The majority of countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been comparatively peaceful and stable in the past two decades, but the region continues to grapple with peace and security challenges such as armed insurgencies, crises of governance and socio-economic development deficits that SADC has proven ill-prepared to manage effectively. The objective of the paper is to provide an up-to-date assessment of SADC’s ability to effectively manage security challenges in the region. For this purpose, the paper (a) provides a short overview of recent crises and security challenges in SADC states, and reviews (b) the development of SADC’s peace and security architecture, (c) conflict management policies and (d) responses to intrastate crises in the past ten years (2008-18).
An overview of recent crises and risks in the region suggests that, whereas the SADC region continues to experience isolated armed conflicts and developmental backlogs bear major risks to regional stability in the long-run, governance deficits that in the recent past decade prompted crises in a variety of SADC states presently constitute the most acute source of instability. A preliminary assessment suggests that, although SADC has gradually established a peace and security infrastructure in line with the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), the institutions seem poorly capacitated, for they lack material and political support as member states are reluctant to cede authority to supranational structures and to enforce SADC principles. The liberal-democratic norms enshrined in SADC’s peace and security policies are, in practice, often overridden by imperatives of anti-imperialism, stability and regime solidarity, and SADC has in the past not been able to effectively respond to intrastate crises. The persistent governance deficits and SADC’s lacklustre conflict management may arrest the development of the Southern African region in the long run.
In the recent past, SADC, for instance, reacted drastically to military meddling in civilian politics and government instability in the tiny state of Lesotho by sanctioning the deployment of troops, and several SADC states contributed troop contingents to the UN-mandated Force Intervention Brigade in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where they suffered human losses. SADC was, however, neither able to effectively respond to the political crisis created by DRC President Kabila’s failure to hold elections before his constitutional term of office expired, nor to intrastate crises in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Given that formerly apartheid-sponsored RENAMO rebels in Mozambique enjoyed little sympathy among Southern Africa’s liberation party governments, SADC was not in a position to act as a credible and impartial mediator in the conflict. SADC, however, equally omitted to respond to the rebellion in Cabinda and to the state-sponsored mass violence in Angola. After trying to contain the Zimbabwean crisis through a series of diplomatic initiatives in the space of thirteen years, SADC watched Zimbabwe’s renewed descent into economic and political crisis after the SADC-brokered power-sharing process had ended and the severely flawed yet credible-enough 2013 election allowed the Summit to drop the perennial Zimbabwean problem from its agenda for the time being. Whilst stressing that neither the AU nor SADC would tolerate an unconstitutional change of government, owing to a thin veneer of constitutionality, SADC, alongside the international community, acquiesced to the de facto military coup that compelled President Mugabe to resign and entrenched the ZANU-PF’s military hardliners responsible for most of the human rights abuses of the post-colonial period in government. By accepting the coup, SADC not only displayed its impotence vis-à-vis the securocrats and unwillingness to enforce democratic principles at a high cost, but set a dangerous precedent, signalling that the Community tolerated unconstitutional changes of government and military meddling if they were thinly disguised in constitutional terms.
As the study covers SADC responses and crises in a range of countries, the analysis relies on available studies on the respective Southern African countries and SADC institutions, interviews with experts, politicians and civil society activists, as well as news coverage on the different peace and security challenges. The study moreover analyses SADC policy documents and communiqués released during the period of analysis to trace SADC’s crisis responses. In addition, interviews with officials from SADC’s mediation support and early warning infrastructure will be conducted at the SADC Secretariat in Gaborone in mid-May 2018.