Supreme in letter, supreme in spirit, supreme in deed : an exposition of the SADC summit’s overarching powers in the SADC regional integration project

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.