Policy challenges Successful regional integration schemes require political commitment, confidence building and trust, or at least the ability to seek compromises among the stakeholders to create sustainable common denominators. There has hardly been encouraging evidence in Southern Africa in recent years that there have been meaningful achievements towards more regional unity. The original focus and emphasis on trade patterns has to some extent created the misleading assumption that regional integration would be foremost a matter of economic issues. Even there, however, the rather painstakingly slow process of the ratification of the SADC Trade Protocol has been discouraging. Agreed upon in 1996, it only came into effect at the end of 1999, paving the way for a free trade area in the region in another decade.
Regional peace is an obvious illusion so far.
The latest war in Congo provoked a serious rift among SADC states, with direct Angolan, Namibian and Zimbabwean military involvement since 1998. The intervention by South Africa and Botswana in Lesotho before the end of the same year was similarly counterproductive. So is the impact of the deteriorating internal situation of Zimbabwe. Along with the continued conflict in Angola, where Namibia has directly intervened, these are only the most prominent among the sobering signs of unsolved regional security issues. They illustrate as much as the ongoing petty disputes over borders and territories that individual countries place their particular agenda above regional matters.