<p>This essay deals with the topic of regional integration in Africa. Using the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as an example, it seeks to answer the question what constitutes a successful region organisation. To do this a number of criteria defining success were developed and subsequently applied to the SADC, the main one beeing the organisations ability to adapt to change. In order to be able to show whether and how the SADC has reacted to and accommodated changes, the analysis was built around a description of the historical evolution of the SADC(C). The changes made by the SADC (political structure, membership, goals) have been summarised and assessed. Special attention was paid to the (potential) problems identified by Winfried Lang (1982).</p><p>Guided by the thoughts of Winfried Lang and the criteria used in this essay defining what constitutes a successful regional organisation, we find that the Southern African Development Community is rather successful. The SADCC seems to have created a good basis for integration, and the organisation has proven ist ability to adapt to changes, even if they are as all-embracing as the end of the apartheid regime in the RSA and the subsequent membership of the former opponent. One can thus suppose that the SADC could, if necessary, accomodate changed circumstances again, and is thus unlikely to become one of the many failed regional organisations in Africa.</p><p> </p>

<p>This research paper aims to understand and analyse the CISG, its history, scope and structure, and to evaluate its impact on SADC.The main ideas that this paper will consider are: what is the CISG / &nbsp / Its history, scope and structure / &nbsp / Its impact on developing countries / &nbsp / Its relevance to developing countries within SADC / and How the implementation of the CISG improved these developing countries within SADC.</p>

This thesis focuses on the relationship between trade and FDI in the SADC. While FDI is seen as a stimulus for growth and development, Africa is lagging behind other regions in attracting FDI. Whilst a number of reasons have been explored in the literature, the potential link between trade and FDI has not been explored in the African context. This may be potentially important, since African governments have been engaging in trade liberalisation and trade promotion over the past two decades. In this thesis, gravity modelling is used to investigate the trade-FDI relationship. Two single equation regression models are used in a preliminary investigation to evaluate aggregate trade and FDI. The third model consists of six panel regressions that evaluate the different relationships between the individual SADC countries and their individual major trading partners. A causality test is also carried out to confirm the relevance of trade as a determinant of FDI in the SADC. Overall results indicate that, in the specific case of the SADC, SADC exports significantly cause FDI. Distance from home countries and political instability are the most significant negative forces that affect FDI inflows. Home country exports deliver mixed results and these results suggest that the United States and the United Kingdom have a different FDI-trade relationship with the SADC than continental Europe, whereas Japan's exports prove insignificant. The policy implications are that the SADC will need to focus on attracting investment from countries that provide for complementary FDI and trade as this is optimal for poverty alleviation and job creation. Further research should focus on these policy areas and take into account the relevance of trade as a determinant of FDI. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Economics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (MPhil (Information Science))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / Africa’s socio-economic reconstruction and development is constrained by the spate of violent conflicts afflicting the continent. Internecine strife and humanitarian concerns have prompted international debates surrounding the efficacy of existing conflict prevention, management and resolution strategies. With Africa seemingly in a semi-permanent state of tension and crisis, and the inability of the global and continental systems and structures to effectively deal with these situations, it requires a disentanglement of a “complex interplay of institutional-bureaucratic and political dynamics,” that place the continent at the centre of intervention dilemma. At the end of the Cold War, violent conflicts on the continent did not wither away, but have become so complex, thus confounding efforts to achieve sustainable peace. This complexity requires greater efforts to improve international, regional and subregional institutional capacities and contingency instruments to facilitate effective responses. The key emphasis within the international community is to enhance instruments to facilitate early detection of conflict situations in order to initiate preventive actions. Put differently, conflict prevention can be facilitated through the dynamic improvement of the processes, structures and functions of (conflict) early warning systems (EWS). In addition, political will is crucial towards the operationalisation of such systems to ensure swift and coordinated implementation of preventive actions. Cedric de Coning