The Southern Africa Development Community’s (SADC) Summit, a bi- annual ritual of high-level diplomacy, recently concluded its 31st ordinary meeting in Angola, amid increasing concerns that the organization has become hostage to elite political consensus. Even before the meeting got underway, fissures in the transparency and democratic culture of the organization’s new chair Angola, surfaced over the arbitrary but allegedly deliberate deportation of members of regional apex organizations, including those from the Council of Non‐Governmental Organisations (SADC‐CNGO). The NGO groups’ meetings in Luanda planned to precede the summit, were intended to consolidate civil society consensus on key issues of concern and strategize on influencing the outcomes of the Summit. Reports also surfaced that NGOs’ push to be accorded state party status at summit roused the ire of some officials from the SADC member states who questioned the very relevance of their participation. This perhaps reflects the current state of affairs in the region characterized by a growing trend of purposeful shrinking of the public sphere and their engagement in political affairs, as well as the notable return of repressive media laws in various SADC countries. In a seemingly ‘business as usual’ fashion, little fuss was made by the host, having last assumed chairmanship in 2002 and the Luanda summit proceeded amid critiques of the organisations effectiveness; concerns of a growing culture of systematic disregard of democratic and human rights by member states; as well as ineffectual sanction mechanisms for recalcitrant members.

Summit practice should otherwise re-affirm the primacy of multilateralism in solving the region’s problems but SADC summit fatigue and apathy from civil society is growing. The August Summit Communiqué, like previous ones, stands to become mere political posturing, with member states simply affirming the common normative ground they profess to share in the promotion of peace and stability. But, post summit and at operational levels, deviations in the interpretations of SADC protocols are inherent, with divergent security approaches and democratic and governance cultures. Nonetheless, public expectations of SADC summits will mostly remain high precisely for the fact that presidents are made visible to their constituencies, and since the Summit is SADC’s supreme policy making institution, a window of opportunity arguably exists for identifying, redefining human security challenges as well as setting priorities that filter down to other SADC policy arenas. Although SADC summits have an agenda-setting value, functionally connected to other SADC diplomatic procedures, they mostly provide a pre-negotiation function, while keeping the momentum on on-going talks and rubberstamping previous resolutions. However and critically, Summit outcomes are often prone to inertia; its culture of consensual decision negating much needed leadership along the line.

This year’s SADC Summit was distinguished by two key developments: Angola’s chairmanship, a country whose foreign policy is often referred to as ‘multivector’, its diplomacy ‘unconventional’ and regional ambitions beyond oil exportation reticent; and South Africa chairing of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation- the latter expected to recommend headways to the protracted deadlocks in Zimbabwe and Madagascar and ‘make SADC sense’ of the recent crack down on demonstrations in Swaziland and Malawi. The summit’s agenda as framed by the Council of Ministers, was rather exhaustive notably predisposed toward SADC’s regionalisation project as underlined by its theme ‘Consolidating the bases of regional integration, infrastructure development to facilitate trade and economic liberalisation’. A pertinent and timeous emphasis, given the dawdling process of state centred integration, unfavourable socio-economic conditions and leadership challenges that allow regression on both economic and political security.

However, SADC’s economic integration agenda arguably poses a lesser challenge to both the Secretariat and member states in comparison to the sensitive political imperatives. When it comes to the degree of political commitment and follow-through on concrete “political” policies and practices, SADC has sometimes been found wanting. The variations in SADC responses to the region’s crises from the ostensible Zimbabwe, Madagascar, to the recent wave of demonstrations and attempted demonstrations in SADC member states, notably, Swaziland, Malawi, Angola – signify challenges in political will and ability to cooperate on security issues in a manner that systematically produces clear political outcomes. A greater challenge is establishing the nexus between economic challenges and political governance as underlined by the increased demand for greater governance and accountability in SADC member states as a well as improvements in the living conditions of much of the region’s population. Suffice to note that the foregoing are deliberated at the Troika summit, but this is an immense challenge for Summit whose outcomes are permanently defined by be three foremost principles: consensus decision-making; respect for national sovereignty; and non-interference in the domestic affairs of members.

It is fair to note that Summit has acted as an important catalyst to the development of progressive policies, but its success is contingent on harnessing the requisite political will of member states to critically seek a balance in competing security objectives, national priorities and reconciling them with regional ones. In fact, the implementation ‘separateness’ between the organisations blueprint for economic integration and security cooperation the Strategic Implementation Plan of the Organ (SIPO) and the Regional Indicative Strategic Plan (RISDP), have underlined an impulse towards fast-tracking trade and economic integration, while remaining slow on political or security related integration. This further displays summitry culture where the two are treated as mutually exclusive. It basically infers that political priorities are seen as secondary to developmental objectives by member states, despite loud pronouncement that development would not happen in conditions of conflict, and political instability.

The Luanda summit communiqué helps us do two critical things: identifying repetitions and areas mostly suffering from implementation deficiencies; and revisiting summit repertoires of implementation to ascertain trends in the normative culture of the organization. In this context some of the long standing issues reflected include: the facilitating of the movement of capital, people and goods; consolidating infrastructure development; trade and economic liberalisation; and the implementation of the regional poverty observatory. Human security interventions by SADC in its member states require concrete political and policy steps, and simply not mere legally binding articulated common positions and declarations. It is also the internal drivers of SADC in policy implementation and in strengthening its governance agenda that can move a multitude of processes forward. Moreover, the importance of conflict prevention and early warning in the region cannot be overemphasized and issues pertaining to the development of SADC’s capacity for mediation, preventative diplomacy needs urgent attention such that social unrests in Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland for instance are not allowed to fester. Correspondingly, the inadequate coverage of existing and emerging security challenges speaks to the lack of sufficient interface with civil society- a reality the region’s leaders cannot afford to deny - exacerbated by the absence of SADC National Contact Points (NCP) in many member states. These notably falls under the mandate of the Troika but as its Chair, South Africa’s task is an arduous one, with the concurrence of its roles in the security councils of the United Nations and the African Union – coupled with its own demanding development challenges. The deciding factor will be how leadership on these issues by Angola and South Africa re-orients Summit to pool political will and requisite human and financial resources in a concerted regional response to breathe life to a truly common mandate.

Written by Dimpho Motsamai, Researcher, African Conflict Prevention Programme, ISS Pretoria Office