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SOUTHERN AFRICAN
SECURITY REVIEW
2013
Edited by Anthoni van Nieuwkerk
and Katharina Hofmann
i
COVER IMAGE
The cover features a mask made of pieces of assault rifles and other military equipment by
the Mozambican artist Goncalo Mabunda. He is one of several Mozambican artists who are
turning weapons into sculptures, as part of a project to disarm Mozambicans in the wake of
the civil war. Their work has attracted growing international attention, and has been exhibited
in galleries throughout the world. Commenting on Mabunda’s work, the Jack Bell Gallery in
London has noted: ‘The deactivated weapons of war carry strong political connotations, yet
the beautiful objects he creates also convey a positive reflection on the transformative power
of art and the resilience and creativity of African civilian societies.’ (For the full text, see http://
www.jackbellgallery.com/artists/29-Gon%C3%A7alo-Mabunda/overview/.)
Centre for Defence and Security Management
University of the Witwatersrand
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung
Mozambique Office
SOUTHERN AFRICAN
SECURITY REVIEW
2013
Edited by
Anthoni van Nieuwkerk and
Katharina Hofmann
December 2013
Jointly published in December 2013 by:
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung
Mozambique Office
Av. Tomás Nduda, 1313
Caixa Postal 3694
Maputo, Mozambique
Tel (00 258) 21 49 12 31
Fax (00 258) 21 49 02 86
info@fes-mozambique.org
www.fes-mozambique.org
The Centre for Defence and Security Management
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
University of the Witwatersrand
2 St David’s Place, Parktown
Johannesburg, South Africa
Tel 011 717 3520
http://www.wits.ac.za/academic/clm/pdm
All rights reserved. This publication, either whole or in part, may not be reproduced, stored, or transmitted
without the prior permission of the publishers. It may be quoted, and short extracts used, provided the
source is fully acknowledged.
Copy-edited by Riaan de Villiers and Rob Meintjes
Design and layout by Acumen Publishing Solutions
ISBN 978-0-620-59686-2
Table of contents
About the authors 4
Acknowledgments 5
Introduction 6
Part one: Concepts and contexts
Chapter 1: Security in southern Africa: the state of the debate 13
Sandy Africa and Mpho Molomo
Chapter 2: The role of donors and NGOs in the security policy process in southern Africa 27
Gavin Cawthra
Chapter 3: Exploring SADC’s evolving peace and security policy framework 38
Anthoni van Nieuwkerk
Chapter 4: The AU-SADC interface on peace and security: challenges and opportunities 54
João Machatine Laimone Ndlovu
Part two: Case studies of peace and security in southern Africa
Chapter 5: Crafting policy for the Namibian security system 73
André du Pisani
Chapter 6: SADC’s crisis management in Zimbabwe, 2007–2013 83
Munyaradzi Nyakudya
Chapter 7: Mozambique’s economic transformation and its implications for human security 102
Katharina Hofmann
Chapter 8: Southern African maritime security: problems and prospects 120
João Paulo Borges Coelho
About the authors
Professor Sandy Africa is an associate professor of political science at the University of Pretoria. She has extensive teaching and research experience, and has published widely on security
sector governance and the South African intelligence services.
Professor Gavin Cawthra holds the chair in defence and security management in the Graduate School of Public and Development Management of the University of the Witwatersrand.
He has lectured in more than 20 countries in Africa, and has published widely in the field of
security in southern Africa and Africa.
Professor João Paulo Coelho is the research director of the Aquino de Bragança Centre for
Social Studies in Maputo. He has published widely on the political construction of conflicts
and security in southern Africa and the Indian Ocean region.
Professor André du Pisani is a scholar, policy analyst and poet, with 40 years of teaching and
research experience at the tertiary education level. He is a professor in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies of the University of Namibia. His teaching and research have
centred on the politics of southern Africa, conflict resolution and democratic consolidation,
democratic theory, and ethics.
Katharina Hofmann is the resident representative of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in
Mozambique. From there she co-ordinates the regional security work on peace and security
in southern Africa. Her research has centred on peace and conflict studies, particularly nonconventional warfare and human security in Latin America and Africa.
Professor Mpho Molomo is the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS), affiliated
with the Department of Political and Administrative Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at
the University of Botswana. His field of interest includes state and land development, politics
and democratisation in Southern Africa, security sector governance, political parties and electoral systems, and ethnicity.
João Ndlovu is the head of the SADC Liaison Office at the African Union. A retired colonel
from the Mozambican Defence Force, he is also a guest lecturer at the Institute of International
Relations (ISRI) in Maputo, Mozambique, and the University of St Thomas in Mozambique. His
research centres on SADC security policy and its linkages with development.
Munyaradzi Nyakudya lectures in African history at the University of Zimbabwe. His research
interests include various aspects of African history, notably governance, peace and security.
He is the founding chairman of the Zimbabwe Peace and Security Education and Training
(ZIPSET) Network, a network of Zimbabwean academics dedicated to educational research on
peace and security.
Asha Sekomo is a doctoral student and research fellow at the Centre for Security and Defence
Management in the Graduate School of Public and Development Management of the University of the Witwatersrand.
Professor Anthoni van Nieuwkerk is the director of the Centre for Defence and Security Management in the Graduate School of Public and Development Management of the University
of the Witwatersrand. He has extensive teaching and research experience, and has published
widely on southern African foreign policy as well defence and security policy.
4
Acknowledgments
THIS PUBLICATION is the result of fruitful collaboration between the Southern African Defence
and Security Management (SADSEM) network and the Mozambique Office of the FriedrichEbert-Stiftung (FES). As readers may know, the SADSEM network consists of 11 tertiary partner
institutions throughout southern Africa. SADSEM members engage in security-related training, education, research, and policy analysis, and maintain close relations with national security sectors as well as the Directorate for Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation in the
Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat. The FES Office in Maputo has
co-ordinated security-related research and dialogue in the region for several years.
Since 2010, SADSEM and FES have jointly hosted an annual workshop on security in southern Africa, which quickly became known as the ‘Maputo Dialogue’. In 2012, in an attempt
to deepen the discourse around regional security, the organisers commissioned a series of
research papers on themes relating to the contemporary security terrain in the region. The
papers were presented to the Maputo Dialogue in that year. Following the Dialogue, the organisers decided to collect edited and updated versions of the papers in this volume, thus making
the work of the SADSEM-based community of researchers available to a broader readership in
the region and beyond.
Three people were appointed to steer the project: Professor Bizeck Phiri of the University of
Zambia; Professor Anthoni van Nieuwkerk of the University of the Witwatersrand; and Katharina Hofmann, resident representative of the FES. The steering committee invited authors to
improve their drafts based on the discussions at the Maputo Dialogue. Revised chapters were
peer-reviewed by the steering committee, and it then fell upon a smaller team of editors to
bring the project to completion.
We wish to thank all the members of the SADSEM network who have participated in the
Maputo Dialogue over the past few years, making it a truly outstanding event on the academic
calendar. We also wish to thank the various authors as well as Professor Phiri for their sterling
work and their patience with the publishing process; Riaan de Villiers and his colleagues at
Acumen Publishing Solutions, for their copy-editing and production work; and Asha Sekomo,
the Maputo Dialogue rapporteur and subsequent project assistant, who has played a major
role in bringing this project to fruition.
We believe everything possible should be done to convey the perspectives of academics and
other expert analysts to policy-makers and others involved in shaping regional security. For
this reason, we hope to make this a bieannual publication.
Anthoni van Nieuwkerk and Katharina Hofmann
September 2013
5
Introduction
Anthoni van Nieuwkerk, Katharina Hofmann and Asha Sekomo
The debate on prospects for peace and security in southern Africa has been captured by
a relentless ‘new growth’ narrative which is permeating western financial magazines, and is
being perpetuated by growing numbers of African commentators and analysts. In this perspective, Africa is in the fortunate position of having been endowed with vast quantities of natural
resources, and all it needs to prosper is for African governments to partner with global business
and commercial interests to make the most of this bonanza.
In this narrative, commercial exploitation will bestow many benefits on Africa, including more
jobs, higher incomes, a greater distribution of wealth, and good governance. Presumably, this
will also generate stability and security. Precisely how this is meant to happen is unclear. This
‘Africa rising’ mantra receives more nuanced analysis from academics writing about the continent’s enduring socio-economic and political challenges. More thoughtful analysts point out
that the renewed scramble for Africa’s resources (and the crass commercialism accompanying
this display of self-interest on the part of some global powers) is working to exacerbate rather
than diminish existing fault lines in African societies, thereby increasing inequality and the
potential for social conflict.
A brief review of the extensive literature on conflict in Africa shows that inter- and intra-state
conflicts are common, widespread and destructive, and pose significant challenges to the
security and prosperity of millions of people. Following Lloyd (2010), conflict in Africa arises
on three main levels: the international level, the level of the African state, and the level of
individual leaders. As regards the international or systemic level, primary drivers of conflict
include the colonial legacy of partition and authoritarian rule. A further complicating factor is
the enduring European influence over Africa through trade, political co-operation, and security ties. To this we may add the renewed scramble for Africa’s resources, with the Chinese state
and Chinese commercial interests as particularly prominent players.
On the international level, while globalisation has benefited Africa in some ways, it has also
caused conflicts around norms of self-determination and democratisation, cultural degradation, religious evangelism, the exploitation of natural resources, and strategies for dealing with
communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
On the next level, a formidable array of factors are working to undermine the integrity of the
state, including geographic incoherence, the lack of identification of citizens with the state, the
corroding effects of ethno-nationalism, rapid population growth, and the effects of urbanisation and unemployment, uneven economic growth, land disputes, and environmental degradation. One could also add the impact of corruption as well as religious tensions. In some
cases, these factors have conspired to weaken the authority of African states to the point where
they can be said to have failed, or collapsed entirely.
Finally, we have to recognise the enormous influence of individual leaders over African states
and African politics, particularly in the form of the ‘big man’ syndrome. African ruling elites
often resort to clientelism and patrimonialism as a means of acquiring and sustaining political
and economic power. Consequently, it is difficult to replace authoritarian regimes with demo-
6
cratic ones capable of managing conflicts, promoting economic growth, and allowing peaceful
change through constitutional means (Lloyd 2010).
Against this schematic background, we turn to focusing on actual peace and security trends
in Africa and southern Africa as they have manifested themselves in recent years. The most
important current conflicts are those in Somalia, the Sudan and South Sudan, eastern DRC, the
Central African Republic, and Madagascar (Dersso 2013). To this list we can add the turmoil
generated by the North African uprisings, affecting Egypt and Libya in particular, with a knockon effect on Mali, where an armed rebellion and military coup took place in 2012. Emerging
security threats include terrorism (by Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Lord’s Resistance Army in
the Great Lakes region, or Al Shabaab in Somalia, among others), organised crime, arms proliferation, arms / human and drug trafficking, and piracy.
While Africa clearly remains afflicted by violent conflict, few of these trends are visible in
southern Africa. Member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
face violent conflicts in the eastern DRC, and political instability due to disputed election outcomes such as in Madagascar. Transnational security threats include piracy along the Indian
Ocean coast (although this is diminishing), organised crime, and human and drug trafficking.
Two structural factors seem relevant. The first is the impact of globalisation, whether in the form
of economic instability due to the global financial crisis or the renewed interest by outsiders in
southern Africa’s mineral riches, and the second, the impact of processes of democratisation and
governance on stability and human security. As regards the second factor, elections do trigger off
disputes, but violent conflicts erupt more often when communities struggle against the state or
compete among themselves to survive in difficult economic times and make a living.
Various players have attempted to settle conflicts in Africa at the communal, national, subregional, and regional / continental levels (Olonisaken 2002). Key institutions meant to attend to
peace-making and peace-keeping (and increasingly, post-conflict reconstruction and development) are the African Union (AU) and its regional subsidiaries, known as Regional Economic
Communities (RECs), with SADC the most apposite for our enquiry. These organisations are
meant to operate in concert under the umbrella of the AU’s African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), but the degree to which this is happening in practice is open to question (Van
Nieuwkerk 2013).
Against this background, rather than viewing Africa through the ‘emerging market’ lens, which
tends to obscure a historical understanding of African peace and security, the contributions
to this volume start from a position of skeptical inquiry. They are divided into two parts; the
first explores the institutional and policy settings appropriate to security policy-making and
implementation in southern Africa, and the second presents a series of case studies of peace
and security in a number of southern African countries.
Part 1: Concepts and contexts
In chapter 1, Sandy Africa and Mpho Molomo provide a conceptual framework for examining
security on the subcontinent. They explore current conceptualisations of national and regional
security, and suggest which framework best explains the security dynamics in the region. They
sketch its historical and current strategic significance, showing that it has long been regarded
as strategically important in global terms. They then trace the emergence of a regional identity,
in lockstep with the emergence of regionalism on the continent.
7
Introduction
Africa and Molomo offer three interpretations of these developments. The first is that southern
Africa remains an intractably polarised region – a security complex of competing interests and
values. The second is that the region has historically united against white minority rule, and
that this is a strong driving force behind its identity as a ‘security community’. The third interpretation suggests replacing a concern about the security of the state and of ruling elites with a
concern about the security of the region’s people, particularly given a range of human security
challenges, notably high levels of poverty and deprivation.
In chapter 2, Gavin Cawthra examines the role of non-government organisations (NGOs) and
donors in setting southern African peace and security agendas. In his view, the main players
in security policy in the region are the 15 member states of SADC, and SADC itself. However,
a growing array of other institutions – including foreign governments, UN agencies, financial
organisations, trade unions, religious organisations, the media, and counter-terrorism institutions – are contributing to the process. To assess their influence, he examines the nature of
agenda-setting, issues surrounding donor support for NGOs, areas of co-operation in the security sector, and how donors navigate the interface between their traditional focus on development and the more recent concern with security issues. The chapter concludes by examining
new issues and challenges surrounding ‘emerging donors’ such as the BRICS countries. An
interesting finding is that donor-supported NGOs are by no means the principal agenda-setters or policy developers in the region. Moreover, although SADC member states are protective
about state security, and are therefore reluctant to accept donor funding in this area, they do
allow NGOs to engage with human security issues.
In chapter 3, Anthoni van Nieuwkerk analyses SADC’s revised Strategic Indicative Plan for the
Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation (OPDSC), informally known as SIPO
II. Drawing on the ‘new regionalism’ literature, particularly the concept of security regionalism, he briefly examines the continental and southern African security terrain before turning
to the evolution of security co-operation among SADC members. He then examines SADC’s
peace and security management systems before analysing the SIPO II. He argues that SADC
has not yet achieved its objective of improving regional security by harmonising the interests
of member states, or assuming the role of an effective regional security actor capable of solving
interstate and intrastate conflicts. In the process, he highlights the awkward sectoral approach
in SIPO II, and the lack of involvement of key regional stakeholders in implementing its objectives. This analysis suggests the need for SADC and its member states to fully involve the people
of the region in the promotion of democracy and good governance. The AU has committed
itself to promoting peace and security on the continent, as well as economic growth and the
development of its people. However, as critics have noted, contradictions and inconsistencies
in its policy frameworks are complicating the implementation of its policies and programmes,
which sets the scene for the next case study.
In chapter 4, João Ndlovu explores the relationship between SADC and the AU in the area of
peace and security. He argues that the varied and conflicting interests of the nation states that
make up these bodies have resulted in an institutional framework with conflicting policy and
decision-making processes. This, in turn, has adversely affected the interface between the two
organisations in the area of peace and security. Ndlovu supports this argument by examining
convergences and divergences among the AU’s policies on peace and security and the MoU
on relations between the AU and RECs in the area of peace and security on the one hand, and
its institutional architecture and operational practices on the other. Two questions guide the
analysis: Why is the AU-SADC interface so problematic? And why do SADC member states
8
make different decisions when they meet at the level of the AU? In conclusion, Ndlovu suggests
what needs to be done to avoid these sorts of problems in the future.
Part 2: Case studies of peace and security in southern Africa
In chapter 5, André du Pisani analyses security policy formation in Namibia, notably the development of two policy frameworks: the National Security Policy Framework (NSPF) – the first
such policy framework to be developed by a SADC member state – and the Counter-Terrorism
and Financing of Terrorism Policy (CTFTP). Drawing on an agency perspective, he maps the
interaction of ideas, interests, institutions, and events that resulted in these policy frameworks.
He explores the institutional setting for policy formation in Namibia and its broader implications for intra-government relations, especially within the security system. He also shows
how both policy frameworks were preceded by key provisions of the constitution (1990) and by
earlier policy frameworks, notably the National Security Policy of 1997 and the Defence Policy
of 2001 as revised in 2010. These were augmented by specific SADC and AU policy frameworks,
and in the case of the CTFTP, public international law considerations emanating from the UN.
The author points to the marginal role of local civil society in developing these policy frameworks, and emphasises the state-centric approach with which both frameworks have been
invested. The case of Namibia demonstrates the need for security policy-makers to be alive and
responsive to global political and security trends. Moreover, Du Pisani’s discussion of the crafting of these two policy frameworks uncovers diverse understandings of Namibian interests as
well as SADC interests in the security policy domain.
In chapter 6, Munyaradzi Nyakudya examines SADC´s management of the crisis in Zimbabwe.
He argues that this ongoing crisis has served to expose SADC as a ‘toothless bulldog’ incapable of enforcing its policies and decisions on intra-state conflicts on powerful member states.
According to the author, causes of the crisis include security challenges in the form of armed
bandits, their suppression by the state with disproportionate brutality, a series of droughts that
crippled agricultural productivity, and the state’s failure to redistribute land. He draws on the
Zimbabwean experience to illustrate a broader argument that African leaders generally tend to
focus on retaining power and accumulating wealth, instead of proper economic management.
Finally, he argues that urgent steps should be taken to turn SADC into a cohesive and wellfunctioning security community whose members act as one against errant members, irrespective of age solidarities among political leaders, as well as other continental and international
forces undermining the security of the region and its people.
In chapter 7, Katharina Hofmann seeks to identify risks and opportunities surrounding
Mozambique’s accelerated economic growth, and its potential impact on human security. She
argues that a purely GDP-based analysis of current economic growth will merely feed into the
‘aspiring Africa’ narrative and bolster the ‘myth of Africa’s rise’ if it does not improve the circumstances of the majority of the population. Thus far, a decade of growth has not sufficiently
reduced poverty, or created enough jobs. Recent resource discoveries may alter Mozambique’s
development path if export revenue and foreign direct investment (FDI) led to investment in
job-creating industries. One obstacle to this positive scenario is the lack of transparency and
poor communication by political elites about the dynamics of the economic transition combined with a lack of opportunity for political participation by Mozambican citizens. Taken
together, these factors are creating heightened potential for political and social conflict.
9
Introduction
In chapter 8, João Paulo Coelho highlights the maritime dimension of regional security. He
points out that maritime security involves many aspects of conflict germane to Africa as its
governance is too weak to absorb the challenges of globalised maritime trade such as piracy,
pollution, the illegal trafficking of humans, drugs and weapons, and resource management. He
argues that, if these issues are not properly addressed in a comprehensive maritime security
framework, some could develop into hard security threats, while others could jeopardise the
economies, environments, and public health of countries and societies in the region. Piracy
should therefore not merely be regarded as a maritime event to be contained at sea, but as a
symptom of broader problems such as extreme poverty and political instability. In line with
this approach, the author argues that maritime insecurity is always created ashore, and is too
serious to be dealt with by the security sector alone.
References
Dersso, S. 2013. A retrospective look at peace and security in Africa in 2012. African Security Review, 22 (1),
pp 74–83.
Lloyd, R. 2010. Conflict in Africa. The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 1 (2), pp 171–86.
Olonisaken, F. 2002. Conflict and conflict resolution in Africa. In P McGowan and P Nel (eds), Power, Wealth
and Global Equity: An International Relations Textbook for Africa. Lansdowne: UCT Press.
Van Nieuwkerk, A. 2013. The peace and security architecture of African sub-regional organisations.
In I Boulden (ed), The Rise of the Regional Voice? The UN, Regional Actors and Conflict in Africa.
Ontario: Palgrave.
10
PART ONE
CONCEPTS
AND CONTEXTS
1
Security in southern Africa: the state of the debate
The aim of this chapter is to explore current conceptualisations of national and regional
security in southern Africa, and to reflect on which conceptual outlook best explains security
dynamics in the region. Understanding these varying conceptualisations is important because,
to a greater or lesser extent, each of them has informed the approaches of different actors to
the security challenges facing the region. Each of these approaches represents responses to
the perennial questions that readers interested in the study of security understand to be vital:
whose security is being addressed when ‘national security’ is invoked; who decides on what is
to be secured; and at whose expense does this happen?
Towards the end of the last century, analysts asking these questions began to challenge the
traditional, militaristic approach to security, criticising it for holding up the state as the referent
object of security, and for its claims that only a strong state – most often equated with a militarised state – could guarantee a nation’s security. In contrast with the traditional approach,
the idea of holding up the individual as the referent object of security emerged, and has been
woven into contemporary security discourse ever since. Human security has even been appropriated as one of the formal deliverables of the security sector: police agencies, intelligence
services, and armed forces all claim they are acting in the interests of human security as they
exercise the ‘hard options’ of force, secrecy, and deterrence, as do multilateral organisations in
cases of forcible ‘humanitarian interventions’ in circumstances of dire need. If anything, these
manifestations show that the debate on how security is to be conceived is not a simple one:
indeed, it may well be argued that ‘security is in the eye of the beholder’.
This chapter tries to trace developments in the conceptualisation of security in southern Africa,
and unravel their implications. It recognises that conceptual understandings are developed
in response to concrete conditions. Therefore, it attempts to situate its analysis in the context
of an overview of the major security challenges confronting the region, both historically and
in current times. In making this assessment, the chapter attempts to provide the signposts to
answering the following questions:
• To what extent can southern Africa be regarded as a regional security community, with a
shared set of security interests and concerns?
• Can the region and its various countries be characterised as secure? Whatever the answer,
whose interests are served by this state of security or insecurity? What are the sources of
security or insecurity?
13
Chapter 1: Security in southern Africa: the state of the debate
• What are the current responses to security challenges at the regional, interstate and intrastate level, and whose interests do they serve?
The chapter is organised along the following lines: first we sketch the historical and current
significance of the geographic region known as southern Africa, showing that it has long
been regarded as strategically important in global terms. Next, we explore the emergence of
a regional identity, in parallel with the broader emergence of regionalism on the continent.
Finally, we translate the development of a regional identity into its security manifestations, and
assess what has taken place and is taking place against three possible interpretations. The first
is that southern Africa remains an intractably polarised region – a security complex of competing interests and visions – and that this is inevitable given that the individual states and peoples
in the region have divergent interests and aspirations which they prioritise ahead of regional
goals. The second interpretation is that the region has historically united against white minority rule, and that this remains the driving force of a cohesive identity of the region as a ‘security
community’. The third interpretation is that the first two repeat the historical error of prioritising the security of the state and even that of ruling elites above the security of the individual, in
the form of ‘freedom from fear and freedom from want’. We conclude by offering some initial
thoughts on the state of the debate as a frame of reference for interpreting developments in
southern Africa today.
Southern Africa’s geopolitical and economic significance
Major powers have long been interested in southern Africa, given its obvious strategic importance as a gateway to trade between Europe, the Americas and Asia. Moreover, from the late
19th century onwards, the minerals revolution in southern Africa, especially gold mining,
transformed the region into a significant component of the international capitalist system. Its
strategic importance has persisted to this day. The concentration of minerals, including strategic minerals such as gold, chrome and uranium, as well as energy sources such as coal, gas and
oil, continue to make it an area of great interest (Leysens & Thompson 1999).
The exploitation of minerals, especially gold, created the need for a regional infrastructure and
labour pool, and South Africa became the hub of the southern African regional economy. This
was first institutionalised through the formation, in 1910, of the Southern African Customs
Union (SACU). However, it created a regional dependence on South Africa that has never been
reversed, even in the post-apartheid era. To compound matters, the South African migrant
contract labour system disrupted families and communities in the region, and contributed to
the underdevelopment of peripheral economies (Alden & Soko 2005). This pattern has been
reinforced in recent years, as citizens from other countries in the region – and even beyond
it – continue to make their way to the more economically powerful South Africa in search of
work and personal survival.
Southern Africa’s integration into the global economy has followed a steady trajectory from
the colonial period, through the Cold War and the region’s wars of liberation and anti-colonial
campaigns, to the present day. The enduring legacy of this process has been one of underdevelopment. This pattern, which has repeated itself through most of Africa, will not be analysed
in detail here, since it has been done many times previously. Briefly, poorly developed states
were left to fend for themselves in the wake of abrupt withdrawals by colonial powers, and if
not subjected to one-party rule, descended into civil war. Under these conditions, prospects
for economic growth were diminished, and human development remained a chimera. In the
14
1970s and 1980s the security of the region was jeopardised by the omnipresence of white-ruled
South Africa. This situation began to change as the region inched toward greater freedom. At
the least, the end of the proxy civil wars of the Cold War period, and the end of apartheid in
1994, lifted the oppressive blanket which had shrouded the region for so long.
Today, the region is relatively peaceful. Armed conflicts between states, or groups within states
– such as the coup in Madagascar in 2009 – are not the norm. In contrast with the Cold War
period, external actors do not currently sponsor violence in the region. And yet a range of
external actors, including the United States,1 China, and the European Union (EU), are active
here in trade, diplomacy, cultural relations, and security co-operation. Matters of mutual concern include transnational organised crime, terrorism, and piracy on the high seas. Instead
of opting for military solutions as a first resort, these actors base their engagements with the
region on careful assessments of political, economic, social, and security conditions. They
seek to proceed on the basis of mutual agreements, and prefer diplomacy to intervention as a
means of dealing with domestic conflicts.
During the Cold War, Western powers enjoyed a privileged economic relationship with southern African states that supported their agenda. Since then, however, Western influence in
Africa has been increasingly challenged by emerging powers. The rise of China, India, and Brazil in the Global South has prompted the West to take more active steps to retain its competitive
advantage in African as well as global markets (Qobo 2012: 153).
Although China is not a new player on the continent, it has revitalised its relationship with
Africa in recent years. This relationship first played itself out in the context of Sino-Soviet relations during the Cold War, aimed at counteracting Western influence in Africa. Paradoxically,
the Soviet Union and China did not support the same liberation movements,2 and China wanted
to counter Soviet hegemony in Africa. China’s re-entry into Africa has been driven by its need
to acquire raw materials to support its huge population and phenomenal economic growth.
China uses unconditional aid and soft loans as part of its new strategy for engagement with
Africa. In positioning itself as an emerging world power, China has facilitated strong people-topeople relationships. Confucius institutes3 have been established at several southern African
universities, and the study of Chinese language and culture is becoming commonplace. Most
infrastructure and construction projects in southern Africa are undertaken by Chinese firms.
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) has served as a new vehicle for consultation and dialogue between Africa and China. China’s economic penetration of African markets
disconcerts Europe, which regards Africa as its sphere of influence. China offers an ‘alternative
developmental model that African countries find attractive after a long history of colonial and
neo-colonial domination by the West’ (Le Pere 2012: 281). Although China is emerging as a
‘global power with huge economic capabilities’, it is not willing to ‘act as a superpower’ (Flemes
& Vaz 2011: 18).
While China’s influence in Africa is strengthening, the opposite seems true for Western countries. The United States is a case in point. Although its hegemony as a world leader is declining,
and is being challenged by other actors, it remains an important player in world politics. Its
hegemonic status in world affairs arises from its military superiority and its political will to
intervene militarily to safeguard its interests and those of the world at large. In military terms,
the United States commands a huge arsenal of weapons, and ‘accounts for more than half of
global defence expenditure’ (ibid, p 8). The United States Africa Command (US AFRICOM)
does not represent the totality of United States foreign policy toward Africa, but remains the
face of the United States military in Africa. Although Africa has thus far refused to host AFRICOM, the United States military has conducted several bilateral exercises with African mili-
15
taries.4 There are signs that some countries5 in the region may be contemplating unilateral6
accession to AFRICOM’s request to relocate here from Stuttgart, Germany. The United States
believes that African armies could help it to manage and resolve regional conflicts thus reducing pressures on the American military. AFRICOM is perceived as a symbol of United States
imperialism in Africa, and the prospect of its relocation to the continent has aroused apprehension in the region. This apprehension stems in part from America’s covert interventions
and proxy wars in Africa during the Cold War, and more recently from its overt war on terror.
The emergence of a regional identity in southern Africa
Geographical proximity is a compelling reason for identifying southern Africa as a regional
enclave. If membership of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is used as
criterion, the region comprises 15 countries.7 However, several countries in the region have
also joined other regional economic communities(RECS), in which they play varying roles.
Thus Hammerstad (2005: 74) notes:
The dynamic of the security threats faced by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),
for instance, is more closely linked to events in the Great Lakes region than in southern
Africa, and the country is member of both SADC and the Economic Community of Central
African States (ECCAS). However, other SADC countries have been central to the efforts
of dealing with the DRC’s security threats, their responses ranging from military intervention to mediation and peacekeeping. Tanzania is playing an increasingly important role
in SADC, but is also a member of the East African Community (EAC) together with Kenya
and Uganda. Furthermore, the spill-over from conflicts in Burundi, Rwanda and the DRC,
particularly in the form of large-scale influxes of refugees, ensures that Tanzania is also
part of the Great Lakes security complex. Angola, after emerging from a devastating civil
war in 2002, has entertained (unrealistic) ambitions of challenging South Africa’s hegemonic position within SADC, but has also extended its security interests into both the Great
Lakes and West Africa.
That said, southern Africa is a vast geographic region situated at the southernmost end of
Africa. It has a long coastal belt, characterised by the strategic intersection of the Atlantic and
Indian Oceans. The deep natural ports along the Indian and Atlantic Oceans make the region
ideal for global trade. All these countries were subjected to colonial rule, albeit under different
colonial masters. They also share a legacy of combating colonial domination. After granting
them independence, the metropolitan powers maintained neo-colonial links with their former possessions. Southern Africa is, nevertheless, more than a geographic region. It has been
shaped by its complex history, cultural diversity, and position in the global hierarchy. This heritage accounts for the complexity of current dynamics in the region.
Attempts at conceptualising national and regional security in southern Africa tend to be predicated on notions of state sovereignty. As in many parts of the world, the plight of the poor and
marginalised, even in times of distress, tends to be overshadowed by the interests of regimes
and elites who have access to resources and decision-making structures. This is an incorrect
– or at best incomplete – conceptual framework, given that security actors must respond to so
many transnational and regional issues.
Despite the intertwined history of the peoples of southern Africa, sovereign statehood and
national identity are also deeply embedded regional features. This is not surprising: the carv-
16
ing up of Africa and post-colonial administrations reinforced the sense of national belonging,
facilitating the project of building ‘imagined communities’ in the form of discrete nation states.
But is statehood more important in southern Africa than regional identity? And if so, what are
the implications? The state-centred focus of the debate appears even to overwhelm that more
persuasive referent, the individual, whose security was extolled immediately after the Cold War.
The reason for this could lie in the region’s geopolitical history. It is generally accepted that a
common sense of oppression under white minority rule and a shared destiny became a source
of solidarity that transcended national boundaries in southern Africa from 1960 onwards. This
shared nationalism fostered a great sense of regional identity, co-operation, and collaboration
(Hammerstad 2005).
In response to South Africa’s apartheid government, and other remaining white minority
regimes, an alternative political constellation of independent African states emerged in the
early 1970s. Known as the Frontline States (FLS),8 the grouping came together as a political and
military alliance to co-ordinate the liberation of southern Africa. The FLS campaign reached
its height in the mid-1970s when the balance of forces in the region began to favour the liberation movements. In particular, the independence of Angola and Mozambique in 1975, under
governments that professed a Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the impending capitulation of
Ian Smith in Rhodesia, gave the struggle for independence further impetus. The domino effect
of these socialist victories accounted for deep-seated paranoia on the part of the South African state and its Western allies, which viewed these developments as a ‘communist onslaught’
(Brown 1990). After the Soweto uprisings of 16 June 1976, South Africa found itself increasingly isolated in the region and internationally. The South African government tried to give
apartheid a new lease on life through neo-apartheid reforms, but the processes of change were
irreversible (ibid). The independence of Zimbabwe in 1980 under the leadership of a militant
Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) shattered South Africa’s ambitions to create a Constellation of Southern African States (CONSAS) comprising Zimbabwe and moderate states in
the region, including South Africa’s ‘Bantustans’.
This initiative was dealt a final blow by the establishment of the Southern African Development and Coordinating Conference (SADCC), which sought to reduce the region’s economic
dependence on South Africa. In 1992 SADCC transformed itself into SADC in anticipation of a
free and democratic South Africa as well as regional integration unfettered by acts of destabilisation. The democratic elections in South Africa in 1994 marked an important turning point in
southern African politics.
A significant feature of post-apartheid South Africa was the ending of its isolation and its
assumption of a growing economic role throughout Africa (Soko 2005: 10). Moreover, foreign
investors seeking opportunities in Africa commonly regarded South Africa as a gateway to
the continent (Adebajo et al 2007: 25). South African multinational corporations utilised their
competitive advantage – including investment capital, marketing and technological capabilities, advanced infrastructure, a sophisticated banking system, and relatively skilled personnel
– to promote their interests in neighbouring countries (Soko 2005: 10).
Following its transition to democracy, South Africa was thrust to centre stage as the most
industrialised and diversified economy in Africa (Alden & Soko 2005: 370). Under presidents
Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, South Africa sought to position itself as a hegemonic
leader of southern Africa and indeed the entire continent. Invoking the sentiment of an ‘African renaissance’ in his now famous speech, ‘I am an African’, Mbeki asserted South Africa’s
African identity, an important step for a state that had for so many decades positioned itself as
17
superior to and different from its African neighbours, and more aligned with Western norms
and traditions.
In 2001 South Africa, along with Nigeria and Algeria, spearheaded the New Partnership for
Africa’s Development (NEPAD). This coincided roughly with the formation of the African
Union (AU), the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). A strong regionalist and
pan-Africanist thrust marked these initiatives. This was not surprising: since the establishment
of the OAU, the benefits of regionalism had been venerated by African leaders as a solution to
the political and economic marginalisation that seemed to prevent the continent from realising its potential.
Ruppel (2009: 275) captures the context in which Africa’s regional economic communities
(RECs) emerged as follows:
The dawn of RECs in Africa can be traced back to the 1960s, when the United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) encouraged African states to incorporate single economies into sub-regional systems with the ultimate objective of creating a single
economic union on the African continent. In order to realise this aim, the OAU, predecessor of the AU, identified the need to enhance regional integration within the organisation, recognising that each country on its own would have little chance of, inter alia,
attracting adequate financial transfers and the technology needed for increased economic
development.
Following decisions and declarations relating to regional economic and political integration,
notably the 1991 Abuja Treaty, several RECs were established on the continent. Besides the
SADCC and later the SADC, RECs were established in East Africa, West Africa, and Central
Africa. Today, the AU officially recognises eight such communities.9 However, these regional
structures and economic groupings have their difficulties. Olivier (2010: 17) observes that
while a ‘plethora’ of African regional institutions have come into existence in the post-colonial
period, Africa is still in the phase of ‘shallow integration’, or intergovernmental co-operation.
Moreover, he points out that ‘supra-national decision-making, the touchstone of regional integration, does not exist, even in limited form’. In some respects this is not surprising, given that
there is ‘no single universal criterion that defines regions’. For Olivier (ibid: 23), the rationale
behind economic integration is obvious: ‘Acting on their own, most African states are destined
to remain vulnerable, marginalised, even beggar nations; … deeper integration is the only way
towards African development, stability, and relevance in a globalised world.’
One interpretation of Olivier’s argument is that African regions only co-operate out of economic necessity, and that regionalisation is a forced arrangement. His line of argument suggests that, objectively speaking, African countries, or the elites leading them, have not matured
to a point where the benefits of ‘deep integration’ are obvious or desirable. It is in this context
that we frame the next section: is the regionalisation of issues seen positively in southern Africa,
and if so, by whom? Is it in fact correct to escalate security matters to the level of the region, or
should national polities be left to address their own issues, in the name of sovereignty? Different actors and analysts have addressed this question from different points of view, as the next
section shows.
18
Conceptions of regional security integration in southern Africa
This section grapples with three contending paradigms or understandings of security dynamics in southern Africa.
The first is that the region is a security complex, as defined in international relations literature.
In other words, it encompasses many competing interests, rivalries, and disputes that drive
the many choices being made within this regional space. In this view, southern African states
are fragmented and lack a binding set of values, resulting in an inability to agree on a common
agenda, particularly in relation to disputes and conflicts. From this point of view, regional strategies are compromises reached by competing elements in order to move forward.
The second understanding is that southern African states constitute a regional economic community, with shared values that derive from a lingering liberation movement paradigm.
The third understanding regards the first two as too state-centric, and therefore incomplete.
By contrast, it argues that the primary agents of change and the driving force of security in
southern Africa are its people. It questions whether sovereign states can in fact address the
challenges of poverty, unemployment, food security, and the like, and argues that new ways of
looking at the region may hold the solution to these problems. Each of these approaches will
now be analysed in greater detail.
Proposition 1: Southern Africa as a regional security complex
Buzan and Waever (2003), Adler and Barnet (1998), and Hammerstad (2005) have all dealt
with regional ‘security complex’ theory and how it can be distinguished from the theory of
‘security communities’. Buzan and Waever (2003) argue that hostile relations between states in
southern Africa were precipitated in the 20th century by white minority regimes, thus qualifying the region for definition as a security complex. The question that arises today is whether
the changes in these objective conditions, particularly the end of apartheid, means that differences among these states have disappeared, and that the path has been cleared towards
asserting their ‘regionness’. The answer is not clear-cut: given the pervasive legacy of apartheid,
many states in the region are still fragile and lack depth in articulating governance structures
and developing security architecture.
The creation, in 1996, of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation (OPDSC)
was meant to transform the region from a security complex based on destabilisation and insecurity into a community built on mutual trust (Hammerstad 2005: 75). A regional community is an
entity in which ‘both state elites and the wider population share values, meaning and identities’,
and is therefore characterised by a high level of mutual trust and confidence (ibid: 76).
Laurie Nathan (2012: 1) challenges the notion of a cohesive southern African region characterised by mutual trust. By contrast, he suggests that from the time of its establishment in 1992,
the SADC region has been ‘wracked by a high level of violent conflict’ (ibid: 4), including a
lengthy civil war in Angola that ended only in 2002; elections in several countries – Zimbabwe
notably – marred by violence and disputes over results; mutiny and external military intervention in Lesotho in 1998; the civil war in the DRC, which remains unresolved to this day; and a
violent and unconstitutional change of government in Madagascar in 2009. Swaziland remains
an absolute monarchy, where the king is head of state and government for life, irrespective of
popular calls for democratic governance.
19
While SADC has been based from the outset on the notion of ‘common security’, Nathan
(ibid: 35) throws light on a battle of ideas that took place when SADC emerged from its former (SADCC) identity – which was primarily concerned with economic coordination – to an
identity that addressed the political and security agenda of the region in a more direct way.
The main protagonists in the debate were Zimbabwe and South Africa.10 The following pattern
emerged:
As far as the other states were concerned, Angola and Namibia supported Zimbabwe as
close allies; Botswana, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Swaziland, and Tanzania generally backed South Africa; the DRC made no contribution to the debate; and Malawi, Lesotho,
and Zambia contributed erratically without conforming to any discernible pattern (ibid).