argues that conflict early warning systems can “improve our ability to generate the political will necessary to authorize preventive action much earlier in the conflict cycle, by improving our ability to estimate the potential future cost of inaction, and the way we bring this information to the attention of decision makers.” Schmeidl also argues that “early warning needs to be seen as a precondition to developing political will, and thus initiate (or better inform) reasonable response strategies.” However, existing organisational structures crucial for facilitating and expediting conflict prevention initiatives, suffer from “inertia” due to entrenched political structures, hierarchies and competing interests. The United Nations (UN) is an international body with the authority to facilitate conflict prevention. However, it is constrained by organisational complexities such as sectional political self-interest and the “bureaucratic red tape in large bureaucracies”, thus hampering its ability to swiftly and with the correct mandate, to respond to a call for preventive intervention. Hence the devolution of the responsibilities for the settlement of conflicts to the regional and subregional bodies. Conflicts have also “tended to pay little respect to State borders, proving the necessity for inter-State cooperation.” Because of the regionalisation of conflicts, the case of inter-regional collaboration has become increasingly vital as the “appropriate initial actors in seeking to defuse tensions and resolve local disputes within the region.” To this end, stronger intergovernmental mechanisms to facilitate early recognition of conflict situations and early intervention to prevent eruption or mitigate escalation have to be maintained. African countries, as a result, bear the burden of peace interventions from the African Union (AU) which consists of 53 members, to regional economic communities (RECs) such as Southern African Development Community (SADC), which consists of 14 members. These organisations are attenuated by bureaucratic ineptitude for adaptive behaviour that impact on swift and flexible responses. Nation states with diverse historical backgrounds, different political systems and unequal economic strengths are inclined to have fundamental inequalities in power and influence. Consequently, opposing political values, national interest and competing rationalities underlining their actions become sources of contention and impede the establishment of a common ground. These hurdles breed tensions and suspicion that impact on coordination of effort and information sharing regarding conflict situations. Thus, to surmount these barriers, it is imperative to reconcile competing interests through comprehensive inclusiveness, cooperation and effective collaborative partnerships among various stakeholders, particularly civil society and political decision makers. ‘Preventive action’ must, insists the International Peace Academy (IPA), “not be considered as an expedient product or event, but as a continuous, organic process that necessitates a highest degree of inclusiveness and multisectoral participation in dialogue and peace-building. These aspects should be institutionalised within the inter-regional organisations to establish the culture of common effort for common purpose. In the interest of collective effort and to expand AU’s capacity for conflict prevention, the Peace and Security Council (PSC) was established in 2003. The PSC is defined as “a collective security and early warning arrangement to facilitate timely and efficient response to conflict and crisis situation in Africa. Apparently, the PSC, as an instrument of conflict prevention on the continent, is also aimed at achieving unity of thought in dealing with the threats to peace and stability. In conflict situations, state sovereignty, political desirability and competing goals often render peace processes ineffective due to differences regarding the best course of action. The PSC is regarded as the means to create a platform for shared understanding and common vision regarding the challenge of conflict prevention. Still, to be more effective, it requires a strong collaboration with subregional organisations (e.g. SADC) and multisectoral participation of, for example academics, research institutes, civil society organisations (CSOs), non-governmental (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs). The main thrust should be to create a shared framework for political decision makers to make “collective sense” of the problems on the continent, and be in a position to synchronise efforts to achieve peace and stability. Conversely, the AU and also SADC remain politically diverse organisations. As such, operationalisation of conflict prevention initiatives is likely to encounter obstacles emanating from, as Gina van Schalkwyk indicated, “conflict around political values amongst states in the [sub]region and …disputes on the basis of divergent interpretations [of policies]. This creates a paradox between the necessity of conflict prevention and the divergent national interests. Convergent thinking and creating a shared outlook in the existing organisational frameworks (e.g. SADC) is imperative in order to generate political will and to facilitate improved decision making and implementation of proactive responses in the prevention of conflicts.

