the immediate, fundamental issues that the challenges are mind-bogglingly big and complicated. Or that there is too little human capacity to properly govern and cooperate at the intergovernmental level.

This ‘‘something’’ is to be found in the levels of mismanagement and corruption and the misrule of the governing elites in Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Angola. It can also be discerned in the participation of most members in three different regional economic cooperation schemes and in trade negotiations with third parties, including the European Union—engagements which undermine SADC’s agenda.

It is also in the lack of determination and urgency with which cooperation in SADC is approached.

Such conduct raises two questions. Are the ruling elites really convinced of the need for, and desirous of, effective and concerted intergovernmental cooperation through organisations such as SADC? And, more fundamentally, do they really care about the plight of those on whose behalf they supposedly govern?

(*) Gabriël H Oosthuizen, a London-based specialist in international law, is the author of the book The Southern African Development Community: The organisation, its policies and prospects (2006)