Essentially, the debate centred – to use Nathan’s language – on whether a pacifist or militarist
agenda was to be pursued. At the one pole of the debate was the pacifist South African ‘camp’
which favoured a ‘common security’ regime, whose primary basis for co-operation would be
political. On the other hand, the militarist camp (Zimbabwe, Angola and Zimbabwe) ‘preferred a mutual defence pact and prioritised defence co-operation and military responses to
conflict’ (ibid: 42). In the end, a compromise was reached which sought to appease both factions. Moreover, it was decided that the chair of the OPDSC would rotate, so that no single state
would dominate this regional security body.
The record of conflict resolution under these arrangements is the best indicator of the efficacy of SADC and the OPDSC in resolving conflicts. In the main, the states of southern Africa
have avoided the threat and use of force against each other. However, there have been notable
exceptions, as Nathan (ibid: 63) points out:
In 1998 Angola threatened to invade neighbouring Zambia in order to halt supplies to
UNITA [National Union for the Total Independence of Angola], and two years later Zambia
accused Angola of conducting military attacks on its territory. In the same year … South
Africa and Botswana deployed troops in Lesotho. In 2008 political tensions between
Zimbabwe and Botswana acquired a military dimension when Gaborone mobilised artillery and troops along their common border and Harare accused Botswana of providing
military support to opposition insurgents. SADC avoided dealing with the issues directly
through diplomatic intervention, preferring to treat them as internal matters.
Nathan (ibid) argues that three persistent factors lead to SADC’s inability to temper disputes
in its jurisdiction:
• the absence of a set of common values ( the regime types in the region range from democratic to authoritarian);
• reluctance on the part of member states to surrender their sovereignty to the regional body;
and
• the fact that most of the countries are small, underdeveloped, or weak, and don’t want a
powerful regional body dictating terms to them.
Nathan’s approach, which highlights tensions between some states in the region, suggests that
the region is better characterised as a security complex. At best, it might be possible to talk
about a nascent security community, because mutual trust and reciprocity are still in the formative stages. A strong sense of community among SADC citizens is yet to be institutionalised.
The xenophobic attacks by South Africans on people from other countries in the region who
20
have drifted to South Africa in search of work – which broke out on a large scale in 2008, and
have recurred intermittently since then – illustrate that a regional identity remains an elusive
reality.
Proposition 2: Southern Africa as a cohesive regional community
As stated earlier, southern African states outside South Africa also suffered the effects of apartheid, which gave them a sense of unity. Some of the more militant ones grouped themselves
into the FLS during the apartheid era. But even though states such as Malawi, Swaziland, and
Lesotho who were economically dependent on South Africa had no option but to toe the apartheid line, acquiescence to apartheid was a humiliating and survivalist stratagem.
The argument that southern Africa is a cohesive regional security community is premised on a
number of assumptions, apart from the historical common purpose to end apartheid, namely
that:
• inter-state conflict in the region is unlikely;
• no country in the region – or the region as a whole – faces any threat of violence or force from
external actors;
• relations among the countries and peoples of the region are essentially peaceful; and
• adequate mechanisms exist for identifying possible causes of tension and conflict, as do the
means to respond to them.
The formal political frameworks for mediating security relations in the region suggest that these
assumptions are largely correct. SADC, at first glance, appears to have retained a degree of
cohesion insofar as its security agenda is concerned. This arises from the historical reality that
the region was united in its fight against white settler domination. With the collapse of apartheid in 1994, those strong bonds were retained, and tended to overshadow any differences.
This has led to the analysis that southern Africa has shed its identity as a regional security complex, and is well on its way to becoming an REC. This is reflected in the fact that SADC leaders
have agreed on an institutional architecture – the Interstate Politics and Diplomacy Committee
(IPDSC) and the OPDSC – which has been used to fairly good effect to regulate political and
security relations in the region. This venture is seen in optimistic and unproblematic terms.
Van Aardt (1997) has raised the question of which notion – security regime or security community – best describes the OPDSC, and comes down in favour of the latter. Following Deutsch’s
characterisation of a security community, Van Aardt (ibid: 7) states that the acid test of a
security community is the fact that its members do not target each other in a military sense,
because interstate relations are such that there are dependable expectations of long-lasting
peace, and that ‘problems will be solved without resort to large-scale physical force’. The end
of apartheid clearly heralded such a moment. However, a number of factors might militate
against this, resulting in a community of insecurity: insufficient capacity, a lack of political will
to implement the formally agreed measures, intra-state instability, and state disintegration
being among them.
Despite these structural contradictions, there is much to commend a view of SADC as a relatively stable zone of peace. The ruling establishments have by and large managed to manoeuvre through delicate issues without becoming irreversibly polarised. A case in point has been
the handling of the situation in Zimbabwe. Following the elections in 2008, SADC appointed a
facilitator to mediate between the parties, and emerged with a Global Political Agreement. This
21
was seen as a victory against an ‘interfering’ West, widely believed to have wanted to impose a
version of ‘regime change’ on Zimbabwe.
Moreover, South Africa is well aware that to win the trust of regional neighbours, it must desist
from a ‘unilateral use of military force’ and ‘hegemonic aspirations’ (Flemes & Vaz 2012: 17). As
a result, South Africa is widely perceived as a force for stability rather than a hegemon.
Proposition 3: The people as the referent objects of security
Proponents of the third interpretation of security in southern Africa would argue that the first
two approaches are too state-centric, and that, flowing from this, competition among the ruling elites of different countries is not the main issue. Instead, it is more appropriate, in keeping
with the developing global discourse on security, to replace the concern about the security of
the state and its governing elites with a concern about the security of its people. Today, few
policy actors would want to dissociate themselves from the right of people to freedom from
fear and freedom from want – encapsulated in the notion of human security. A strong and
effective state is seen as necessary to deliver social development to a country’s people, and
people whose needs are being met are seen as an indispensable guarantee for a stable state.
This new security paradigm has emerged since the end of the Cold War. It transcends the traditional realist conception of security based on the security of the state. Instead, in the postCold War period, insecurity has stemmed more from human security challenges, which arise
from poor infrastructure and a lack of skilled manpower, high levels of urbanisation, climatic
changes, severe poverty, unemployment, income inequalities, disease, environmental degradation, a lack of good governance and a democracy deficit, and violence against women.
Most conflicts in southern Africa are intra-state rather than interstate. States in the region do
not face threats of external aggression, but suffer from internal instability. Perhaps the biggest
threat in the region is the displacement of people, and the need to deal with internal instability and the resultant flows of migrants and refugees (ibid: 16). The provision of water and
electricity remains a central challenge for sustainable development. Sustainable food security
also emerges as a key area for supporting healthy lifestyles, and ensuring that people engage
in productive activity. Access to food and its nutritional value account for happy and healthy
people, and must be sustained through crop and livestock production based on appropriate
technology.
Although southern Africa is well endowed with natural and human resources, it suffers from
extreme poverty and deprivation. Poverty and underdevelopment are widespread and endemic
in SADC, and influence its security. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for the bulk of the world’s
poor countries, and the percentage of people living below the poverty datum line is high.
Poverty dehumanises people, and is one of the key markers of underdevelopment. Its basic
parameters are deprivation, powerlessness, vulnerability, and a loss of dignity. The impact of
climate change is also significant. Some parts of the region are prone to drought while others
are prone to flooding. Food security is compromised under these conditions. This is very much
the story of southern Africa. The region also bears a great burden of other socio-economic ills:
HIV/AIDS infection rates are among the highest in the world. Women, because of their place in
the power structures of society, are often exposed to HIV/AIDS. Women are treated as objects
and subjects of security, and are brutalised in their families and relationships. As single mothers they often have to bear the entire burden of feeding their families.
22
Conclusion
These three approaches to security in southern Africa arise out of the concrete historical experience of the countries in the region, notably the effects of colonialism and apartheid. South
Africa continues to play a key role in the region, but there are other complex relationships
which give pause to reflect on whether southern Africa today is a regional complex of competitive, self-interested states, or a regional security community struggling to attain a common
set of goals. There are even differing interpretations of South Africa’s current role, with some
arguing that it is trying not to rekindle perceptions of domination or destabilisation historically associated with apartheid, and others that it is indeed seeking to install itself as a regional
hegemon, enabled, in turn, by its continued economic superiority.
There is an element of truth in all these conceptualisations. Relations among southern African
states have been strained from time to time, and while these tensions have usually been successfully diffused, they have also had lingering and damaging effects. When the tensions have
had military undertones, it has been easy enough for SADC to respond with one voice, as it
did following a coup in Madagascar, even though this has not stopped the crisis from dragging
on for several years. Here we see evidence favouring the notion of a security complex. On the
other hand, SADC has effectively closed ranks on the issue of Zimbabwe, at least at a formal
level, and has reached consensus on the implementation of a Global Political Agreement.
In both cases, however, the questions must be asked: whose security is guaranteed by the
arrangements; who has made the decisions; in whose interests; and at whose expense? Objectively speaking, human security should be at the top of the region’s list of concerns. However,
the ability of member states to address issues of human security – which are often transnational ones – are still hampered by their fear of losing national sovereignty, and the concomitant reluctance of leaders to rattle the cages of others.
Endnotes
1
Among others, the United States has collaborated with Botswana on establishing an International Law
Enforcement Academy (ILEA) that provides training in law enforcement for middle managers from
member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), East Africa and other
eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
2
In Zimbabwe the Chinese supported the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) while USSR
supported the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU). In South West Africa, they USSR supported
the South West African Peoples Union (SWAPO), while the Chinese supported the South West African
National Union (SWANU).
3
Such an institute exists at the University of Botswana.
4
In August 2012, Thandi Modise, then deputy secretary of the African National Congress in South Africa,
told people attending the 45th anniversary of the opposition Botswana National Front that some regional
leaders ‘ ... want to host people who want to hurt us. They think as long as they can get funding from these
Western people [it] is fine. But I can tell you that we are not happy at all.’ Quoted in Lawrence Ookeditswe,
In support of AFRICOM, Mmegi Online, 31 August 2012.
5
Some believe the joint exercises between the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) and the United States
military are indications of such gestures. Botswana is regarded as as good candidate for hosting AFRICOM
because of its high level of internal peace and democratic credentials. A joint military exercise between
AFRICOM and BDF in August 2012 (known as Southern Accord 12) created apprehension in the region –
especially in South Africa and Zimbabwe – that Botswana was ‘warming up’ to host AFRICOM. This was in
23
the wake of ‘military consignments’ shipped to Botswana to support the exercise. For details, see Justice
Kavahematui, ‘US military roll tanks into Botswana’, Botswana Guardian 17, 2012, p 6.
6
According to Wikileaks, Botswana wanted to host an AFRICOM base. According to a cable sent by the
American ambassador in Botswana, Katherine Canavan, to the US Secretary of State in Washington in
October 2007, Canavan met the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mompati Merafhe, to discuss the
possible location of AFRICOM in Botswana. Ambassador Canavan wrote: ‘It would be premature of us
to suggest how the government of Botswana might officially respond to our demarche, but given past
expressions of the Government of Botswana’s interest from the highest level here, we remain hopeful for
a positive reply.’ The ambassador further wrote: ‘Merafhe appeared genuinely interested and engaged
during our meeting … and immediately wanted to know how many US troops would be based in Botswana
under this AFRICOM proposal.’ For details, see Sunday Standard, ‘Botswana wanted to host AFRICOM
base: Wikileaks’, 13–19 January 2013.
7
Lesotho, Swaziland, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique,
Madagascar, Mauritius, Zambia, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Madagascar’s
membership was withdrawn in 2009 following an unconstitutional change of government.
8
The original members were Botswana, Tanzania and Zambia. They were joined by Angola and
Mozambique in 1975, and Zimbabwe and Namibia in 1980 and 1990 respectively.
9
The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU); the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD); the Common
Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA); the East African Community; (EAC); the Economic
Community of Central African States (ECCAS); the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS); the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD); and the Southern African
Development Community (SADC).
10
According to Nathan, at the time of SADC’s formation in 1992, Zimbabwe was the most committed to
the process of defining the security agenda. South Africa, under Nelson Mandela from 1994 to 1999, was
preoccupied with its post-apartheid challenges, while under Thabo Mbeki it was more interested in the
architecture of the AU than that of the subregion.
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McGowan P. 2006. The Southern African regional sub-system. In McGowan et al (eds), Power, Wealth and
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Molomo M and G Mokhawa. 2012. Botswana. In A Dissel and C Frank (eds), Policing and Human Rights:
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African Security Governance: Emerging Issues. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
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Smaldane J. 2006. African military spending: defence versus development? African Studies Review, 15: 4.
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26
2
The role of donors and NGOs in the security policy process
in southern Africa
Gavin Cawthra
The principal stakeholders in security policy in southern Africa are the 15 SADC member
states and their governments as well as the major multinational peace and security organisations in the region, notably SADC itself. Besides this, security policy is analysed, formulated
and implemented by a growing array of institutions, including foreign governments, United
Nations structures and agencies, financial organisations (including central banks), trade
unions, religious organisations, the media, and institutions tasked with combating moneylaundering and terrorism.
Security policy in the region is also subjected to growing international influence, as more and
more countries join international regimes of various types (ranging from the World Trade
Organisation to the United Nations), or are subjected to pressures to adapt their national policies to the demands of large powers. The war on terror initiated by the United States has intensified these pressures, as countries have been coerced into developing anti-terrorist measures
and anti-money-laundering policies (although, as usual, the United States was selective in its
support for international agreements, even to the extent of punishing countries that endorsed
the Rome Statute that set up the International Criminal Court and refused to exempt US
personnel).
SADC’s policies and strategies – to the extent that they exist – have been comprehensively
analysed, among others by members of SADSEM institutions. Except for South Africa, less
attention has been paid to the policies of national governments in the region, partly due to
the continued secrecy with which many of them approach security issues, and partly due to
their lack of relevant policy frameworks.1 Dealing with all of the above will require research far
beyond the limitations of this chapter.
This chapter examines only one dimension of what might be thought of as a ‘security policy
community’ (or the organisations and institutions clustering around security), namely NGOs2
and donors,3 and in particular what their agendas are. The research is based on primary and
(mostly) secondary published material, supplemented by the experience of the author in this
field over many years. The chapter does not attempt to give a comprehensive overview of donor
funding and the role of NGOs in security – this would be impossible in the space provided – but
pursues certain themes and issues. It first examines the nature of policy processes in general,
especially with regard to agenda-setting; looks at some of the broad issues involved in donor
27
Chapter 2: The role of donors and NGOs in the security policy process in southern Africa
support for NGOs; examines areas of co-operation in the security sector and how donors navigate the interface between their traditional focus on development and their post-Cold War
concern with security issues; and concludes by examining some new challenges, especially
relating to ‘emerging donors’ such as the BRICS countries.
In the course of this research, it became evident that donors and NGOs, which are well known
for promoting transparency when it comes to governments and inter-governmental organisations, often do not practise what they preach, and are remarkably opaque when it comes to
funding flows, project development, and donor-NGO relations. While it is possible to obtain a
fairly detailed picture of these matters – as has notably been done by Elling Tjonneland4 – this
requires interviews with both donors and recipients. Unfortunately, resources did not allow
for this, and the research presented here must therefore be seen as preliminary. Some of the
major NGOs, such as the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), publish little about their funding
relations or their budgets, merely listing that a particular product or activity was supported
by a particular donor. Typically registered as section 21 non-profit companies, South African
NGOs are required to provide some basic information, and there is similar legislation in other
countries, but this often requires in-country research to track down. Of course, donors regularly evaluate the organisations and projects they fund, but these assessments are not generally placed in the public domain, or at least not accessibly so.5 Since NGO policies are heavily
influenced by donor agendas as well as associated funding, a comprehensive assessment of
the role of donors and NGOs in the security policy process in South Africa would require a
comprehensive analysis of project documents (which are often not publicly available).
The largest and most influential NGOs working in the field of security in the region are based in
South Africa, and still attract most donor funding. Many of these organisations have reinvented
themselves as ‘pan-African’ or ‘regional’ ones, mainly on the basis that they employ staff of
many different African nationalities, work in several African countries, and in some cases have
satellite offices outside South Africa. That this does not wash with African governments, which
still regard them as largely South African organisations, is hardly surprising.
In the author’s experience, many African governments are uneasy about donor support for
NGOs in the field of security – more so in SADC than in other regional economic communities
(RECs). As will be discussed later, SADC has delineated narrow areas in which it is amenable to
donor funding in respect of security, and these have more to do with ‘soft’ or ‘human security’
issues than with state security. SADC sources argue that donor/NGO intervention undermines
state sovereignty, and exposes the security sectors of states to external (especially big power)
interference. To some extent this is also a legacy of the pre-SADC days in the region, when
politics and security were the preserve of presidents and ‘securocrats’ who met in secret under
the aegis of the Frontline States and from which civil society and donors were excluded; donor
support was welcomed for socio-economic development which was channelled through the
Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), largely on a project basis.
This dichotomy between political–security issues and developmental ones is preserved within
SADC to this day.
While this is understandable, given SADC’s organisational legacy, and the fact that many
SADC nations have only relatively recently gained their sovereignty, often after protracted
anti-colonial struggles, it is ironic that many states in the region are themselves dependent on
donor funds – in some cases for more than half their national budgets. Moreover, donors do not
hesitate to impose conditions on their aid, the most recent seemingly being around the way in
which recipient countries deal with sexual orientation – homosexuality being illegal in most
southern African countries and often brutally repressed through law (not to mention social
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Gavin Cawthra
discourse and practice). Furthermore, SADC itself is dependent on donors, with only $35 million of its annual budget provided by member states, and $43 million by donors.6 There is thus
considerable hypocrisy around this issue.
Most donor funding for security initiatives in Africa – but not necessarily in SADC – is directed
not at NGOs but at national governments and intra-governmental organisations, notably the
African Union and its peace fund. Furthermore, most of it is directed towards military support for peace operations – the ‘train and equip’ syndrome (sometimes dressed up as Security
Sector Reform, or SSR). For example, in recent years, the United States gave Egyptian military
$1,3 billion-worth of military assistance a year (which continued under President Mohamed
Morsi’s Islamist government). Since November 2007, SADC itself has drawn on EU support for
the AU security budget which has been used to support the development of the SADC Standby
Force (formerly known as SADCBRIG) in Gaborone. More than €3 million has been used to
develop this arrangement (it is not actually a standing force), and particular to set up its only
permanent component, the Planning Element (PLANELM). This support will probably continue and increase, albeit channelled through other sources such as the AU and the UN, which
are supporting what was initially intended as the first operational deployment of the SADC
standby force in the Northern Kivus in the DRC – for which the force was certainly not ready.
After being ‘blue-hatted’, this is now an offensive operation – the first specifically offensive
operation in UN peacekeeping history.
The policy cycle
It is the stated objective of most donors which support NGO activities, if they are not involved
in capacity-building (usually training programmes such as various iterations of ‘Training for
Peace’ which is aimed at building capabilities for peace support operations), to support ‘policyrelevant research’, assist with developing ‘policy recommendations’, or offer ‘policy support’ to
governments or SADC. This normally stops short of actual policy-making and implementation,
which is correctly seen mainly as the prerogative of governments, especially in the security
sector.
In essence, this involves the first three stages of what is usually understood as the policy cycle:
agenda-setting, analysis and formulation. Various iterations of the policy cycle (sometimes
called ‘stage models’) exist, but all basically fall into the following phases (give or take different
terminologies used): agenda-setting, policy process design, research and analysis, formulation
(writing up), decision, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. These are not necessarily
sequential – for example, monitoring should be continuous, while the process can be ‘punctuated’ by successive evaluations (and usually is, by donors insisting on pre-implementation
appraisals, mid-term evaluations and the like).7
Agenda-setting is a complex business, often ‘triggered’ by negative events such as the massacres and mass rapes in the Eastern DRC, which force governments to act in part as a response
to public opinion (in this case international opinion). There are, after all, an infinite number
of potential policy challenges. Why some of them make it to the action agenda and not others
has been one of the scholarly focuses of John W Kingdon. Like the majority of policy analysts
dealing with policy generally and not within a particular field, he bases his empirical conclusions on research in the United States, but it is nevertheless relevant. For an issue to get on the
agenda, he argues, there has to be a problem, a potential solution (‘no solution – no problem’),
and political will. He further argues that three ‘streams’ need to come together, namely the
29
problem stream, the policy stream and the politics stream – the last-named often driven by
‘policy entrepreneurs’ (Kingdon 1984). Local and international media also play an important
role in agenda-setting by focusing public attention on certain issues.
It is not always clear who the entrepreneurs are when it comes to security policy agendas in
southern Africa – states, donors, or NGOs. Outside of the state this is probably an interactive
process, with NGOs coming up with ideas or identifying issues that need attention on the basis
of environmental scanning and their own concerns, values and interests (often the ‘bottom
line’ of maintaining financial viability), and donors doing the same. In the latter case, though,
the agendas are inevitably closely related to perceptions of national interest – and are often
driven by domestic politics, popular opinion and the media in the donor countries as well as
obligations incurred in international forums.
One critique of southern African NGOs operating in the security field is that they do not have
an indigenous or organic policy base, but simply take on donor agendas. (By contrast, universities are more likely to be perceived as institutions which do not seek to influence policy,
but to develop intellectual capacity around policy formation). This is particularly the case in
respect of NGOs which do not have an autonomous income stream and appear to be unselective in their selection of donors. The ISS, the most successful of all southern African NGOs
dealing with security, has a donor partnership forum of no less than ten foreign governments,
with project funding being provided by another four governments, the European Commission,
and about a dozen foundations, funds or overseas-based NGOs.8 It argues that its donors are
carefully cultivated and selected, and that having multiple donors helps to ensure that no single government dominates the agenda-setting process, and also prevents it from becoming a
single-issue NGO (a classic – and rather successful – example of this would be the tiny NGO
Gun-Free South Africa, which has almost single-handedly managed to turn around the South
African government’s indulgent approach to citizen gun ownership.9)
Much policy work undertaken by funded NGOs is directed towards ‘policy-relevant’ research
– indeed, most donors will pointedly not fund pure research that is not linked to perceived
policy inputs or, preferably, outputs (the sole exception seems to be Atlantic Philanthropies,
which is happy to fund cultural and historical projects related to security, although it is rapidly
phasing out its work10). The output of the research is likely to be occasional publications rather
than scholarly ones. An alternative format is that of conferences, workshops or ‘policy advisory
group’ meetings, such as those championed by the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) in
Cape Town.
Despite significant donor investment in these security policy research and networking activities, it is notoriously difficult to measure policy impacts or outcomes (inputs of course are easy
to calibrate).11 There is no doubt that NGOs play a valuable role in generating research and
knowledge germane to policy formation (which is recycled in academia), as well as policy
recommendations for presentation to governments and inter-governmental organisations. In
the author’s experience, donor evaluations are seldom able to demonstrate that policy recommendations are adopted and implemented with the intended effects – in part this may be due
to the tendency of NGOs to present recommendations rather than options or alternatives, the
consequences of which can then be evaluated through the usual approach of policy analysis.
In other words, they tend to be too prescriptive.
The exception is when NGOs work ‘in the tent’ and actually participate in policy-making processes, such as the role of Pax Africa, in formulating the Common African Defence and Security
Policy (CADSP). Organisations such as the ISS also have much easier working relations with
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Gavin Cawthra
Africa’s other RECs. However, SADC – much more so than the African Union or the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – is reluctant to let NGOs into its closed policy
processes, and has largely excluded them from the development of the Strategic Implementation Plan (SIPO) for the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence, and Security Co-operation, for
example, which has been almost entirely the work of governments, as opposed to its developmental counterpart, the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP), which has
been a playground for consultants (Van Nieuwkerk 2012). In contract with ECOWAS, NGOs
have also been largely excluded from SADC early warning mechanisms. This in part is a legacy
of the pre-SADC separation between the FLS, with its political and security focus, and SADCC,
with its developmental focus, but also reflects the thin skins of most SADC states.
An exception seems to have been made for the German Development Institute, Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), largely for historical reasons and perhaps because GIZ projects itself as providing technical support rather than policy influence.
Unlike other NGOs, GIZ has advisors based within the SADC Secretariat for Politics, Defence,
and Security Co-operation in Gaborone, and works closely with the secretariat on issues such
as capacity and institutional development, training electoral monitors, and providing advice
and support to SADC member countries during elections.12
Donor support to NGOs in southern Africa
Support from donors to SADC as well as governments and NGOs in southern Africa is meant
to be aligned with international policy frameworks or guidelines, developed by the Monterrey
Conference on Financing for Development in 2002, which reaffirmed that developed countries should spend 0,7 per cent of GDP on official development assistance (ODA), and – more
importantly – the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of 2005, which endorsed principles of
country ownership, donor alignment and harmonisation, the management for results (in part
through more effective monitoring and evaluation) and mutual accountability among donors
and recipients. This was followed up by the Accra Agenda for Action in 2008 which sought to
ensure the implementation of the Paris principles (Tjonneland & Albertyn 2012).
In terms of these principles, funding for NGOs is meant to give citizens a ‘voice’ in policymaking processes, and improve the accountability of governments, although the authors of
a study on these issues note that ‘donor receptiveness to supporting civil society voice and
accountability is inevitably linked to a) the alignment of that “voice” to their own objectives;
and b) the likelihood of that voice having an impact upon its target audience’ (ibid, p 6).
Aid flows to southern Africa peaked in 2008, largely as a result of debt relief to states, but
dropped radically in 2009 following the global financial crisis that began towards the end of
2008. The crisis had an immediate impact on NGOs working in security (including SADSEM),
especially as US-based foundations lost fortunes on the global stock exchanges, but much of
the impact took a few years to work through.
From SADC’s point of view, donor funding for security issues is governed by the wider Windhoek Declaration on a New Partnership between SADC and the ICPs, adopted at a joint conference in April 2006. Much of this reiterates the Paris principles and concerns support for the
RISDP, while paying little attention to funding for security projects. It specifically restricts this
funding to issues deemed to be ‘non-strategic’, including thematic issues that resonate with the
public in developed countries, like child soldiers or land mines, but are not necessarily a priority for SADC countries (Du Pisani 2011). Indeed, it seems that while SADC as an institution,
31
and most governments in the region, are willing to let donors and NGOs engage with human
security issues, they tend to draw the line at matters of state security. Even issues that are globally seen as fair (and necessary) game for a wide range of civil society as well as state actors
– such as SSR (for which there is now an official AU policy), as well as early warning – seem, in
SADC, to be regarded as the preserve of states alone, although not in Africa’s other RECs.
SADC has identified the following areas for security co-operation with ICPs (these presumably
apply equally to NGOs working with SADC):
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
peace support and humanitarian operations;
democracy and good governance;
disaster management;
combat organised crime including drug trafficking, anti-money laundering, and human
trafficking;
post-conflict reconstruction and social reintegration programmes;
mine action programmes;
HIV and AIDS programmes;
small arms and light weapons control;
drug trafficking control programmes;
joint training exercises; and
food security.13
Some of these issues have been actioned – for example, the SADC secretariat has used EU funds
to set up structures and appoint staff for dealing with disaster relief, and – as noted earlier,
PLANELM has been set up with donor funding (albeit channelled through the AU). Election
monitoring may be added to the above list, since some donors such as the German Development Institute seem to be acceptable partners for training electoral observers and providing
technical electoral support, although this is resisted by some countries in the region.
Donors and wider peace support missions
Donors have also largely been excluded from SADC’s recent initiatives to set up much-needed
structures for mediation in the region, with SADC having struggled in particular to mediate
in the Mozambique and Zimbabwean crises (Cawthra 2010). A Panel of Elders to oversee
mediation processes is being established, as is a Reference Group for providing expertise. The
third component, the Mediation Support Unit, has been delayed indefinitely, with Hartmann
(2013: 8) giving the following reason: ‘since SADC considers mediation a strategic activity, the
mediation structure limits funding to member states’ contributions’ (which do not seem to be
forthcoming). A compromise may eventually be found whereby a fund managed and activated
by SADC itself could channel international contributions to this vital area.
Donor funds do seem to be increasingly welcome for the Regional Peacekeeping Training
Centre (RPTC) in Harare. Peacekeeping training (in its widest sense, including the training
of police and civilian personnel) is seen as key way of developing ‘African solutions to African
problems’ – this largely suits many African countries which fear the agendas of big powers on
the continent in an age of regime change, and it also suits external powers which can concentrate their resources elsewhere (notably on the ‘war on terror’) while using Africans to carry out
proxy tasks and not having to justify to their publics why their soldiers and citizens are coming
back from the continent in body bags.
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Gavin Cawthra
Early preparation for peacekeeping in the SADC region was carried out by the British and
Danish governments (initially through what was to become SADSEM, which developed postapartheid South Africa’s first peacekeeping training course), and the Danes built the RPTC
facilities in Harare – unfortunately attached to a Zimbabwe Defence Forces facility and essentially under Zimbabwean authority, which made it difficult to maintain donor support when
EU sanctions were imposed (or even before, with a change of government in Denmark). Donor
funding only began to be restored after the RPTC was moved to neutral premises, and placed
under the direct authority of the SADC secretariat.
The RPTC is now in a relatively healthy state and is operating at full capacity with the support
of a wide range of external donors, with funds channelled through the SADC secretariat in
Gaborone. It delivers a comprehensive range of training courses for peace support missions,
including building capacity for conflict prevention, resolution and mediation; assisting in
SADC peacekeeping exercises; and building capacity for the Standby Force.14 The EU is the
principal donor to AU peace support operations, notably the African Union Mission in Somalia
(AMISOM), while the UN will fund the intervention of South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi in
the Eastern DRC, as this is no longer only a SADC project.
Donors and security sector reform in southern Africa
Unlike other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the concept of security sector reform (or at least the
term, which was first coined by Clare Short, a minister in Tony Blair’s cabinet) has been resisted
in southern Africa, even though it has been carried out extensively, particularly in post-apartheid South Africa, and donors have provided support for SSR training across the region in the
guise of Security Sector Governance or Security Sector Transformation. In part this is because
of a belief, particularly held by ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe and also by the Angolan government,
that SSR is the thin edge of the wedge of regime change. This has not stopped donors from supporting NGO initiatives that widely fall into the SSR ambit, and in any case the situation may
change now that SSR has been adopted as formal policy by the AU Summit, and an SSR Unit
has been established at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
After a lengthy process, driven in part by an NGO based in Ghana – the African Security Network (ASSN), to which SADSEM is affiliated – an African SSR policy was developed on the
basis of the AU’s Post-Conflict and Reconstruction Policy (PCRD) as well as UN policy on SSR
initially adopted in 2008, elaborated in various UN statements and reports, and adopted by the
AU Summit in 2013. The policy makes it clear that all African states are obliged to apply principles of good governance to the security sector (including transparency and accountability),
promote gender equality and women’s empowerment within the armed forces, and conduct
regular security sector governance and reform reviews (AU 2013).
To mollify those governments, mostly in southern African, which believe that SSR could be
misused in service of regime change agendas (not that there has been any evidence of this
anywhere) the policy goes out of its way to prohibit ‘ … all national, regional, continental or
international entities from carrying out activities in Africa, in the name of SSR, which may
undermine the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence, domestic jurisdiction
of a Member State, including the use of SSR to effect regime change …’ (ibid: section C).
33
Funding modalities
In Africa as a whole, much non-military donor funding has gone to SSR (although ‘train-andequip’, such as the billions of dollars in US funding that goes to supporting the Egyptian military, is sometimes also described as SSR). Britain, the global champion of SSR, has been at
the forefront of this, especially through a joint effort by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the
Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office (FCO), known as the Africa Conflict Prevention Pool (ACPP), which forms part of the
Global Conflict Prevention Pool (GCPP). In April 2008 the ACPP was merged into the GCPP,
with deleterious effects on the Africa focus, since stabilisation activities in countries such as
Afghanistan took priority. The ACCP funded large SSR projects in Sierra Leone, Uganda and
Ghana (and more recently in South Sudan) but its activities in southern Africa were restricted
mainly to South Africa.15
The British approach to managing the security-development nexus may thus be described as
a co-operative one, sometimes branded as defence, diplomacy, and development (DDD).16
Other countries have adopted different approaches. Canada, for example, pursues complementarity through a division of labour based on common goals. Countries may also pursue a
‘subordination’ policy whereby development is regarded as secondary to short-term security
agendas – what may be called the ‘securitisation of development’, focused on donors’ selfinterest (the United States, perhaps?).17
As noted earlier, although in Africa as a whole most donor security funding is for train-andequip programmes and is concentrated on militaries, or elements of the African Peace and
Security Architecture (APSA), this is not the case in SADC, because SADC restricts security
funding to ‘non-strategic’ issues and has shown disinterest, an inability, or a lack of political
will in accessing donor funding earmarked for security issues. Much of it, including Nordic and
EU funding, has subsequently been lost as donors have reallocated funding to other fields or
areas.18
As a result of this reluctance, donors have tended to channel funds through NGOs or universities in the region rather than the regional organisation itself. In part, this is deliberate. As
the German Development Institute has put it: ‘Their role as policy advisors puts CSOs in the
position of experts. Better staffed and equipped to conduct in-depth studies and analysis,
research institutes, think-tanks and, increasingly, universities are able to collect and offer the
knowledge and expertise that is lacking within the AU and government institutions’ (German
Development Institute 2008).
As also noted earlier, it is unclear what policy impact this actually has. SADC itself has noted
that the effect of donor research and policy work on the institution or relevant governments
concerned is ‘unclear, or at least not properly assessed’ (ibid: 214). It is often said that senior officials lack the time to read the enormous policy output on security issues generated by
NGOs: one government official even told the author that when he did bother to read the policy
recommendations, he used them as a guide to what not to do, and took the opposite path!
34
Gavin Cawthra
Emerging issues and current challenges
It is widely recognised that donors do not generally adhere to the Paris principles and that their
interventions tend to be unco-ordinated, contradictory, and in competition with each other.
These characteristics were all too noticeable during a recent visit to South Sudan, especially
when it came to SSG and the development of a national security policy. To address this issue,
southern African donors set up a thematic working group on security in February 2009, initially
chaired by Austria, but its levels of activity have gradually declined.
The donor terrain is also in the process of changing as emerging powers, particularly BRICS,
begin to show greater interest in ODA. So far, most of this assistance has taken the form of
train-and-equip or the building of security infrastructure, such as the new Zimbabwe Defence
College built by the Chinese on the basis of a $98 million loan. However, the preferred mode of
operation by BRICS, especially regarding security, is bilateral development assistance (usually
in the form of loans) to individual SADC countries, rather than working through the regional
organisation, and (as far as this author could ascertain) never through NGOs. India is a partial
exception to this in that it has participated in SADC-ICP consultations.
Another approach has been that of ‘trilateralism’ whereby donors seek out partners in the
developing world – in SADC this means South Africa – and jointly fund projects in a third country. South Africa itself is becoming increasingly active as a donor or development partner, and
is establishing the South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA) for this purpose
(although it has long been active in providing development loans and assistance through the
Development Bank of Southern Africa). The terms of reference for SADPA, which is not yet
operational, include working with civil society and NGOs (as well as governments) and focuses
on regional integration as well as ‘peace, security, stability and post-conflict reconstruction
and development’.19 Whether South Africa will act any differently to any other donor is debatable. When approached by Swaziland and Zimbabwe for assistance in recent years, it stated
that any aid would be conditional. Parliamentarians have made it clear that this is because, as a
democracy, the government should be able to explain to the electorate that it is not using funds
for non-democratic purposes.20 Furthermore, the attitude of the South African government to
NGOs dealing with security policy issues is at best ambivalent, although it seems to vary from
department to department at different times, in part depending on the attitudes of ministers
and senior government officials. Ronnie Kasrils, for example, was quite open to civil society
input on policy agenda-setting during his stint as Minister of Intelligence, while his successor has labelled members of civil society protesting against the Protection of Information Bill
that provides for widespread classification of state information as ‘agents of foreign spies’ (See
Kasrils 2010, 2011).
Conclusion
Although this chapter has touched on wider contextual issues, without which this discussion
cannot be understood, it has focused on only a small aspect of security-related funding, namely
funds given to NGOs and the security directorate of SADC by external ICPs. In particular, it has
sought to determine how policy agendas are set through the selection of issues to be funded.
It tends to support the work of Kingdon, who has argued that policy issues get placed on the
agenda because problems, potential solutions, and political will come together – although the
major conclusion must be that within SADC as a regional institution there is a distinct lack of
political will to engage with ICPs and international and NGOs around state security issues,
35
restricting involvement to ‘soft security’ or human security challenges. This is out of step with
some other RECs in Africa, who seem very amenable to donor-supported NGO participation
in policy processes, as well as the AU, particularly since this body has adopted a comprehensive policy on SSR which entails the application of good governance principles to the security
sector.
Donor-supported NGOs are by no means the principal agenda-setters or policy developers in
the region, but do play a limited interventionist role, and help to establish agendas through
policy-oriented research and, to a lesser extent, capacity-building. Far more research needs to
be conducted on how this fits into the broader picture of agenda-setting, policy analysis, and
policy formulation in relation to the evolution of a security community in the southern African
region, if this is indeed possible.
Endnotes
1
Only one southern African country, Namibia, has a codified and public national security policy or strategy
in one document, although others have been working on one, often for many years. Even in Namibia, this
has still not been adopted as policy, but is under discussion.
2
The term NGO is more restrictive than that of civil society: for example this paper does not deal with
university programmes and departments involved in security in southern Africa.
3
SADC prefers the term International Co-operating Partners (ICPs) to ‘donors’.
4
For example the work carried out by Tjonneland for the Formative Process Research for Integration
in Southern Africa (FOPRISA) project, funded by the Norwegian government.
5
One exception being SADSEM. See for example Tjonneland et al 2009.
6
SADC Council of Ministers Briefing, 2 March 2012.
7
See, for example Dunn 1994; Wissink & Cloete (eds) 2002; and Parsons 1995.
8http://www/issafrica.org/pgcontent.php?UID=7.
9
Although this is now being undermined by systematic corruption involving the police and firearms
sellers. See, for example, The Star, 9 July 2013.
10
See www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/region/South-africa.
11
See, for example, Brynard 2002 and Colebatch 2002: 55-71.
12www.giz.de/themen/en/221029.htm.
13
These are drawn from the SIPO. Windhoek Declaration, SADC, 2006.
14www.sadc.int/sadc-secretariat/services-centres-rptc
15
See Bendix & Stanley 2008. SSR discourse is dominated by Britain, the Nordics, Germany, Switzerland,
and to some extent the United States, although the last-named has a different take on it. France is a
latecomer.
16
An acronym also used by the Americans, notably Hilary Clinton.
17
See German Development Institute 2008 and the work of Mark Duffield.
18
In the case of Denmark, for example, some funding was switched from Southern to East Africa.
19www.dfa.gov.za/docs/2013pq/pq16ncop.html
20
Personal communications with members of the Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs, National
Assembly, 2012.
References
African Union. 2013. Policy Framework on Security Sector Reform. Addis Ababa.
Bendix, R & R Stanley. 2008. Security Sector Reform in Africa: The Promise and Practice of a New
Donor Approach. Durban: ACCORD.
Brynard P. 2002. ‘Policy implementation’. In Wissink & Cloete (eds), Improving Public Policy.
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Gavin Cawthra
Cawthra, G. 2010. The Role of SADC in Managing Political Crisis and Conflict: The Cases of Madagascar
and Zimbabwe. Maputo: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
Colebatch, H K. 2002. Policy. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Du Pisani, A. 2011. ‘The security dimensions of regional integration in SADC’. In Monitoring
Regional Integration in Southern Africa Yearbook 2010. Trade Law Centre for Southern Africa/
Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
Dunn, W N. 1994. Public Policy Analysis: An Introduction. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.
German Development Institute. 2008. Donor Contributions to the Strengthening of the African Peace and
Security Architecture, Bonn.
Hartmann, H. 2013. ‘The evolving mediation capacity of the Southern African Development Community’.
Conflict Trends, 1.