Magister Legum - LLM / The purpose of this research is to examine the legal and institutional framework of financial services supervision and regulation in SADC. In doing so the study will probe the various models of financial services regulation with the purpose of discerning what each model sets out to do and how, in doing so, it effectively exercises its function. This study answers the question: Is there a model of financial services regulation and supervision that is legally sound and best embraces SADC’s circumstances? The legal soundness will be extracted by examining which model achieves the main objectives of independence and accountability to the greatest extent. The first objective of the study is to discuss the structure and operations of each of the identified primary models of financial services regulation with the aim of determining whether certain cardinal administrative law principles are upheld. Secondly, it then takes a practical look at how the primary models are applied and effectively work within some of the SADC Member States. Similarly, the study’s main focus will be to discern whether the financial services regulation models are ‘tangible’ when country dynamics are introduced. Thereafter, the study reconnoitres the possibility of SADC adopting a ‘harmonised’ financial services regulator and supervisor. It is worth noting that ideal as it may be; the author has no intention of prescribing one of the primary models but merely uses them as a springboard to ascertaining the viability of a single financial services regulator and supervisor in SADC. The objective is to assess how best SADC can deepen its integration levels in this area of concern. The ultimate result may very well be that such deeper relations are not feasible or that different components from the primary models be adopted to make SADC’s ‘unique’ model of financial services regulation and supervision.

This aim of this study was to explore the mediatory role of the Rhodes University (RU) / Southern African Development Community (SADC) International Certificate in Environmental Education course in developing capacity for reflexive mainstreaming of environment and sustainability education in teacher education in southern Africa. This course was a change-oriented intervention to support capacity and agency for mainstreaming environmental education across many sectors of education. The discourse of the course included environmental education and education for sustainable development and for this study this was referred to as environment and sustainability education (ESE). Environment and sustainability education is a developing notion in southern Africa and the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme (REEP) was set up to support capacity for mainstreaming ESE. ESE was one of the responses taken by the SADC region to respond to prevalent environment and sustainability issues across the region. This study focused, in general, on establishing the mediatory roles of the reflexive mediatory tool, the change project in the course. More specifically, the research explores the mediatory role of course interventions and activities that were used to develop understanding of and to frame the change project in fostering agentially motivated changed practice in the teacher education sector. Drawing on realist social theory, which is a form of critical realism, especially the work of Margaret Archer, the study used the principle of emergence to interpret changes in the course participants' practices. The study was framed using the research question: How do mediated actions in a regional professional development programme and the workplace influence Environment and Sustainability (ESE) competencies, practice, learning and agency in Teacher Education for Sustainable Development (TESD) change projects? The following sub-questions refined the study: • What mediated actions on the course influence ESE competences, practice, learning and agency on the professional development programme? • How do these identified mediated actions influence ESE competences, practice and learning on the professional development programme? • What mediated actions in workplaces influence ESE competences, practice, learning and agency in the change projects in teacher education institutions? • How do these identified mediated actions in workplaces influence ESE competences, practices and mediated actions in the workplace? Notions of practice, agency, reflexivity, competences and capabilities were used to sensitise explanations of features emergent from course interactions; the process of analysis was under-laboured by the theoretical lens of critical realism and realist social theory. Mediation theory was used to explain the role of interventions across the course. The study used a case study approach with three cases of teacher educators from two institutions in two southern African countries. Data were generated through document analysis of course portfolios, semi-structured interviews with research participants, observations of participants during their teaching and through group discussions in a change management workshop to establish features that emerged from the course and change project interactions. The principle of emergence recognises that any interactions result in new features of characteristics that are different from the original. In this case, the study investigated those features shown by participants after being exposed to the course's mediatory tools. In order to describe the cases, a narrative approach was used. The study was conducted at the interface