By IPS Correspondents
CAPE TOWN, Dec 2 2006 (IPS)

While the recent stakeholders’ conference on the Zambezi River Basin saw many good intentions expressed, it also served as a reminder of the persistent challenge posed by weak co-operation between Southern African states.

At the conference, held in Windhoek, Namibia, on Nov. 22 and 23, participants from civil society raised concerns about the lack of a united driving force to develop the Zambezi watercourse. This role should be played by the planned Zambezi Watercourse Commission (ZAMCOM).

However, one of the eight riparian states – Zambia – has not even signed the agreement to establish ZAMCOM, despite promising to do so. Another three have yet to ratify the agreement: Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Ross Herbert, head of the governance programme at the South African Institute for International Affairs, a Johannesburg-based research organisation, told IPS that the problem with many inter-state protocols and agreements in Africa is that regional co-operation on the continent generally remains quite weak.

This explains why certain regional accords do not get much further than the table they were signed on.

ZAMCOM, a project of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), is aimed at enabling joint management and decision-making among the eight riparian states to avoid conflict over the valuable resources of the Zambezi river and its surrounding areas.

So far only Angola, Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia have ratified the agreement.

ZAMCOM is also meant to promote a more holistic approach to the developmental potential of the mighty river, fitting in with the aims of SADC’s Regional Indicative Strategic Development Programme (RISDP). To come into force, the ZAMCOM agreement needs to be ratified by at least six participating states.

Governments have had ample time to prepare themselves to join ZAMCOM, as the initiative flows from the Zambezi Action Plan adopted back in 1987.

According to Herbert, part of the problem is that the secretariats of regional organisations are chronically understaffed and under-funded. Member states also frequently do not give secretariats a mandate to execute or enforce agreements.

This is also true for the SADC secretariat, which is too under-resourced to fulfil its main tasks of co-ordinating and monitoring SADC policies and plans. Member states are loathe to empower the SADC secretariat to monitor their activities, according to Gabriël H. Oosthuizen, author of ‘The Southern African Development Community – the organisation, its policies and prospects.’

Herbert pointed out that SADC is unlike the European Union where member states after many decades decided to cede sovereignty to a permanent collective government based in Brussels.

SADC has not received such authority. “As a result it cannot do much more than pull people together,” said Herbert.

One example of SADC’s inability to implement decisions concerned Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections held last year. In spite of the Zimbabwean government’s selective implementation of the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, it faced no sanction from its SADC counterparts.

Similarly, patchy implementation keeps the objectives of the SADC RISDP out of reach. The SADC Protocol on Politics, Defence, and Security Cooperation has not been applied with respect to conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the anti-democratic actions of the governments in Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

David Monyae, lecturer in African international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, believes weaknesses in SADC’s structures should be viewed in their historical context.

SADC’s predecessor, the Southern African Development Coordination Conference, was formed in a bid to counterbalance the economic dominance of apartheid South Africa within the region. Its origins thus have more to do with politics than economics, said Monyae.

Since the end of apartheid, SADC has been attempting to transform itself from a politically-focussed organisation into one which is aimed at advancing economic growth. This transformation has not been a smooth one.

“Despite this hangover from the past, there is political will to make it work,” Monyae told IPS.

In his view, the SADC secretariat is stronger than it used to be and, as a result, much has happened in terms of the development of protocols and guidelines for the SADC region.

He admitted that many of these documents have yet to be implemented at the national level, but said that critics should remember that the application of protocols is in its infancy as SADC has only been around for 14 years. “They need time to evolve.”

But, not too much time, warns Herbert. The difficulty with structures such as ZAMCOM is that political leaders are content with advancing them at a snail’s pace. The continent is rich in natural resources such as the Zambezi river but, as far as the exploitation of these resources is concerned, much work needs to be done, and fast.

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