Kasrils, R. 2010. ‘Defend Democracy – Don’t Gag it!’ Pretoria News. 20 October.
Kasrils, R. 2011. Statement on the Protection of Information Bill. 17 November. http://www.politicsweb.co.za/
politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=267783&sn=Detail&pid=72308
Kingdon, John W. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies. Boston, MA: Little Brown.
Parsons, W. 1995. Public Policy: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar.
Tjonneland E N, C Albertyn, G Le Pere, K Heggstad & B Vickers. 2009. Promoting Defence Management and
Security Sector Reform in Southern Africa. Bergen: Christian Michelsen Institute.
Tjonneland, E & Albertyn, C. 2011. Follow the Money! Policies and Practices in Donor Support to Civil Society
Formations in Southern Africa. Midrand: Southern Africa Trust.
Van Nieuwkerk, A. 2012. Towards Peace and Security in Southern Africa. Africa Peace and Security Series no 6.
Maputo: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
Wissink, H & F Cloete (eds). 2002. Improving Public Policy. Pretoria: Van Schaik.
37
3
Exploring SADC’s evolving peace and security policy framework
This chapter analyses the revised Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ on Politics,
Defence and Security Co-operation (SIPO) of the Southern African Development Community
(SADC).1 Informally known as SIPO II, it succeeds the original Strategic Indicative Plan for the
Organ, adopted in 2004 for a five-year period. Following a lengthy review process, SIPO II was
approved by the SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Windhoek, Namibia,
in August 2010. It was finally publicly launched in November 2012, but as of mid-2013, implementation appears to be lagging.
This analysis draws on the ‘new regionalism’ literature, particularly the concept of ‘security
regionalism’. It briefly examines the continental and southern African peace and security terrain before turning to the evolution of security co-operation among SADC members. It then
examines SADC’s structures and processes for co-ordinating its political, defence and security
objectives, and finally offers a policy analysis of the revised SIPO.
The main findings are that SADC has not yet been able to fully transform its conflict-generating
interstate and intra-state relations, or behave like a regional security actor. There is also little
evidence of SADC having a track record as a security actor beyond its own region. Moreover,
its relationship with the African Union (AU) is underdeveloped. The chapter also highlights
SIPO II’s awkward sectoral approach, and the lack of involvement of key regional stakeholders
in developing and implementing the plan.
Conceptual framework
The literature on the ‘new regionalism’ provides a rich conceptual framework for our analysis (‘new’ is used to distinguish it from earlier functionalist and neofunctionalist approaches
to regional integration). For Hettne and Söderbaum (2010), prominent architects of this new
approach, contemporary regionalism is plural and multidimensional in nature. In recent decades, they note, there has been a large increase in various kinds of co-operation and integration
projects, which in their view is closely linked to the shifting nature of global politics and intensifying globalisation. They point out that regionalism involves almost all governments, but also
a rich variety of non-state actors, ‘ ... resulting in multiplicities of formal and informal regional
governance and regional networks in most issue areas’ (Hettne & Söderbaum 2010: 13). In
addition, academics have developed the notion of regions as development, trade or security
38
actors, introducing the concepts of ‘regionness’ and ‘actorness’ in the process (Bretherton &
Vogler 2006, Lurweg 2011).
Regionalism refers to a tendency and political commitment to organise the world order in
terms of regions; more narrowly, the concept refers to a specific regional project. According
to Hettne and Söderbaum, regionalisation refers to a complex process of forming regions ‘ ...
that leads to patterns of co-operation, integration, complementarity and convergence within a
particular cross-national geographical space’ (Hettne and Söderbaum 2010: 14). A region can
be more or less coherent, leading to the notion of ‘regionness’: a high degree of regionness and
regional identity implies the capacity to act, or ‘actorness’, while a lower degree of regionness
implies a greater impact on the region from the outside.
‘Actorness’ has four main ingredients:
• a shared commitment to a set of overarching values;
• the domestic legitimisation of decision-making processes and priorities relating to external
policy;
• the ability to identify priorities, and formulate consistent and coherent policies; and
• the availability of and capacity to utilise certain policy instruments, notably diplomacy/
negotiation, economic tools, and military means. Regions, then, are not natural phenomena – they are social constructs, and therefore politically contestable. ‘Regional integration’, as Hettne (2005) points out, belongs to an earlier discourse primarily related to spiralling translocal market integration.2 The concept of integration
should preferably be broken down into economic integration (the formation of a transnational
economy), social integration (the formation of a transnational society), and political integration (the formation of a transnational political system). Regional co-operation is somewhat
less complex, and normally refers to joint efforts by states to solve specific problems. However,
some have argued that this notion can only be understood in terms of the national interests of
individual member states, and that the politics of regional negotiations invariably involve the
accommodation of these by all partners. By contrast, regional integration is normally taken to
involve some inroads into national sovereignty.
The new regionalism literature also conceptualises relations between developmental regionalism and security regionalism. According to Hettne and Söderbaum (2010), developmental
regionalism comprises concerted efforts by a group of countries in a given region to enhance
the economic complementarity of constituent political units in order to strengthen the total
capacity of the regional economy. Security regionalism, on the other hand, refers to attempts
by states and other actors in a particular area – a region in the making – to transform a security
complex with conflict-generating interstate and intrastate relations into a security community
characterised by co-operative external (interregional) relations and internal (intraregional)
peace.
There are several links between regionalism and security. One has to do with the conflict
management role of the organised region. This may include a role in internal regional security
(‘regional order’); managing conflict in its immediate vicinity; or a role in maintaining world
order, to the extent that there may be enough ‘actorness’ to influence global affairs. Managing
conflict in the immediate vicinity or external environment can refer to efforts to manage a particular crisis, or to transform a conflict situation by means of either stabilisation or integration
(thereby enlarging the regional organisation).
39
Chapter 3: Exploring SADC’s evolving peace and security policy framework
The region can thus be the cause (the regional complex), the means (regional security management), and the solution (regional development). The level of regionness can be changed in
order to increase actorness and conflict management. The new regionalism literature suggests
that security co-operation within a given region could improve stability, thus helping to attract
international investment and trade, and that development regionalism could lead to the more
efficient use of available resources.
Having discussed the key features of the new regionalism, we now provide a brief overview
of security regionalism in Africa, which will set the scene for a more detailed analysis of its
dynamics in southern Africa.
Security regionalism in Africa
Regional conflicts in Africa have been managed differently in the post-Cold War period than
during the Cold War. During the earlier period, conflicts were addressed by way of interventions by superpowers, former colonial powers, or powerful neighbours. By contrast, even
though most post-Cold War African conflicts have been defined as domestic, they have all
been deeply embedded in a regional and/or cross-border context.
Most contemporary conflicts in Africa spill over into neighbouring countries, or draw regional
actors into what is often better understood as regional wars rather than ‘domestic conflicts’.
This pattern leads, in turn, to a far greater role for action, mediation, and intervention at the
regional level by affected neighbouring countries and especially by regional organisations.
Flowing from this, the AU was created in 2001–2 to secure and promote African democracy,
human rights, and sustainable development. It hopes to end violent conflicts on the continent
by improving the socioeconomic conditions of its people – hence the ideal of establishing a
continent-wide economic community, built in turn on five regions referred to as Regional Economic Communities (RECs).
This new attempt at continental co-operation differs significantly from the activities of the
AU’s predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), seen by many as a club of dictators, and marked by grand annual summits which were high on symbolism but low on action.
Engel and Porto (2010) write that the AU differs from the OAU in at least three respects: its
institutional design, its focus on development, and its peace and security architecture. Both
the AU and its New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) programme assume that
economic growth and human development cannot take place in a context of war and violent
conflict. Consequently, security considerations feature prominently in the AU’s objectives and
institutional structure. The AU’s peace and security policy framework consists of its Constitutive Act of 2000, its Peace and Security Protocol of 2002, and its Common African Defence and
Security Policy (CADSP). Peace and security instruments include the African Standby Force
(ASF), the Panel of the Wise, and the Continental Early Warning System. Key decision-making
nodes include the Assembly, Executive Council, and the AU Commission. Collectively, these
policies, institutional setting, and implementation tools are referred to as the African Peace
and Security Architecture (APSA).
One commentator has noted that the African Standby Force ‘… is one of the most critical elements of the APSA that will enable the AU to deliver on its promise of intervention to protect
people in grave circumstances, and to provide a prompt and robust response to manage and
resolve African crises’ (Dersso 2010: 6).
40
However, at the time of writing, and following the Libyan and Mali crises (among others), it
was clear that, despite extensive policy and operational development, the ASF was not ready or
able to assume the responsibilities envisaged for it in terms of managing and resolving crises.
It is also evident that the relationship between the centre (AU) and its regions (the RECs) is
sub-optimal, and requires urgent attention (Van Nieuwkerk 2011).
The development of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
The idea of ‘southern Africa’ as a coherent region is a relatively recent one. It is, as argued by
Immanuel Wallerstein and Sergio Vieira (1992), a construct of the 20th century, with a prehistory that can be traced back at most to the 1870s. For them, the starting point has to do with
global forces, notably the decline of the British Empire, as well as global economic stagnation,
which led to the notorious ‘scramble for Africa’ by various European powers. In this context,
two factors played a prominent role in shaping southern Africa’s future. The first is its extraordinary mineral wealth, and the second, its relatively large and permanent settler populations.
A struggle ensued for political control of the region. African kingdoms were defeated in battles,
and forced to sign disadvantageous treaties. They were partially or totally dispossessed of their
land, which was included in new political units established by colonial authorities. At the turn
of the 19th century, Britain also declared war against the Boer republics in the South African
interior, and defeated them as well.
By 1910 the current political boundaries in the region were largely in place. This was followed
by the creation and consolidation of the political and material infrastructure needed to govern
the region and build and manage western-style economies, largely based on exporting primary
products such as diamonds, gold and coal. South Africa’s rise introduced the notorious policy
of apartheid. This led to the creation of an elaborate system of oppression and marginalisation,
and generated a large pool of cheap African labour (drawn from the entire subregion) that was
vital for the establishment of the country’s industrial base.
Growing internal resistance to apartheid, and the formation of the Front Line States (FLS) as
a means of supporting the anti-apartheid struggle and reducing the region’s dependence on
South Africa, deepened the conflict surrounding South Africa, and in the 1970s the stage was
set for a brutal showdown.
In 1980, Zimbabwe gained its independence, which enabled the FLS to establish a more structured regional co-operation project: the Southern African Development Coordinating Conference (SADCC). However, attempts by the apartheid regime to destabilise its neighbouring
states continued, and the region remained embroiled in conflict. This cycle of war and attrition
was broken by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of communist rule in the then
Soviet Union. These events had a decisive impact on the politics of the southern African region.
Soviet, Cuban and South African forces withdrew from Angola, leading to a peace process (and
the eventual demise of UNITA’s Savimbi) and the independence of Namibia in 1990. In the
same year, the South African state president, F W de Klerk, unbanned the ANC and released
Nelson Mandela. This led to a period of negotiations (the CODESA talks) which resulted in a
relatively peaceful transition from apartheid to democratic rule.
SADCC read the signs well and admitted South Africa to its ranks, transforming the organisation into SADC at the same time. By 1994, when the ANC rose to power, Southern Africa faced
a dramatically altered terrain, marked by the demise of one-party systems and autocratic rule
41
in favour of multiparty democracies. Yet regional dynamics were still shaped by a number of
historical trends, including South African dominance of the region’s political economy and
infrastructure, and widespread poverty and underdevelopment within and across countries.
The 1990s also saw the dramatic and violent eruption of tensions in the Great Lakes region,
which invariably impacted on the newly reformed SADC as war and peace-making drew various SADC member states into its vortex.
SADC as an emerging security actor
As suggested above, formal, inter-state co-operation in Southern Africa is a relatively new phenomenon. In June 1996, the SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government established the
SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation (OPDSC). In August 1999, heads
of state and government decided to restructure all SADC institutions, including the Organ, and
adopted a review of the operations of SADC institutions at an extraordinary summit in 2001.
On 14 August 2001, heads of state and government signed the Protocol on Politics, Defence
and Security Co-operation, which provided an institutional framework for co-operation by
member states in these areas. In January 2002, the SADC Summit mandated the OPDSC to
prepare a Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ (SIPO) which would provide guidelines for
implementing the Protocol on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation over the next five
years. As the 2004 foreword to the SIPO document notes:
The SIPO is not an end in itself ... it is an enabling instrument for the implementation of the
SADC developmental agenda embodied in the Regional Indicative Strategic Development
Plan (RISDP). The core objective of the SIPO, therefore, is to create a peaceful and stable
political and security environment through which the region will endeavour to realise its
socio-economic objectives (SADC 2004).
The SIPO was designed to achieve three objectives: provide guidelines for action (strategies
and activities); shape the institutional framework for the day-to-day activities of the Organ
(including the operationalisation of the Protocol and the Mutual Defence Pact); and align
SADC’s peace and security agenda with that of the AU (particularly the AFS and aspects of
good governance).
In theory at least, SADC decision-making in respect of peace and security is comprehensive
as well as complex. The primary SADC bodies dealing with political and security co-operation
are the Summit of Heads of State and Government and the OPDSC. The key policy frameworks
guiding decision-making in the areas of politics and security are the SADC Treaty and the
Protocol on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation. The Organ is managed by a troika
of elected member states. The Summit elects an Organ chairperson for a one-year term. This
functionary is assisted in her/his work by a deputy chairperson – who will take over after a
year – and the previous chairperson (troika members are informally called the serving, incoming and outgoing members). The troika is supported by several committees, including the
Ministerial Committee of the Organ (MCO), the Inter-State Defence and Security Committee
(ISDSC), and the Inter-State Politics and Diplomacy Committee (ISPDC). The MCO comprises
the ministers responsible for foreign affairs, defence, public security, and state security of each
member state. Decisions taken by the Organ are referred to the Summit for discussion and
approval. The SADC Secretariat plays an important co-ordinating but not decision-making
42
role. Decisions by the Summit and the OPDSC on political and security matters are generally
made by consensus.
The achievements under the SIPO can be summarised as follows.
• The building of trust and confidence by sharing and exchanging information, particularly
co-operation in various defence areas, such as information exchange, visits to and the sharing of training institutions, and joint exercises.
• The introduction of the SADC Mutual Defence Pact. The Organ views this as a regional commitment to self-defence and the preservation of peace and security.
• The launch and operationalisation of the SADC Standby Force (SSF). This is seen as a commitment to a collective approach to defence and security affairs.
• The integration of the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation
(SARPCCO) into the ISDSC, aimed at improving co-operation on policing in the region.
• Establishment of a Regional Early Warning Centre (REWC) tasked with helping to anticipate, prevent, and manage conflicts.
• Progress on issues relating to political governance and the observation of elections via the
establishment of the SADC Electoral Advisory Council (SEAC) and a mediation unit. However, SIPO I was poorly implemented in numerous respects. In particular, the production
of a business plan for addressing its 130-plus objectives never materialised, and no serious
effort was made to develop strategies for operationalising the Organ. The relationship between
the SADC Secretariat and member states is central to SADC’s effective functioning, and needs
to be driven by effective leaders. The SSF, although technically committed to the AU’s grand
strategy of having standby forces ready for deployment (by 2015 – a new deadline), remains
resource-poor and depends on political guidance at the summit level. It is unclear whether
there is any real political will to use this instrument in a robust fashion beyond fact-finding and
mediation by retired presidents. Despite prescriptions to this effect in the Protocol, SADC’s
security architecture does not necessarily harmonise with that of the AU, giving rise to a range
of tensions, least of all the question of agenda-setting (who determines action, when, and
how?) and deployment authorisation (which body decides to deploy which force, at what level,
and with what mandate, and accountability?)3
Overall, Macaringue and Magano (2008: 135) note that ‘SADC can only be understood in its
complexity’. In their view:
… SADC still faces an identity crisis, and it cannot be assumed that it is in a position to spell
out common values and indicate clearly that its citizens are at the centre of individual state
efforts. Different states still view and articulate security in divergent ways. Comprehensive
security arrangements that include standardisation of democratic practices, human rights,
the rule of law, and even civil–military relations are still a long-term goal. The human security notion, although embedded in the key SADC policy documents, is still far from being
the foundation of a regional practice.
Evolution of the SADC peace and security policy framework
A formal SIPO evaluation exercise, held in Dar es Salaam in February 2007, recommended that
the SIPO be reviewed before it expired in 2009. The meeting noted the need for regular (fiveyearly) reviews and evaluations. A second review workshop was held in Swaziland in March
43
2009. At its meeting in August 2009 the Ministerial Committee of the Organ (MCO) directed the
Secretariat to ensure that the revision was completed by 2010.
Following the MCO’s decision, member states convened in Gaborone in May 2010 to ‘consolidate’ the SIPO, in line with the Swaziland review. The meeting recommended that the Organ
Troika meet in June 2010 to ‘harmonise’ the reviewed document. This process involved reviewing the objectives, strategies and activities undertaken by the various sectors relevant to peace
and security specified in the SIPO, as well as the inclusion of the police as a stand-alone sector
of the Organ. The revised document, known informally as SIPO II, was approved by the SADC
Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Windhoek, Namibia, in 2010.
In reviewing the regional environment, the document notes a range of ongoing challenges: climate change, economic recession, unconstitutional changes of government, the growing vulnerability of national borders, illegal migration, an increase in organised transnational crime,
drug and human trafficking, money laundering, illicit mining, and maritime piracy.
It states that SIPO I has been restructured to respond to previously and newly identified challenges. It also notes the weaknesses of SIPO I in responding to challenges, the need to rethink
the Organ sectors, human resource constraints, and a lack of coordination in implementing the
SIPO objectives. It acknowledges that proper implementation would require regular monitoring and evaluation, and recognises the need to develop annual implementation plans to this
end.
SIPO II: structure and content
SIPO II is structured around five sectors: political, defence, state security, public security,
and police. The discussion of each sector follows a standard format, namely an introductory
analysis followed by a number of objectives, each elaborated in turn with detailed strategies,
activities, and expected outcomes (presumably in aid of monitoring and evaluation). Below,
we provide a snapshot of each sector:
The politics and diplomacy sector
This sector seeks to promote good governance among member states on the basis of shared
political values and practices, improved conflict management, improved civilian participation
in peacekeeping, and the effective management of regional disasters.
The defence sector
This sector seeks to enhance participation in peacekeeping, roll out the SSF, and provide support to civilian authorities. According to SIPO II, defence co-operation in the region has contributed significantly to peace and stability, and as a consequence the focus is currently on
participation in Peace Support Operations, or PSOs (bilaterally but also via the SSF), humanitarian assistance, and support to civil authorities.
Intriguingly, however, it identifies a wide range of ongoing threats in need of action (diplomatically phrased as ‘challenges which impact on the defence sector’). These can be grouped into
three sets of issues: ‘hard’ issues (intra-state armed conflict, arms trafficking, maritime piracy,
land mines, disaster relief support capability, terrorism and external aggression); societal
44
issues (HIV and AIDS, DDRRR, and illegal migration); and policy development issues (peacekeeping, regional defence technology, and Defence Force inter-operability doctrines).
State security
This sector seeks to prevent the subversion of the constitutional order and to deal with economic threats to member states, by regularising intelligence exchanges among state security
agencies and services in the region.
According to SIPO II, political co-operation in the region has created a ‘conducive environment’ for ongoing security co-operation, marked by the regular formal and informal exchange
of intelligence among security services. The state security sector’s main achievements to date
relate to the development and implementation of the REWC.
The main areas of concern for member states are threats to the constitutional order, and activities designed to undermine the economic interests of member states and the region. The latter
seem to refer to the perceived negative effects of globalisation (border vulnerabilities, increased
drug and human trafficking, and money laundering), but also include issues relating to climate
change, food insecurity, maritime piracy, foreign interference, and terrorism.
Public security
This sector seeks to address the threats associated with organised crime syndicates by coordinating the activities of law enforcement, public safety, correctional services and prisons,
immigration, parks and wildlife, and customs and refugee agencies.
SIPO II dwells at some length on the purpose of the public security sector, probably in anticipation of questions about the relationship between the public security and police sectors. It
states that the public security sector is meant to provide services in respect of law enforcement,
public safety, corrections or prisons, immigration, parks and wildlife, customs and refugees.
All these areas, it says, are characterised by increased co-operation and collaboration among
the various services and other law enforcement agencies – notably participation in joint crossborder operations aimed at combating crime and recovering stolen property. This sector also
helps to implement the SADC protocols on the Combating of Illicit Drug Trafficking and on
Firearms, Ammunition, and Other Related Materials.
Despite these achievements, the document notes that numerous challenges remain, including
a wide range of transnational criminal activities by organised criminal syndicates and criminal
intelligence networks (it lists 21 such challenges).
The police sector
This sector focuses on the prevention of cross-border crime and the enhancement of law and
order by co-ordinating the activities of the region’s police services and forces. SIPO II struggles to explain the purpose of the police sector in a way that distinguishes it from the public security sector in SIPO I. Its ‘situational analysis’ suggests that policing is largely meant to
deal with crime, particularly cross-border crime. It notes that law enforcement agencies in the
region have been active in implementing the SADC protocol against corruption, the protocol
on extradition, control of firearms, mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, and combating
illicit drugs.
45
How relevant is SIPO II? Seven policy questions
Which themes, norms and principles guide SIPO II?
SIPO II is not meant to be a binding policy document or legal framework for decision-makers –
the SADC Treaty and the Protocol on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation play that role
(Oosthuizen 2006). As SADC officials and security sector officers often note, it should rather be
understood as a guide to collective behaviour. Both SIPO I and SIPO II state that they are guided
by the ‘objectives and common agenda’ of SADC, as elaborated in Article 5 of its amended Treaty.4
In brief, SADC regards good political and economic governance as the two key ‘enablers’ of
regional integration.5 Article 5 of the Treaty requires member states to ‘promote common political values, systems, and other shared values which are transmitted through institutions that are
democratic, legitimate, and effective’. According to SADC, it ‘firmly acknowledges that economic
growth and development will not be realised in conditions of political intolerance, the absence of
the rule of law, corruption, civil strife and war’. It states that its member states ‘are cognisant of the
fact that poverty thrives under such conditions, nurturing further political instability and conflict’.
SADC also notes that its members ‘are committed to the ideals of the AU and the NEPAD programme which identifies democracy and political governance, including peace and security,
conflict management, post-conflict reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction, and
the combating of illicit trafficking in arms and related materials, as essential prerequisites for
achieving sustainable development’. This is consistent, it notes, with the approach in the RISDP,
which has however added trafficking in drugs and human beings to this list.
The big question for most political analysts is to what extent SADC and its member states are
able to claim a shared understanding of and commitment to democratic principles and practices. And does SADC really speak for the people of the region on matters relating to democracy?
Matlosa notes that ‘… while generally transitions have taken place in a majority of states in the
SADC region, democracy and governance remain in a state of flux’ (2008: 43). Indeed, between
2008 and 2013 new crises of governance arose in Zimbabwe, the DRC, and Madagascar. To
some extent, the section on politics and democracy in SIPO II addresses some of these problems. It seeks to strengthen recent innovations such as the SADC Electoral Advisory Council,
and standardising electoral management throughout the region.
However, as long as SADC remains a predominantly state-driven project, its attempts at promoting democracy will be limited. Progress on this front will require SADC to live up to its
obligation under Chapter Seven of its Treaty, namely to ‘fully involve the people of the region’
in its activities. Instead, the SADC Secretariat, the Organ, and most member states pay lipservice to this people-friendly vision, utilising instead a limited range of prominent NGOs and
consultants to design, implement, and evaluate its projects. Several analysts have argued for a
new participatory paradigm in regional integration processes through deliberative policy-making
involving not only the political and civil society elites, but ordinary people themselves through
community-based organisations (Matlosa and Lotshwao 2010). Not only is SADC found wanting
on this score, but so too are civil society elites, many of whom appear content with the status quo.
How did SIPO evolve?
SIPO II is remarkably similar to SIPO I. Specifically, it follows the same method, namely to
analyse the region’s political and security situation and current challenges, and identify objec-
46
tives, strategies, and activities for overcoming those challenges. Also, both documents were
developed in the same way, namely by task teams of SADC officials (primarily from the SADC
security sector) with political oversight by the Organ’s committees (ISDSC and ISPDC) and the
Ministerial Committee of the Organ. The final drafts were considered and adopted by SADC
Summits (in the case of SIPO I, the Summit of 2004, and in the case of SIPO II, the Summit of
2010). It appears that very little input was received (or solicited) from civil society.
SIPO II differs from the original in two key respects. First, it now defines five sectors instead of
the four in SIPO I: political and diplomatic, defence, state security (intelligence), public safety,
and police. The last-named sector is new, but there are conceptual difficulties in distinguishing the police sector from the public safety sector. The difference seems to revolve around the
police sector’s focus on co-ordinating attempts to combat cross-border crime. Second, SIPO II
pays far more attention to monitoring and evaluation. Besides a series of objectives and strategies, it defines detailed activity plans and expected outcomes for each sector, which theoretically enable more rigorous monitoring and evaluation than previously. The question remains:
who will undertake this, and how?
Who and what shaped SIPO II?
It is difficult to pinpoint a single actor which has driven the development of SIPO II. It may
be fair to say that SIPO II was developed by SADC officials as a response to political pressures
emanating from a combination of sources. SIPO II was produced well after SIPO I reached the
end of its five-year life (it was supposed to be implemented from 2004 to 2008). The donor community and civil society have been persistent in their critique of the perceived lack of implementation of SIPO I. This became evident following the 2006 SADC Consultative Conference
which adopted the Windhoek Declaration on relations between the donor community and
SADC, and particularly support for the SADC Common Agenda as expressed in the RISDP and
SIPO. However, discussions around the SIPO did not feature strongly at the Conference, partly
because SADC officials were reluctant to indicate specific areas of engagement via the SIPO. It
was also obvious to conference participants that SADC officials were unable to articulate the
RISDP / SIPO interface.
After the conference, the establishment of a mutually agreed mechanism for regulating donor
support for SIPO objectives was delayed for many years, frustrating donors (as well as NGOs
working in the field of democracy and security). On the other hand, many SADC insiders
defend its track record in terms of implementing SIPO, and argue that undue pressure on
SADC to reform SIPO should be understood as political attempts to dictate its agenda. Our
comparison of SIPO I and II suggests that the organisation has chosen to review and update
the plan based on its own internal logic, with little assistance from outside. Several research,
training, and policy institutions (ACCORD, the CCR, EISA, the ISS, and SADSEM) have sought
to engage with the SADC Organ, its directorate, and individual member states on issues surrounding the SIPO agenda, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
(GIZ, formerly GTZ) has continued to provide the Organ Directorate with valuable technical
support. However, the extent to which any of this has influenced SIPO II is hard to determine.
In November 2012, SIPO II was publicly launched and the event was characterised by open
and constructive engagement between SADC peace and security officials and officers and a
range of stakeholders. This paved the way for new thinking around its management and implementation. However, considering the constraints upon the SADC Directorate dealing with the
regional peace and security agenda, it is clear is that any meaningful formal implementation of
SIPO II activities will have to be undertaken in collaboration with key stakeholders, including
47
the donor community, the private sector, relevant research, training and policy institutions,
and community-based organisations. The institutionalisation of working relationships among
these potential partners should receive priority attention.
Is SIPO consistent with the main policy principles of the AU and APSA?
The promotion of democracy is very much on the minds of SADC officials – however, on terms
defined by SADC ruling elites. ‘Democracy’ from the perspective of a social activist in Swaziland means something quite different from claims by the Swazi government. This gives rise to
questions relating to SADC’s approach to the transitions in Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and Madagascar. Regional elite solidarity often overrides the values associated with open, transparent,
and accountable democratic governance. This seems to be true in the case of Swaziland and,
to some extent, Zimbabwe. In the latter case, SADC prefers mediation from within its ranks (by
Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma), despite the fact that some heads of state (notably
the late President Levy Mwanamasa of Zambia, and Presidents Ian Khama of Botswana and
Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania) have openly criticised Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
In the case of Madagascar, the picture remains opaque: on the one hand, SADC has brought
substantial pressure to bear on President Andry Rajoelina by suspending his government from
SADC, supporting a mediator (an in-house appointment in the form of former Mozambican
President Joaquim Chissano), and declining to condone the so-called road map for political
change in Madagascar – a document that favours the incumbent. SADC’s mediation effort also
seems to be bedevilled by the involvement of the AU, the UN, and a range of Western interests,
particularly France (Cawthra 2010). At the time of writing, progress towards implementing a
revised road map to democratic normalisation remained unclear.
Regarding peace and security, efforts seem to have been made to harmonise SADC’s security
architecture with the emerging APSA framework. However, much work remains, including
addressing the core question of how to structure SSF decision-making and its relations with
the AU and UN. As we have argued elsewhere, there is an unresolved tension between the AU
and its role in the APSA versus the roles and responsibilities of RECs (Van Nieuwkerk 2011).
The decision-making around the Madagascar crisis and the unfolding peace enforcement
intervention in eastern DRC, first mooted as a SADC intervention but then changed to a UN
intervention, illustrates this point.
Finally, it appears that the SADC Organ has recognised the need for a more comprehensive
understanding of (and response to) the challenges associated with public safety and security
(the traditional policing and criminal justice agendas). It is unfortunate that the structure of
the SIPO document prevents this vital set of activities from being given a proper set of objectives and activities in harmony with the rest of the security sector. Separate ‘public safety’ and
‘police’ sectors strike one as rather artificial.
To what extent is SIPO II based on a consensus on security threats in Southern Africa?
SIPO II does make an effort to capture the dynamic nature of the security environment, but its
treatment of the political environment remains divorced from reality. Moreover, the strategic
analyses are often deficient. In many cases, the linkages between the strategic analysis and
objectives and activities in a given sector are not obvious. The analyses are sectoral and not
holistic, which is understandable if one assumes that sectoral members know their business
well. However many of the sectoral analyses seem dated, often repeating or partially repeat-
48
ing those in SIPO 1. The strategic analysis of the political terrain in southern Africa appears
unconnected to the real-life struggles of people in the eastern DRC, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, or
Swaziland. The sector’s opening sentence casually states that ‘the regional political situation is
characterised by the acceptance of political pluralism’, and elsewhere it talks of the prevailing
peace and deepening of democratic practices. Imagine the value of strategic analysis drawing
on the reservoir of available, open-source, credible assessments of the state of democracy in
the region.
The strategic analyses in the public safety and police sectors are virtually identical, casting
further doubt on the value of adding a police sector. The impression the document seeks to
create that dedicated analyses have led to appropriate objectives and activities is weakened
when it becomes apparent that a common method has been applied to all sectors in both SIPO
I and II. Objectives are identically phrased across all sectors. This template looks good in a
spreadsheet or log frame, but actually creates an artificial structure which induces mechanical
sectoral responses.
Does SIPO II accurately reflect current foreign policy and security policy thinking in the region?
SIPO II is practically silent on this issue. The question of how and to what extent SADC is able
to develop and project commonly agreed foreign policy positions has received some analytical attention in recent years (Harvey 2010). The findings suggest that collective foreign policymaking in Africa is a slow process of learning, accommodation, and compromise because of
the persistence of national sovereignty and the diversity of interests and experiences in managing complex external environments. SADC has the advantage of having fashioned a practice
of building foreign policy coordination around some core issues at the height of the apartheid and decolonisation era that seems to hold some promise for the future. However while
there has been some convergence around certain principles within SADC, the process remains
superficial.
In order to meet the challenges of a globalising, turbulent and unequal world, SADC needs
to pay much more attention to the operationalisation of its Organ protocol requirement to
‘develop common foreign policy approaches to the issues of mutual concern’, and ‘advance
such policy collectively in international fora’.
SIPO II does not provide any guidance on this score, so the impetus will have to come from
somewhere else: in our view, this is part of the leadership challenge facing SADC and its member states. We do not restrict ‘leadership’ to elected politicians or state managers only; we
also have intellectual, cultural, entrepreneurial, spiritual, sport, and artistic leaders in mind
– a wide repertoire of thinkers and practitioners with whom southern Africans are familiar.
The question then is to what extent SADC can be persuaded to adopt a less state-driven and
regime-centred approach to regional integration.
Conclusion
This discussion of SADC’s SIPO has been situated in current patterns of interstate political and
security co-operation in southern Africa. In particular, it asks whether SADC could be regarded
as a coherent and capable political and security actor – and whether the OPDSC and SIPO
strengthen SADC’s role as such an actor.
49
If we assume that democratic governance provides the foundation for such behaviour, the
region has much to do. To state, as SIPO II does, that ‘... the region experiences peace [and] a
deepening of democratic practices’ is to tell only half the story. The other half relates to ongoing
governance crises in Zimbabwe, the DRC, and Madagascar; and persistent tensions in Swaziland and, until recently, Lesotho. The SADC Organ appears preoccupied with these ‘matters’
(it avoids crisis management language), yet seems unable to resolve many of them. Crises typically drag on for years, or are resolved by other means. These events demonstrate the complex
nature of transitions to democracy, and the reality of democratic reversals. We would therefore
suggest that SADC has not yet achieved its objective of improving regional security by harmonising the interests of member states, or assuming the role of an effective regional security
actor capable of solving interstate and intrastate conflicts.
There is also little evidence of SADC beginning to establish a track record as a security actor
beyond its own borders. Its relationship with the AU is underdeveloped (perhaps because it is
still relatively young), but also because it is based on divergent understandings of peace and
security requirements under the APSA. For the region, mediation is the preferred method of
intervention, while elsewhere the ASF concept represents a preference for more forceful interventions (ironically, an approach undermined by the AU’s inability to provide the resources
required for such robust behaviour).
What about the argument that the presence of a regional power will enable the region and its
institutions to behave with more confidence as a security actor – able and willing to take steps
to resolve interstate and intrastate conflicts, and exercise power and influence beyond its borders? South Africa’s post-apartheid relationship with the region is an intriguing one. It has the
power to dominate, and in fact does so, particularly in the economic domain. But politically
it seems to be a reluctant hegemon, or ambivalent partner. It maintains an ambitious foreign
affairs posture, aiming to be a global player, if not a continental leader, and a force in shaping
South–South relations. Some believe that in the course of this process (driven with gusto by
Mbeki but much more tentatively by Zuma), it has tended to neglect its relationship with its
neighbours – if true, a potentially tragic oversight.
Recent indications are that the South African government intends to reclaim lost terrain. First,
a white paper on foreign policy, released in May 2011, reaffirms Africa as central to its international relations (SAG 2011). It states that South Africa will continue to play a leading role
in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction. The
white paper proposes a strengthened relationship among the SADC Organ, the AU PSC, and
the UN Security Council. Second, after assuming the chairpersonship of the Organ in August
2011, the South African government released a detailed statement of its regional policy objectives – a significant development in itself, and suggestive of a renewed engagement with SADC
(Sisulu 2011). It announced a proposed SADC strategic plan for combating illegal migration, a
policy to combat piracy in SADC waters, the linking of the National Early Warning Centres of
South Africa, Botswana, and Angola to the SADC REWC as a pilot project, and its intention to
facilitate development of this capacity in the remaining SADC member states once the project
proves successful. South Africa also aims to position SADC as a continental security actor: it
recently suggested that SADC should engage the AU regarding peace-making in Somalia, Puntland, and Somaliland (this links back to the approach on piracy).
However encouraging this is, South Africa is not SADC. Its role is vital, but SADC cannot subsume its policies under those of South Africa. As the white paper clearly demonstrates, South
Africa’s foreign policy positions are increasingly determined by its national interests: for example, it regards the putative Tri-partite Free Trade Area between SADC, COMESA, and the EAC
50
(the T-FTA) as a key priority. Together with its fellow members of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), namely Namibia, Botswana, and Lesotho, it has a special relationship
with the EU (via the trade and development co-operation agreement). It also maintains relations with selected European countries (via so-called strategic partnerships), and prioritises
relations with emerging powers, bilaterally but also via the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South
Africa (BRICS) and India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) alliances. Moreover, it aims to become a
permanent member of a restructured UN Security Council. To what extent are these key priorities for other SADC members?
Despite SADC’s sophisticated security architecture, then, the behaviour of its members suggests that they are not yet willing or able to share democratic political values and norms, or
harmonise national decision-making structures and practices in order to enhance SADC’s
ability or authority to make, implement, and enforce rules. Underlying this reality are SADC’s
difficulties in proceeding with regional economic integration – a project bedevilled by the
region’s unequal power relations, and the tendency by outsiders to select trade partners on a
bilateral basis with little regard for local efforts to establish a regional free trade area leading
to a customs union and common monetary area. All in all, then, SADC is a stable (but not very
efficient) institution, (mis)used by its members to serve disparate demands of national interest
and sovereignty.
As regards the norms and principles which guide SIPO II, SADC regards good political and
economic governance as the two key ‘enablers’ of regional integration. SADC members are
also expected to adhere to AU and NEPAD principles, norms and values in respect of democracy and peace and security. SADC member states have much to do, individually and collectively, to realise this vision. A key argument is that SADC, as a state-driven project, has in-built
limitations (for example, its attitude towards the Zimbabwean and Swaziland governance crises suggests that ruling elites tend to protect each other against criticisms, and pressures for
reform). SADC should do more than pay lip-service to the notion of engagement with civil
society. In order to address poverty and underdevelopment, and promote stability and democracy, it ought to become people-driven rather than state-driven.
Both SIPO I and II were developed in virtually identical processes dominated by defence and
security officers and officials, with no acknowledged contributions from outsiders. The sectoral analyses are mechanically forced into a uniform template, and their quality is uneven.
However, the plans differ in two key respects. First, SIPO II encompasses five sectors, with the
police added, but struggles to distinguish this sector from the public safety sector. Second,
monitoring and evaluating the performance of each sector is a prominent feature of SIPO II.
However, this raises the question: who will undertake this, and how will it be done?
SIPO II was developed by SADC officials in response to various pressures. The first was a technical requirement, emanating from inside the organisation, for a review. Second, the donor
community and civil society have consistently criticised a perceived failure to implement
SIPO I. Thirdly, implementing the SIPO will require significant donor support. SADC member states cannot afford the budget of the full SIPO. Hence the development, following the
Windhoek Declaration, of a structured relationship between the SADC Organ Directorate and
the International Cooperating Partners, or ICPs, in the form of a Peace and Security Working
Group. Although the working group has not yet been activated, it may significantly improve
the implementation of SIPO II. To achieve this, however, it will have to engage more effectively
with regional research, training and policy institutions as well as broader civil society.
51
There is evidence that SADC has sought to harmonise SIPO II with the AU’s APSA. However,
given the AU’s resource constraints, the question is to what extent it is willing to allow RECs to
run with the peace-making and peacekeeping ball (as demonstrated by the Madagascar imbroglio). As noted earlier, South Africa has played a major role in advancing the SADC peace and
security agenda in continental and global institutions. However, beyond this renewed – and
laudable – drive to make SADC more responsive to the problems of the region (and beyond),
there is little evidence of a collective effort to develop a shared foreign policy approach. The
region’s leaders must rise to this challenge if SADC is to become more than a loose collection
of ruling elites.
Endnotes
1
This chapter draws on the author’s earlier work on SIPO II (Van Nieuwkerk 2012).
2
Regional integration is typically understood as a process in which a group of (usually) contiguous countries
move from a condition of partial or total isolation towards one of partial or complete unification. The
shift involves a progressive lowering of internal boundaries within the integrating zone, and a de facto
raising of external boundaries vis-à-vis countries outside the region. Regional integration does not have
to involve the construction of some kind of formal institutional structure of mutual co-operation among
involved governments (Thakur & Langehove 2006).