of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) and the Global Action Plan for Education for Sustainable Development, therefore the outcomes have implications for capacity development for ESE during and beyond the Global Action Plan for Education for Sustainable Development. The key finding is that capacity development for ESE needs to foreground reflexive engagement with one's own practice for it to be meaningful and relevant. The change project provided course participants with the opportunity to engage with their own practice and particularly their competences and capabilities through its mediatory tools. Course participants showed emergent properties that were evidence of expanded zones of proximal development (ZPD) in competences, capabilities and agency. The study illustrates that meaningful learning happens when immersed in context and when learners are able to make connections between concepts, practices and experiences (their praxis). The study also illustrates that capacity building creates opportunities for practitioners to expand their repertoire through the course activities. Some of the course activities stimulated, enhanced and gave impetus to their agency or double morphogenesis for them to continue to expand that repertoire by trying and retrying changes in practice that they value on their own and in communities of practice. Capacity development courses need to be structured to involve a variety of mediatory activities as some of these are relevant and are valued for different teacher education contexts. The study also shows how knowledge and understanding of classical Vygotskian mediation can be used to frame and structure courses for developing the ZPD retrospectively and how the repertoire which forms the ZPD has potential to be expanded and to keep expanding, whether at individual level or in community with others, as an object in the post-Vygotskian mediation process. The change project provides the starting point, the vehicle and momentum to teacher educators to critique and to reflexively transform competences or aspects of their practice that they value. The study showed that capacity development through the change project generated momentum for potentially morphogenetic changes in teacher education practice. The course initiated interactions at the phase T2-T3 that disrupted teacher educators' habitus. On-course phase activities such as assignments, lectures, discussions, practical tasks, excursions and regional knowledge exchange groups contributed smaller morphogenetic cycles to the main cycle. Reflexive engagement with one's own practice becomes a useful tool for building capacity for scaling capacity for mainstreaming ESE during and after the Global Action programme for ESD. Contributions of the study therefore go beyond the SADC region to contribute insights into capacity development for ESD in similar conditions of teacher education across the world.

Magister Legum - LLM / South Africa

This mini-dissertation examines the role of the United Nations, the African Union and the three relevant sub-regional organizations namely the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) in the post-conflict period in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These organizations played a threefold role based on the monitoring, intervention and assistance regarding the reconciliation and reconstruction process. To some extent, their strategies contributed to activate the reconstruction and the reconciliation process after nearly a decade of instability caused by the war in the country. However, in spite of the combined efforts of these actors, the conflict persists and continues to take innocent human lives, leaving the survivors affected by hostilities and violations of human rights that they have experienced. The study sets out the political situation in the DRC during the conflict, then analyzes the resurgence of the conflict beyond the ceasefire and later explores the role played by each actor relatively to its mandate after the free and democratic elections of 2006, which mark the starting point of the reconstruction and reconciliation process. In analyzing these interventions, the study refers to the protocols, objectives and results of each organization. From this perspective, the study argues that each conflict has its realities and does not necessarily comply with the standard solution (negotiations and military interventions). As for the DRC, this approach has not provided the expected solutions. The nature of the conflict, the history of the DRC and the Congolese people is new to the different organizations and impacts considerably on the way they perceive and deal with the situation. The study found that each of the international organizations is mandated, in one way or another, to deal with issues such as those rose in the DRC post-conflict period namely rapes, outrageous criminality. Yet, none of the organizations reached the results envisaged by its statute. Taking the best from each other, these organizations need complementarity when addressing the reconstruction and reconciliation in the DRC post-conflict period. Therefore, these multiple agents fit together to address the challenges in the DRC post-conflict period. The study also emphasizes that initiation of tolerance showed through civilian reconciliation constitutes a prerequisite to any possible and durable peace in the country. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Centre for Human Rights / unrestricted

