A Southern African Development Community Parliament? Challenges and opportunities for regionalisation

Abstract

In 2020, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) celebrated forty years of existence. It started as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) in April 1980, which later became the SADC in 1992. Notwithstanding this milestone, as a regional economic community, SADC remains the only such a community in Africa without a regional Parliament. Although the SADC-Parliamentary Forum (PF) does exist as an institution approved by the SADC in 1997 in terms of article 9 (2) of the SADC Treaty, it cannot be regarded as a bona fide regional parliament of SADC because its transformation into a SADC Parliament is yet to be realised. SADC Parliamentary Forum (PF) exists and functions at this stage only as an independent association of parliamentarians. This research sought to address the primary question: what are the opportunities that a regional parliament inherently provides for a regional economic community like SADC in strengthening and supporting its regionalisation project? This question was premised on the preliminary assumption that the establishment of a regional parliament brings with it inherent institutionalised benefits and efficiencies for a regionalisation project of an economic community like SADC.

Theoretically, this study is set against the backdrop of Africa’s broader vision of the promotion of economic integration as a precondition for the continent’s realisation of its envisioned goal of self-reliance and self-sustained development. The study is specifically presented in the broader context of the phenomenon of regional parliamentarisation in Africa, which is deemed an integral component of the continent’s efforts of fostering socio-economic integration, democratic governance and political globalisation. The study’s theoretical framework is predicated on three dominant intuitionalist approaches, namely, international democracy approach, rational choice approach, and pan Africanism approach.

The study has, in essence, found and confirmed the preliminary assumption that there are indeed inherent institutionalised benefits and efficiencies that are attached to regional parliaments, among which, is their institutionalised potential to help, through an oversight function, in enhancing monitoring and implementation of regional activities and decisions, and removing trade barriers. Also found in this study is the regional parliaments’ potential to act as key agents in fostering and nurturing intraregional communication, consequently, contributing to building shared regional identity, and consequently building and entrenching the continental identity that pan Africanist ideologue envisages. Also found in this study, is that SADC as the only regional economic community in Africa that does not have a regional parliament, is currently not able to enjoy the institutionalised benefits and efficiencies that accrue from having a regional parliament and this is clearly manifest in the kind of implementation and coordination challenges it is currently faced with.

Keywords: regionalisation; parliamentarisation; regional economic communities (RECs); and SADC