3
Article 7 of the Memorandum of Understanding Amongst the Southern African Development Community
Member States on the Establishment of a Southern African Development Community Standby Brigade of
August 2007 stipulates that ‘SADCBRIG shall only be deployed on the authority of the SADC Summit’, and
‘may be deployed on a SADC, AU or UN mandate’.
4
See Article 5: Objectives, Consolidated Text of the Treaty of the Southern African Development community,
as amended, http://www.sadc.int/english/key-documents/declaration-and-treaty-of-sadc/#article5
5
This section draws on Chapter 1: The SADC Framework for Integration, SADC: Years of Progress (19802010), http://www.sadc.int/index/browse/page/107
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4
The AU–SADC interface on peace and security:
challenges and opportunities
The maintenance of peace and security and the prevention, resolution and management
of conflict are vital undertakings at the core of both the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) as international organisations of nation-states.
SADC’s peace and security agenda, as articulated in the Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ
(SIPO), enables the implementation of its socioeconomic development blueprint, the Regional
Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP).
Similarly, the AU regards the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) enshrined in the
Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) as an anchor
for the advancement of its huge array of programmes articulated in the Abuja Treaty and currently reflected in the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Plan (CAADP), and the Continental Free Trade
Area (CFTA).
SADC’s ultimate objective is to build a developed, prosperous and peaceful community
through regional integration, guided by a vision of a common future. Similarly, the AU aims at
establishing ‘an integrated, prosperous, equitable, well governed and peaceful … Africa, driven
and effectively managed by its own citizens and representing a creative and dynamic force in
the international arena’ (AUC 2009). While both bodies prioritise peace and security, major
challenges arise from operationalising these objectives.
Article 16 of the protocol establishing the PSC recognises regional economic communities
(RECs) and their mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution as building blocks of
APSA. The Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) also regards
RECs as fundamental for its implementation. SADC is an REC with a peace and security mandate, and therefore constitutes an APSA building block. This status calls for regular interaction
between the AU and SADC in the areas of peace and security.
While interaction between the region and the continent began when southern Africa was
struggling for independence and freedom, more structured interaction started in 2005 with
the establishment of the PSC, which replaced the OAU’s Central Organ on Conflict Prevention,
Resolution and Management established in 1993.
The new SADC-AU interface phased out de facto interaction under the old dispensation, and
ushered in a new era of rules-based interaction. In this chapter I argue that the varied and conflicting interests of members of the AU and SADC led to the creation of an institutional frame-
54
work marked by conflicting policy and decision-making processes. This in turn has a negative
impact on the interface between these two organisations in the area of peace and security.
I support my argument by examining convergences and divergences in the PSC protocol and
the MoU on relations between the AU and RECs on peace and security on one hand, and
the institutional architecture and operational practices of the AU and SADC on the other.
The analysis is guided by two questions: is there a model that can explain the seemingly
dysfunctional SADC-AU interface? And what empirical evidence is there to explain the fact
that SADC member states take different decisions when they participate in the AU?
The chapter starts by setting out an appropriate conceptual framework. Next, it provides a brief
overview of SADC and its relationship with the AU. It then examines two ‘policy disconnects’
between the AU and SADC, and traces how these dynamics have played themselves out in
practice. Finally, it raises the issues requiring attention if the dysfunctional interface between
these two organisations is to be improved.
Framework of analysis
Scholars have developed numerous models for explaining complex institutional interactions.
Some focus on institutions themselves as sets of behavioural actors (Amenta & Ramsey 2010),
while others analyse their utility in terms of organisation theory (McAuley, Duberley & Johnson 2007). Organisation theory regards institutions as organisations, namely social constructs
concerned with ordering, grouping and categorising the activities of individuals. Put differently, an organisation is seen as a rational coordination of the activities of a number of people
for the achievement of some common purpose through the division of labour or function, and
through a hierarchy of authority and responsibility (Schein 1970).
In the course of this process, the actors surrender their individual autonomy to collective
ownership of and responsibility for the processes and desired goals or end status. However,
organisation theory cautions against regarding organisations as corporates, a phenomenon
described as ‘anthropomorphisation’, whereby the leadership of an organisation is compared
to a human brain and its members as the rest of the body, poised to respond to the brain’s commands. Any deviation from this would be regarded as pathological.
Following this logic, dysfunctional interfaces between organisations such as the AU and SADC
could be caused by asymmetrical members’ interests as well as peer-pressure induced consensus leading to the approval of policies that are fraught with implementation challenges. However, this model regards members of organisations as separate entities engaged in a bargaining
process, and the institutions they establish are downplayed.
Another model for examining inter-institutional interaction is integration theory. It regards
‘organisation’ as a process of integrating the activities of different human groupings, with
the integrating parts performing certain functions in the system. Its main assumption is that
because resources are scarce, actors depend on each other, thus responding to the environment by pooling resources, the latter being the initial moment of integration (Ujupan n.d.).
This theory relies on perspectives such as neofunctionalism proposed by Ernst Haas, as cited
by Laursen in his 2008 study of European integration. It argues that bodies such as the European Union are sites of integration where political actors from national settings are persuaded
to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities to a new centre whose institutions
possess or demand jurisdiction over pre-existing national states. At the core of this process is
55
Chapter 4: The AU–SADC interface on peace and security: challenges and opportunities
the spillover effect, in terms of which integration deepens from initial economic integration to
eventual political integration.
The spillover depends on what is at stake for the various actors. In the context of security, the
intensity or proximity of a threat drives the spillover thinking of a nation to include neighbouring interests into its own. Peter Wallenstein of Uppsala University refers to this as a securityregime building process. In line with this approach, the option to integrate in one respect would
gradually spill over to another area, resulting in an integrated union of states with the authority
to direct the integration process. Indeed, SADC and its forerunners started as a loose security
co-operation arrangement which spilled over into co-operation in the economic sphere.
However, the spillover and loyalty transfer argument fails to appreciate that a spillover resulting in a security regime does not necessarily lead to a surrender of national defence, taxation,
foreign policy, and macroeconomic strategies. On the contrary, the spillover serves to project
these national policies into the external environment. Indeed, Hofman argues that in these
instances nation-states do not accept sovereignty transfers in favour of a higher authority.
In trying to diagnose problems surrounding inter-institutional interfaces, the neofunctionalist
approach would argue that organisations often overemphasise the spillover effect, and fail to
separate legal from highly political issues. In this way, they miscalculate how vital defence and
security are to members’ sovereignty which, in the case of our enquiry, is actually recognised
in the AU Constitutive Act and the SADC Treaty.
However, these models only partially explain the complexity of inter-institutional interfaces.
SADC and the AU are complex organisations, involving multiple actors. Their members interact at different levels over different interests, in different bureaucracies and in different institutional regimes. They tend to move like waves, with the crests representing high-value issues,
and the bodies representing interests that can be traded off. In the sphere of peace and security, this fluctuation depends upon the capacity of each actor.
In examining the SADC–AU interface in an environment where history remains the only glue
among AU members, the Principal-Agent model developed by Kassim and Menon (2003)
offers helpful tools. It recognises that we are dealing with complex interfaces between complex
institutions comprising multiple actors, in the sensitive area of peace and security.
In terms of this model, SADC and the AU are engaged in a reciprocal process of delegation
involving a delegator, the ‘principal’, and a delegatee, the ‘agent’. For example, in a private company the shareholders (the principal) contract an executive (the agent) to manage the business
on a day-to-day basis. This model becomes more complex when the principal is an ‘organisation that delegates responsibility to another organisation in order to economise on transaction
costs, pursue goals that would otherwise be too costly, or secure expertise’ (ibid: 122).
As the principal delegates in order to save costs, but imposes restrictions and control mechanisms in the process, the agent may feel constrained, and prevented from fully applying its
skills. Under these circumstances a rational choice for the agent would be to circumvent the
procedures by maximising the asymmetry in information. The interaction between the AU and
SADC displays some of these characteristics. This raises an interesting question. Both organisations have the same southern African members, but they behave differently in the two different forums. Both advocate the need for integration, and both have approved the APSA. Why do
these members behave as they do? The answer seems to lie in the fact that equidistance plays a
role in the issues of security, as we shall see when we examine two regional cases.
56
Region and regionness
The popular images of the AU and SADC correspond to the AU Commission in Addis Ababa
and the SADC Secretariat in Gaborone, rather than complex regional systems. Informed technocrats hold the latter view, while functionaries tend to have a hybrid view of these organisations as comprising their secretariats as well as the extended policy systems. Despite these
differences, all role players agree that the AU and SADC are complex regional and subregional
organisations served by bureaucracies which are increasingly acquiring a life of their own. But
what is a region, and how does it acquire its regional quality?
Regions have been defined in various ways (Väyrynen 2003). One view emphasises physical
or geographic characteristics, while another gives precedence to functional criteria such as
economic and political roles. By contrast, Hettne (1996) and Russet (1996) define ‘regionness’
or regionality in terms of a number of phases, each with their own characteristics, namely:
• A geographic phase, which emphasises territories demarcated by natural physical barriers with certain ecological characteristics, inhabited by humans who maintain some level
of interaction. Hettne refers to this as the first level of regionness, a ‘proto-region’, or ‘preregional zone’, since there is no organised society.
• A social phase, which implies trans-local relations between human groupings. At this level,
these groupings are interdependent both for their security and for their socioeconomic
survival. This constitutes a primitive security complex dependent on mutual consent, and
governed by unwritten rules. The interest of the actors are co-ordinated in terms of social
bonds and concerns.
• Organised co-operation on cultural, economic, political and military issues. In this phase,
‘region’ is defined in terms of those countries which are formal members of the regional
organisation in question. It is a formal region, with a formal membership. This process of
regionalisation is driven by the need for complementarity informed by comparative economic advantages and the principles of a security complex. Most of the current African
RECs emerged out of this necessity, both for security and socioeconomic development.
This phase or type of regionality does not respect geographical borders. It also allows countries to affiliate to the regional organisation regardless of physical location, as in the case of
COMESA.
• An acting subject with a distinct identity, capability, legitimacy, and decision-making structure. In this phase, regions are defined in terms of their focus, typically interventions aimed
at resolving conflicts between and within member states, and the improving of welfare in
terms of social security and regional balance. The ultimate outcome is a ‘region-state’ in
which nation-state sovereignty is surrendered to a supranational institution.
These stages or phases do not occur in isolation. In order to qualify as a region, a territory must
display all or part of all these characteristics. In the case of our enquiry, both the AU and SADC
qualify as regions since both are geographically definable, are inhabited by people who are
constantly interacting and engaged in organised co-operation; and both are acting subjects,
because they have distinctive institutions aimed at achieving certain goals, and are governed
by collectively agreed rules, which makes them legitimate.
Given Africa’s size, the AU has attempted to combine geographic and organised co-operation
aspects in structuring institutions for managing continental affairs. As will be noted later, it
resorts to geographic politico-diplomatic structures to manage the APSA, and RECs to manage
its socioeconomic agenda. This is where the structural problems begin. Why did African coun-
57
tries not regionalise purely along geographic lines, as proposed in 1976? The answer lies in the
reasons why countries group themselves into regional organisations.
Regionalisation is a carefully designed process of delegation. Unlike co-operation, in terms
of which actors engage in bargaining process aimed at maximing comparative advantages,
regionalisation driven by integration as a prime strategy is a complex process of forward and
backward contracting and subcontracting, or simply delegation.
Regionalisation as a structured form of co-operation in a specific geographic or thematic area
is not new (Van Nieuwkerk 2001). In today’s world, marked by rapid and highly sophisticated
globalisation, regionalisation has also changed significantly. Hettne (1996) argues that while
the older form of regionalism echoed a bipolar international system that divided the world
along ideological lines, the new form exists in a multipolar system with complex and multiple layers of interdependence. And while the old regionalism was created from above through
superpower interventions, the new regionalism is a more spontaneous process from within
regions themselves, with constituent states experiencing the need for co-operation in order to
address new global challenges.
Hettne further argues that the old regionalism was inward-oriented and protectionist in
economic terms, and also had specific objectives in that some organisations were securityoriented, while others were economically oriented. By contrast, the new regionalism is more
comprehensive, multidimensional and ‘open’, and therefore compatible with an interdependent world economy. Under the old regionalism, relations were state-centred, while in the new
era non-state actors have moved to centre stage.
The move from the old to the new regionalism has been driven by changes in the nature of
security threats. In the bipolar era, security was heavily state-centric, and human security was
measured in terms of the security of the states in which people lived. Attempts at regionalisation (delegation) focused on the state. Non-state actors such as transnational corporations and
civil society organisations had no space of their own; all their activities had to be sanctioned by
the state apparatus. Constitutions contained many restrictive clauses.
SADC and the AU operate under the new regionalism in terms of which non-state actors play
a vital role. Security has become multidimensional, and globally interlinked. This has had a
major impact on the reasons for delegating powers and functions to regional institutions, as
well as institutional design. However, the raison d’être of regional institutions remains a functional one – i.e., institutions are chosen or established because of the roles they are meant to
play, the goals they are meant to achieve, or their services to the states which have established
them.
In fact, countries tend to have specific and concrete reasons for initiating or participating in
regional initiatives. Professor Bruce Russett of Yale University has outlined some of them. He
emphasises the functional dimension, submitting that regionalisation starts when states identify a need for collective public goods – that is, when they recognise that regionalisation will
provide the citizens of those states with benefits which those states cannot provide on their
own. ‘These are goods which, to be achieved at all or at least to an optimal degree, must be
provided by collective action. They must be provided cooperatively, with some provision for
minimising [free-riding] by those who would like to enjoy the benefits without paying for them’
(Russett 1996).
In line with this, countries often pursue regionalisation for its perceived economic benefits, in
the form of comparative advantages for intra- and extra-regional trade. Countries often join
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those types of arrangements when they realise that staying out would be more costly than
going in. The second major reason for pursuing regionalisation is to improve safety and security. Countries regionalise when there is either a clear or perceived security interdependence–
security complex (Ohlson 1988). A third major reason is to enforce or improve compliance
with rules and values protecting the provision or use of public goods, such as the control of
infectious diseases, aviation safety, the safety of shared water causes, and the prevention of
transnational organised crime.
There are three more reasons for regionalising that do not need much elaboration, namely the
need to mediate between the competing interests of integrating parties, the need to ensure
there is a collectively trusted agent serving as a channel of communication, in the form of a
supranational authority, for conveying information about member’s actions, needs, preferences and perceptions; and the need to construct and shape the norms and behaviour of states
and individuals.
These motivations cut across geographic boundaries, and are more or less prominent in specific settings. RECs such as SADC are moved by both political and economic imperatives. It is
impossible to think of SADC without Tanzania or Angola. More far-flung countries such as the
DRC, Mauritius, Seychelles and Madagascar joined SADC not because of geographical proximity but because of economic, security, and politico-strategic considerations. Although the
AU recognises RECs, its working procedures are not aligned with the ways in which RECs are
configured.
The AU’s hybrid integration approach is a prisoner to complex interests and to a complex web
of strategies for meeting them. AU member states, as delegating principals, suffer from policy
incoherence. At the level of the AU, their security concerns are viewed in a geographic perspective, but in operational terms they are stronger when operating at a subregional level, in RECs.
The equidistance factor with regard to security threats is the reason for the contradictory
behaviour of SADC member states. SADC member states are well aware of the fact that the
AU is meant to remove structural challenges to peace and security, while SADC is meant to
deal with specific security threats. The problem is that policies aimed at addressing structural
sources of insecurity often do not harmonise with policies aimed at addressing specific sources
of insecurity.
In short, the interaction between the AU and SADC about peace and security is complex, due
to factors related to the principal-agent process. As the next section shows, SADC is a complex
organisation, but is indebted to the AU for both historical and socioeconomic reasons.
SADC and areas of policy incoherence with the AU
SADC has its origins in the struggles for the liberation of the subregion, especially the call by
the OAU Liberation Committee for liberation movements to work together. In 1976, the committee’s then executive secretary, Colonel Hashim Mbita, undertook a series of field visits to
the camps of the armed wings of liberation movements active in three southern African counrties, namely ZANLA and ZIPRA in the case of Zimbabwe, PLAN in the case of Namibia, and
Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) in the case of South Africa. Following this initiative, the independent
countries of southern Africa – Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania – came
together in the Frontline States (FLS). This initiative was aimed at co-ordinating their support
59
to the liberation movements and to provide member countries with mutual protection against
attacks by Rhodesian and South African security forces.
In 1978, in order to help co-ordinate the activities of the military wings of the various liberation movements, the FLS established the Southern African Chiefs of Defence Coordination
Committee. The growing complexity of this committee’s work, and the adoption of the Abuja
Plan of Action for addressing the growing economic crisis in Africa, led to the establishment,
in 1980, of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC). SADCC
was founded by nine states, namely Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Namibia joined SADCC in 1989, soon after achieving
independence.
As argued by Laursen (2008) and McAuley, Duberley and Johnson (2007), organisations are
created for a purpose. SADCC was established first and foremost to shield member states
against the ‘Total Strategy’ adopted by the apartheid regime, aimed at using economic and
military instruments to punish countries supporting SWAPO and PLAN in the case of South
West Africa, and the ANC, the South African Communist Party, and MK, in the case of South
Africa.
SADCC essentially pursued a two-track programme, namely to improve the security of its
members, and bolster intra-regional trade. The first track was supported by the OAU, and the
second by international partners, especially the Scandinavian countries. The main motivation for affiliation to SADCC was that of security, in a broader sense. However, as argued by
McAuley (2007), this primary objective was not shared by all, resulting in an asymmetry of
interests; Malawi, Lesotho, and Swaziland were more concerned with the economic dividends
of regional co-operation, while the other SADCC member states were more concerned about
issues of security.
SADCC coexisted with the FLS. While all nine SADCC founding members participated in its
deliberations, only six – Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania,
plus the liberation movements – attended the deliberations of the FLS. This resonates with
organisation theory which argues that in any organisation there will be those who act as a
human brain. In this instance, the brain behind SADCC was the FLS.
In 1978, the Committee of Chiefs of Defence was expanded to include police and state security
actors, and transformed into the Inter-State Defence and Security Committee (ISDSC) of the
FLS. Attempts to involve other SADCC non-FLS members ended in disaster. For example, in
1984, all SADCC members attended an ISDSC meeting in Nyanga, Zimbabwe. By next morning, the South African Defence Force had acquired copies of all the documents tabled at the
meeting, including a draft agreement on defence and security cooperation.
In 1992, following the Lagos Plan of Action and the Lagos Final Acts that led to the Abuja Treaty,
as well as Namibia’s independence, SADCC was transformed into the Southern African Development Community (SADC). This did not greatly affect the area of peace and security, as the
FLS continued to dominate this area of co-operation.
The end of apartheid in 1994 was a turning point for southern African security, and changed
political thinking in Africa and the rest of the global community. For SADC, it meant that the
hostile activities by apartheid security forces – and the proxy wars in Mozambique and Angola
– had either ended or de-escalated. Until then, leadership of the ISDSC had rotated among the
FLS, with each host providing secretarial services. The SADC secretariat could not be involved
because of its vulnerability to the apartheid intelligence services. Hence SADC was not pre-
60
pared to establish a delegated agent for peace and security matters. For the OAU, while the
new political dispensation represented a resounding victory over colonialism in Africa, it also
represented the beginnings of an organisational crisis.
Until then, no one had questioned the role of the OAU on the continent, and representation in
the structures of the OAU, especially its executive organs, was not an issue. Solidarity among
OAU leaders, and their historical contributions to Africa’s liberation, were the glue that kept the
OAU together. However, following the realisation that there were serious intra-African issues
over and above ending apartheid, the OAU established a central organ on conflict prevention,
resolution and management in Cairo in 1993. This was seen as an initiative to transform the
OAU Liberation Committee that had focused on decolonisation into a new organ focused on
interstate and intra-state peace and security challenges.
This raised the issue of interference in the domestic affairs of member states. The OAU secretariat was perceived to have excessive powers, and more privileged information than the members themselves. As a result, the OAU embarked on a major organisational overhaul. Emulating
the OAU, the FLS also began a discussion on its future. In the meantime, SADC’s modus operandi was to allow each member state to co-ordinate a sector. South Africa’s entrance into SADC
started a discussion on whether defence and security could be regarded as a sector, and if so,
which country would co-ordinate it. South Africa displayed an interest in doing so, as it had
hosted a number of working meetings of the ISDSC subcommittee. At the time the ISDSC was
chaired by Zimbabwe, and the FLS by Tanzania.
In 1996 the FLS was phased out and replaced with SADC’s Organ on Politics, Defence and
Security Cooperation (OPDSC) which, by inheritance, was chaired by Zimbabwe, while South
Africa chaired SADC itself. The debate then centred on the need to align the chairmanship of
all SADC structures, and to unify their administration under the SADC secretariat. The former
FLS members were reluctant to do so, because the apartheid security apparatus was still intact.
In 1999, while the OAU was debating its transformation into the AU, the SADC Summit directed
the restructuring of all its institutions, including the Organ (SADC 1999). From then until 2001,
the ISDSC embarked on broad consultations, resulting in the drafting of the Protocol on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation. In the course of these debates some role players favour
higher levels of formal integration, while others continued to argue that issues of defence and
security should not be surrendered to a supranational authority (Ndlovu 2010).1
The final consensus reached was to make the Organ an institution chaired by a head of state
and/or government that would not simultaneously chair SADC. Its secretariat would no longer
rotate, and would be permanently housed in the SADC Secretariat. This intra-SADC dynamic
differed from that in the AU where the Central Organ was transformed into the PSC with clear
guidelines on how to interact with RECs. By contrast, SADC did not clearly spell out how it
would interact with the PSC.
SADC’s Founding Treaty of 1992, as amended in 2001, established the SADC Summit as the
main decision-making body on peace and security, and also established the Organ on Politics,
Defence and Security Co-operation (OPDSC). It stipulates that the Organ should be governed
by a Troika comprising the incoming chairperson, chairperson, and outgoing chairperson. The
Troika functions as a steering committee. In between meetings of the Organ, it is responsible
for decision-making; facilitating the implementation of decisions; and providing policy direction. It has the power to create committees on an ad hoc basis. It determines its own rules of
procedure, and may co-opt other members (SADC 2001: articles 9 and 9A).
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The structure and functions of the OPDSC are elaborated in the Protocol on Politics, Defence
and Security Co-operation adopted in 2001. According to the protocol, the Organ is an SADC
institution which reports to the Summit. It comprises a chairperson, the Troika, a ministerial
committee, an Inter-State Politics and Diplomacy Committee (ISPDC), an Inter-State Defence
and Security Committee (ISDSC), and substructures established by any of the ministerial
committees. In line with the last-named provision, the ISDSC is supported by technical subcommittees on defence, security, police, and public security; and the ISDSC by technical subcommittees on politics, diplomacy and democracy. These structures are complemented by
missions designed to address specific issues of peace and security. Although the chairperson
consults the chairperson of SADC, the Organ is responsible for its overall policy direction and
the achievement of its objectives (SADC 2001: article 4.4), and may ask the SADC chair to table
issues for discussion by the Summit (ibid: article 4.7).
According to Article 2, the Organ’s general objective is to promote peace and security in the
region. Its specific objectives, akin to those of the AU, are to:
• protect the region against instability arising from the breakdown of law and order, intra-state
conflict, interstate conflict and aggression;
• promote political co-operation among state parties and the evolution of common political
values and institutions;
• develop regional coordination and co-operation on matters related to security and defence,
and establish appropriate mechanisms to this end;
• prevent, contain and resolve interstate and intra-state conflicts by peaceful means;
• consider enforcement action in accordance with international law as a matter of last resort
where peaceful means have failed;
• consider the development of a collective security capacity, and conclude a Mutual Defence
Pact; and
• develop the peacekeeping capacity of national defence forces and co-ordinate the participation of state parties in international and regional peacekeeping operations.
According to Article 5, the Ministerial Committee comprises the ministers responsible for
foreign affairs, defence, public security, and state security of each of the state parties, and is
responsible for co-ordinating the work of the Organ and its structures. Therefore, it functions
like a PSC, and the Troika as the executive arm. The Summit is the main gatekeeper and the only
SADC body which can authorise military action within the framework of the Mutual Defence
Pact. Secretariat services are provided by the SADC Secretariat, which has established a Directorate of the Organ for this purpose. The Directorate resembles the AU’s Peace and Security
Department (PSD).
In sum, SADC’s peace and security institutions are provided for in its major policy instruments,
and do not have rigid structures or operational requirements. The Troika, whose leadership
rotates among member states, can meet as and when necessary. The executive secretary,
assisted by the director of the Organ, oversees the Organ’s activities. The Secretariat brings
issues surrounding peace and security requiring the attention of the Organ to the Troika, and
the appropriate mechanism is activated and assigned to resolve it at the Troika Summit level.
SADC recognises the primary role of the UN and the AU’s PSC in maintaining international
peace and security, but also bears in mind the provisions of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter,
which recognises the role of regional arrangements for maintaining peace. However, the Protocol on Politics, Defence, and Security Co-operation does not spell out how the Organ is meant
to interact with the PSC. Although SADC member states were involved in the development and
62
approval of the PSC Protocol, they never raised the issue of how the peace and security instruments of the various RECs would interact with the new AU body.
Given these policies and the associated institutional framework, it should be easy for SADC to
interface with the AU’s peace and security organs. In practice, this is not the case. What is missing, and what can be done? The answer seems to lie in the policies and structure of the AU and
SADC pertaining to decision-making. The following section shifts the attention to institutional
dissonances, resulting in conflicting modus operandi between SADC and the AU.
Institutional dissonances affecting the SADC-AU interface
The first paradox is that all SADC member states are also members of the AU. They approve the
policies and legal instruments of both organisations. Why, then, do the same member states
make contradictory policy decisions in these two bodies?
The answer seems to lie in the complexities of the principal-agent dilemma when states bargain over their interests. The AU recognises RECs as the building blocks of its African Peace and
Security Architecture (APSA). In line with this, regional peace and security organs should really
serve on the PSC. However, this is not the case. The organs under the APSA include the PSC, the
Panel of the Wise, the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS), the African Standby Force
(ASF), and the Peace Fund. RECs are not even included in the subsidiary bodies provided for
in Article 8.5. Article 12.4, which deals with the CEWS, states that ‘the Commission shall also
collaborate with the United Nations, its agencies, other relevant international organisations,
research centres, academic institutions, and NGOs to facilitate the effective functioning of the
Early Warning System’. Again, RECS are not mentioned.
Article 16 deals with the AU’s ‘relationship with regional mechanisms for conflict prevention,
management and resolution’, and treats RECs as subordinate institutions. Article 16.9 provides
for the conclusion of MoUs between the AU and RECs in the area of peace and security. But if
the RECs are pillars of the APSA, why were MoUs needed? This was deemed necessary because
member states realised that the AU operates on the basis of geographically delineated regions,
to which RECs are not aligned. RECs are meant to be the AU’s strategic partners, but it is not
obliged to listen to them or work through them. Instead, the MoUs fill the coordination gap
and allow the AU to use REC executives as one-stop shops for gathering intelligence about the
views of the inhabitants of those communities.
This situation contains serious weaknesses in respect of coordination. Intergovernmental theory asserts that the lack of linkages between bargaining platforms is the cause of problematic
inter-institution interfaces (Kassim & Menon 2003). This theory seems vindicated here because
the SADC Secretariat is a delegated agent answerable to its principals, and so is the AU Commission. The difficulty is that both these delegated agents share the same principals, and have
to respond to multiple demands from internal as well as external actors.
This points to a fundamental underlying cause of the problems surrounding the AU’s activities
as well as its relations with RECs, namely a dissonance between its policies and structures for
dealing with political and diplomatic issues – including peace and security – on the one hand,
and economic development on the other.
Article 33(2) of the Constitutive Act of the AU states that: ‘The provisions of this Act shall take
precedence over and supersede any inconsistent or contrary provisions of the Treaty establishing the African Economic Community.’ This is an implicit acceptance of the validity of the
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African Economic Community (AEC), which opens the door to the participation of RECs in the
AU. In this regard, the Treaty established as its main organs the Assembly of Heads of State and
Government; the Council of Ministers; the Pan-African Parliament; the Economic and Social
Commission; the Court of Justice; the General Secretariat; and the Specialised Technical Committees (OAU 1991).
Article 15 states that ‘representatives of regional economic communities shall participate in
meetings of the Economic and Social Commission (ECOSOC) and its subsidiary organs’. An
explanatory note states: ‘The modalities and conditions of their participation shall be prescribed in the protocol concerning relations between the Community and African regional
and sub-regional organisations and Third States. Representatives of other organisations may
also be invited to participate as observers in the deliberations of the Commission.’ Indeed in
2007, the AU concluded a Protocol on Relations between RECs and the AUC which provides
for co-operation and collaboration in all areas, be they economic or political. Where did this
go wrong?
Prior to the establishment of the AEC (via the Abuja Treaty), regions were defined in purely
geographic terms. OAU Resolution CM/Res. 464 (XXVI) of March 1976 divided the continent
into five geographic regions, namely North, West, Central, East and Southern. This decision
was based on the stated need to ensure ‘the equitable geographical distribution of representation, on a regional basis, of all OAU Member States in the UN, UN Specialised Agencies, other
international organisations, and OAU institutions’, and to comply with ‘OAU policy to encourage viable economic development projects on a regional basis’ (OAU 1976).
Although economic arguments predominated, the politico-diplomatic dimension was emphasised. In fact, considering the fact that the OAU’s main project was decolonisation, its diplomatic presence in international organisations made a great deal of sense. However, with the
establishment of the AEC, another conception of regions, namely Regional Economic Communities (RECs) – which are not necessarily geographically contiguous – was superimposed
on this original, politically driven conception.
The disjuncture between these two conceptions is immediately apparent, and arises in the
Abuja Treaty itself. Article 1, dealing with the definition of terms, states that: ‘“Region” shall
mean an OAU region as defined by Resolution CM/Res.464 QCXVI) of the OAU Council of
Ministers concerning the Division of Africa into five regions, namely North Africa, West Africa,
Central Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa’.
However, Article 6 states that the AEC should be established gradually in six stages. The first
would comprise ‘ ... strengthening existing regional economic communities and ... establishing economic communities in regions where they do not exist’. Similarly, Article 28, dealing
with the establishment of RECs, states that: ‘During the first stage, Member States undertake
to strengthen the existing regional economic communities and to establish new communities
where they do not exist in order to ensure the gradual establishment of the Community.’
From here on, the contradictions between these two conceptions cascade through other key
documents and instruments, including those dealing with peace and security. The Protocol
establishing the PSC acknowledges the role of regional mechanisms in preventing and resolving conflicts, and maintaining peace and security. Article 5 states that the election of its members shall follow regional representation, as defined in 1976.
Article 9 of the Protocol states that the PSC shall enter conflict areas by ‘using its discretion to
effect entry, whether through the collective intervention of the Council itself, or through its
64
Chairperson and/or the Chairperson of the Commission, the Panel of the Wise, and/or in collaboration with the Regional Mechanisms’.
The instruments at the disposal of the PSC include Panel of the Wise, the Early Warning System, and the Standby Force. Article 13 states that ‘Member States shall take steps to establish
standby contingents for participation in peace support missions decided on by the Peace and
Security Council, or intervention authorised by the Assembly”. The same article spells out the
role of member states. The roles of RECs and Regional Mechanisms (RMs) are not spelled out.
This means that AU member states have a direct legal obligation to provide troops to the AU if
the PSC decides on Peace Support Operations. Yet RECs, as the ‘building blocks of the APSA’,
are meant to be responsible for operationalising the ASF. This contradictory situation has
encouraged some member states to devise some sort of ‘coalition of the willing’ in responding
to crises. In this dynamic, RECs are sidelined and the AUC takes the lead, supported by powerful and willing nations.
The situation is made more complicated when considering regional arrangements for the
Standby Force. These arrangements do not coincide with the politico-diplomatic delineation.
Except for the East Africa Standby Force Coordination Mechanism (EASFCOM) and the North
Africa Regional Capability (NARC), other standby forces are based in RECs. This is consistent with the AEC. In fact, considering the fact that the main function of defence and security
establishments in any country is to protect its sovereignty and defend its strategic economic
interests, it makes sense to align standby forces with RECs. The legal link between the AU’s PSC
and RECs or Regional Mechanisms (RMs) is Article 16 of the PSC Protocol. However, the provision focuses on the chairperson of the Commission, and does not mention REC / RM peace
and security organs.
All this goes to show that regions and their roles are conceived in two fundamentally different
ways. On the one hand, the notion of regions is used in a largely normative way as a means of
organising participation in political and diplomatic initiatives. On the other, it is used in a positivist (descriptive) way to connote economic communities. This leads to contradictory policies
and practices. The continuous use of politico-diplomatic regionality alongside the economic
architecture not only confuses strategic planning but is also a source of dysfunctional relationships with the SADC. SADC also does not have clear guidelines for interacting with the AU. The
MoU and Protocol are rich in incongruities. These deficiencies should not be addressed by the
AU alone – SADC needs to do so proactively as well.
The Protocol on Relations between the AU and the RECs was concluded in 2002, in compliance
with the Abuja Treaty. It defines RECs as ‘regional groupings of African states organised into
a legal entity by treaty, with economic and social integration as [the] main objective’. Article 2
states that the protocol shall apply to the ‘mechanism established by the Parties in the implementation of measures in the economic, social, political and cultural fields, including gender,
peace and security, intended to fulfil the responsibilities placed on them by the Constitutive
Act, the AEC Treaty and this Protocol’. Article 3 states that the objectives of the protocol are to
‘formalise, consolidate and promote closer co-operation among the RECs and between them
and the Union ...’ and to establish a framework for co-ordinating their activities in support of
AU objectives. However, it does not refer to their ‘full participation’ in AU affairs.
As regards the institutional framework, Article 6 establishes a Committee on Coordination
comprising a chairperson, the chief executives (of RECs), the executive secretary of UNECA,
the president of the African Development Bank, and the chief executives of the AU’s financial
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institutions. However, it does not provide for any representation of REC policy-making organs,
or organs dealing with peace and security.
The Protocol is operationalised by the MoU on co-operation in respect of peace and security
between the AU and RECs. Its objectives, outlined in Article 3, include contributing to the full
operationalisation and effective functioning of the African Peace and Security Architecture;
developing and implementing joint programmes and activities in the area of peace, security
and stability in Africa; and ensuring that the activities of the RECs and coordinating mechanisms are consistent with the AU’s objectives and principles. To this end, it establishes AU liaison offices in the RECs/RMs, and encourages RECs to establish similar offices at the AU.
The obligations of the RECs/RMs are outlined in persuasive rather than imperative terms. For
example, Article 20 states that, ‘In undertaking these activities, the RECs and, where appropriate, the Coordinating Mechanisms shall keep the Chairperson of the Commission and,
through him/her, the Council fully and continuously informed and ensure that their activities
are in conformity with the objectives of the PSC Protocol’. It also states that RECs should make
their regional brigades, established in the framework of the African Standby Force, available to
other RECs and Coordinating Mechanisms for ‘peace support operations outside their areas of
jurisdiction’. This has major implications for RECs and their resources.
The RECs/RMs are not obliged to comply, because the partnership set out in the MoU is a
voluntary one. At the same time, no legal instruments emanating from the AU describe or
recognise policy organs of the RECs/RMs. The founding treaties of the RECs empower their
chief executives to sign co-operation agreements with other parties. But these instruments
are technical, and express general intentions. Non-compliance does not attract any sanctions
other than denunciation. In the language of the principal-agent model, neither the AU or its
principals have powers to effect ex ante or ex post control over the REC/RM standby brigades.
In a nutshell, the AU and its instruments are institutionally incoherent. The coexistence of
political-diplomatic and economic regionalisation fragments its initiatives, and undermines
coordination. The RECs/RMs have no active voice in the PSC; conversely, the PSC has no voice
in SADC.
The AU approved a roadmap which would culminate in the AMANI Africa Field Training
Exercise, to be held in 2010. SADC took this commitment seriously and, at its own expense,
conducted Map Exercise (MAPEX) in Cabo Ledo, Angola; Command Post Exercise (CPEX) in
Maputo, Mozambique; and Field Training Exercise (FTEX) code-named Golfinho at Lohatla,
South Africa. The exercise cost more than US$6 million and involved almost 8 000 military,
police and civilian personnel. As a result, SADC expected to play a significant role in AMANI
Africa Cycle I in 2010, and reserved a ready-to-deploy capability for this continental exercise.
To SADC’s surprise, the AU reshaped AMANI, focusing on exercising the PSOD. SADC and
other RECs did not play formal roles, and were given subsidiary roles only. Some officers and
officials were called to AMANI not as part of a SADC standby force but as individuals. The AU
then selected certain officers for certain functions. In this context the AU selected a South African officer who acted as Force Commander during the SADC Golfinho Exercise to act as Force
Commander for AMANI.
This situation raised two questions. First, does the AU regard regional standby forces as part of
its REC architecture or its political-diplomatic architecture? And second, does it ask individual
member states or regional organs to deploy those forces? Until these issues are clarified, its
interactions with SADC as well as other regional communities will remain problematic.
66
In summary, the SADC-AU interface is weakened by these contradictions in the AU’s policies and legal instruments, resulting in institutional and organisational disjunctures. The
geographic regions that determine representation in the PSC are not aligned with the peace
and security organs of RECs and RMs. As a result, interactions on peace and security between
the AU and regional co-ordinating bodies are dependent on good faith and on the success or
otherwise of personal interactions. If the chairperson has a rapport with a certain region, this
interaction will be relatively effective. This was and still is evident from the poor to non-existent
interactions between the AU’s Peace and Security Department and SADC, and its more effective interactions with ECOWAS and EASFCOM.
It could be argued that this is due to the fact that the West and the East Africa are beset with crises requiring peace support operations, while SADC is not. However, the AU is meant to deploy
regional standby forces elsewhere in Africa, wherever it regards this as necessary. The AU’s
regionalisation architecture regards RECs as their executive secretariats and not their policy
organs. This restricts interactions to the technical rather than the political level. However, decisions on peace and security are made by policy organs, which are now given no formal role at
all. This constitutes a fundamental institutional weakness in the interaction between the AU
and SADC. This emerged clearly from AMANI Africa Cycle I. The AU needed an officer to act as
Force Commander, and asked South Africa to provide one without consulting SADC. Yet SADC
had held Exercise Golfinho in preparation for the AU Exercise. This raised questions among
SADC member states which felt that their efforts had not been recognised.
Also, as noted earlier, the ASF is meant to comprise five brigades, one in each geographic
region, but these regions do not coincide with the RECs which have formed those brigades in
practice. In line with this fundamental disjuncture, legal instruments do not provide for direct
interaction between the PSC and the peace and security organs of RECS or RMs.
Two cases
There are few examples of peace support operations in southern Africa that have involved
interaction between SADC and the AU. However, the recent unconstitutional change of government in Madagascar and the ongoing conflict in eastern DRC can be used as examples to
test the arguments made in this chapter.
In the case of Madagascar, SADC reacted to the crisis by convening an extraordinary summit
at the request of the chairperson of the Organ, King Swati III. While SADC was still discussing
the best way to address the crisis, the AU and UN deployed a mission to try to resolve the crisis. When the SADC mission arrived in Antananarivo, the issue of its mandate arose. The AU’s
PSC had decided on the mission without consulting SADC, but had consulted the UN. SADC’s
reaction was based on its internal policies, since Madagascar was a member. The new regime
exploited this lack of coordination, which complicated the prospects for a resolution of the
conflict.
When SADC decided to establish a mediation team led by former Mozambican president
Joaquim Chissano, the AU and the UN also appointed mediators. It took the magnanimity of
the SADC leadership and of fomer president Chissano to resolve the leadership mess. At a PSC
meeting held in Addis Ababa, preceded by a meeting of the International Contact Group (ICG),
the AU and UN had to dissolve the joint mediation team, accept SADC’s leadership, and accept
mediation by Chissano.
