Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

EMERGING SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES ON REGIONAL COOPERATION AND INTEGRATION AFTER APARTHEID

1992; Issue: 20 Linguagem: Inglês

1726-1368

Robert Davies,

Leadership, Human Resources, Global Affairs

Developments in southern Africa in the period since the battle of Cuito Cuanavale and in South Africa since February 1990 have placed the issue of the involvement of a democratic, non-racial South Africa in a programme of closer economic cooperation and integration with the rest of southern Africa firmly on the agenda. Most of the 'key players' inside South Africa - ranging from the present minority government and business community to the political organisations of the national liberation movement and the trade unions - are now on record as supporting some such move. At the same time organisations formed in the rest of the region, notably the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) and the Eastern and Southern African Preferential Trade Area (PTA) are preparing themselves for a new relationship with a post-apartheid South Africa. Despite the superficial appearance of consensus and some overlap in the use of language and terminology, significantly different perspectives have, in fact, emerged between different forces in South Africa on the terms, principles and approaches to govern a programme of closer regional economic cooperation and integration after apartheid. Future South African policy on this issue can thus be expected to depend to a considerable extent on the balance of forces established in the negotiation process now underway. This paper will critically examine some of the major perspectives emerging in South Africa on this issue. It will not offer a content analysis of the declared positions of key actors, nor will it discuss in any detail the merits or otherwise of the increasing number of specific proposals or models that have been put forward. Rather, it will attempt to characterise the broad thrust of the main alternative approaches that are emerging against the background of an analysis of the current crisis in the pattern of interaction established in the period since the end of World War n. It will then, on this basis, evaluate the capacity or otherwise to produce policies capable of building a new pattern of relations between a post-apartheid South Africa and the rest of the region that is equitable, sustainable and growth orientated.