Effects of regional economic integration in Southern Africa and the role of the Republic of South Africa

This study was undertaken during the democratisation and political reform process across the region in general, and in the Republic of South Afhca in particular. The analysis is made mainly in two phases: the first phase assesses the former Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) with South Africa as a competitive and hostile neighbour. The second part looks at the prospects of the region under the Southern African Development Community (SADC) with the membership of the majority ruled and democratic South Africa. The acronyms SADCC and SADC will be referred to interchangeably. SADCC is mainly covered up to 1992, and SADC thereafter. The objective of this study is to demonstrate how regional policies on manufacturing and trade have performed and make a critical assessment as benchmark for future policy formulations. SADCC undertook to develop a functioning regional economy, to improve the utilisation of available domestic resources, to strengthen the national economies through macroeconomic adjustment policies and to adjust to a dynamic outlook on the increased production of goods and promotion of trade. Instead of integrating via a classical market liberalisation approach, SADCC opted to integrate via co- operation in production applying an approach which has become to be known as „Production Coordination Approach“ (PCA). The market liberalisation approach was supposed to complement the one on cooperation in production.