67
In the case of the DRC, the UN transformed the United Nations Organization Mission in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) into the United Nations Organization Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) in 2011, but conflict in the eastern Congo persisted.
The breakdown of the March 2009 peace agreement between the DRC government and some
rebels threatened the whole country as the rebels, now named M23, threatened to launch an
offensive on the capital of Kinshasa.
Bearing in mind the collective responsibility under the mutual defence pact, SADC began to
consider deploying its standby force. However, this exercise called for coordination with the
efforts of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region ( ICGLR) because the latter
had called for the deployment of an International Neutral Force (INF) and was already hosting
negotiations between the DRC government and the M23 rebels. Both SADC and the ICGLR
agreed that a SADC force should be deployed.
However, when the AU entered the fray, the issue of mandate arose, as well as issues around
funding. At same time, the UN was involved in a face-saving exercise after the M23 had attacked
and occupied Goma without any response from MONUSCO forces. While SADC has not designated a mediator in the DRC, it supported the ICGLR process in terms of which the Ugandan
president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, hosted the mediation process.
Whenever the PSC discusses Madagascar and the DRC, it asks SADC to either brief it or make
a statement, after which it deliberates in camera while excluding SADC. Briefings on Madagascar are provided by the mediator, while statements on the DRC are provided by a representative of the chairperson of SADC. The PSC does not consult the SADC’s OPDSC or the
Ministerial Committee of the Organ (MCO). As a result, SADC is obliged to play the diplomatic
game to avoid upsetting the PSC. Until when, however, will this situation continue? When the
PSC meets, representatives of the peace and security organs of relevant RECs should be present throughout the discussions, as they will eventually be called upon to implement the PSC’s
decisions. This cannot happen at present because it is not provided for in the Protocol or in
PSC procedures.
It should also be recalled that, in 2008, the AU and the UN attempted to intervene in Zimbabwe
when it sent Ambassador Heile Menarious of Eritrea as well as a UN under-secretary-general
to try to mediate the crisis that ensued when Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the MDC-T, decided
to boycott the second round of the presidential elections, and took refuge in the Netherlands
Embassy. Because of its lack of interaction with SADC policy organs, the AU was advised to stay
out of the situation and leave SADC to deal with political developments in Zimbabwe. Ironically, SADC seemed to be successful in Zimbabwe because there was no bifurcated decisionmaking framework , which helped to avoid conflicting methodologies and interests during the
mediation process.
Conclusions and suggestions
Managing inter-institutional interfaces on security issues on a massive and complex continent
such as Africa is a daunting task. While the decolonisation agenda attracted a convergence of
interests, post-colonial Africa seems beset with structural and institutional crises. While the
agenda seems clear – fighting poverty, and bringing peace and security to the continent – there
is no consensus about how this should be undertaken.
68
The interaction between SADC and the AU lacks institutional coherence. The protocol establishing the PSC spells out how it is meant to interact with RECs. But there is no reciprocity
in the REC peace and security protocols, at least not on the part of SADC. The AU has two
distinct institutional architectures: a political-diplomatic one focusing on member states, and
a political-economic one geared towards RECs and consistent with the Abuja Treaty of 1991.
This hybrid approach complicates the operations of the AU’s PSC and the planning, development and possible use of the standby forces as well as other APSA components (the CEWS, the
Panel of the Wise, and the Peace Fund).
The ideal institutional set-up would be to discard the political-diplomatic dimension in favour
of the political-economic architecture, which is consistent with human security. But introducing such a sweeping change would be very difficult, and no role players are currently interested
in attempting it. It would require the same courage displayed during the transformation of
the OAU into the AU. Alternatively, RECs could adopt legal instruments setting out how they
expect to interact with the PSC. Since the same member states are represented in the PSC, they
would be obliged to act in a consistent way at all levels.
The remaining question is whether the PSC or the AU as a whole would be prepared to observe
the principles of subsidiarity and variable geometry, and give REC policy organs a formal role
in respect of peace and security issues as well as other developmental activities. The AU should
recognise that the integration process cannot be dictated from the top. Given the asymmetries
and complex sets of interests at play on the continent, member states are more comfortable
with integration spillover at the subregional level than at the continental level. The interface
between the AU and SADC as well as other RECs is likely to become far more functional if the
PSC consistently works through regional bodies, where member states are effectively represented and continue their bargaining to advance their national interests.
References
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Russett, B. 1996. Global or regional: what can international organizations do? In Toshiro Tanaka and Takashi
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Van Nieuwkerk A. 2001. Regionalism into Globalism? War into Peace? SADC and ECOWAS compared. African
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Conflict and Conflict Resolution. Uppsala University, Sweden.
70
PART TWO
CASE STUDIES
OF PEACE AND
SECURITY IN
SOUTHERN
AFRICA
5
Crafting policy for the Namibian security system
André du Pisani
This chapter analyses the crafting and content of two recently completed policy designs for
the Namibian Security System (NSS), namely the National Security Policy Framework (NSPF)
and Counter-Terrorism and the Financing of Terrorism Policy (CTFTP). Located within the
political economy of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the wider
global political economy, Namibia is the first SADC member state to craft a NSPF, and one of a
number of states to design counter-terrorism policies and laws.
The genesis and design of these two policies provide useful analytical and political insights
into the processes and knowledge domains that shaped them. Considered from an agency
perspective, and infused with a meta-political understanding of policy formation, these two
case studies illustrate the interaction of contributory ideas, interests, institutions, and events.
The chapter also explores the institutional setting of policy and its wider implications for intragovernmental relations, more especially within the NSS.
From a temporal point of view, both the NSPF and the CTFTP were preceded by key provisions of the Constitution (1990) and by earlier policy frameworks, notably the National Security Policy of 1997 and the Defence Policy (2001), as revised in 2010. These were augmented by
specific SADC and African Union (AU) policy frameworks, and in the case of the CTFTP, public
international law considerations emanating from the United Nations. These provided the legal
foundation for both policies, and partly explain their scope and framing.
Regarding the content of both policies, the chapter underlines the marginal role of the local
civil society in their design. It emphasises the statist charge, under executive leadership and
oversight, with which both frameworks have been invested. Finally, it engages the rationale
advanced for both policies, and explores their scope and basic orientation, their strategic and
guiding principles, and aspects pertinent to their implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
Conceptual grounding
Public policy sits at the crossroads of politics, for it brings together interests, ideas, institutions,
and information. It also has impacts that are temporal and social/spatial in nature. Public policy is never neutral, for it reflects preferences, objectives, and urgency. It is always crafted in a
context of disequilibrium that results from a problem that has societal currency.
73
Chapter 5: Crafting policy for the Namibian security system
Public policy can be considered and studied from a number of perspectives, all of which entail
specific meta-political and analytical dimensions. Meta-analysis is about the methods and
approaches used in the study of public policy and the discourse and language which it harnesses.1 From a meta-political perspective, the constructs of ‘public’, ‘policy’, and ‘security system’ are not self-evident, but need to be interrogated to determine the specific policy space(s),
interests, ideas (ideology), events, relevance, and knowledge that spawned a specific public
policy.
Informed by such a meta-political perspective, the chapter briefly sketches the genesis, topo
graphy and events that led to the design of both security system policies, starting with the NSPF
and followed by the CTFTP.
Genesis and context
At the global level, the design of both the NSPF and the CTFTP was accelerated by the post-9/11
global context (both policies germinated earlier than 9/11 – in 1998 and 1999 respectively). The
post-9/11 context brought new security fractures: in general, the foreign policy framing and
behaviour of the United States informed by that country’s National Security Doctrine at the
time, and in particular, the subsequent ‘War on Terror’ and the associated politics of ‘regime
change’.
In 2005, following the accession to power of President Hifikepunye Pohamba, the cabinet
again instructed the Namibia Central Intelligence Service (NCIS) to lead a deliberate process –
involving both the traditional security agencies, such as Defence, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence,
and Public Safety and Security (police), as well as non-traditional security actors, such as the
Bank of Namibia (BoN), Environment and Tourism, Mines and Energy, Trade and Industry,
and Fisheries and Marine Resources – in developing a more comprehensive security policy
framework. This framework would be responsive to the national interest (however defined)
and its constitutive parts, such as national and public safety, as well as economic, energy, and
environmental security.
At the regional level, security fractures within the SADC, such as those in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), and the impact these could have on the political stability of member
states and on the political economy of the region, provided further impetus for developing
these policy responses. From a Namibian perspective, new security fractures opened up, which
required a co-ordinated and trans-agency response. The NSPF in its final iteration – there were
four iterations of the framework in the period 2006 to 2013 – identified the following specific
security fractures:
• The growing importance of energy security and sustainable supply and the rising demand
for energy throughout the SADC. This demand superseded energy generating capacity.
• A significant increase in the illicit exchange of tradable goods and currencies across national
borders. In the case of Namibia, these came mostly from neighbouring Angola.
• The growth of the criminal economy both in Namibia and in the rest of the SADC, as evidenced by local and regional crime statistics.
• The potential threat of globalisation from above, as evidenced in the Interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union and SADC, to local economic development and local policy spaces. This was coupled with the mantra of neoliberal economics
with its insistence on rapid and complete trade liberalisation, and the latter’s harmful effects
on local infant industries.
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André du Pisani
• The overdependence of Namibia on other countries, especially South Africa, for its food
security.
• The projected long-term effects of climate change on food security and water scarcity, with
southern Africa being one of the potentially hardest hit regions in the world.
• Renewed appreciation of the role played by maritime security and its associated fishing and
mining industries in national economic development, employment creation, tourism, and
international trade.
At the national level, the NSPF highlighted specific human security fractures that could conceivably undermine the achievement of national development objectives – as provided for in
the various five-year National Development Plans (NDPs) and in Vision 2030, the long-term
framework for industrialisation – and making the transition to a knowledge economy. These
included, among others:
• Namibia’s deeply skewed social and spatial economy, resulting in one of the worst GINI
coefficients in the world;2
• high and rising rates of unemployment, especially among young people;3
• the country’s regional poverty profile; and
• rising levels of crime, as confirmed by the Namibian Police Force (NAMPOL) and City of
Windhoek Police statistics.
While this chapter does not chronicle the historiography of the process that culminated in the
NSPF, it is important to state that the actual deliberative process of policy design started in
September 2006, and ended in October 2011. Throughout the process, civil society actors were
under-represented, even if the process was integrative of the different security system agencies
and ministries. During the process of policy design, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertook
a major strategic review, based on the 2004 White Paper on Foreign Relations and Diplomacy
Management. Conducted in July 2007, some of its outcomes fed into the NSPF process. So too
did the revised Defence Policy of 2010, notably its articulation of ‘national values’ and its wider
consideration of the construct of ‘security’.
Counter-Terrorism and the Financing of Terrorism Policy
The CTFTP had its genesis in July 2008 following a cabinet resolution and undertaking that
Namibia would design and implement such a policy to meet its obligations under specific
provisions of international public law. These included the International Convention for Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism of 1999; the multilateral Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, including Diplomatic
Agents, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 14 December 1973; the multilateral International Convention against Taking of Hostages, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 17
December 1979; the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings of
1998; and the OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism of 1999.
Namibia signed these conventions, but parliament only ratified them late in 2012. Moreover,
the country has a legal obligation to ratify and implement the Standards and Special Recommendations of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of October 2001, as amended
in February 2008.4 The FATF Special Recommendations cover aspects of terrorist financing, the
freezing and confiscating of terrorist assets (in its Interpretative Note), as well as special recommendations on wire transfers, non-profit organisations, and cash couriers.
75
Besides these international public law provisions, Namibia and other UN member states
have certain legal obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001) in respect of
counter-terrorism. More specifically, Namibia needs to provide an annual status report to the
chairperson of the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee on progress made with the
ratification of all relevant international public law instruments and the development of appropriate legal and policy frameworks to comprehensively counter terrorism.
The actual policy process started in April 2011 under the aegis of the Ministry of Safety and
Security, actively and strategically supported by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC)
of the BoN, with the first iteration of the CTFTP, accompanied by a policy brief to Cabinet,
completed in August 2011. The CTFTP articulated domestic legal and policy provisions that
have a bearing on the combating of terrorism, namely the Defence Act, Act 1 of 2002; the
revised Defence Policy of 2010; The Namibia Central Intelligence Service Act, Act 10 of 1997;
the Marine Traffic Act, Act 2 of 1981; and provisions pertaining to civil aviation.
At the time of writing, both policies have been approved in principle by the Cabinet and the
Cabinet Committee on Defence, Security, and International Relations. The Prevention and
Combating of Terrorist Activities Act, Act 12 of 2012, was ratified by parliament in December of
that year, and signed into law by the president.
Scope and basic orientation
The NSPF contains an integrated, codified framework for achieving a number of objectives,
namely to:
• provide an institutionalised framework for articulating the country’s national values, interests, and security in response to dynamic and changing global, continental, regional, and
national environments;
• ensure that the government addresses all security threats in a comprehensive and co-ordinated way;
• enhance the effectiveness and coordination of the national security system by optimising
contributions from all security agencies and law enforcement bodies;
• guide the development of constitutive policy for all security and law-enforcement agencies.
The operational plans of security agencies, however, would remain within their province;
• foster national consensus through public debate and research on national security, public
safety, and defence; and
• enhance regional and international confidence and co-operation in support of key objectives in foreign, investment, industrialisation, and trade policies, as well as to work in support of NDPs and Vision 2030.
The NSPF works with a multidimensional and multi-level construct of ‘security’, conceptualised as having specific referent objects and threats. This construct requires specific statutory
and non-statutory providers for ensuring and managing it. Consequently, the NSPF conceptualises ‘security’ in the following principal forms: national security, human security, societal
security (public safety and security), economic security, cyber security, maritime security, and
environmental security.5 In this conceptualisation of ‘security’ the first (2004) iteration of the
Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ on Politics, Defence, and Security Co-operation (SIPO)
of the SADC served as a regional referent. The revised SIPO of 2010/12 has since served a similar purpose.
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André du Pisani
As noted previously, the scope and basic orientation of the CTFTP derive largely from the legal
provisions and obligations embodied in key international public law conventions and standards, and emanate from the country’s membership of specific multilateral agreements such
as the Eastern and Southern African Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG). Again, the
regional context looms large in the genesis and design of the CTFTP.
The CTFTP rests on four key elements. These are:
• Analysis and research: an intelligence- and research-led response to terrorist activities
driven by a networked and informed national security system.
• Protection: taking all necessary and practical action to protect Namibia and Namibians from
terrorist activities at home and abroad, and reducing vulnerability to such attacks.
• Response: providing a timely and targeted response to specific terrorist threats and terrorist
attacks, should these occur.
• Resilience: building a strong and resilient society capable of resisting any form of violent
extremism and terrorism on the home front.
The CTFTP, in common with the NSPF, commits government to complementary action and
close inter-agency co-operation against terrorism in all its forms, based on a risk-based and
multilayered approach to counter-terrorism.
Strategic elements
Given the purposes and scope of the NSPF, the framework is informed by an actualising matrix
that identifies and lists the types of ‘security’, their respective referent objects, the value(s) at
risk, the sources of the threat, the form(s) the threat could conceivably take, and the principal
and secondary security sector provider(s) in each case. Typical of such frameworks, it does not
contain the actual operational plans of any of the statutory security providers; these are the
province of the actual agencies.
For example, in the case of national/state security, the referent object is the state and government (the regime). The value(s) at risk are sovereignty, territorial integrity, and state survival/
integrity. The principal sources of threat are other states and non-state actors, while the form
that the threat(s) could take include military or armed aggression, sabotage, insurrection, terrorism, irredentism, foreign mercenaries, and espionage. The primary and secondary security
providers include the Namibian Defence Force (NDF), the NCIS, and NAMPOL, among others.
In the case of ‘societal security’ (public safety and security) the referent objects are the nation,
societal groups, and communities. The values at risk include national unity, public safety, social
peace, national stability and cohesion, public order, human rights, and national reconciliation.
The sources of the threat could include foreign migrants, politicised ethnicity, and globalisation, while the form of these threats could conceivably include genocide, ethnic cleansing,
legal discrimination, homophobia, terrorism, and uneven/skewed spatial and social development. The principal security providers are the Ministry of Safety and Security, NAMPOL, the
NCIS, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the National Planning Commission (NPC).
With respect to ‘human security’, the referent objects are individuals and humankind. The
values at risk are social cohesion, the rights and freedoms of citizens, and the livelihood of
citizens. As in the case of ‘societal security’, the threats can take many forms such as crime,
social exclusion, and marginalisation from human development, poverty, communicable dis-
77
eases, and corruption. The primary security providers are the NPC, the ministries of Regional
Government, Local Government, Housing and Rural Development, Public Health, and Labour.
As far as energy security is concerned, the sources of threat emanate from extreme dependence on fossil fuels and on energy imports from the region and beyond, while the form of the
threat could be unreliable and costly energy (electricity) supply and a context where demand
outstrips energy supply. The Ministry of Mines and Energy and the National Power Utility
(NAMPOWER) are the two principal security providers.
As noted previously, ‘maritime security’ and ‘economic security’ receive special attention in
the NSPF. In respect of maritime security, the referent objects include marine and coastal ecosystems and the country’s important fishing industry, while the key value at risk is the sustainable utilisation of the country’s marine resources. Various forms of threat have been noted:
threats to bio-safety, piracy, terrorism, pollution, trafficking, illegal oil bunkering, and illegal
fishing. The primary security providers will be the Namibian Navy, NAMPOL, the Ministry of
Home Affairs (Customs and Excise), and the respective Port Authorities (NAMPORT).
‘Economic security’ is another dimension of ‘security’ that is well-developed in the NSPF.
Here, the principal security providers are the BoN with its specialised agencies and units such
as the AMLC, the Ministry of Finance, the Namibia Financial Institutions Supervisory Authority (NAMFISA), the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), and the private commercial banks.
With a more limited set of objectives, and a more exacting scope, the CTFTP has four strategic
elements. These in turn, are based on the orientation that undergirds the policy. The strategic
elements are:
• Grounded analysis: financial intelligence (inclusive of cyber-intelligence) and a researchled response to terrorism driven by a coherent and informed national security community.
• Protection: taking comprehensive and timely measures to safeguard Namibia and Namibians from terrorist activities at home and abroad.6
• Response: mounting an immediate (and in some cases a preventive) and targeted response
to specific terrorist attacks and threats.
• Resilience: building a coherent Namibia with a sense of belonging and civic pride.
The strategic framework of the CTFTP provides for regional and international co-operation
informed by the provisions of relevant SADC, continental, and global international public law
instruments. It also provides for the sharing of financial intelligence with appropriate security agencies, and the conduct of regular risk-based and multi-layered environmental security assessments. The purpose of these measures is to develop a lawful, proportionate, and
accountable response to terrorist threats and activities. Finally, the CTFTP underlines close
co-operation between government, the private sector, the local financial sector, and local
communities.
Core values and principles
Both policies integrate core values and guiding principles to guide their implementation. In
the case of the NSPF, these are:
• Inclusiveness and responsiveness: Inclusiveness in all stages of the policy process helps
address security concerns.
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André du Pisani
• Debate and consensus: open (public) debate and the search for consensus are essential to a
nationally inclusive, broadly supported, and implemented NSPF.
• Comprehensive consideration of threats.
• Critical assessment of means.
• Transparency: ensuring the appropriate balance between openness and secrecy.
• Accountability: providing for both horizontal and vertical oversight and accountability
through parliament; its standing committees such as the Public Accounts, Defence, Security, and International Relations Committees; and towards the Executive, particularly the
Cabinet Committee on Defence and Security.
• Ongoing multi-stage monitoring and an integrated threat assessment.
• Respect for international law and regional obligations.
• Prioritising education, training, and research.
The CTFTP embraces most of the above core values and principles. It recognises the inherent
tension between the imperatives for secrecy, liberty, and transparency. Ordinarily, both policies forge a link between ‘national values’ and the ‘national interest’. National values act as a
normative political symbol for an articulation of the national interest, and derive largely from
provisions contained in the Namibian Constitution, especially those in Article 1 (1) and Chapter 3 that embed a justiciable bill of rights and fundamental freedoms.
The NSPF identifies the following as key human values and rights:
•
•
•
•
•
•
The right to life.
Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Equality and fraternity.
Respect for human dignity.
Peace, stability, freedom, and justice for all.
Patriotism, defined as a devotion to and a defence of the core values that underpin the
Namibian State.7
The NSPF definition of national interest is complex and contested. International relations literature reminds one of the realist lineage and charge of such a construct as well as its relation
to definitions of national power. A political and social construct, the national interest is never
static. It configures and re-configures in different iterations, depending on who defines it and
for what purposes.
Mindful of these caveats, national interest has two primary registers. First, it serves as an analytical and policy tool for identifying the key goals and objectives of public policies, be these
national or international; and secondly, it serves as an all-embracing concept of policy and
political discourse used specifically to identify particular policy preferences and choices against
national values and the provisions of the Constitution of Namibia (emphasis added). In both
these uses, it refers to the basic determinants that guide state policy in relation to a range of
policy environments.
The NSPF invokes another distinction, that between ‘core’ and ‘subsidiary’ interests. Core
interests include safeguarding the nation’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, independence,
democracy (advancing and protecting democracy is a normative project), economic integrity,
and stability. The core interests all revolve around one of the following universal values: state
survival; democracy; prosperity; national identity; and economic and human security.
Subsidiary interests are complementary and interdependent. Most notably regional (SADC)
and international developments influence the country’s national security trajectory. Sub-
79
sidiary interests are best safeguarded through regional integration and co-operation; the promotion of peace and stability through diplomatic means (as provided for in Article 96 of the
Constitution); and the further consolidation of regional, continental, and global institutions.
The process of policy design for the NSPF highlighted the complexities associated with a common understanding of both the core and subsidiary national interest, with different security
agencies privileging particular aspects of the mix. The NDF, for example, put great emphasis
on safeguarding the territorial integrity of the state, reflecting its core mandate. The NCIS had a
more integrated and multi-layered understanding of the ‘national interest’.
Knowledge domains
Public policy harnesses two separate, but related, knowledge domains; these are ‘knowledge of
policy’ and ‘knowledge for policy’.
In the case of both policies, extensive provision has been made for enhancing the knowledge
of existing security system policies, principally among policy makers, parliamentarians, and
implementers. The principal means for achieving this objective would be a series of ongoing
seminars and training workshops, involving parliamentarians and the members of relevant
standing committees of parliament.
Since both policies are new, ‘the knowledge for policy’ would derive principally from regular
integrated ‘national security environmental assessments’ augmented by a monitoring framework. The monitoring framework provides for both national assessment tools and a number
of international benchmarks: the Global Peace Index, the Democracy Index, the Mo Ibrahim
Foundation Africa Democracy and Governance Index, the SADC Conflict and Instability
Index, the Global Competitive Report, and for the CTFTP, the Recommendations of the FATA
Task Force (2001) as amplified in 2008. Tapping into both open-source and closed-knowledge
domains would ensure a relevant knowledge flow to both policies.
Accountability and monitoring matrix
Informed by the growing salience of ‘delivery analysis’ in respect of public policy and the primacy of information sharing and knowledge management, both policies have invested meaningfully in ensuring their accountability (within the limits associated with security systems),
by providing for parliamentary oversight. This would come mostly through the standing committees of parliament. Cabinet and the Cabinet Committee on Defence, Security, and International Relations would have executive oversight.
While there is no explicit provision for extra-parliamentary oversight of both policies, Namibian citizens do have the right of recourse to the courts, the Office of the Ombudsman, and
the ACC.
The NSPF proposes the establishment of a National Security Council (NSC) as an overall oversight and monitoring body under the chairpersonship of the president. The NSC, if and when
it enacted and established, may supersede the existing Cabinet Committee and further limit
the oversight function of parliament. At the time of writing, there is a draft National Security
Council Bill, but this bill has yet to pass muster with the Office of the Attorney General, the legal
drafters, and Cabinet. The bill has yet to be tabled before parliament.
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André du Pisani
Primary accountability for the CTFTP resides with the Ministry of Safety and Security and the
BoN, especially through the AMLC. Membership of the AMLC includes, among others, the
NCIS, the Ministry of Finance, the ACC, the Banker’s Association of Namibia, and NAMFISA.
As a member of the ESAAMLG, established in 1999, and the FATF, Namibia has specific obligations towards these bodies in respect of money laundering and the financing of terrorism.8
Conclusions
This exploratory chapter considered, from a meta-political perspective, the genesis and
design of two recent security system policies in Namibia, namely the NSPF and the CTFTP.
In both cases, the complex policy environments and events that spawned these policies were
described, followed by a consideration of key aspects of their content, inclusive of their core
values and principles, oversight, monitoring, and evaluation.
Since both policies are in their initial stages of implementation, no analysis was offered of their
potential impact on the body politic of Namibia, or on the international relations of the country. Finally, both policies were initiated by the executive. Their accountability and oversight
topography is largely directed towards the executive, and local civil society agencies played
a marginal role in their design. This trend was firmly established in the rather limited three
readings in the National Assembly of the Prevention and Combating of Terrorist Activities Bill
on 20 November 2012. The then Minister of Safety and Security not only introduced the bill,
but provided a lengthy exposition of its rationale and purposes. The opposition members of
parliament made few contributions in the debate, and the bill was approved unanimously by
the National Assembly.9
More recently, local civil society agencies have raised the concern that the bill was ‘rushed
through parliament’ without allowing adequate time for it to be debated.10
Endnotes
1
Wayne Parsons, Public Policy, an Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Policy Analysis, Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar, 1995, p 1.
2
At independence in March 1990, Namibia had a GINI Coefficient of 0.72 making it one of the most unequal
countries in the world. In 2011 the GINI Coefficient improved to 0.62.
3
The 2008 Labour Force Survey found an unemployment rate of 51.2 percent. This has since been adjusted
downwards by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) to 38 percent nationally. Regionally, unemployment is
higher than the 38 percent national average.
4
See, FATF Standards, FATF IX Special Recommendations, October 2001 (incorporating all subsequent
amendments until February 2008), Paris, 2010.
5
The NSPF uses a wide definition of ‘security’ that reflects the contemporary discourses on the construct
and its referent objects. Namibia developed a Joint Offshore Protection Command (JOSPC) as a key
strategic element in the country’s articulation and definition of ‘maritime security’. Since this is a strategic
and operational plan, it was not discussed in the chapter.
6
In the absence of a universally agreed definition of ‘terrorism’ the CTFTP harnessed a definition of
‘terrorist acts’ as defined in various UN conventions and protocols.
7
The Defence Policy, as revised in 2010, contains a similar formulation of the key normative values. These
derive from the Constitution of Namibia.
8
Following the events of 11 September 2001, ESAAMLG expanded its scope to include the countering of
terrorist funding.
81
9
Government Gazette of the Republic of Namibia, Prevention and Combating of Terrorist Activities Act,
2012 (No. 12 of 2012), Government Notice, No. 298, 20120, Windhoek, 14 December 2012, Gazette No.
5095.
10
See various local press reports, also Is This Democracy?, issued by the Media Institute for Southern Africa,
Windhoek, 2013 (for 2012).
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6
SADC’s crisis management in Zimbabwe, 2007–20131
Munyaradzi Nyakudya
In September 2008, after a decade-long socio-political and economic crisis, Zimbabwe’s
warring political parties reached an agreement entitled the Global Political Agreement (GPA).
It came in the wake of a mediation process led by South Africa under the direction of the
Southern African Development Community (SADC). SADC was therefore the guarantor and
facilitator of the GPA. The first step in implementing the GPA was the formation of an Inclusive Government (IG), generally known as the Government of National Unity (GNU), which
governed the country from February 2009 up to the general elections in July 2013. The GNU’s
term of office was tumultuous, and it barely delivered on its basic mandate. The parties to this
shaky marriage of convenience continued to fail to find common ground on the fundamental
reforms needed before democratic elections could be held. Given that the GPA – and the GNU
– represented the results of SADC’s approach to resolving the crisis in Zimbabwe, it has also put
the SADC crisis management system under the spotlight.
In this context, this chapter assesses SADC’s management of the crisis in Zimbabwe, focusing on former president Thabo Mbeki’s mediation up to the signing of the GPA, and President Jacob Zuma’s facilitation of its implementation. This is done in the framework of regional
security integration and the concept of a security community, as set out by Rowlands (1998),
Weeks (1996), Vale (1996), du Pisani (2010) and Ngoma (2010), among others. These concepts
are mapped out in the first section. The next section traces SADC’s genesis, emphasising the
role of Zimbabwe in its formation. The third section shifts to the crisis in Zimbabwe, analysing
the debates over its origins. The fourth section addresses SADC’s efforts to manage the crisis,
focusing on Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy, Zuma’s facilitation, and the weaknesses and challenges
bedevilling this process. The chapter ends by evaluating SADC’s crisis management mechanisms in the light of the Zimbabwean experience. It argues that they were not very effective,
and that SADC can therefore not be relied upon at this stage to manage or resolve similar
regional crises.
Indeed, the crisis in Zimbabwe has generally exposed SADC as a toothless bulldog with no
capacity to enforce its will in conflicts within relatively powerful member states. It shows that
SADC faces major challenges in this area, notably the need to bridge the divide between the
legacy of liberation and post-liberation politics. Then there is the paradox of the regional integration agenda versus the need to respect the sovereignty of member states. This has caused
a range of problems over the extent to which SADC should intervene in the internal affairs of
member countries without attracting accusations of ‘undue interference’. In short, it faces the
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Chapter 6: SADC’s crisis management in Zimbabwe, 2007–2013
challenge of striking a balance between respecting the independence of member states, and
addressing legitimate regional security interests and concerns.
SADC’s status in Zimbabwe in general and with Mugabe in particular, as well as the absence
of a SADC mediation and conflict resolution system, have added to the problems of making
peace in Zimbabwe. This has been compounded by SADC’s heterogeneity, resulting in a failure
to develop shared threat perceptions (see Baregu 2003: 29 and Ngoma 2010: 17). Furthermore,
South Africa, SADC’s strongest member in economic terms, has not been able to flex its muscles in any meaningful way primarily because of fears of being perceived as perpetuating the
‘bullying strategy of the apartheid period’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2011:12).
The concept of regional security integration
Rowlands (1998: 917) contends that belonging to a regional organisation has both political and
economic advantages, notably that countries grouping together, especially developing countries, achieve enhanced bargaining power when dealing with external powers. This is reiterated
by Weeks (1996: 107), who stresses the leverage of solidarity against external powers that would
otherwise want to play one developing country off against others, for their own economic benefit. Since integration seeks to enhance the common interests of the participating countries,
it encompasses various dimensions, including economic, political and cultural, and defence
and security dimensions (Rowlands 1998: 919). In general, these ‘common interests’ revolve
around the achievement of sustainable development, which thrives under conditions of peace
and security. In short, development is linked to peace. However, as Vale (1996: 379) argues,
sustained peace and security hinge on ‘the interdependence of nation-states, since many
security problems transcend national borders’. This ‘requires the organisation of co-operative
security policies’.
Chapter VIII of the UN Charter states that ‘the Security Council shall, where appropriate, utilise
such regional arrangements or agencies for enforcement action under its authority’, and that
UN members ‘… shall make every effort to achieve pacific settlement of local disputes through
such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies before referring them to the Security Council’. As a result, the concept of regional security integration has gained great currency
around the world, including in southern Africa. The subregion’s nation states have long been
bound in a collaborative arrangement in the form of SADC. Buoyed by a belief in the interdependence of states in seeking to heighten their peace and security, and improve the welfare of
their people, SADC member states have pursued the idea of ‘a security community’ (Ngoma
2010).
Drawing on Adler and Barnett (1998), Ngoma (2010: 18) defines a security community as ‘a
group of people which has become integrated’, with integration entailing the achievement,
within a territory, of ‘a sense of security’ as well as strong and extensive institutions and practices that assure the attainment of ‘dependable expectations of peaceful change among its
population’. He identifies three stages in the emergence of security communities. The first stage
comprises ‘causal factors’ such as economics, the environment and demography, which motivate states to form security communities. The second stage comprises ‘factors that facilitate the
development of mutual trust and collective identity as a result of shared meanings and understanding’. The third stage comprises the development of trust and a collective identity, in terms
of which security communities are either loosely or tightly connected. In the former case, the
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security community is characterised by ‘partial identification as one people’, and in the latter,
member states conform strictly to the ‘community identity and norms’ (Ngoma 2010: 19).
This notion of a security community places great emphasis on shared knowledge and common
values as the basis for security co-operation. States in such a community share values such as a
respect for democracy, human rights, the international system, the environment, markets, and
national unity (Asberg & Wallensteen 1998). They are bound by the belief that problems can be
peacefully and collectively resolved (Deutsch 1953: 5). In fact, as noted by Du Pisani (2010: 25),
in a security community where deep integration has been achieved and common values are
practised, ‘a much closer nexus between security linkages and political co-operation emerges’.
There is, therefore,
A preference for peaceful, democratic change of political leadership, a common framework for the conduct of legitimate and transparent elections, a regional code for policing,
common protocols that govern security and development, trade and investment agreements among member states, and the existence of a common doctrine for Peace Support
Operations (ibid).
It is on this basis that the crisis in Zimbabwe has become a SADC responsibility. However,
this idyllic conception of a security community is not without its complexities. To start with,
at the centre of the security community paradigm is the divisive notion of state sovereignty.
As Nathan (2006: 617) has noted, it is difficult in practice for member states to surrender their
scope for independent decision-making, especially in a region where most states are underdeveloped, and resent being dictated to by a regional hegemon or regional body. While some
commentators believe a powerful regional hegemon encourages co-operation, others see this
as a hindrance for two reasons; either the smaller states will be unco-operative as they fear
being dominated by the hegemon, or the hegemon itself may not be keen to ‘invest’ in a project
in which other countries merely reap the rewards of regional integration without contributing
to its costs (Rowlands 1998: 920). All these problems are particularly evident in a region displaying uneven economic, socio-cultural and political development, and hinder the development of a security community. SADC’s management of the crisis in Zimbabwe is analysed in
this context.
SADC’s origins
SADC began as the Front Line States (FLS)2 and developed into the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) before assuming its present form. Indeed, as highlighted by Cawthra (2006: 166), contrary to most regional organisations that emerged either for
security or economic reasons, SADC is a hybrid of both, as the FLS dealt with security issues
while SADCC was economically oriented. In 1976, the leaders of the independent African
countries of Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia formed the FLS as a security alliance against apartheid. The primary objective was the liberation of remaining outposts
of white minority rule, in the region and elsewhere in Africa. Zimbabwe and Namibia became
members upon gaining their independence in 1980 and 1990 respectively.
Zimbabwe began to play a pivotal role in the region’s security affairs, rendering vital support
to the FRELIMO government in Mozambique against the RENAMO rebel movement backed
by apartheid South Africa. In the late 1980s, Zimbabwe was a key player in peace initiatives in
Angola, assuming the position of force commander of UN-sanctioned peacekeeping opera-
85
tions (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2011: 13). This helped to bolster its status in the region at a time when
South Africa embarked on a new counter-revolutionary strategy of destabilisation named
‘swaardmag’ (‘the power of the sword’), aimed at destabilising the FLS (Adolfo 2009: 18).
The FLS had an Inter-State Defence and Security Committee (ISDC) which championed the
region’s defence and security concerns. Interestingly, the ISDC advocated collaborative security and military pacts against South Africa, but allowed individual states to enter into unilateral accords with the apartheid regime at the same time (Adolfo 2009: 18). This kind of license
and leeway impinges on the quest for a security community.
With Zimbabwe playing a leading role, the FLS took on a more economic thrust, culminating in
the formation of SADCC in the Lusaka Declaration of 1980. SADCC’s primary objective was to
reduce the region’s economic dependence on apartheid South Africa. This would be pursued
by creating conditions conducive to regional integration, and the coordination of regional economic policies tailored to bring about economic emancipation (Nyang’oro 2005: 13). Clearly,
SADCC’s thrust was purely economic, with special emphasis on the promotion of joint projects
and the collective mobilisation of development assistance (Nathan 2006: 607). Evans (1984/5:
1) emphasises the significance of Zimbabwe in the politics of the day, arguing that its presence
in SADCC bolstered the group to the extent that it was deemed to be ‘the driving force behind
the creation of SADCC’. Similarly, Adolfo (2009: 17) describes Zimbabwe as ‘the anvil upon
which SADCC was formed’. Zimbabwe naturally took the lead in SADCC as it had the best economic infrastructure among the region’s independent states. This hegemonic status inevitably
elevated Zimbabwe’s position in regional politics prior to the end of apartheid, which later
influenced SADC’s management of the crisis in Zimbabwe.
When apartheid ended, the FLS lost its reason for existence, and it ceased to exist in 1992.
SADCC also lost part of its purpose, which had been directed against South Africa, and was
therefore superseded by SADC, a broader regional community, whose mandate was also more
encompassing than its predecessor’s economic role. SADC now focused on regional integration, with Article 5 of its founding treaty listing one of its main objectives as ‘the promotion and
defence of peace and security’ through ‘the evolution of common political values and institutions’ (Nathan 2006: 607). The thinking behind this objective was the conviction, later enunciated by the Lesotho Prime Minister, Pakalitha Bethuel Mosisili, in a foreword to the Strategic
Indicative Plan for the Organ on Defence, Politics and Security Co-operation (SIPO), that ‘peace,
security and political stability are the linchpins for socio-economic development’ (SADC
2004). The pursuit of collective peace and security has therefore become the cornerstone of
SADC activities. As Nathan reiterates, SADC was based on the idea that regional security is
a collective obligation requiring what he terms ‘institutional arrangements’ which facilitate
the attainment of ‘political stability and mutual security as critical components of regional cooperation and integration’ (2006: 607).
Clearly, there is a direct connection between the old FLS and SADC, particularly in view of their
focus on defence and security. When the FLS disbanded in 1992, the ISDC was retained as the
basis of SADC’s defence and security system. In fact, the FLS legacy has continued to influence
relations, alliances and the management of the crisis in Zimbabwe, as it is the direct predecessor of SADC’s current political, defence and security co-operation system. However, SADC was
established in a special era in global politics. The collapse of the Soviet Union had signaled the
demise of the communist bloc and an end of the Cold War, which thrust the world into a new,
unipolar era. This in turn resulted in the increased popularisation of the ideas of democracy,
human rights, and the rule of law as championed by the Western world. These ideas became
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Munyaradzi Nyakudya
significant at a time when the region was also witnessing the collapse of the apartheid regime,
with its authoritarian orientation and ruthless attitude towards its perceived opponents.
The origins and nature of the crisis in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980 after a protracted struggle against white settler rule.
The war had been fought over a wide range of issues, ranging from race and ethnicity to class
and gender, among others. The post-colonial government was faced with the daunting task
of building a nation, restructuring the state, ‘democratising the inherited authoritarian colonial institutions’, and reconstructing infrastructure. In the 1980s, the ZANU-PF government,
benefiting from foreign aid, significantly improved education and health provision, water and
sanitation, peasant agriculture, and workers’ wages and conditions (Muzondidya 2009). However, these advances were limited and welfarist, and Zimbabwean society was not fundamentally transformed. The government struggled to assert itself, with its projects failing to address
the challenges created by the country’s colonial legacy (Muzondidya and Ndlovu-Gatsheni
2007). Instead, between 1982 and 1987, the government was confronted with a serious security challenge in the form of armed bandits in the Midlands and Matabeleland. It responded
with disproportionate force, resulting in the deaths of more than 20 000 civilians in the two
regions (CCJPZ and LRF 1997). In the early 1990s, a series of droughts undermined agricultural
productivity, while the state’s failure to redistribute land resulted in uncontrolled land occupations. By the late 1990s, Zimbabwe was generally thought to be in crisis.