The aim of this study is an examination of the Southern African Development Community's (SADC) conflict resolution role (through multilateral mediation) in the Zimbabwe conflict and to determine how this role impacted on the development and outcome of the conflict. The underlying problem is not so much the intervention of SADC but the process and impact thereof. The primary research question is: Would the events in Zimbabwe and the outcome of the 'Zimbabwe-problem' have been substantially different without the involvement and conflict resolution role of SADC? This question is underpinned by two subsidiary questions: Firstly, what was the conflict management role, including that of conflict resolution, that SADC played? Secondly, did this role contribute to a positive outcome by overcoming limitations and how? In response the argument is that SADC, despite institutional limitations and operational constraints, played a positive role that prevented an escalation of the conflict and that contributed to a de-escalation thereof on account of its mediation. The study includes a framework for analysis to explore the conflict resolution role of a regional organisation in intra-state (domestic) conflict; a contextualisation of SADC's role with reference to the nature, scope and development of the 'Zimbabweproblem' as conflict; the analysis of the conflict resolution role through SADC mediation; and an evaluation of key findings as a basis for policy and research recommendations. The study is demarcated in conceptual, temporal and geopolitical terms. At a conceptual level, the key variables are conflict, conflict resolution and the role of international (regional) organisations. In terms of time-frame, the study covers the period from 2002 to 2014. The commencement year of 2002 is based on the constitutional and humanitarian crises that emerged and necessitated SADC intervention. The concluding year of 2014 marks the first full year since the end of the Global Political Agreement's (GPA) Government of National Unity (GNU) and allows for a retrospective assessment of the outcome(s) of SADC's role. The noncomparative case study focuses on Zimbabwe as the national-level and SADC as the regional-level (Southern African) units of analysis. The research design is that of a historical case study and entails a critical literature-documentary analysis. Although SADC's initial response and involvement was delayed and limited, it developed into a concerted mediation effort and a dedicated conflict resolution role. This role, despite limitations and constraints, overcame challenges and produced a settlement agreement. It is evident that events in Zimbabwe and the outcome of the 'Zimbabwe-problem' would have been substantially different and undeniably more detrimental (even disastrous) not only to Zimbabwe but also to the Southern African region without SADC's involvement and conflict resolution role. Its intervention contributed to the de-escalation of the conflict and to acceptable levels of stability (unstable peace) in the region and within the country. A retrospective and diachronic assessment confirms a relative improvement in political, economic and social conditions (if juxtaposed with the first decade of the 2000s. This, however, does not imply a termination of the conflict and the existence of stable peace. The residue of dissatisfaction produced by the GPA; the prevailing electoral and constitutional contestation; and the authoritarian and repressive regime trends still apparent in Zimbabwe attest to continued latent and manifest conflict. This confirms the tenet that intra-state conflict is never really terminated, seldom resolved but only managed in an effective manner to produce a minimally acceptable outcome of unstable peace. / Mini Dissertation (M Security Studies)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Political Sciences / M Security Studies / Unrestricted

This paper critically evaluate the effectiveness of the non -tariff barriers legal framework under the SADC Protocol on Trade. In the same vein it identifies and discus a list of non-tariff barriers to trade that are still prevalent in the SADC region despite the prohibition for their use under the Protocol. The list of these NTBs is made up of quantitative restrictions, customs procedures and administrative requirements, technical standards, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, government participation in trade, lack of infrastructure, restrictive rules of origin and anti-dumping measures. Their impact is also addressed using some case studies based on the experience of businesses and people trading in the region. The paper concluded that the widespread and continued existence of NTBs in the region is as a result of a weak regulatory framework aimed at addressing them. To this end the paper single out the provisions relating to the granting of derogations from complying with the Protocol, the rules of origin, antidumping provisions and rules relating to the protection of infant industries as some of the weak points in the Protocol. To assess the compatibility of the rules regulating NTBs under the Protocol with the WTO rules one of the chapter is dedicated to a discussion on the WTO legal framework for NTBs. The paper also gives the reader an opportunity to have a grasp of the progress made in the SADC Free Trade Area by providing a section which focuses on the NTBs Monitoring and Elimination Mechanism. Problems associated with the mechanism are also clearly laid down in this paper. Recommendations are made at the end of the paper as way of providing solutions to some of the issues identified as weaknesses on the NTBs legal framework. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Centre for Human Rights / unrestricted