Abstract:
While literature exists on the institutions of the
Southern African Development Community
(SADC), there still lacks – especially
from an
international institutional
law perspective
– a detailed and critical
analysis
of SADC’s
institutional design, focusing
on the powers
of the various SADC institutions and interinstitutional
relations. The Treaty of the
Southern African Development Community
(SADC Treaty) gives the Summit of Heads
of States or Government (the Summit)
overarching powers in the SADC integration
project. There is no framework for policy
bargaining in SADC as the other institutions
play a largely subservient
and supporting
role to the Summit. As if the powers of
the Summit given to it by the letter
of the
SADC Treaty are not overarching enough,
the Summit, buoyed by the spirit
of its
supremacy guaranteed in the SADC Treaty,
has at times acted even beyond its already
outsized powers as evidenced
by the
suspension and disbandment of the SADC
Tribunal. The powers of the Summit in the
two selected areas of treaty amendment and budget adoption are used in this
article to illustrate the dominance of the
Summit in the SADC project. With no
framework of checks and balances in the
general policymaking
arena and no judicial
oversight, the SADC institutional framework
not only belies
the normative values
of
democracy
and the rule of law which the
SADC Treaty seeks to promote and protect,
but is furthermore at odds with the current
trend in the institutional design of regional
economic communities.