According to Raftopoulos (2009: 201), the crisis was rooted in the ‘long-term structural economic and political legacies of colonial rule, as well as the political legacies of African nationalist politics’. Muzondidya (2009: 175) points to ‘the continuity of authoritarian governance from
the Rhodesia Front to ZANU-PF’. He argues that, after rising to power in 1980, ZANU-PF failed
to transform colonial structures and institutions in favour of a democratic and just dispensation. Instead, Ncube (1991) observes, under the cloak of constitutional democracy, the ruling party began to use repressive colonial legislation such as the Emergency Powers Act and
Law and Order (Maintenance) Act against its political opponents, undermining the rule of law
and violating human rights in the process. Mhanda (2011: 213) attributes the socio-political
and economic failures to two factors, the first being ZANU-PF’s ‘commandist policies’, which
prevented the party from transforming itself ‘from a liberation movement into a democratic
organisation’, and its focus on retaining power and accumulating wealth instead of proper economic management. ‘This focus gave primacy to loyalty and patronage rather than competence and expertise in key government positions and enterprises’ (ibid).
From 1998 onwards, the challenges besetting Zimbabwe turned into a fully fledged crisis, due
to a combination of factors. In late 1997s the government had yielded to pressure from war veterans and paid them a staggering unbudgeted once-off gratuity of Z$50 000 (then US$4 500),
followed by monthly pensions of Z$2 000 (then US$150). The government also deployed the
army in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of a SADC peacekeeping initiative, at a cost
of some US$1 million a day (Mhanda 2011). In March and November 1998 an increasingly militant labour movement organised three worker stayaways which demonstrated growing worker
opposition to state policies. Growing dissatisfaction with ZANU-PF’s failed policies culminated
in the emergence of a strong political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), in
September 1999, and more vibrant civic activism. Supported by the National Constitutional
Assembly (NCA), a grouping of individuals and civil society organisations; white commercial
farmers; and the labour movement, the MDC successfully campaigned against a new govern-
87
ment-initiated constitution which would have allowed the government to seize farms owned
by white farmers without compensation, and transfer them to Africans. In a referendum held
on 12–13 February 2000, the proposed constitution was defeated – ZANU PF’s first defeat at the
polls since independence.
Aggrieved by the defeat, ZANU-PF, in alliance with war veterans and land-hungry peasants,
embarked on ‘a violent process of land occupations’ that later became known as the Fast Track
Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), a process that ‘radically transformed the politics and economic landscape of the country’ (Raftopoulos 2009: 211). From then on the economy nosedived, with hyperinflation peaking at a staggering 231 million per cent in July 2008 (Mhanda
2011: 214). Unemployment and food prices soared while wages declined drastically, resulting
in an estimated 85 per cent of Zimbabweans living below the poverty datum line (Kanyenze
2003: 32). Opposition to ZANU-PF and the government intensified, but provoked greater state
repression. As Muzondidya (2009: 197) observes, the government ‘turned increasingly to the
security services, especially the army, for protection against indications of discontent’ and
opposition. Repression was increasingly characterised by terror and violence (Sachikonye
2011: 50). In March 2007, police brutally assaulted opposition and civic leaders who attended
a prayer meeting in the Harare suburb of Highfield.
This line of analysis situates the crisis in Zimbabwe in ZANU-PF’s failure to resolve inherited
tensions, a lack of tolerance of diversity, and reliance on coercion (Muzondidya 2009: 199).
However, nationalist scholars and commentators have developed an alternative explanation,
attributing the crisis to the workings of ‘post-modern imperialism’. This refers to the Western
world’s emphasis on democracy and governance, the promotion of economic development,
the prevention of conflict, and respect for the rule of law. Under the guise of pursuing these
global objectives, this view holds, the Western world – as the chief purveyor of post-modern
imperialism – seeks to gain control over African politics and economies by linking aid to governance issues. Therefore, if states wish to benefit from development assistance, they must
open themselves up to the interference of international organisations and foreign states. Postmodern imperialism justifies interference in the internal affairs of states on the grounds that
domestic instability poses threats to other states in the same regions (Cooper 2002). In line
with this, ZANU PF has attributed the crisis in Zimbabwe to Western interference in its internal
affairs with the intention of effecting a regime change. As evidence, it cites the imposition of a
raft of sanctions against ZANU PF functionaries by the American government and European
Union in 2001 and 2002 respectively after the start of the FTLRP in 2000, under which 4 500
white farmers were driven off their farms (Nyakudya 2013: 185). The sanctions are perceived as
punitive measures in retaliation for ZANU-PF’s anti-imperialist policies and its radical assertion of Zimbabwean sovereignty (ibid: 177).
Given this, it is clear that the interpretation of the causes of the Zimbabwean crisis has become
part of the challenge of finding a solution. Put differently, the crisis has polarized Zimbabweans
into so-called patriots and nationalists who perceive it as a consequence of the West’s regime
change agenda on the one hand, and those who regard it as a product of ZANU-PF misrule and
disregard for human rights and the rule of law on the other. Moreover, this polarisation extends
beyond Zimbabwe’s borders. There have been clearly divergent responses to the crisis in Zimbabwe by Western and African governments. While Britain, the United States and their allies
castigated the ZANU-PF government for its authoritarian governance, human rights abuses
and disregard for the rule of law, and went on to impose a raft of sanctions against it, most
African leaders stood by their Zimbabwean counterpart, whom they adjudged to be fighting
an anti-imperialist war against the West. In fact, the West tried to exert pressure on African
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states to sideline Mugabe. The former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa revealed that
‘African leaders have endured bombardment from the West for an alliance against Mugabe’
(www.globalresearch13April 2007). Some African countries have sided with the Western position against Zimbabwe, either on ideological or principled grounds, or in compliance with
the dictates of Western governments which provide them with development assistance. This
polarisation has bedevilled SADC initiatives to help restabilise Zimbabwe, thus creating a new
platform for sustainable development.
SADC efforts at managing the crisis in Zimbabwe, 2007–2013
Early SADC initiatives to resolve the crisis
The violent and disorderly way in which the ZANU PF-led government implemented the FTLRP
after its failed attempt to amend the constitution ‘became the first development that provoked
regional and international concerns about the Zimbabwe issues’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 152).
This matter was discussed at the 2001 SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government. In
its concluding communiqué, the Summit expressed its concern about the ‘effects of the Zimbabwe economic situation on the region’, indicated its readiness to ‘engage in a dialogue with
the Zimbabwean government and other actors to resolve the situation’, and announced the
establishment of a task force comprising Botswana, Mozambique, and South Africa to ‘work
with the Government of Zimbabwe on the economic and political issues affecting Zimbabwe’
(SADC 2001).
SADC and South Africa took the initiative to convince the international community to financially support the land redistribution exercise as agreed at the Lancaster House Conference
(1979) and the 1998 Donor Conference. SADC also sent a mission to observe the 2005 parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe, which declared the process free and fair, and the result as
credible. However, the SADC initiatives collapsed due to a combination of factors, notably a
failure by the international community to provide funding, and Mugabe’s continued pursuit of
the FTLRP that totally disregarded the ownership rights of white farmers. Furthermore, as both
Hoekman (2012) and Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013: 152) argue, South Africa could not contradict
Zimbabwe on the land issue because Mugabe had earlier agreed to delay land repossession at
the time of South Africa’s transition to democracy, in order to help avoid a ‘racial flare-up’ in
that country (see also Tendi 2010: 73-74).
Thabo Mbeki’s ‘quiet diplomacy’
The brutal assault by police on opposition politicians and civic leaders in March 2007 attracted
world-wide publicity, which forced SADC to intervene in the crisis in Zimbabwe in the hope of
providing ‘African solutions to African problems’. An Extraordinary Summit held in March 2007
mandated the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, to mediate in the Zimbabwean conflict
by facilitating dialogue between the country’s warring political parties (Zimonline 2007). The
choice of Mbeki as mediator was a natural one. He had started his mediation efforts in 2001,
working with the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in the Commonwealth to try to bring
ZANU PF and the MDC to the negotiating table. According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013: 153),
Mbeki was worried about the ripple effects of a ‘political and economic implosion in Zimbabwe’. Furthermore, Mbeki led Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner, and therefore seemed best
placed to negotiate a settlement, especially as he was espousing an ‘African grand design that
89
crystallised around the philosophy of the African Renaissance. His foreign policy … included a
determination to show that Africa was able to take charge of her destiny and use African solutions to solve African problems’ (ibid: 156).
Over several months, Mbeki mediated between ZANU PF and the two MDC formations, seeking their agreement to free and fair elections that would hopefully end the crisis in Zimbabwe. He eventually persuaded the disputants to agree on a range of constitutional, electoral
and media reforms which were endorsed by the Zimbabwean parliament in December 2007.
However, events over the next three months exposed SADC’s helplessness in the face of the
continued intransigence of ZANU PF. Mugabe unilaterally declared 29 March 2008 as the election date for harmonised parliamentary and presidential elections without the consent of the
MDC, and before a new constitution could be drafted and any meaningful reforms effected. To
Mbeki’s and SADC’s credit, the elections were relatively peaceful, potentially yielding a credible outcome.
However, despite a commitment to the 2004 SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, which commit member states to following agreed best election practices, the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission would not release the presidential election results for five
weeks. When the results were eventually announced, Tsvangirai had won 47,9 per cent of the
presidential vote and Mugabe 43,2 per cent (EISA 2008a). The unexplained delay led to speculation, notably that the results had been manipulated in favour of Mugabe during those five
weeks (Dzinesa and Zambara 2011). Some scholars argued that SADC’s inaction and seeming
helplessness had serious implications for ‘the future of democracy in this country and region
at large’ (Zandile Bhengu, cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 158).
Since the election did not produce an outright winner (namely 50 per cent plus one vote), a
run-off election was held in June 2008. The intervening period was characterised by ‘massive
state-controlled violence’ (Raftopoulos 2013: 11) during which thousands of people were killed
and injured, and many more were left homeless and traumatised. An alarmed SADC called an
Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government, held on 12 April 2008, where Mbeki
brought the SADC mediation process into disrepute by claiming that there was ‘no crisis in
Zimbabwe’. This prevented SADC from taking formal action against Mugabe and ZANU PF in
order to prevent them from using further violence against opposition forces. Only Botswana
openly condemned the excesses of ZANU PF, with President Ian Khama refusing to recognise
Mugabe as a legitimate leader, while Vice-President Mopati Merafhe initiated efforts to have
Mugabe barred from SADC and AU summits (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 159). While Mbeki persisted with his kid-glove handling of Mugabe in the name of ‘quiet diplomacy’, Mugabe himself continued on a violent trail that forced his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, to withdraw from the
presidential elections. The hapless Mbeki and SADC could only watch as Mugabe won a sham
one-person race in the June 2008 presidential run-off, plunging the country into a leadership
legitimacy crisis.
The mediator was certainly on shaky ground. The mediation did not turn out to be as easy as
the choice of mediator. Mbeki’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ did not sit well with various role players and
interest groups. Given ZANU-PF’s wilful and flagrant disregard of SADC and generally accepted
human rights, the opposition in Zimbabwe saw him as a limited actor whose efforts were ineffectual against an entrenched dictatorship. Moreover, as Kagwanja (2006: 159) argues, various
factions of the ANC held mixed positions on Zimbabwe that signaled Mbeki’s waning power
back home. Mbeki, however, persevered with his quiet diplomacy against serious odds. On 21
July 2008, the warring parties in Zimbabwe agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding that
committed them to working for a resolution of the crisis in their country. As Ndlovu-Gatsheni
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(2013: 160) argues, this was a great breakthrough that legitimised the concerns of all the warring parties, thus placing them on an equal footing, and paving the way for the next phase
of the negotiations. Indeed, mediated negotiations continued, albeit in a tortuous way, with
Mbeki weathering attacks from various quarters, notably the opposition in Zimbabwe as well
as Western powers. The focus of his mediation had to shift from creating conditions for credible
elections to establishing an interim coalition government that would organise new elections.
This process culminated in the signing of the GPA in September 2008, which led, in turn, to the
power-sharing arrangement in the form of the GNU in February 2009. The GNU was supposed
to be an interim arrangement aimed at preparing the ground for credible elections that would
bring about ‘the normalisation of the situation in Zimbabwe and the resumption of its development and reconstruction process intended to achieve a better life for all Zimbabweans on a
sustained and sustainable basis’ (Mbeki 2009). This tenuous arrangement remained in place
until July 2013, with the partners in this marriage of (in)convenience continually exposing the
weaknesses in SADC’s crisis management systems.
Critics have lambasted South Africa for what Mhango (2012) has termed a ‘demonstration of
hegemonic naivety’ in not tackling Mugabe head-on. Mugabe and ZANU PF wilfully violated
the GPA even before the GNU was inaugurated. As the parties haggled over ministerial allocations, and before consensus could be reached, ZANU PF proceeded to unilaterally gazette
‘what it claimed was the agreed allocation of ministries to the three parties’ (Raftopoulos
2013: 15). Furthermore, Mugabe went ahead and renewed the terms of office of the governor
of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the Attorney-General, and Provincial Governors without
Tsvangirai’s consent (Hoekman 2012: 8). This contravened the letter and spirit of Article 7 (vi)
of the GPA which stipulated that ‘the appointments of the Reserve Bank Governor and the
Attorney General will be dealt with by the Inclusive Government after its formation’.
The GPA resulted from Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy, albeit at a snail’s pace and with several hitches,
but that is normal with all mediation exercises where the protagonists are ideologically at variance. The warring parties agreed to a slew of socio-political and economic reforms, which
would pave the way for credible elections. Central to the agreement was a framework for a government of national unity and a Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC) to
oversee the implementation of the agreement. However, it took another five months of haggling before the GNU was inaugurated, again further discrediting Mbeki and SADC. As Dzinesa
and Zambara (2011: 63) note, ‘the agreement was signed without a clear roadmap in relation to
the implementation modalities’. This not only delayed the establishment of the power-sharing
government, but remained an albatross for the IG itself.
Jacob Zuma’s implementation of the GPA
Domestic dissatisfaction with Mbeki mounted to the point where, in December 2007, he was
voted out as president of the ANC, leading to his resignation as South African president in September 2008. His task of facilitating the implementation of the GPA passed on to his successor,
Jacob Zuma. Opponents of Mbeki’s ‘closed door’ policy hoped that Zuma would be more forceful in handling Mugabe, having previously expressed his impatience with Mbeki’s kid-glove
treatment of Mugabe, whom he described as ‘a dictator’ (New York Times 17 December 2007).
In an obvious reference to Mbeki, he said:
It is even more tragic that other world leaders who witness repression pretend it is not
happening, or is exaggerated. When history eventually deals with the dictators, those who
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stood by and watched should also bear the consequences. A shameful quality of the modern world is to turn away from injustice, and ignore the hardships of others (Zimbabwe
Metro 16 April 2007).
Zuma stepped up his criticism of both Mugabe and Mbeki after the disputed 29 March 2008 election. He condemned the electoral process (BBC 9 April 2008), describing the delay in announcing the results as ‘suspicious’ (www.irinnews.org/11 April 2008). On 24 June, he bluntly stated;
‘We cannot agree with ZANU-PF. We cannot agree with them on values. We fought for the right
of people to vote, we fought for democracy’ (IOL News 2008). At an ANC dinner in July, he
rebuked Mugabe for refusing to step down (The Zimbabwe Times, 9 July 2008).
Indeed, Zuma made a bold start in facilitating the implementation of the GPA. His first move
was to appoint Lindiwe Zulu, Mac Maharaj and Charles Ngqakula as his assistants (NdlovuGatsheni 2013: 163), and to bring in the South African Department of International Relations
and Co-operation (DIRCO) to provide him and his team with technical assistance (Ibid.). On
31 March 2011, Zuma presented his report on Zimbabwe to the SADC Summit in Livingstone,
Zambia. For the first time, a SADC Summit received a scathing report on Mugabe’s conduct in
frustrating the implementation of the GPA and operations of the GNU. Significantly, the Summit endorsed Zuma’s report and adopted vital and defining resolutions that became the basis
of the GPA implementation. Notably, the Summit resolved that SADC had to help the Zimbabwean ‘belligerents’ to come up with an election roadmap containing the following milestones:
•
•
•
•
•
Completing a new constitution.
Staging a referendum on the new constitution.
Preparing a new voter’s roll.
Introducing electoral and media reforms.
Realigning the security sector with a multiparty democracy, and ensuring that both the
police and the army remain non-partisan.
• Co-operation between officials appointed by the Troika of the SADC Organ on Politics,
Defence and Security Co-operation and the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC) on the ‘monitoring, evaluation and implementation of the GPA’ (SADC 2011).
However, it soon became apparent that despite his early robust and forthright demand for
compliance, Zuma’s approach would not differ greatly from Mbeki’s. Regular SADC summits,
extraordinary summits and Troika meetings were held over the years, without any tangible
results. The meetings invariably issued communiqués that ‘noted with satisfaction’ the progress made in implementing the GPA.3 All they did was to urge signatories to the GPA to implement its provisions, with each summit stressing a particular provision relevant to the situation
at the time.
For example, the final communiqué of the 32nd summit of SADC heads of state and government
held in Maputo in August 2012 commended Zuma and his team for ‘progress made towards
normalising the Zimbabwe situation’; urged signatories to the GPA to develop a roadmap with
timelines for adopting a new constitution and creating conditions for free and fair elections;
and urged the parties to the GPA to continue its implementation. It also urged the European
Union and the rest of the international community to lift all sanctions against Zimbabwe. The
facilitation team also made the right noises at key moments, spelling out agreed positions as
per the roadmap in the public interest.
Thus the Zuma facilitation also progressed quietly and slowly. Some analysts believe the communiqués reflected a diplomatic public stance that concealed the pressures brought to bear
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on the various parties behind the scenes. The adoption of the new constitution following a
referendum on 6 April 2013 was largely attributed to these sorts of pressures. Otherwise, even
Zuma did not seem to have an answer for Mugabe’s and ZANU PF’s continued defiance, prevarication and posturing. In 2010, Judge Arrianga Pillay, the former Chief Justice of the SADC
Tribunal, accused Zuma of presiding over the collapse of the court ‘on Robert Mugabe’s behalf’
after the court had ruled ‘against Mugabe’s land grab campaign’ (Zimbabwe Situation, 5 March
2013).
The Tribunal had been established to ensure the adherence of member states to the SADC
Treaty, including Article 4 of the Treaty which obliges SADC leaders to act in accordance with
human rights, democracy and the rule of law. It was this article which the Tribunal invoked
when it ruled against the Zimbabwe government (ibid). In typical fashion, Mugabe defied the
court ruling. However, instead of sanctioning Zimbabwe, SADC took the inexplicable route
of suspending the court in order to review its mandate. Pillay argued that Zuma, as leader of
the regional hegemony, could have acted more decisively to prevent the collapse of the court
(Ibid).
While the original agreement put the life span of the GNU at two years, during which time stipulated reforms had to be completed to pave way for fresh elections, the date came and passed
quietly. The Zuma/SADC facilitation failed to get the Harare disputants to effect these reforms.
In fact, the areas of contestation changed continually as the disputants kept on shifting the
goalposts. Tsvangirai aptly summed up this challenge when he stated: ‘The stumbling block
to the implementation of the … agreed reforms remains a palpable deficit of a political will to
implement the agreed issues, without which we are likely to reproduce political contestations
and disputed outcomes’ (The Zimbabwe Independent, 26 April 2013).
ZANU PF had long since narrowed its position to the removal of Western sanctions on its members, declaring in February 2012 that the party would ‘no longer entertain any reforms until
sanctions are removed’ (Nyakudya 2013: 190). On the other hand, Tsvangirai stipulated the
needed prerequisites for elections as follows; ‘the elections roadmap, security of the vote, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission secretariat, invitation and accreditation of observers, electoral
law amendments, voter education, and the conduct of security forces during elections’ (The
Zimbabwe Independent, 26 April 2013). Meanwhile, Zuma and SADC continued to pressurise
the disputants ‘behind the scenes’. Occasionally, however, members of his facilitation team
made public pronouncements in order to clarify issues pertaining to the roadmap in the face
of disagreements expressed publicly by the GPA principals.
Challenges bedevilling the SADC management of the crisis in Zimbabwe
Why was the mediation so ineffectual and ineffective? There are a plethora of explanations
for this state of affairs, chief of which should be the contradictions between interventions by
regional bodies in the interests of peace and security on the one hand, and the principles of
sovereign equality and ‘non-interference’ on the other. Mugabe and ZANU PF have consistently argued that a sovereign country should not be subjected to these sorts of pressures and
processes, categorically stating that SADC has no right to dictate what happens in Zimbabwe
(Power FM 7pm News, 29 April 2013). At the most, they believe, SADC should only give advice.
Indeed, this is in line with the AU Charter, to which SADC subscribes, which upholds the principle of ‘non-interference in internal affairs’ (AU 2002, Article 7). In terms of the AU Charter,
intervention in the internal affairs of member states is only permissible ‘in respect of grave
93
circumstances’ such as ‘war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity’. Under such circumstances, SADC has therefore found it difficult, if not impossible, to enforce adherence and
compliance.
A related point is that SADC’s principles and guidelines for democratic elections commit member countries to following agreed best election practices, but in accordance with national laws.
This means that ‘SADC is hamstrung in this crucial area since it can only encourage member
states to adhere to the SADC principles. It cannot enforce their compliance’ (Dzinesa & Zambara 2011: 67).
This situation has been compounded by the region’s diversity. States differ greatly in political,
economic, social, and cultural terms. As a result, SADC is often highly polarised. As Rowlands
(1998: 922) notes, English, French and Portuguese are spoken in different countries, all of which
also have different indigenous languages. Religious practices include Christianity, Islam, and
African traditional religions. Levels of development are unequal and uneven. Levels of intraSADC trade remain low, which also makes it more difficult to build a regional community.
On the issue of Zimbabwe, SADC has been loosely split into two camps. Governments run by
former liberation movements have generally sided with ZANU PF, while Botswana, Malawi,
and Zambia have been more tolerant of the MDC. The DRC has been obliged to support
Mugabe, following Zimbabwe’s military intervention which prevented the country from falling
to rebel forces backed by Rwanda and Uganda in 1998 (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 146). However,
these alliances are not cast in stone. Tanzania has castigated the excesses and authoritarianism
of ZANU PF. Zambia, under Michael Sata has tended to side with Mugabe as opposed to the
governments of Levy Mwanawasa and Rupiya Banda. Malawi under Bingu wa Mutharika was
pro-Mugabe, while the current president, Joyce Banda, initially seemed intolerant of authoritarian regimes, but recently agreed to open the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair where she
spoke about Mugabe in glowing terms (The Standard, 8 April 2013). In 2006, Zuma himself
spoke about Mugabe in more positive terms, saying that:
Europeans often ignore the fact that Mugabe is very popular among Africans. In their eyes,
he has given blacks their country back after centuries of colonialism. The people love him,
so how can we condemn him? Many in Africa believe that there is a racist aspect to European and American criticism of Mugabe. Millions of blacks died in Angola, the Republic of
Congo and Rwanda. A few whites lost their lives in Zimbabwe, unfortunately, and already
the West is bent out of shape (Der Spiegel, 20 December 2006).
All this means that SADC member states do not speak about Zimbabwe with a single voice,
particularly between Summits. This is partly explained by the history of liberation struggles in
the region. As Amadu Sesay (1985: 24) notes:
[There were] various preferences with the FLS (Front Line States) in their support for liberation movements. Thus, while Botswana and Zambia leaned towards the moderate Joshua
Nkomo faction of the Patriotic Front (in Zimbabwe), the rest of the Front Line entente
preferred the more radical wing led by Robert Mugabe. The Front Line States also pursued
different policies during the Angolan civil war. Tanzania and Mozambique supported the
MPLA, but Zambia gave tacit support to UNITA and advocated a government of national
unity consistent with its national interests.
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Moreover, in the case of South Africa, the Pan African Congress (PAC) was closer to ZANU,
and the ANC to the Zimbabwe People’s Union (ZAPU). Indeed, liberation history also helps to
explain the challenges confronting SADC’s mediation of the crisis in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has
constantly invoked regional liberation solidarity and anti-colonial rhetoric to curb potential
opposition from his SADC counterparts. As Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2011; 2013: 145) observes, SADC
is still dominated by enduring solidarities among ‘sister liberation movements’ and ‘brother
presidents’ at the helm of governments in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique,
Namibia, and Tanzania. These organisations and personalities hold annual solidarity meetings and regular consultations. Mugabe has used such gatherings to isolate his political rivals
in Zimbabwe, who have been described as ‘imperialist stooges’ bent on reversing the gains of
the liberation struggle (see Johnson 2008: 8).
Western powers have not helped this situation either. They have openly shown that they favour
a regime change in Zimbabwe (see Eppel 2009; Nyakudya 2013: 194-195). This has been communicated in several ways, notably the restrictive sanctions against ZANU PF leaders as well
as their close allies and sympathisers (see Raftopoulos 2013), which inevitably gained Mugabe
sympathy among ‘brother presidents’ in the ‘sister liberation movements’ who fear a similar
fate once the West is through with Mugabe. After all, most of them see Mugabe as a father
figure because of the role he played in SADC’s formation. Reining in Mugabe and schooling
him in good governance practices has therefore been a daunting challenge for other SADC
leaders, most of whom assumed power long after Mugabe. In any case, Mugabe is much older
than they are, and in traditional African society, age is revered and admonishing an elder is
frowned upon. This aspect is aptly captured in Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s 2007 article ‘Bob Is Peerless
…’, in which he spells out why his counterparts find it so difficult to subject him to a peer review.
Mhango (2011) has aptly argued that the absence of a formal SADC mediation framework has
further complicated the situation:
The manner in which quiet diplomacy has been tolerated within SADC only reveals the
deficiencies of the values and the principles used to govern mediation. … Despite laying
the broader framework and institutions within which disputes are to be resolved, SADC
is silent on how to mediate. The competence for mediation is taken for granted and the
terms on which mediation must be executed are not clear. This renders the approach
informal and often dependent on personalities rather than institutions.
Indeed, SADC’s approach has relied on ‘point men’ guided either by their own whims, interests and considerations or those of their countries, and not necessarily those of SADC. Mbeki
was guided by his own ideological, domestic and international predilections when he regarded
the opposition parties in Zimbabwe, notably the MDC, as ‘puppets of the West’, and incapable of running a government. His Pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist sentiments chimed with
Mugabe’s anti-West rhetoric, and his choice of a policy of quiet diplomacy was informed by the
desire to avoid alienating some African powers (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 156). Similarly, even
Zuma initially backed Mbeki and defended Mugabe, when he was still on relatively good terms
with the former. However, as he became locked in a deepening political struggle with Mbeki,
he made a U-turn and began to lambast Mugabe. More broadly, however, South African interests have benefited from the country’s role as sole mediator in the crisis in Zimbabwe. Mhango
(2012) has revealed how South Africa has denied other countries a direct role in the mediation
process for fear of potential spoilers. This supports Ancas’s argument (2011) that the absence
of a guiding framework has detracted from the SADC mediation process, as it has inevitably
remained prone to power politics.
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SADC’s monitoring of the GPA has been equally problematic. Dzinesa and Zambara (2011:
64-5) have criticised what they have termed ‘the fallacy of self-monitoring’. Established by
the GPA, JOMIC comprised members from each of the three signatory parties to the agreement. As its title implies, JOMIC’s role was to monitor the operational implementation of the
GPA. Dzinesa and Zambara’s criticism is legitimate, considering that even SADC seemed to
acknowledge the folly of self-monitoring when it decided, at its March 2011 Summit, to assign
officials to JOMIC to help plan and monitor implementation of the GPA (SADC 2011). However, despite being reiterated at the Summit held in August 2012, this initiative never really got
off the ground.
Other factors that detracted from the mediation process include the fact that the GPA was not
a long-term instrument. By establishing a government of national unity, the agreement redistributed political power in the short term, as opposed to adopting an integrative approach
aimed at proper reconstruction and reconciliation. It also failed to deal with power dynamics
in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean securocrats stated in no uncertain terms that they would not
allow a regime change in Zimbabwe, or entertain reforms that would democratise the security
sector and render it more effective, efficient and national in focus (see Nyakudya 2013: 190).
Indeed, the security sector had propped up Mugabe since his loss to Tsvangirai in the 29 March
2008 presidential election. Mazarire (2013: 80) observes that the ‘problem of securocracy’ is
bound to haunt Zimbabwe for a long time to come. This presented the SADC mediation effort
with a major challenge, as Tsvangirai insisted that his party would not contest any elections
before security sector reforms were introduced.
Conclusion
The general complexity of the crisis in Zimbabwe, notably its entanglement with regional, continental and international politics (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013: 144), the legacy of the liberation
struggle, and SADC’s diversity help to explain the apparent failure of this body to act more
decisively in respect of the crisis in Zimbabwe, particularly against Mugabe, whose role in the
formation of the organisation had turned him into a father figure. Equally significant is the
notion of sovereign statehood, which precludes the regional organisation from forcibly intervening in the affairs of member states. The lack of a formal mediation framework also helped
to weaken the mediation process, as it basically relied on the whims of two South African ‘point
men’ and their country’s interests, to the total exclusion of other players. Furthermore, the GPA
lacked a reconstructive and reconciliatory perspective. Finally, the Zimbabwean security sector proved to be a major player, categorically stating that it would not recognise a leader with
no liberation war history, irrespective of the outcome of elections.
The quiet diplomacy undertaken by a hegemonic power unwilling to flex its muscles for historical reasons has been heavily criticised in many quarters, particularly in Zimbabwe, where
there were huge but diverse expectations about South African mediation. SADC seemed powerless in the face of ZANU PF intransigence, prevarication, and an outright refusal to comply
with key provisions of the GPA. Progress was painfully slow, as the GNU was characterised by
bickering and power struggles at the expense of national development.
However, the ‘quiet diplomacy’ approach did produce an agreement which resulted in a powersharing arrangement, stabilised the economy, and drastically reduced the levels of violence
which were threatening to tear the country apart. As Mhango (2012: 18) rightly asserts, the
mediation ‘insulated Zimbabwe’ against possible intervention by other external forces, notably
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Australia, Britain, and the United States (see also Phimister 2004). As Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013:
155-158) explains, despite widespread criticisms of SADC’s approach, it was underpinned by
a certain logic and rationale. In adopting this approach, Mbeki wanted to avoid the mistakes
inherent in Mandela’s proactive approach to foreign policy, which alienated some African
countries and leaders. Moreover, it enabled him to ward off accusations of fronting Western
interests in Zimbabwe. Then there were also misgivings about the MDC’s independence, and
its ability to run a government. Moreover, the issues at stake were complex; land redistribution
was a legitimate requirement; sanctions were real; authoritarianism, brutal repression and disregard of the rule of law were blatant; and outside forces were keenly interested. Given all this,
megaphone diplomacy would almost certainly have scuttled the mediation efforts.
In sum, quiet diplomacy and the ensuing interim power-sharing arrangement has turned out
to be a reasonably effective way out of the crisis in Zimbabwe. However, quiet diplomacy needs
to be laced with assertiveness if it is to become an effective means of managing crises in the
region. SADC should develop into a fully fledged security community whose members speak
out with one voice against both errant members, irrespective of historical solidarities, as well
as continental and international forces threatening or disadvantaging its members. (In this
respect, the example of the Economic Community of West African States leaders who threatened Cote d’Ivoire’s intransigent Laurent Gbagbo with military force unless he relinquished
power after suffering defeat in the 2010 elections could be a worthwhile point of reference for
SADC leaders.) More effective mediation would require the involvement of more players working within a clear formal framework, rather than reliance on ‘point men’ acting on personal
whims.
Update
This chapter was completed in May 2013, before the harmonised elections on 31 July 2013 that
brought an end to the GNU and the GPA. The decision to hold the elections was yet another
hotly contested issue in the Zimbabwean saga. Mugabe’s unilateral declaration of the election date by means of a presidential decree was vehemently opposed by the other players in
the GNU. Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube, the latter the leader of a smaller MDC formation,
opposed the date on the grounds that some of the reforms the parties had agreed to introduce
before elections could be held were still outstanding, and that Mugabe’s unilateral declaration
of an election date contradicted the letter and spirit of the GPA, which obliged him to consult the other principals, notably the prime minister (News Day, 14 June 2013). Outstanding
reforms were extensive, and included electoral, media and security sector reforms. Instead,
Mugabe argued that as state president he was mandated by the constitution to declare the
dates (ibid). The matter was referred to SADC which acknowledged the ruling of Zimbabwe’s
Constitutional Court in upholding Mugabe’s poll date. However, SADC urged the Zimbabwe
government to engage the Constitutional Court ‘to seek more time beyond the 31 July 2013
deadline for holding the harmonised elections’ (SADC Extraordinary Summit Communiqué
16 June 2013).
In the event, the elections saw Mugabe romping to victory with 61 per cent of the presidential vote, while his party, ZANU PF, garnered a two thirds majority in parliament. ZANU PF
even surprised neutrals by winning all 13 Matabeleland South parliamentary seats, an unprecedented feat since independence in 1980. Inevitably, the elections were contested by the losing
parties which accused ZANU PF of ‘monumental rigging’ (The Independent, United Kingdom,
August 2013) with the assistance of Nikuv International Projects, an Israeli company which
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specialises in voters’ rolls, election results, and intelligence services (Zimbabwe Independent,
9 August 2013). The parties’ major grounds for disputing the elections outcome were the shambolic voters’ roll, the failure of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to release the voters’ roll
to the parties for inspection ‘within a reasonable time’ before elections, as stipulated by law;
and the fact that about one million urban dwellers had been denied an opportunity to register
as voters (The Independent, United Kingdom, 1 August 2013). A video showing youthful voters
purportedly bused in from outside Harare by ZANU PF to vote in Mount Pleasant was widely
circulated on the internet. ZANU PF won the constituency. The parties thus appealed to SADC
not to recognise the outcome of the elections, and to declare them null and void. Tsvangirai
described them as ‘a huge farce’ (ibid, 1 August 2013).
However, in a communiqué issued after a summit of heads of state and government in August
2013, SADC declared the elections as ‘free and peaceful’ (SADC 2013). Following this seal of
approval, Mugabe was inaugurated as Zimbabwe’s president on 22 August 2013 for the seventh
time since 1980. This endorsement marked the end to the South African mediation and facilitation of the Zimbabwe crisis. The SADC summit also commended Zuma and his team for their
‘sterling job in facilitating the successful completion of the GPA’, and appealed to the West to lift
sanctions against Mugabe and his allies. Inevitably, the mainstream MDC lodged legal appeals
against the election results in numerous constituencies.
In terms of conflict resolution, SADC appears to have achieved its objective, as the country
was relatively calm and peaceful after the elections. However, declaring the elections ‘free and
peaceful’ was an easy way out for SADC. The demands of the two MDC movements for more
deep-seated democratisation have remained unresolved, and the reforms stipulated both in
the GPA and the elections roadmap have simply been ignored. The security sector remains
immune to any reforms. Media laws remain skewed against non-state actors, while the absence
of electoral reforms has resulted in yet another disputed election. The opposition has refused
to recognise the outcome of the elections; indeed, in its final report, the SADC observer mission itself stopped short of declaring the elections as ‘free and fair’, merely labelling it as ‘free,
peaceful and generally credible’ (Ndlovu 2013).
Whither Zimbabwe now? Several schools of thought have emerged. One is that the opposition has been dealt a mortal blow and is showing serious signs of disintegration. Since the
announcement of the elections results, calls for Tsvangirai to step down as president of the
MDC-T have become louder and more frequent (Zimbabwe News, 13 October 2013). Some of
the party’s newly elected local councillors have defied a party directive to vote for the party’s
preferred choice of mayors by either voting for their own choice of mayors or even voting for
ZANU PF candidates (Zimbabwe Situation, 13 September 2013). Most of these ‘rebel’ councillors are either being investigated, or have been suspended from the party. The implications of
all this for unity of purpose in the opposition are dire.
The second school of thought is that the current peace and calm is only a temporary lull, and
that the incomplete or abandoned democratisation agenda will soon come to haunt the country. Sanctions, which the government blames for the previous economic meltdown, largely
remain in force, and Western powers have remained lukewarm about renewed ties and development assistance. According to a National Social Security Authority (NSSA) Report, 711 firms
reportedly shut down between July 2011 and July 2013. Without any meaningful support for
agriculture and industrial recapitalisation, the economy is expected to slow down once again,
particularly amid reports that Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa came back ‘empty-handed’
from the IMF where he had hoped for renewed loans, or an adjustment of the current debt
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(New Zimbabwe, 20 October 2013). Many Zimbabweans fear that the twin spectres of economic
meltdown and political instability that rocked the country in the 2000s are bound to revisit.
In sum, SADC’s failure to ensure the full enforcement of the GPA may have laid the basis for
further conflict, and its failure to insist on Zimbabwe abiding by its basic requirements on the
conduct of elections has brought its crisis management systems into disrepute. Instead, SADC
seems to have rewarded Mugabe by electing him as deputy chairperson, while his close allies,
President Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia and Prime Minister Thomas Thabane of Lesotho,
have been elected as chairperson and deputy chairperson of the Organ on Politics, Defence
and Security Co-operation respectively (SADC 2013). Clearly, continued dissatisfaction with
SADC’s role in Zimbabwe – and the prospect of continued conflict in that country – do not
augur well for the region’s quest for peace, security, stability, and sustainable development.
Endnotes
1
I am indebted to Joseph Jakarasi, a history student at the University of Zimbabwe, for conducting part of
the research for this chapter.
2
The FLS actually emerged from the Pan African Freedom Movement for East and Central Africa, which
was later enlarged to include the liberation movements of the region and renamed as the Pan African
Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (See Van Nieuwkerk 2009: 102).
3
See for instance, the Extraordinary Summits of 30 March 2009, 1 June 2012, and 7–8 December 2012; the
Summit of 17–18 August 2012; and the Troika Summits of 10–11 January 2013 and 9 March 2013.
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7
Mozambique’s economic transformation
and its implications for human security
Katharina Hofmann
Mozambique has entered an important stage in its economic development that will have
a major impact on its social and political environment and the well-being of its citizens. This
is due to high rates of economic growth (7,5 per cent growth in GDP in 2012, according to the
International Monetary Fund), and the discovery of natural resources (mainly coal and gas),
accompanied by growing regional and international investment interest. Mozambique now
ranks among the five best GDP performers in Africa, although this has been achieved from a
very low base.
Thus far, Mozambique’s economy has not undergone any significant structural changes. There
has been no economic transformation despite more than a decade of sustained economic
growth. Recent discoveries of resources may alter the country’s development path and lead to
an economic transformation if revenue from these natural resources as well as foreign direct
investment (FDI) lead to investments in job-creating industries.
One obstacle to this positive scenario is the lack of transparency and deficient communication
by political elites about the dynamics of economic transition, combined with a lack of opportunity for political participation by Mozambican citizens that is creating the potential for political
and social conflict.
As regards security, Mozambique has to cope with the legacy of a violent and conflictual history, including several centuries of Portuguese colonisation; an 11-year anti-colonial struggle;
and a 15-year post-independence civil war. The anti-colonial struggle was led by the Marxistoriented Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO), which assumed power in 1975.
The civil war ensued when FRELIMO’s one-party rule was challenged by the conservative and
anti-communist Resistencia Nacional de Moçambique (RENAMO), which was supported by
South Africa’s apartheid regime. The civil war formally ended in 1992 with the Rome Peace
Accord, and the first multiparty elections – won by FRELIMO – were held in 1994.
The country has been relatively peaceful and stable since then. Earlier this year, however, for
the first time since the 1992 peace accord, violent clashes took place between members of
RENAMO and the Mozambican security forces. Moreover, petty crime (including kidnapping)
is increasing, as is transnational organised crime.
