The Quest to Rebalance Human and Capital Migration in SADC

Since the dawn of colonialism South Africa has battled with its northern sisters on the control of human and financial capital. In the colonial times, the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WENELA), mobilised labour from Southern African countries like Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia to work in the mines. The discovery of large deposits of gold and diamonds also meant that capital went south. While South Africa was still under apartheid, regional independent member countries created the Southern Africa Development Coordination Committee (SADCC) in 1980. The organisation intended to whittle down South African hegemony by creating alternative industrial and transportation hubs. The fall of apartheid South Africa in 1994 ushered in a new political dispensation in the region. However, the hegemony created in colonial times persisted especially with the fall of the Zimbabwean economy which was an alternative challenge to South African hegemony. In 2015, SADCC's successor, Southern African Development Community (SADC) launched the Agenda 2063 that seeks to industrialise the whole region and neutralise South African Hegemony. This paper looks at how South Africa gained hegemony in the region that has seen it dominating both the human and financial capital of the region. It will also analyse regional countries' response, the level of their successes and South Africa's attitude to regional industrialisation.