The Role of SADC (or Lack Thereof) in the Political Unification of the Region and/or Continent: An Afrocentric Critique

Through an Afrocentric prism, the South African Development Community was critiqued as it celebrated three decades since its inception in 1992. The paper went beyond the widely discussed and researched aspects of economic strategies of integrating this regional bloc. It focused on the notion of political integration of SADC and the broader continent of Africa which is an area that has not received much attention in the last 30 years or so. The paper partly found that the latter has been the case mainly because, in their design, Regional Economic Communities were mainly created as a compromise position during the early debates in the 1960s when the then African political leaders were deliberating on the best possible way of uniting the continent. This was, therefore, the ramifications of the gradualist approach to African integration. Since that period, efforts at establishing an African Union government have taken a back banner, if discussed at all. The future relationship between SADC and the African Continental Free Trade Area was also explored and it was argued that the latter must be prioritised over the former including over the rest of the RECs in Africa if meaningful inroads are to be made in the efforts to attain the African Economic Community but more importantly, if a politically united Africa is to be realised.