The aim of this chapter1 is to identify the risks and opportunities surrounding Mozambique’s
impending economic transformation, and their implications for human security. A GDP-based
analysis of economic growth feeds into the ‘aspiring Africa’ debate (The Economist 2013), but
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will only add to the ‘myth of Africa’s rise’ (Foreign Policy 2013) if the circumstances of the poor
majority are not improved.
This chapter seeks to identify political options for crisis prevention in order to enhance Mozambique’s chances of becoming a peaceful, middle-income country. Framed in the concept of the
‘post-GDP debate’, economic development will be analysed to estimate its potential impacts
on human security. The impending economic transition will be assessed in the context of the
development–security nexus, which reflects the belief that the security of citizens is a precondition for sustainable development. Put differently, it is based upon the proposition that
violent conflict is more likely in highly unequal societies in which most people are excluded
from effective participation in political decision-making, as well as the benefits of economic
development.
Human security and post-GDP growth as indicators of sustainable development
‘The security of people and their goods is one of the basic democratic principles recognised all over the world’ (Nzongola-Ntalaja 1997: 12).
The following observations are aimed at transcending a narrow conception of security exclusively based on the interests of state actors. If security is defined as ‘survival in the face of existential threats’ (Buzan et al 1998:27), it is no longer the survival of the state alone, but also the
economic well-being of societies, the functioning of their political institutions, and the integrity
of the cultural identities of minorities that seem to be at stake (Jung 2009:8). Given the consequences of globalisation, namely the loss of state sovereignty to supra-, trans-, or subnational
financial, political and social regimes, development should be analysed in broader terms than
rates of economic growth. As Koponen has noted: ‘ ... security and development have much in
common as notions. Both are broad normative concepts whose empirical referents are vague,
and whose operational meanings are constantly changing’ (2012:25). Therefore, in order to
maintain peace and prevent conflict, development and security must be constantly scrutinised
and monitored, especially in times of change.
The post-GDP perspective holds that societies should measure their development not only in
terms of rates of economic growth, but also in terms of the well-being of their citizens. This could
help least-developed and more developed countries (LDCs and MDCs) to avoid the mistakes
previously made by industrialised countries, and currently being made by the BRICS. Instead,
they could choose development paths that do not lead to environmental crises, unsustainable
patterns of growth, ‘jobless growth’, continued inequality, divided societies and, ultimately,
social unrest. The global economic and financial crisis since 2008 has demonstrated that even
European and Asian countries are running up against serious social and ecological limits
(Saxer 2013). African countries, as the least developed countries in the world, should avoid the
developmental mistakes made by more developed countries. As Joseph E Stiglitz has noted:
‘Much of development economics have been viewed as asking how developing countries could
successfully transition towards market-oriented policy frameworks … the global financial crisis
has now raised questions about that model even for developed countries’ (2011: 230).
Proponents of the concept of ‘buen vivir’ (living well), adopted by the Latin American Left as a
marker of socially and environmentally situated human development, argues that assessments
of the approach and performance of political leaders should include long-term measurements
of the role of the state in regulating income distribution, decent work and environmental protection. ‘Buen vivir’, which also implies a collective well-being, is the orienting concept of the
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Chapter 7: Mozambique’s economic transformation and its implications for human security
new Ecuadorian constitution adopted in a popular referendum in September 2008. Besides
being its ‘transversal axis’, this notion is linked to more than 75 articles covering water and
food, nature, education, health, labour and social security, housing, culture, social communication, science, technology, ancestral knowledge, biodiversity, ecological systems, alternative
energy, and individual and collective rights, among others (Walsh 2010: 18). Walsh defines
this approach as the introduction of an ‘organised, sustainable, and dynamic ensemble of
economic, political, socio-cultural, and environmental systems that guarantee the realisation of buen vivir’ (2010:15). Key elements of the political framework giving expression to this
approach include equity, democracy, participation, the protection of biodiversity and natural resources, and respect for ethnic-cultural diversity. Cross-sectional areas of well-being are
just distribution within a society, and a sustainable acquaintance with the resources at hand
(Krell 2001: 6).
In the post-nation-state world, positive development has become much more difficult to measure and influence, since political actors have lost regulatory power to market forces. Actors in
international relations are far more diversified than they were some 20 years ago. This trend
has been analysed from the early 1990s onwards and is also reflected in political thinking about
international security, notably the security–development nexus and the debate about the ‘new
wars’ and its embeddedness in transnational war economies. The central thesis of this debate
is that conflicts have changed in lockstep with the global economy: that the main drivers of
modern war are not state actors (soldiers) but non-state actors (rebels, child soldiers, warlords
and mercenaries), and that many of those wars are financed through the exploitation of war
economies (such as diamonds, drugs, or human resources) connected to global capital markets. Therefore, the aim of war is not only political but rather economic, or a mixture of both
(Münkler 2001, 2002; Reno 1996, 1998; Keen 2000; Kaldor 2000).
The development–security nexus reflects the impact of globalisation on peace and security.2
As Duffield notes: ‘Development is ultimately impossible without stability and, at the same
time, security is not sustainable without development. This convergence is not simply a policy
matter. It has profound political and structural implications. In relation to the strategic complexes of liberal governance, it embodies the increasing interaction between military and security actors on the one hand, and civilian and non-governmental organisations on the other. It
reflects the thickening networks that now link UN agencies, military establishments, NGOs,
and private security companies’ (2001:18).
The loss of the state as the central reference point for political and economic decision-making
has created post-national conflicts which centre on parallel economies of trade that are not
based on production but on control over existing resources and commodities. The informal
character and criminalisation of economic processes is not only a phenomenon of war, but
also a constant factor in many societies with weak governance. The ‘shadow economy’ has
become a part of both regular and informal economies and interlinks them as well, thus blurring the distinction between these sectors, with trade in weapons or natural resources as prominent examples. These trends have changed security on the national as well as the individual
level. At the institutional level, security is characterised by an increase in (globalised) domestic
conflicts in relation to interstate conflicts. At the individual level, security has been privatised.
In this perspective, levels of security now directly reflect the social position of an individual
within a society: rich citizens are safer than poor citizens. Living in gated communities armed
by private security companies has become the norm for wealthy people in most developing
countries as well as a growing number of developed countries.
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Katharina Hofmann
Equality and ‘well-being’ are therefore interconnected with levels of security: according to
Wilkinson and Picket, ‘inequality is structural violence’ (Wilkinson & Picket 2010: 134ff ). This
is proven by statistics, which show a clear correlation between social and economic inequality
on the one hand and homicide, assaults, robbery, and rape on the other. South Africa has one
of the highest crime rates in the world. Central America is another region marked by extremely
high levels of inequality as well as high rates of violence and human insecurity. Both regions
suffer from weak states where violence is a norm (Mills & Herbst 2012:119ff ).
In Mozambique, the poorest 20 per cent of the population share 5,2 per cent of total income,
while the top 20 per cent commands 51,5 per cent of total income. The percentage of poor
people is larger in rural areas (56,9 per cent) than in urban areas (49,6 per cent) (African Development Bank 2012: 2).
The concept of human security was pioneered in the United Nations Human Development
Report of 1994. Widely acknowledged as a conceptual milestone, this notion has altered the
global approach to security, and has served as an important instrument for screening the state
of a given society and its approach towards the well-being of its citizens as a guiding framework of democratic governance. Arguing for a ‘profound transition’ in thinking about security,
the report states that, ‘for too long, the concept of security has been shaped by the potential
for conflict between states, or equated with threats to a country’s borders. However, for most
people today, a feeling of insecurity arises more from worries about daily life than from the
dread of a cataclysmic world event. Job security, income security, health security, environmental security, security from crime – these are the emerging concerns of human security all over
the world.’
To address the growing challenge of human security, a new development paradigm was needed
that put people at the centre of development, regarded economic growth as a means and not
an end, protected the life opportunities of future generations as well as the present generations, and respected the natural systems on which all life depended. The point of reference was
the individual and not the state: ‘In the final analysis, human security is a child who did not die,
a disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in
violence, a dissident who was not silenced’ (UNDP 1994:22).
Threats to human security occur in seven main categories, namely economic security, food
security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, and
political security.
The human security approach has strongly influenced the activities of the United Nations,
among others. In March 1999 the Government of Japan and the United Nations Secretariat
established the UN Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS), tasked with financing activities
by UN organisations to translate the human security approach into practical action. The same
year saw the formation of a Human Security Network (HSN), comprising foreign ministers of
13 countries, to promote the concept of human security as a feature of all national and international policies.
In 2001, an independent Commission on Human Security (CHS) was established to mobilise
support for the concept of human security, develop it further as an operational tool, and outline a concrete plan for its implementation. It presented its final report to the UN SecretaryGeneral in 2003. Following its conclusion, an Advisory Board on Human Security (ABHS) was
established, tasked with advising the UN Secretary-General on the propagation of the concept
of human security and the management of the UNTFHS.
105
In 2004, a Human Security Unit (HSU) was established in the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), with the principal objective of mainstreaming
human security in UN activities. In 2012, after seven years of discussions, UN member states
agreed on a common understanding of human security. Embodied in a General Assembly
resolution, this milestone agreement paved the way for the formal application of the concept
of human security in the work of the UN.
Outside the UN, the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF) at the University of Duisburg,
Germany, has developed a multidimensional Human (In)Security Index, and sought to demonstrate its practical use in the political realm to identify threats to human security (Werthes/
Heaven/Vollnhals 2011). Today, the concept of human security is more relevant than ever:
due to globalisation, threats to human security are increasingly transnational in their origins
and their effects. Their intensity, particularly environmental concerns, are increasing (see Du
Pisani 2007:20).
The challenge of economic transformation in Mozambique
Since 2003, the economies of several African countries have grown rapidly, averaging GDP
growth of up to 5 per cent a year. Much has been written about the rise of Africa, also comparing it with the rise of South East Asian states. However, these higher rates of GDP growth
have not yet led to the economic transformation of most African states. The Oxford Dictionary
of Geography (2004) defines economic transformation as ‘the change in the structure of an
economy over time from a subsistence economy, through industrialisation, to an industrial or
even a post-industrial society’. As such, economic transformation and diversification are vital
dimensions of development. Analysts generally agree that economic transformation entails
economic growth combined with structural change. Thus Syrquin notes that, ‘While structural
change can be defined as an alteration in the relative importance of economic sectors, the
interrelated processes of structural change that accompany economic development are jointly
referred to as economic transformation’ (1988:3). Breisinger (2008:12) argues that economic
transformation can typically be broken up into the following dynamics:
The economic structure changes during the transformation period, when industrialisation triggers a rapid increase in the share of manufacturing in the economy, while there is
a concomitant decline in agriculture´s share. In other words, the industrial sector works
as an engine for economic transformation, while the agricultural sector is a provider of
surplus; as a consequence, a share of total labour force employed in the agricultural sector
falls, while that in other sectors rises, and the centre of a country´s economy shifts from
the rural areas to the city.
If this traditional definition is applied to Mozambique, it seems clear that, although its economy is growing, no structural changes have yet taken place. Put differently, economic growth
thus far has largely been ‘jobless’ through mega-projects carried out mainly by foreign companies. Mozambique has still not moved from a subsistence to an industrial or post-industrial
economic model. The only structural change so far has been the transition3 from the centrally
planned economy of the socialist government after independence to a free market model
introduced via the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in 1986. As the OECD has stated
in its most recent African Economic Outlook (2013; 259): ‘Despite more than a decade of sus-
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tained economic growth, Mozambique’s economy did not undergo any significant structural
change, limiting its capacity to sustainably reduce poverty.’
Recent natural resource discoveries may alter the country’s development path and lead to a
thorough economic transformation if incomes from those resources trigger investments in
job-creating industries. However, today the low level of economic development remains the
main reason for the poor quality of life of most of Mozambique’s people. In fact, Mozambique
is still classified as one of the worst human (in)security performers worldwide, ranking 12th
out of 209 analysed countries (Werthes/Heaven/Vollnhals 2011:39). In order to fully understand the state of human security in Mozambique, one has to examine its history.
Phases of Mozambique’s economic development
Exploitation and dependence
Mozambique has always been integrated into global trade via the Indian Ocean. The first
involvement in an international economic system was Swahili trade, which dominated the
entire East African coast for centuries, with the coast of Mozambique forming the southern
extension of the African-Arabian trading network. Until today, Indian traders have dominated
important sectors of the economy, further stimulated by India’s rapid rise as a global power
and one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Contacts between Portugal and what
is today called Mozambique can be traced back to the end of the 15th century. In 1884–5, the
African continent was divided up by colonial powers at the Berlin Conference, with Portugal
officially acquiring power over Mozambique. The Mozambican economy during the Portuguese colonial era was outwardly oriented on a permanent basis, and like those of all colonies,
skewed through the exploitation of local natural and human resources. However, due to its own
internal economic weakness, Portugal was not able to effectively organise the economic exploitation of its colony. This is why a concessionary company system was established between 1889
and 1892. Commercial enterprises, relying partly on Portuguese but largely on foreign capital,
rented Mozambican territory and acted like ‘a state within a state’ by elaborating economic
policy as well as performing administrative functions in some regions of Mozambique. Plantations and farms were introduced as new forms of production, with Mozambican peasants
frequently being expropriated and exploited as migrant or seasonal labour (Cross 1987: 554;
Meyns 1981: 42; Mondlane/Shore 1969).
Only in 1926 did Portugal start to align its ‘overseas provinces’ more closely with its own goals
of national industrialisation. This was done by forcing Mozambican peasants to cultivate cotton, sugar, and rice. The products of this coercive policy were transported to Portugal and used
in the textile sector, among others. In the 1960s Portugal started to expand the strategy of plantation and settler agriculture, mainly producing cash crops for export. The system of plantation
and settler agriculture remained predominant until the end of the colonial era. Mozambican
peasants received very little in the way of support from the colonial administration and therefore had a hard time competing with the large-scale production of Portuguese plantations and
farms. An additional shack tax forced many local peasants out of subsistence farming and into
selling their labour for a low price. The exploitation of labour was actually the colony’s most
important economic resource, because at the time there were no other valuable resources to
be exploited (Hedges 1999: 88-93; Isaacman 1991: 195-237).
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Industrial development in the form of agricultural products such as cotton, sugar and cashew
nuts began in the 1960s as a result of a gradual import substitution programme (Hedges 1999:
161, Meyns 1981: 44). The Mozambican economy under colonialism was endemically burdened by a huge trade deficit, as the costs of imports always exceeded export revenue. Given
this large structural trade deficit, Mozambique used other sources of foreign exchange – such
as payments for port and railway facilities by neighbouring countries, and money remitted by
Mozambican migrant labourers employed outside the country – to pay for its imports (Cross
1987:569; Meyns 1981: 43, 44). All these sources of foreign exchange were largely related to the
South African economy.
The Mozambican economy, crippled by its failed economic model, witnessed capital flight,
reduced production, and distribution difficulties in the pre-war years. In fear of a future that
was uncertain at best in Mozambique, 185 000 out of 200 000 Portuguese left the country
shortly after the revolution in Portugal in 1975 put an end to the colonial wars. Due to the
sudden flight of the white colonial minority regime, Mozambique lost almost its entire skilled
workforce. All skilled and semi-skilled workers in the colonial economy returned to the mother
country, where they added to the pressure on unemployment. In 1975, about 95 per cent of the
Mozambican population was still illiterate (Cross 1987: 565, Woolman 2003, 32).
The vision of an independent economy
After a decade of armed struggle by FRELIMO against the colonial regime, and the Carnation
Revolution in Portugal, Mozambique finally received its independence in 1975. The new government, led by President Samora Máchel, set out to establish an autonomous national economy which would place the country on a new development path. At this historical juncture,
Mozambique sought to become a developing state. According to Mkandawire, a developmental state is one ‘whose policies are based on an ideology of development, and one who is seriously attempting to deploy its administrative and political resources to the task of economic
development, whatever the outcomes of these attempts’ (2001: 291).
In line with this, the government’s main priority was to improve the well-being of its citizens.
The ruling party also created a new national identity for Mozambicans, based on the concept
of the ‘homem novo’ (new human). This was meant to create a new national unity, and was
also perceived as essential for economic development. ‘Homem novo’ was meant to transcend
traditional and superstitious ways of living, and rely on science, rationalism and modernity
instead. In these ways, FRELIMO adopted a socialist development ideology in terms of which
the state sought to play a decisive role in economic affairs (Sumich 2001; Meyns 1979: 139).
Even though Mozambique has great agricultural potential, FRELIMO took over an economy
which was heavily dependent on the importation of basic foodstuffs (rice, maize and wheat).
As a result, the new government prioritised food production over export products. The
‘national economic project’ was marked by two priorities: an increase in food production, and
the industrial processing of raw materials such as cotton, cashews, vegetables and meat.
Emphasis was put on the agricultural sector, where the state sought to intervene and increase
productivity by promoting aldeias communais (communal villages), cooperative trade, and
collective fields managed by collectives and not individuals (Meyns 1979: 171). The second
form of organising the agricultural sector was by building state-owned farms. Private capitalist
enterprises were still allowed, as long as they served national interests. The notion of a socialist
central state and communal villages was accompanied by resettlements of the population to
enhance supply and control by the state. Mass organisations and ‘dinamizadores’ (associa-
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tions of citizens belonging to FRELIMO) were established to propagate the new economic and
political model. The failure of the socialist economic model was a cumulative factor leading
to the civil war, as the socialist strategy disrupted the economic structure at the local level.
In 1978, only three years after independence, the national economy was in dire straits. Fifty
per cent of export revenues were spent on importing food, and Mozambique`s economy was
suffering from soaring trade deficits, just like in colonial times.
The wartime economy
The Mozambican intra-state war (1977–92) is often referred to as a regional war of destabilisation embedded in the broader context of the Cold War, since both parties, FRELIMO and RENAMO, were backed by major Cold War players (Fandrych 1998; Hanlon 1984; Manning 2002)
while being heavily influenced by regional developments. FRELIMO supported the Zimbabwe
African National Union (ZANU), the leading liberation movement seeking to overthrow the
Rhodesian government. Originally known as MNR/RENAO, RENAMO was established by the
Rhodesian Central Intelligence Office (CIO) to undermine ZANU on Mozambican soil. When
Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, South Africa took over financial support of RENAMO.
UN sanctions against Rhodesia led to the closure of the Beira Corridor, with adverse consequences for the Mozambican import and export industry. Labour migration to South Africa
and therefore income opportunities were restricted. The most obvious cost of the civil war
for the Mozambican economy was the destruction and erosion of immobile capital as well as
human capital. As Collier has noted, ‘civil war is development in reverse’, and tends to reduce
growth by about 2,3 per cent a year (2007:27). The cash crop export sector suffered big losses, as
the reduction to two thirds of its pre-war productivity levels shows. Commercial cattle farming,
the rail system, and the manufacturing sector were destroyed, and many people were pushed
back into subsistence agriculture. Besides capital destruction, the long-term development
potential of Mozambique`s economy was saddled with constraints due to an increasing fiscal
deficit, uncertainty, and economic inefficiency.
An important change in the Mozambican economy took place when the government joined
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) in 1984 – still during the war
– and subsequently adopted Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) aimed at introducing
a transition to a liberal market economy after independence. The main focus of the SAPs was
to minimise the role of the state in the economy, with state intervention only occurring in the
face of market failures (Castel-Branco/Cramer/Hailu 2001: 8). Privatisation, liberalisation and
deregulation were expected to increase economic efficiency and productivity as well as the
international investment rate. Moreover, Mozambique’s integration into global capitalism was
expected to help alleviate inequality and poverty. Another important feature of the SAPs was
that the Mozambican government had to reduce public spending. Due to these adjustments,
government salaries fell. Doctors’ earnings, for example, dropped from $350 a month in 1991
to less than $100 a month in 1996, and teachers’ salaries from $110 to $40-60 a month over the
same period (Naiman/Watkins 1999:28).
The Mozambican civil war had far-reaching implications for human security. In the course of
the war, a quarter of all local residents were displaced internally or fled the country (4 to 5 million). These intense migration flows reflected high levels of insecurity and economic concerns.
Human security during the war was not only threatened by high mortality rates of soldiers and
civilians (up to one million deaths) – it was further eroded by war strategies of intentionally
destroying government facilities such as schools, hospitals, or health clinics as well as all other
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infrastructure (Brück 1997: 38/39, 54). Aid from Western and Eastern Europe played a key part
in keeping Mozambicans alive during the war; this led to a dependence on aid, which reached
US$1 billion at the end of the war in 1992, a level equivalent to almost 75 per cent of the GDP
(Hanlon 2007:7). After the implementation of the Rome General Peace Accords agreed upon
by Joaquim Chissano (FRELIMO) and Afonso Dhlakama (RENAMO), a UN peace mission
(ONUMOZ) was established in December 1992, and terminated in January 1995. ONUMOZ’s
mandate was to monitor and verify the ceasefire, the separation and concentration of forces,
their demobilisation, and the collection, storage and destruction of weapons.
The aid-based economy
Mozambique’s relationship with donors and the international community differed in each of
the three post-independence decades:
• During the socialist project (1975–85), Mozambique was basically supported by the socialist
bloc, the Nordic countries, and Italy. Following the realignment during the mid-1980s to the
United States, it allowed NGOs to enter the country. In 1984, Mozambique joined the Bretton Wood Institutions, the IMF, and the World Bank. In 1986/87, it also received funds from
the Structural Adjustment Facility (SAF), followed by an enhanced SAF in 1990. With the
implementation of the Washington Consensus, the United States became the major donor.
• After the civil war, the country continued to depend on foreign aid, which shifted from
humanitarian emergency aid to long-term development policies.
• After the multiparty elections in 1994, Mozambique became a ‘donor darling’ since it had
made the crucial step from war to free elections. The international community hoped that
Mozambique would become a positive example of African democratic state formation.
According to the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), net Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Mozambique in 2004 amounted to about US$1,2 billion. The
World Bank, the European Commission, and the United States were the biggest donors, followed by Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. According
to IMF figures, aid comprised 48 per cent of the government budget in 2004.
• At present, aid is estimated to provide about 35 per cent of the state budget. The commitments for general budget support (GBS) made thus far by Mozambique’s 19 biggest development partners (G19) for 2014 total US$580 million. Of the amount pledged so far, US$310
million will be direct budgetary aid, and the remaining US$270 million will be channeled
to specific economic sectors. If the total contribution were to match those in 2013, the
Mozambican government would receive an additional US$90 million. The overall bilateral
contribution of the OECD donors – including support to sectoral programmes – in 2012 was
US$1,72 billion, which was still almost third of the total annual budget of about US$6 billion
(according to the Avaliação Final do Governo de Moçambique ao Desempenho dos Parceiros
de Apoio Programático, or PAPs, 2013:10). Despite the financial crisis, and cuts made by Portugal and Spain in particular, the contributions of Western donors remain large, and have
even increased in total numbers.
These funds were and are mainly channeled through the state. FRELIMO has been in control
of all state institutions since independence, and has not been challenged up to the present.
RENAMO is reverting to a ‘rejectionist force’, torpedoing constructive policy proposals while
losing members to a breakaway party, the conservative Mozambique Democratic Movement
(MDM), which was established in 2009. So far the MDM has only won eight seats in Parliament as well as control over two municipalities, and is therefore not able to put pressure on
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the ruling party. While RENAMO is currently turning back into an armed rebel group, there is
basically no political force to challenge FRELIMO.
Given this politically biased situation, the donor community serves as a powerful counterbalance to the ruling party, demanding good governance and structural changes within the political system. But as Hout has put it: ‘The development agencies continue to operate effectively as
“anti-politics machines” … . Although they are concerned about the political context in which
they operate, they feel they should not themselves be concerned with politics in their partner
countries’ (2012: 407). Most donors do not have direct access to power politics, instead operating via state institutions that are responsible in the administrative sense. However, donor
countries do want to see tangible results, and adverse realities on the ground and the mismatch in communication often lead to frustrations on both sides.
In Mozambique, these surfaced after the elections in 2009 in the form of a ‘donor strike’, with
payments being temporarily suspended to put pressure on the government. Although the
‘donor darling’ era seems to be over, Western donors still give the country a lot of money (see
above). Many European countries have cut or reduced aid because of a lack of progress towards
good governance, and growing domestic pressures due to the financial crisis in Europe. The
Danish ambassador to Mozambique recently emphasised that the Mozambican government
should make an effort to improve transparency in the public sector and promote inclusive
growth. This comes after several civil society organisations have recorded the involvement
of government officials in illegal business activities, such as the illegal shipment of timber to
China.7 Several leading figures with FRELIMO are demanding greater participation in decision
making within the party, as well as more democratic governance.
Since the adoption of the free market model, Mozambique has not formulated a new ‘national
project’: a comprehensive, nationally owned development strategy based on a clear vision of
future needs and policy priorities which are not formulated by foreign advisers. So far its economic development strategy is based on its Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PARP) prepared in collaboration with the World Bank and IMF. The IMF’s fifth and latest assessment of
benchmarks, for 2011–2014, states that Mozambique’s macroeconomic performance remains
strong, and that programme implementation is satisfactory. Economic growth in 2012 was
buoyant, and inflation fell sharply. Coal exports are expected to further increase the rate of
economic growth despite the weak global economy. The review adds that high levels of poverty call for the swift implementation of the updated PARP in order to generate more inclusive
growth (IMF 2013:1).
In contrast with this largely positive outlook, Mozambique remains near the bottom of the
UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a composite measure of what the
UNDP regards as the three fundamental dimensions of human development: life expectancy,
educational attainment, and a decent standard of living. Each of these is given a weighting of
one third in calculating the index. A country’s score can range in theory from zero to one. Some
developed countries come close to one – the index is headed by Norway, with a score of 0.955.
Only two countries – Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo – have lower scores than
Mozambique on the 2012 index. Mozambique’s score is 0.327, only slightly higher than the
previous year’s score, but much better than its 2000 score of 0.247, and its 1980 score of 0.217.
According to the UN, Mozambique’s HDI score has shown an accumulated growth of 51 per
cent since 1980. Despite this, it remains one of the least developed countries in the world.
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From aid to business: natural resources and growing investment
Mozambique’s economy has grown steadily in recent years, with GDP growth averaging
7 per cent a year from 2009 until 2011, and forecast to average 7,5 per cent a year until 2017. This
is being fuelled by the discovery of large deposits of natural resources – mainly coal and gas –
and an increase in FDI due to the discovery of and expected growing earnings from natural
resources. This economic trend is reflected in net private capital flows to Mozambique, which
increased significantly from US$43 million in 2009 to US$568 million in 2011 (Vollmer 2013: 3).
According to current estimates (May 2013), Mozambique is set to become one of the biggest coal
and gas producers in the world. The gas reserves in the Rovuma Basin off Mozambique’s East
Coast are estimated at 70 trillion cubic feet, which would make it the fourth greatest reserve in
the world. International companies like Anardako (United States) and ENI (Italy) are exploring
the Basin off Cabo Delgado. Anardako plans to invest US$18 billion before the expected production of liquid natural gas (LNG) begins in 2018. According to the Ministry for Mineral Resources,
investments in extractive industries jumped from US$184 million in 2005 to more than US$2,5
billion in 2012, and is predicted to reach US$4 billion a year by 2018 (AIM News 2013).
The exploitation of coal in the province of Tête has already begun, but is slower than previously
estimated by the investing companies because of a lack of infrastructure, especially the functioning railways and harbours needed to ship the coal to India, China, and Brazil. Nevertheless, the
scale of coal production is expected to increase tenfold over the next ten years. Vale do Rio Doce
(Brazil) and Rio Tinto (Australia), two of the biggest mining companies in the world, are active
in Mozambique. Due to these discoveries, expected revenues from the extractive sector could
create the necessary fiscal space to support the transformation of the economy in the long run.
Thanks to these discoveries, state revenue from the extractive sector could reach the level of the
current national budget. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, revenue from mining
could outstrip current levels of aid by 2017, and place Mozambique among the highest recipients of FDI in Africa. By contrast, companies investing in Mozambique believe it can deliver
real productive income by 2019/2020.
The government predicts independence from aid at current levels within the next ten years,
and foresees a change in the relationship with the current development partners. In a recent
interview with the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECPM), President
Armando Guebuza of Mozambique stated: ‘ … [T]he relationship will probably change in the
sense that as time goes on, and as we have more resources in our budget, we are going to need
more business and commercially oriented relations with those countries that have traditionally provided development funding. It will shift as time passes; in about 10 years we will not be
relying on donations like we are today.’
In June 2013 – in response to the resource discoveries and its implications for economic transformation – the Ministry for Planning and Development published a national development
strategy (Estratégia Nacional de Desenvolvimento, or ENDE) which aims at improving the living conditions of the population through a structural transformation of the economy, including the extension and diversification of its productive base (ENDE 2013:5). It aims at creating
special economic zones (SEZs), which have played a key role in China’s economic model. The
Chinese SEZs (especially the earlier ones) successfully tested the workings of the market economy and new institutions, and became models for the rest of the country to follow. Together
with numerous industrial clusters, the SEZs have contributed significantly to national GDP,
employment, exports, and the attraction of foreign investment. In line with this, ENDE has
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two main goals, namely to provide incentives for the development of the private sector, and to
finance public investment.
South–South trade as a key driver in economic change
Mozambique’s economic growth tends to be driven more by international developments than
by national policy: growing South–South trade and South–South development co-operation
will have a major impact on the national economy, and the BRICS countries are likely to play
a vital role. While European donors are slowly rethinking their commitment in Mozambique
– still one of the poorest countries in the world – the so-called new powers are keen to join the
scramble for natural resources and land as well as the business opportunities offered by a new
market.
The demand by rapidly developing countries for resources to feed their national industries
is one of the main reasons for Africa’s economic success over the past ten years. China is the
main driver of this development. In southern Africa, China is able to re-establish old political
ties with the former liberation movements. The combination of ideological rhetoric based on
South–South cooperation and an African–Chinese alliance in the struggle for liberation from
the former colonial countries feeds into the discourse among ruling African elites who have
not managed to legitimise their dominance beyond liberation rhetoric. In addition to meeting
the Chinese demand for resources, Africa is also a potential market for Chinese products: over
the past ten years, Chinese-African trade has grown at 30 per cent a year on average, reaching US$200 billion at present. Mozambique is not yet in the same league as countries such as
Angola and Sudan, which already supply oil, but the foundations for closer co-operation are
being laid in the form of infrastructure projects and political co-operation.10 Trade between
China and Mozambique was estimated at US$1 billion in 2012.
Chinese development assistance to Mozambique is still small, compared to loans by the World
Bank. This largely comprises commercial loans granted by the state-owned China Export
Import Bank. These loans are covered by natural resources in African countries for infrastructure projects undertaken by Chinese construction companies (Grassi 2013:3). Despite the
fact that this resource-based relationship is sharply criticised in the West, China´s poverty
reduction work is impressive, and more suited to Africa’s search for appropriate development
models than conventional Western models of economic development. At the same time, the
environmental costs of China’s economic development model are well known and need to be
urgently contained.
From a governance perspective, the authoritarian Asian development model is relevant to
Mozambique as it emphasises ‘stability’ and ‘national unity’, both principles of the ruling
FRELIMO party. During Guebuza’s latest visit to China in May 2013, he declared that the aim
of his trip was to ‘boost existing ties of friendship, solidarity and co-operation between the
two countries’. His previous visit, in 2012, resulted in loan agreements from the China Export
Import Bank for the construction of the Maputo ring road (US$315 million) and the Catembe
bridge (US$725 million) (AIM news online, 13 May 13 2013).
The search for alliances based on Asian development models is not limited to China: Guebuza
has recently met with leaders of Mongolia and Myanmar for talks on common strategies. What
do they have in common? Large reserves in resources, a post-socialist political system, and
neighbouring BRICS countries, which are crucial elements of national development and models of economic growth (see Foreign Policy 2013).
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Looking for new allies in a changing world order beyond Asia, Brazil is Mozambique’s fourth
largest trading partner besides Portugal and South Africa. The lusophone connection is an
advantage; ex-President Lula visited Mozambique several times in 2013. India is present
through the Indian Ocean trade and infrastructure projects. South Africa, the fourth BRICS
country relevant to Mozambique (Russia does not play a role in the Mozambican economy)
remains its biggest bilateral trading partner in the region.
Mozambique’s geopolitical setting is its main advantage in respect of South–South trade; the
Indian Ocean is an important gateway to global trade, and therefore a significant source of geopolitical power. Half of all containers and 70 per cent of oil are shipped via the Indian Ocean.
The security interests of new and old powers in the Indian Ocean include piracy, human as well
as drug trafficking, and a lack of control over resource management by African states. From an
African perspective, the Indian Ocean is extremely important; according to the African Union
(AU), Africa depends on the sea for 90 per cent of all exports and imports. Furthermore, fish
is the main source of protein for large parts of the coastal population, as well as an important source of income. Illegal fishing, environmental pollution, and climate change will create
enormous challenges for maritime security and trade in the near future.
Resource incomes: opportunity for growth and risk to good governance
Resource earnings have not fostered democratic development in recent African history. Most
resource-rich countries have become dependent on mining or fuel production, and have
failed to use revenue from extractive industries to diversify their economies or invest in human
resources. Among others, this is explained by the fact that political elites in those countries
are unaffected by elections, as they can simply buy political power via corrupt institutions and
powerful individuals. Besides corruption, the main challenge to the governments of resourcerich African countries is their lack of capacity to monitor their contacts with foreign companies. For historical reasons, Mozambique lacks lawyers, engineers, and technicians in mining
and other relevant fields. It therefore depends upon foreign skilled labour in almost all sectors.
The key question is whether Mozambique will be able to avoid the formation of a rent-seeking
elite in the midst of extreme poverty, and hence growing inequality and insecurity. The risk is
high that Mozambique will relive the ‘resource curse’, as its institutions are run by the governing party without any checks and balances. Members of the government are still stakeholders
in private companies, although a new code of ethics (código de ética), which came into force in
2013, now prohibits members of parliament from holding shares in private companies.
Civil society organisations such as the Centro de Integridade Pública (CIP) and the media have
increasingly criticised a lack of transparency in negotiations between the government and foreign companies, as well as the eventual contracts. Some critics have called for some major
concessions – and especially their taxation – to be renegotiated. However, civil society agendasetting is often donor-driven, and most NGOs are based in the capital of Maputo. Only some
address the plight of the extremely poor people living in the rural areas where the resources
are being extracted. However, there are indications that Mozambican NGOs are played a growing role in the public discourse about transparent government, environmental protection, and
access to information (see CIP 2013). The social cost of extractive industries is well known:
ordinary citizens hardly ever profit from resource extraction. The relocation of people living in
areas earmarked for exploration or resource extraction holds the potential for conflict. Whereas
the government and companies are legally obliged to provide prior information and compen-
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sation, this often only happens after consultation between the government and enterprises.
Communities therefore have little influence over their fate. At best they are informed about the
consequences of mega-projects, and have no avenues for participating in the decision-making
process. Public resistance is often suppressed by government forces. The urban population is
also affected by this looming ‘resource curse’: rising property, fuel, and good prices are among
the side-effects of the growing inflow of ‘fast cash’ from international companies and their staff.
Since salaries are not growing apace, the living standards of poor urban dwellers are declining.
At the same time, an elite is growing and feeding a ‘bubble economy’. This is visible in the form
of luxury cars and the construction of lavish apartments and houses as well as a luxury service
sector. Mozambique is a young nation in demographic terms: most of its people are younger
than 35 (SADC defines youths as people aged 18–35 years). Younger people no longer identify
with the liberation movement, and expect to benefit from the economic boom. As in South
Africa, a failure to provide young people with jobs could trigger conflict, since their opportunities to press their fears and desires through political channels are limited. One positive
development is an increase in the budget for social welfare programmes, aimed at mitigating
poverty and therefore reducing the chances for social unrest. Nevertheless, growing food insecurity and rising costs of living are undermining the living standards of most Mozambicans,
54 per cent of whom are officially classified as living in poverty.
The undermining effect of the shadow economy on growth and governance
Mozambique’s illegal economy is also growing, largely due to the growth in global maritime
trade. Mozambique has been used as a corridor by drug traffickers since the mid-1990s. According to experts, the value of illegal drugs passing through Mozambique is probably more than
all legal foreign trade combined (Hübschle 2010:27). In fact, analysts believe drug money has
played a major role in Mozambique’s record growth in recent years (UNODC 2013:8, 28, 34).
Besides maritime trafficking, Mozambique has several land corridors that serve as pathways
for trafficking children for sexual exploitation and forced labour. A large proportion of southern African cocaine trafficking occurs in Mozambique, where the drug arrives via Brazil from
Latin American producer countries (Hübschle 2010:27; Reismann/Lalá 2012:24).
Small arms often proliferate in post-war societies, and this is also the case in Mozambique:
although disarmament programmes have been successfully implemented, small arms are still
widely available, and are being mismanaged. Among other things, the government does not
know how many small arms are in use by its security forces. If a government cannot even control the movement and use of small arms within its own institutions, it clearly cannot control
the illicit proliferation and use of small arms in the country. Police inefficiency and corruption have led to an alarming trend of vigilantism in Mozambique: according to human rights
organisations, there were 78 instances of extrajudicial killings, often by ‘death squads’, in 2009
(Reismann/Lalá 2012:29). Combating organised crime and its negative impacts on democratic
governance would require police reform, enhanced border controls, and the improved training of security forces and government officials at the nexus between corruption and organised
crime. Besides improving law enforcement, criminal laws in the region should be harmonised
in response to transnational criminal networks, among others to enable co-ordinated intelligence work. At present Mozambican crime statistics do not list organised crime as a category,
and the Criminal Investigation Department does not have a unit for dealing with organised
crime.
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Outlook: lines of conflict, and possible interventions
The potential for conflict in times of slow political but rapid economic and social change is
high, and ongoing economic transformation tends to provoke conflict between different interest groups. Nevertheless, conflicts do not have to be violent, and can even lead to positive
change if their sources are identified and addressed. The main sources of conflict in Mozambique are as follows:
• Anticipated revenues from the resource boom has triggered raised expectations, but has
not contributed significantly to the national budget thus far. However, cash inflows from
FDI, illegal business activities, and corruption are visible and are fuelling greed as well as
expectations.
• This is leading to a conflict over wealth distribution within FRELIMO, between FRELIMO
and RENAMO, and between FRELIMO and multinational companies and local communities, especially about access to licenses and land. This poses a major challenge to peace and
security. On 22 October 2013, RENAMO ended the 1992 peace accord after government
forces had attacked its base in central Mozambique (BBC News Africa, 22 October). Analysts
believe further attacks from either side would significantly worsen the economic outlook, as
investors fear the negative economic impacts of renewed violence and instability.
• The latest incidents of violence between members of RENAMO and security forces is due
to growing greed as well as conflicts over the distribution of the fruits of resource exploitation within the ruling party and between the ruling party and the opposition / former rebel
group. Expectations of the benefits of economic growth are higher than social and political
capacities to absorb the economic transformation and its impacts at the current stage of the
country’s transformation.
• Young urban people are demanding greater participation in political and economic life,
and the gap between the urban and rural population will probably continue to widen in
the coming years. This could lead to renewed social unrest – similar to those in 2010 – and
increasing levels of crime.
• A lack of institutional capacities at all levels is hampering economic and social development. In the long term, revenue from FDI and resource extraction could free Mozambique
from a dependence on external aid. Until then, its institutions need to develop to be able to
act independently from external donor support (budget and experts).
Chances for a successful economic transformation and increased human security
The ‘resource curse’ must be actively counterbalanced by creating local manufacturing capacity – and therefore jobs – linked to the extractive industries. The economy should not rely
solely on the extractive industry. Other sectors need to be developed and diversified, with the
most promising sectors being agriculture and tourism. Incentives for small and medium-size
enterprises should be enhanced by a more liberal labour code, and the expansion of micro
loans. Small and medium-sized entrepreneurs often criticise the interest rate, which currently
standards at 25 per cent. This is one of the reasons why most business investment comes from
external investors, and why business revenues leave the country instead of being reinvested
and diversified. Maritime access to global markets holds great growth opportunities for the
Mozambican economy. Resource management and environmental protection have to be
actively addressed at a regional as well as continental level, in order to cope with increased oil
and gas discoveries. The AU and SADC should work together to develop strategies for maritime
security centred on coastal communities and human security.
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The high levels of demand for Mozambique’s resources and land by rising powers could be
beneficial if foreign investors train and educate local people. Some enterprises have started to
do this as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes. In the next decade,
the new powers will probably play a far greater role in shaping Mozambique’s future than the
European countries. Besides direct business and trade interests, an effort should be made to
see whether Mozambique could adopt aspects of the poverty reduction strategies of China,
India, and Brazil, but integrate them into more sustainable patterns of growth and avoid the
inequality gap that the transformation countries are suffering from. A renewed focus on job
creation, agricultural reform, and economic diversification holds the key to more inclusive
economic growth in the period ahead.
In the long term, the human security of Mozambican citizens will hinge on whether its political leaders manage the impending economic transformation in such a way that it creates jobs,
reduces inequality, and protects the environment. Only if the public sector, private sector, and
civil society work together to allow the majority to participate in, and benefit from, the increase
in national and international business activity will Mozambique become a sovereign nation
which is actively shaping its destiny and improving the well-being of its people – rather than
one which is exchanging one form of dependency for another.
Endnotes
1
A shortened version of this chapter was published as a Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) International Policy
Analysis (IPA) in August 2013.
2
For more on the security–development nexus, see Koponen 2010, Sending 2004, UN 2010, Cawthra 2009,
Stewart 2004, Owen 2004, and Gaspar 2008.
3
Economic transition is the process of moving from one economic system to another. Broadly speaking,
there are three types of economic systems: centrally planned economies, liberal market economies, and
mixed economies.
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8
Southern African maritime security: problems and prospects
The sea has always been stranger than land, an unexplored area where a permanent human
presence and the demarcation of boundaries seemed impossible. For a long time, the politics
of measuring such boundaries had as a yardstick the reach of the cannonball and the rule of the
‘mare liberum’ formulated in the early 17th century by Grotius’s declaration that the sea should
be used by all, and would not belong to anyone. Hence the perspective, which still exists today,
of the sea as a common space that everyone could benefit from, and have the duty to preserve.
Being a space to cross, not to stay, its main importance besides fishing came gradually to lie
in its communication routes, currently referred to as sea lines of communication (SLOCs).
In other words, the sea existed to be traversed, while land was there to be occupied, and the
object of notions of power and sovereignty. It was on land that states established their foundations; hence the surprise of Carl Schmitt that the figure chosen to designate state power
was Leviathan, an aquatic monster.1 Since the colonisation of the Southern worlds, Southern
America and Africa in particular, was about the occupation and exploitation of continental
resources, and the sea was important only as a route for transferring wealth to colonial headquarters, the maritime dimension of colonial sovereignty was never a serious issue.
This way of looking at the sea started to change in the aftermath of World War Two, when
the political division of the world was generally completed and the ‘territorial’ dimension of
the sea started to gain importance, particularly through the growing fishing industry and the
exploration of sub-aquatic soils. In 1945, President Harry Truman announced the right of the
United States over the continental shelf, and in 1958 the first United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was signed, introducing concepts such as territorial sea, contiguous
zone, and continental shelf. Later on, in 1982, the third UNCLOS established a more precise
way of demarcating and measuring aquatic areas, and introduced the concept of the Exclusive
Economic Zone (EEZ), an area extending 200 nautical miles from the edge of the territorial
sea, where coastal nations could claim exclusive exploitation rights over all natural resources.
However, post-colonial Africa remained beyond these issues for most of the second half of the
20th century, busy as it was with settling disputes and consolidating political borders in the hinterland, and deprived of the means to integrate the sea into its national economies. This trend
was reinforced throughout the 1990s by structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) imposed
to rescue African economies which, in the course of dealing with shrinking states and rendering economies accountable and competitive, never paid significant attention to the maritime
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dimension. Moreover, the impact of the sea on other spheres of activity besides fisheries, commerce and transport was not seen very clearly then.
This sounds like a bad irony if we consider that African coastal political entities historically participated in world trade by operating an interface between the sea and the hinterland, feeding
the former with goods to be exported, slaves in particular. It was unfortunate that Africa continued to look at the sea from a distance while a revolution was taking place in the 1980s with
the containerisation of maritime cargoes, which revived the competitiveness and importance
of sea transportation, particularly in view of the fact that the continent is surrounded by some
of the principal international maritime routes, and that almost 90 per cent of its commerce is
transported by sea. It was also unfortunate that this happened while foreign industrial fishing
trawlers were exhausting the main source of protein of African populations. For too long, this
non-existent relationship was disguised by the presence of African countries at the signing
ceremonies of the main international conventions related to the sea. Until very recently, the
sea has also been practically absent from African studies.
In the meantime, the sea was not seen as a place in need of security considerations, provided
that good order prevailed. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), while paying attention to the safety of life at sea (the Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, Convention was signed in
1974), barely mentioned security issues until 1988, when the Convention on the Suppression of
Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (the SUA Convention) came into force
in response to the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achile Lauro (Rahman 2009: 40ff ).
Following 9/11, the situation changed entirely as the sea became an insecure place, and the
bridge between safety and security at sea was established in several ways. Terrorist threats
could assume any form and come from everywhere, including the sea. The attacks on the USS
Cole and the French tanker Limburg in 2000 and 2002 respectively, and on oil platforms off the
coast of Iraq in 2004, accentuated the new trend. Oil tankers and international cargo ships were
now at risk, as were harbours. Suddenly the situation was reversed and coastal countries were
forced to look at the sea, instead of the hinterland, as the direction from where threats could
come. New measures were adopted, most notably the 2004 International Ship and Port Facility
Security (ISPS) Code.2
In the process, maritime security was no longer linked exclusively to geo-strategy and naval
attacks, but began to follow the transformation of security in general, now covering diverse
fields related to the functioning of societies, their economies, and their relations with the sea,
including fisheries, the environment, and health, and aimed at safeguarding them against a
wide range of threats and criminal activities such as illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU), smuggling, human trafficking, trafficking in narcotics and weapons, terrorism, and
of course piracy.
In Africa, after a slow climb up the security agenda, maritime security is becoming a central
issue, particularly in the context of the 2050 Maritime Security Strategy. The reason, or rather
reasons, are complex and intertwined, ranging from overfishing and other environmental
threats on both the western and eastern coasts, through piracy, to deep coastal transformation
in the wake of mining and energy resources exploration, amid growing evidence of a close
relationship between inshore and offshore activities and control. In any case, there is now a
growing awareness that neglecting the sea can lead to a loss of economic opportunities, and
even to serious economic threats.
The Brenthurst Foundation (2010: 10) defines maritime security from an African perspective as
‘anything that creates, sustains or improves the secure use of Africa’s waterways and the infra-
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Chapter 8: Southern African maritime security: problems and prospects
structure that supports these waterways’. Whatever the particular issue at hand, most threats
emerging from the sea – due to their magnitude, the fact that they are so closely intertwined,
and the fact that they produce such a diversity of impacts – demand co-operatively framed
responses. This applies to the global, continental, regional and even national levels, where
issues of maritime security should no longer be left to the military, but dealt with by the full
spectrum of social stakeholders.
The context of the threats to maritime security
Given that boundaries on water are almost impossible to establish, maritime threats resist
being separated from each other. However, it is clear that a maritime security threat in its hardest terms, such as a direct naval attack on the region or one of its member states, is a remote
possibility. Despite this, most of the threats to African coasts referred to earlier, and included
in a more comprehensive conception of maritime security, are present in southern Africa, and
appear to be worsening. If not properly addressed, some could develop into hard maritime
security threats, while others could jeopardise the economies, environment, and public health
of the societies and countries in the region.
Currently, piracy and armed robbery3 are regarded as the principal maritime security threats
to southern Africa. Originating on African coasts further to the north, they have spread southwards over the past few years, to reach the waters of southern Africa off both its east and west
coasts.
To the East, piracy off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden was reinvigorated from 2008
onwards, fed in particular by attacks on aid carried to Somalia in vessels of the World Food
Programme. The pattern was to hijack the ships and keep the crews and passengers as hostages
against the payment of large ransoms. These activities were so successful that, in the following
year, the number of hijackings and ransom amounts paid multiplied tenfold (Gilpin 2009: [6]).
In October 2008, seeking to secure a SLOC which carries one third of the crude oil traded
internationally, and combat the pirates, the UN Security Council adopted resolutions 1838
and 1851, which called on nations with vessels in the region to apply military force. In late
2008 the European Union decided to deploy operation NAVFOR Atalanta, a maritime mission
aimed at protecting maritime traffic in the region as well as improving humanitarian assistance in Somalia. The EU operation was added to NATO’s operation Ocean Shield and the US
Task Force 151 in the region to constitute an armada which has been stationed permanently
in the area for the past five years. Due to a range of factors, including the fact that ships began
to avoid Somalia, a greater awareness of the risk of piracy, and the presence of the international naval force, the pirates – now using ‘mother ships’ to support their skiffs – extended their
operations to the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the west coasts of India and the Maldives, as
well as the coasts of Kenya, Tanzania, the Seychelles, Mozambique, and Madagascar, where
surveillance was much softer and the risks far less. In November 2008, the supertanker Sirius
Star was hijacked 450 miles south-east of the Kenyan port of Mombasa. In late 2010, attacks
by pirates were reported off the coast of the Mozambique-Tanzania border and further south
off the city of Beira, where a fishing vessel, the Vega 5, was taken by Somali pirates, raising the
alarm in the southern African region.4 Since 2012, however, due to a series of factors including action against suspected skiffs, anti-pirate systems and armed protection on board ships,
action against pirate land bases, and a positive shift in the political situation in Somalia, the
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number of attacks has been steadily decreasing. In the first quarter of 2013, virtually no attacks
were reported.
On the West African coast, piracy and armed robbery have increased since the 1990s. They
started in the Niger Delta where the exploration of oil brought serious environmental degradation, pronounced community impoverishment and a very active insurgency, particularly
between 2006 and 2009.5 In this context, the ‘disorder that surrounds the oil industry’ grew
and became entrenched. Oil was siphoned directly from pipelines, domestically refined and
diverted to the black market in great quantities; oil companies were forced to pay protection
fees to groups to avoid kidnappings and ransoms; and the smuggling of subsidised fuel to markets across the Nigerian borders became common (UNODC 2013: 45). According to the Crisis
Group (2012: 6):
While some stolen crude is refined illegally in Nigeria, most is exported. Once at sea the oil
may be traded and transferred to other tankers before being taken to other West African
countries where there are refineries – Ghana, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire in particular –
and other destinations around the world, including India, the Far East and the countries
of the former Soviet Union. Profits from exporting oil illegally are used by criminal gangs
to launch pirate attacks on other vessels.
From around 2010, the unrest moved to the sea, with aggressive speedboat operations against
harboured tankers and offshore oil wells. It also began to spread, reaching Guinea Conakry in
the north and the Angolan province of Cabinda and the coast of the Democratic Republic of
Congo in the south, particularly during the past few years. The local and global impact of this
instability is enormous. Countries such as Benin were seriously affected; in 2011, activities in
the port of Cotonou, which handles 90 per cent of Benin’s external trade, were reduced by
70 per cent (UN SC S/2012/45: 4-5). In Nigeria, the costs of piracy amount to more than 5 per
cent of daily oil production. The impact is felt well beyond the region, since it supplies 40 per
cent and 29 per cent respectively of the oil used by the European Union and United States
(Chatham House 2012).
For a long time, the response to this situation has been weak, due to the complexity of the
threat, the absence of political will, the lack of a maritime perspective, and poor funding and
resources. France has developed some level of response, particularly in the form of Operation
Corymbe, a permanent naval presence in the region since 1990. While also aimed at fighting
piracy and armed robbery at sea, its main focus is to rescue French and European expatriates
and support French military forces active in the region.6
A co-ordinated local response only began to develop relatively recently, following an appeal by
the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and involving the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), and
the Gulf of Guinea Commission. Even if West and Central African states have a longer history
of marine engagement, and possess a ‘better capacity to create and institutionalise integrated
maritime strategies’ (Walker 2012), the situation not improved much, if at all.
In general terms, and despite the obvious differences, both the Somali and Gulf of Guinea
piracy threats have important aspects in common. To name just a few more general ones, they
render SLOCs unsafe and provoke an increase in privately contracted armed security on vessels, with obvious consequences for harbours and shores, not only in the relevant region but
also in the countries touched by those vessels. Piracy threats are also behind a steep rise in
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transport costs due to more onerous insurance costs and less direct routes, among other factors, with an obvious impact on national, regional and international economies.
Besides the search for new prey, strong armed response at sea is regarded as the main reason
why pirates on both coasts broadened their areas of activity to less risky areas: in the case of
Somalia, the presence of war vessels pushed the pirates further East and South, while in the
Gulf of Guinea ‘robust anti-piracy operations launched by Nigeria’ have served to push them to
more vulnerable countries (UN Security Council 2012), including Cabinda and the Congo off
the coast of Pointe Noire.7 In any case, if left unchecked, these two pirate clusters could help to
isolate southern Africa, with disastrous consequences.
Moreover, since pirates are not amphibious creatures, the root causes of piracy are not found
at sea, but on land. In other words, the perspective that regarded piracy as a maritime event to
be contained and repressed at sea is changing, and it is increasingly being acknowledged that
piracy is driven by land-based poverty and political instability.
The root causes of Somali piracy have been debated for some time. A strong school of thought,
which also emanates from Somalia, claims that overfishing by foreign industrial trawlers,
together with the systematic dumping of toxic waste by unscrupulous foreign companies, led
to the depletion of fish stocks in Somali waters, particularly following the end of the Siad Barre
regime in 1991, forcing the Somali fishermen to turn to piracy as a means of survival. This trend
was strengthened by a long period of political and security instability and by the collapse of the
state, together with the cyclic occurrence of severe famines. Allegedly unable to fish, coastal
Somalis were attracted to piracy which, according to Vines (2012: 3), allowed ‘the potential of
earning of up to $6,000 for an armed pirate foot soldier taking part in a successful hijacking of a
commercial vessel’, in a country where annual GDP per capita is about $600.
Others – including Tesch (2011), citing an Atlantic Council study on global piracy – retort that
Somalis, as nomad pastoralists, have never been fishermen, and that their piracy is a seawards
extension of warlord predation on land. This argument is supported by research which shows
that pirate sanctuaries are situated not in chaotic areas but rather in relatively well organised
areas under warlord or Islamic fundamentalist control. In any case, and acknowledging this
in- and offshore connection, international partners are now paying much closer attention to
events ashore. The European Union is a good example, with its new EUCAP Nestor mission
focusing on anti-piracy training and on regional capacity-building for the Horn of Africa and
the Western Indian Ocean in general.
In the Gulf of Guinea, the offshore and onshore connection is even more evident. Apparently, it
is the strong parallel market that provides buyers for diverted or stolen oil, in a system allegedly
nurtured and supported by entrenched corruption in the political and security administration
spheres, as well as in the private sector. This has resulted in what is euphemistically described
as a ‘lack of political will’ to fight piracy. Largely unchecked and unaddressed, piracy has continued to expand to new areas, assume new forms, and search for new contents.
Another commonality between the Somali and Gulf of Guinea is that piracy, despite its precise
formal definition, is constantly seeking to expand its reach, assume new forms, and establish
new relations (ransom, oil, drugs, and so on). Even if it is not associated with other criminal
activities such as drugs, arms, fake pharmaceuticals or human trafficking, the mere fact of creating instability and insecurity at sea favours its development. In Somalia, recent indications
are that arms are being trafficked to al-Shaabab in Puntland. As Vines (2012: 7) writes, ‘arguments that no strategic link exists between pirates and al-Shaabab could become increasingly
difficult to make, as the two groups converge in the same space.’ Piracy and fundamentalist ter-
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rorism are therefore probably mutually reinforcing. In West Africa, recent research shows how
a general environment of illegality and corruption has not only allowed piracy to grow, but has
also turned the region into a platform where cocaine transits from South America to Europe,
methamphetamines are ‘exported’ to East Asia, fraudulent medicines from Asia are introduced
in the market, firearms are trafficked, and migrants are smuggled to Europe (UNODC 2013).
Besides the need for tailored responses to each of these criminal threats, the fact that they
open spaces for each other makes the formidable single threat of disorder at sea very complex
and hard to address, particularly in an environment lacking the operational means, and where
efforts to enforce the law and reduce corruption are timid.8
These two ‘principles’ considered to apply to both the Somali and Gulf of Guinea piracies –
namely the in- and offshore connection, and the synergies with other criminal activities or
spill-over effects – can help us look at southern African maritime threats in a new and different way. Considering that a combination of factors created the inland conditions that fostered
piracy in those regions, it is logical to argue that similar sorts of conditions in southern Africa
could create the same sorts of effects – in other words, lead to local forms of piracy. This has
profound implications for the current approach to maritime security which is largely based on
securing regional maritime borders.
Learning these lessons is perhaps the most important relationship southern Africa can establish with the two piracy plagues. This argument is not new, and has long been made by others
who point to the vulnerability of long stretches of coast in Madagascar and Mozambique, for
example.9 However, it has often been associated with ‘weak states’, ‘failed states’ and ‘ungoverned spaces’ (Whelan 2005). Contrary to this line of analysis, which regards piracy as emerging from chaotic spaces, Amirell writes that:
The first necessary conditions for the emergence of piracy are so evident that [they] risk
going unnoticed. Without maritime traffic connected with commerce, fishing or other,
piracy would not have opportunities to seize. And we must add the unequal economic
opportunities linked to the acute expansion of the world maritime trade: the passage of
loaded vessels close to coastal areas populated by poor communities often favoured the
emergence of piracy. In Nigeria (and to a lesser extent in other West African states) opportunistic piracy emerged in the late 1970s associated with a sudden rise in maritime traffic
provoked by a boom in oil exports together with a strong increase in imports of luxury
goods and consumption in general.10
Cabo Delgado, a Northern Mozambican province on the border with Tanzania, seems a paradigmatic example of how inshore developments can develop direct links with maritime security. From the time of the liberation war, life in this quiet northern province was increasingly
disrupted by the arrival of refugees, clandestine migration, and human trafficking from Eastern
and Central Africa. These human flows include a high percentage of Somalis who either try to
reach the South African El Dorado or stay behind in the area, becoming involved in clandestine
mining and petty trade, or getting placed in refugee camps by the authorities. Many of these
clandestine routes are maritime ones, persisting from ancient times to carry out a coastal trade
in the holds of dhows, resisting rules made by modern states, and including all sorts of goods,
legal and illegal, as well as people.
Referring to this situation, Shillinger wrote in 2007 that ‘meagre state capacity combined with
the overwhelming socio-economic needs of the population’ had left the province wide open,
unprotected and unmonitored. He added:
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The vulnerabilities are more readily apparent in incidents of drug trafficking, smuggling customs abuse, corruption and poorly monitored immigration. Customs officials
described incidents in which Chinese tourists set up camps in the inland forests and
engaged in illegal forest cutting and timber smuggling. Some within the growing Somali
communities in the province, meanwhile, are allegedly engaged in illegal gemstone
extraction. Corruption is high. Even prominent and long-established local businessmen
admit to manipulating trade invoices. Understanding the extent of these practices is hard,
however, because, as Tony Vaux et al indicate, a culture of impunity and the ready flow of
aid encourage corruption and clientelism.
Since then, developments have been mixed. Promising megaprojects are being established in the
region, notably aimed at exploiting large reserves of natural gas discovered offshore, particularly
at the mouth of the Rovuma River, on the border with Tanzania, where similar developments
are also taking place. On the other hand, news of drug trafficking, massive elephant poaching for ivory as well as worrying increases in illegal exports of precious woods to the Far East,
with the involvement of corrupt officials, are becoming commonplace. Moreover, poverty and
food insecurity seems to be worsening, particularly among coastal communities, due to several
factors that need to be better understood, including a crisis in artisanal fisheries as a result of
decreases in fish stocks and a long-lasting asymmetric competition between artisanal fishermen
and industrial fishing trawlers. More recently, this situation has been exacerbated by the operation of semi-industrial fishing boats owned and run by Tanzanians, which not only increases
competition closer to shore but creates resentment and xenophobia among the communities of
petty fishermen. Forced resettlements of communities are breeding growing resentment. Finally,
signs of fundamentalist proselytisation are also noted, and protests are growing from communities forced to resettle. At the same time, local elites are starting to claim a bigger share in new
resources being explored by those who hold political power in the distant southern capital.11
A sharp increase in maritime traffic in the Mozambique Channel, just off Cabo Delgado, has
to be added to this picture. According to a recent study, in a few years from now, the northern
Mozambican ports of Beira and Nacala, plus perhaps Chinde and the Zambezi River Delta,
will be exporting mining and energy products (coal, LNG, phosphates and other minerals) in
the order of 79 million tonnes a year (Lopes 2013: 69, 126). Added to existing maritime traffic,
this amounts to a scenario of increased traffic to the point where it challenges the imagination, and presents a new range of quantitative and qualitative challenges in terms of the safety
and security of ports and of navigation. This raises major concerns about maritime security,
particularly if the root causes of Somalia piracy and events in the Gulf of Guinea have been
correctly understood, namely that addressing the root causes of poverty is largely the same as
addressing the root causes of instability.
Another major factor associated with poverty and piracy is the depletion of fish stocks in African waters, which has allegedly forced local fishermen to change their way of life and engage
in criminal activities at sea. While this explanation may be a bit too simplistic, and should ideally be further researched, most pirates do come from local fishing communities which have,
for environmental, political or ‘developmental’ reasons,12 been deprived of their means of
subsistence.
The relationship between piracy and fisheries is complex, and cannot be evaluated merely in
terms of the depletion of fish catches. Even this impact is unclear, since the withdrawal of fishermen due to dwindling fish catches can actually help to replenish them. As a recent World
Bank report shows, the apparent decline of fish catches could be caused by the withdrawal
126
of fishing vessels from the most dangerous areas. Since the advent of Somali piracy in 2006,
the tuna catch in the western Indian Ocean has dropped almost 30 per cent compared to the
eastern part. However, some claim this is due to the repositioning of fishing fleets, which have
moved to pirate-free areas. In fact, in the same period the number of fleets operating in the
western part of the ocean dropped by 16 per cent. At the same time, the average catch in the
two parts of the Indian Ocean did not differ substantially (World Bank 2013: 58ff ).
Certainly, there are a number of reasons for the decrease in fish stocks in African waters,
including global warming and the migration of species. However, the single most important
cause seems to be the systematic, intense, long-lasting and largely unchecked activity of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, generally (although not exclusively) by nonAfrican fishing trawlers. With some notable exceptions, namely Mauritania, Namibia, and
South Africa, IUU fishing in sub-Saharan Africa has continued almost unchallenged for decades, since the targeted countries usually do not have efficient policies to counter IUU, and
the means to enforce them, including patrolling capabilities. While difficult to estimate, the
extent of IUU fishing is said to cost sub-Saharan Africa more than US$1 billion dollars a year
(Vogel 2011), in the form of pressures on fish stocks on the edge of the law (such as disrespect
of closed fishing periods) fishing licenses and harbouring revenues, as well as unfair competition with artisanal fisheries. Finally, the lack of maritime policies and means of policing of
many African countries, and the tendency to rely solely on the licensing and taxation of fishing
agents and vessels, also play significant roles.
Although unevenly distributed, IUU fishing has affected southern Africa for a long time. Difficult to quantify (after all, it is an activity that tries to evade any form of control), IUU fishing
causes damage which is more serious closer to the coast than in the offshore large pelagic
sector, particularly due to the operation of large numbers of small fresh fish longliners and
trawlers. Taking several forms, including unlicensed activities, changing the name of vessels
when visiting the ports of the region, not keeping records, the transfer of catches at sea, and
disrespect for catching seasons, IUU fishing is more harmful to some species, which include
Eastern coast tuna, sharks and shrimp, species that are rapidly dwindling and even run the
risk of disappearing. In the absence of clear fishing policies, IUU fishing, together with semiindustrial fishing, can have the added effect of generating virulent competition among artisanal fisheries in countries such as Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania.
The SADC maritime strategy and beyond
Following the hijacking of Vega 5 by Somali pirates in the Mozambique Channel, the SADC
Troika asked the State Security Sub-Committee of the Inter-State Defence and Security Committee (ISDSC) to draft guidelines towards a regional action plan for combating piracy. Next, the
Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Windhoek on 24 August 2010 mandated the
establishment of an assessment team to determine the extent of the threat. The team, comprising
representatives of Zambia, South Africa, and Mozambique, and assisted by the SADC Secretariat,
produced a series of recommendations as well as a Draft Action Plan. On the basis of that plan,
the Joint Defence and Security Committee and State Security Sub-Committee met in Pretoria,
South Africa, to develop a SADC Maritime Security Strategy. The strategy was formally adopted
by the Summit of Heads of State held in Luanda, Angola, in August 2011, and is currently in force.
The strategy, which has not been entirely publicly released, cites the eradication of Somali
piracy from southern Africa as the first priority, securing the west coast of southern Africa as
127
the second, and ‘securing southern Africa’s vast rivers and lakes, such as the Congo River and
Lake Tanganyika, which are vital to trade and development,’ as the third.13 The strategy consists
of two main components: military deterrence and intelligence-gathering.
Military deterrence consists of the deployment of South African naval means to patrol the coast
of northern Mozambique and southern Tanzania after an agreement signed among the three
countries early in 2012. Since then, under Operation Copper,14 a South African naval vessel has
been permanently stationed off the coast of Pemba in northern Mozambique, together with a
maritime patrol aircraft and a maritime surveillance helicopter.
The second component is a ‘massive South African naval intelligence-driven operation’ supported by Maritime Domain Centres (MDCs) to be run from strategic locations (Silvermine in
Cape Town and the Bluff in Durban), coordinated by a multi-security agency centre in Snake
Valley, Pretoria, and aimed at gathering and processing intelligence. The system includes ‘maritime intelligence-gathering hubs’ in South Africa’s neighbouring countries up to Kenya in the
East and the DRC in the West, involving ‘the use of local populations as intelligence gatherers’
(Hosken 2012) to directly feed Pretoria with information.
Despite the scarcity of information, some initial remarks can be made about the shape and
scope of this strategy, beyond its merit of providing a barrier against the southwards progression of Somali piracy. The first and most obvious is that SADC (Mozambique and Tanzania in
particular) is benefiting from a strategy that has largely been designed, implemented and paid
for by South Africa. This is not surprising, as it is the sole naval power in the region.
Therefore, it is not surprising – and makes a lot of sense – that the strategy responds to and seems
guided by perceived South African interests. In geostrategic terms, these include the projection
of a South Africa strengthened by its leadership role in a cohesive region, and using this status,
as well as its pivotal placement between the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, in concert with
other emerging southern maritime powers, and in the context of the IBSA and BRICS alliances,
to ‘jointly carve out a security niche within a changing world order’.15 Having inherited the profile
of a conventional blue-water navy capable not only of guarding the Cape sea route and the southern sea but also the south western Indian ocean, as well as performing bold roles in the African
context, the South African Navy (SAN) seems to be a powerful vehicle to this end.16
The military component of the strategy is therefore a high-profile offshore frigate-based operation that can be read in the old South African tradition of securing its own borders from a distance, through buffer zones, while providing strong justification for increases in its defence
budgets, and particularly funding for the SAN. However, the first year of implementation has
revealed some serious limitations, notably the practical difficulties involved in maintaining
such a force so far from its base, maintenance challenges, and the budgetary demands, which
have already provoked political discomfort in the South African parliament. Moreover, the
sharp decrease in Somali piracy in southern African waters has created a growing disparity
between a threat which is now hardly visible and the means allocated to respond to it.
Therefore, the strategy seems to reflect South Africa’s general dilemma in respect of the region.
On the one hand, it has grand geostrategic motives and a self-appointed status as rescuer of the
region that requires the support of a modern blue-water navy, despite what appear to be major
problems in maintaining it. On the other, this option does not respond to domestic challenges
in respect of drug and human trafficking, IUU fishing, environmental protection and rescuing
and disaster response. Given this and other factors, there are indications that the strategy has
to develop in a more flexible and participatory way. As former Minister of Defence, Lindiwe
128
Sisulu, once said, ‘our frigates are too big to move around the coast’,17 and there are renewed
reports that South Africa could be looking for more flexible solutions, including the concept of
a SADC Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV), to be manufactured locally in the context of Project Biro.18
Moreover, there are signs of greater regional participation, referred to as ‘integrated means’,
with Mozambique providing marines, South Africa providing submarines, Angola providing
coastal patrol craft, and so on. Also, integrated exercises are being held more frequently.19
Not enough information is available to fully assess the intelligence-gathering component of
the strategy. However, reducing the interface with society to the establishment of ‘coastal hubs’
meant to gather intelligence to be fed into a network ending up in Snake Valley in Pretoria is a
disturbing idea. It is also not clear how local land-sea connections are meant to be forged, or
the intelligence-operational connection has been conceived.20
At this stage, then, SADC’s maritime strategy appears to be an emergency response to an
external threat that reached southern African waters, a response that, despite being seemingly
effective in the short term, reveals an unclear conception of maritime security, and a narrow
approach to achieving it. At the same time, it seems highly centralised and inextricably linked
to the South African context, a situation to which the weak or absent maritime security policies
and means of the other member states, particularly the coastal ones, also contribute.
In brief, it is a strategy that, sooner or later, will have to be reinvented as a truly regional one.
The way forward implies three fundamental steps towards achieving the paradigm of good
order on the seas of the region. The first is to move beyond a purely security-based approach
to a holistic one. The second is to gradually decentralise the effort by looking for a solution
in which SADC member states other than South Africa, particularly coastal ones, have bigger
roles and responsibilities. The third, but not the least, is to seek the inclusion of non-security
stakeholders, and the adoption of good practices.21
This will require the adoption of a regionally shared concept of maritime security, one which
– pegged on the SADC tradition of human security – acknowledges that maritime security is a
component of a larger notion of maritime governance based on a holistic vision of the sea as
an extension of the territory, capable of generating resources as well as threats. Such a concept
should guide all response to the complex web of interrelated maritime threats, existing and
potential, and particularly those related to the deep transformation brought about by development corridors and new activities related to the exploitation of mineral and energy resources,
which will profoundly affect traffic in the Mozambique Channel.22
The coherence of the strategy will depend on its response to major regional challenges, including the tensions involved in the coexistence of two distinct geo-strategic environments, namely
the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; the asymmetry between South Africa and the other
member states; the tensions between landlocked and coastal states; overlapping memberships
and networks; and last but not least, concluding boundary delimitation processes, particularly
in the Mozambique Channel.
Conclusion
Southern Africa urgently needs a maritime strategy capable of securing southern African
waters in the near and more distant future, bearing in mind its importance for the social and
economic well-being of the region as well as recent international and regional developments.
These include not only the spread of maritime instability from the Gulf of Guinea and Somali
129
waters and their negative impacts on the region, but also the profound coastal and maritime
impacts of growing exports of mining and energy resources. It is vital to resist the temptation of
measuring development in terms of financial or even macro-economic parameters, neglecting
its impacts on people (local communities in particular) and the environment. Far from being
just an ethical question, neglecting these issues could transform developmental dynamics into
instability as well as threats to coastal and maritime security, as the Niger Delta clearly shows.
Therefore, rather than looking at the sea as a potential battlefield, maritime security must be
based on the concept of sea administration, a holistic approach that takes stock of all the factors that can affect it in negative or positive ways, assuming that there is always a strong connection between developments in land and on water. Maritime insecurity is always created
ashore.
The text considered that besides being what seem to be the principal sources of the maritime
threat to Southern Africa, Somali and Gulf of Guinea piracies are important also in the sense
that they can reveal conditions that can foster the ‘creation’ of local piracy. In this sense, understanding the nature of such piracies is an important step to inhibit the development of such
conditions. Of particular importance is the conjugation of increased coastal poverty, sometimes fostered by the impact of development projects, with a more intense maritime traffic.
This chapter has examined the regional strategic response to the threat represented principally
by the spread of Somali piracy. It has viewed this as an important development in the sense
that it exhibits a high degree of regional cohesion. However, judging its success in terms of
the recent decrease in piracy in the Western Indian Ocean could be highly misleading, as a
number of other factors have also played a role in this trend. Moreover, the strategy shows early
signs of fatigue and needs to be reinvigorated by crossing its narrow security boundaries to
become a real strategy capable of mobilising all the regional stakeholders. Their involvement
is important in the sense that, as beneficiaries, they should also share the cost of an onerous
endeavour that states are incapable of supporting on their own.
An even more important reason to adopt an inclusive stand is to acknowledge that maritime
security in southern Africa is not about an occasional external threat. As noted earlier, our
point of departure was that maritime security cannot be achieved without being regarded as a
component of the broader concept of maritime governance. Given its dependence on so many
extra-military factors, and its impacts on so many aspects of the economy and society, maritime security in southern Africa is a clear case of an issue which is too serious to be dealt with
by the security sector alone. It has to be subjected to a multidisciplinary approach, both in
theory and in practice. Among others this means it has to be informed by a sound knowledge
of reality, including the views and social and economic circumstances of one of its most important stakeholders, namely coastal communities.
As Vreÿ has noted, the resolution of maritime insecurity in all its forms, in the region as elsewhere, is a test of the mind and not of naval muscle (2012: 12). In this sense, SADC’s maritime
security strategy has to counter the regional inertia of leaving defence and security issues to be
dealt with by politicians and the military, and leaving society aside. A first move in that direction would be to divulge at least the main components of the existing strategy, thus submitting
it to the scrutiny of regional stakeholders.
130
Endnotes
1
Revealed by Carl Schmitt in his discussion of the Léviathan as political symbol in the doctrine of Thomas
Hobbes. Cited in Dahou 2009: 5.
2
The ISPS Code was adopted following the terrorist attacks on the United States in the sequence on
11 September 2001. It was developed from a number of amendments to the 1974 SOLAS Convention, and
is aimed at enhancing maritime security on board ships, within ports, and during ship/port interfaces.
It contains detailed security-related requirements for governments, ports and shipping companies in
a mandatory section, as well as guidelines on implementation. See, for instance, http://www.imca-int.
com/media/73183/imcasel017.pdf
3
According to article 101 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), piracy
consists of: (a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private
ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed: (i) on the high seas,
against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft; (ii) against
a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State; (b) any act of voluntary
participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or
aircraft; (c) any act inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in sub-paragraph (a) or (b).
Armed robbery at sea is, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Code of Practice
for the Investigation of the Crimes of Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships, (1) Any unlawful act of
violence or detention, or any act of depredation, or threat thereof, other than an act of piracy, directed
against a ship, or against persons or property on board such ship, within a State’s jurisdiction over such
offences. In simple terms, the main distinction is therefore if the offense is perpetrated outside or inside
the jurisdictional space of a State, e.g. in international waters beyond the 12 nautical miles (22.2 km) mark
(piracy) or within it (armed robbery at sea).
4
Several other less successful pirate operations were reported, such as the attempted assault on the Maersk
Alabama near Mombasa in April 2009, or even on the Dutch warship HNLMS Tromp 500 miles off Dar
es Salaam. Attacks were also reported in May 2010 on the Spanish fishing vessel Campolibre Alai and in
December of that year on the Liberian tanker NS Africa, both inside the Mozambique Channel. Pirates
were repelled by anti-pirate devices or armed guards on these ships. Matusse nd: 1-2.
5
See, for example, Crisis Group 2012 and UNODC 2013. According to a UN report, the root causes of piracy
in the region are ‘high levels of youth unemployment, the wide income disparities within society, the
uncontrolled circulation of illicit weapons and the prevalence of corruption’. See UN Security Council
S/2013/45.
6
See www.meretmarine.com and www.defence.gouv.fr/operations. The original purpose of Operation
Corymbe is said to have been the safeguarding of French economic interests in the region, particularly oil
exploration.
7
A June 2012 report published on www.Imalloyds.com by Exclusive Analysis, a risk assessment group,
concluded that ‘oil theft piracy risks in the Gulf of Guinea, particularly off the coasts of Benin, Togo and
Cameroon, are being driven by Nigeria-based piracy groups’.
8
See, for instance, UNODC 2013: 53ff.
9
See Heitman, cited in Walker (2011: 7-8). He argued that ‘any areas prone to political turbulence and poverty,
with easy access to potential targets, boats and weapons and under-policed coasts were most at risk.’
10
Amirell 2009: 112, my translation.
11
A recent World Bank report states: ‘Poverty appears to be highly concentrated in certain areas, with
dramatically higher rates found in Central and Northern Mozambique, as well as in rural areas overall,
compared with relatively low rates in Southern Mozambique and in the country’s urban centers. These
findings substantially contradict the government’s official poverty figures, which appear to systematically
overestimate poverty rates in Mozambique’s Southern provinces and urban areas while simultaneously
131
underestimating the prevalence of poverty in the country’s Central and Northern regions and in rural
areas nationwide’ (cited in Alfani et al. 2012).
12
It is increasingly common for local communities to be affected by developmental infrastructures,
particularly through resettlement or increased access to land. As noted earlier, the most paradigmatic
case in Africa is perhaps that of the Niger Delta.
13
Hosken 2012, quoting Rear-Admiral Karl Weisner, director of maritime warfare in the South African Navy.
14www.dod.mil.za/operations/international/operation_copper.htm
15
According to Kornegay (2008: 4), who remains the best source for a discussion of the geostrategic
dimensions of South Africa, particularly in the context of IBSA.
16
This profile has been reinforced by an ambitious acquisition programme including four Meko frigates,
three SSK submarines and four Westland Super Lynx maritime helicopters. See Baker (2012) for an
in-depth discussion of the SAN, including budget constraints and capacity–challenge mismatches. For
recent developments in the SAN, and the reasoning behind them, see also http://maritimesecurity.asia/
free-2/piracy-2/sa-navy-reviews-fleet-needs-as-antipiracy-patrol-highlights-capacity-constraints/
17
See ‘Tourists spot SA activity off Pemba’, www.defenceweb.co.za
18
See ‘South Africa to build own Offshore Patrol Vessels’ at www.defenceweb.co.za. Also see the declaration
of Vice-Admiral Johannes Mudimu: ‘The new Southern African Development Community maritime
security strategy is now looking at the acquisition of a specific vessel platform to increase the capabilities
of all the SADC’s navies. To increase the continent’s naval capacity, this platform would have to be simply
a vessel which could be built, repaired and serviced in Africa.’ http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/
cash-shortage-a-major-challenge-to-navy-1.1259615
19
See references to these integrated operations in the minutes of the ISDSC Standing Maritime Committee,
at www.navy.mil.za
20
According to Rear Admiral Bernhard Teuteberg, director of maritime strategy for the SAN, a lack of
coordination between national agencies and an inability by the National Treasury to fund Cabinetsupported strategies are hindering efforts to improve maritime safety. See McKenzie 2012.
21
A good example is the Benguela Current Convention recently signed by Angola, Namibia and South Africa
and aimed at the long-term conservation, protection, rehabilitation and sustainable use of the Benguela
Current Large Marine Ecosystem.
22
A recent study anticipates an enormous increase in maritime traffic in the Mozambique Channel by 2020.
See Lopes 2013.
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