the safeguarding of the region against internal and external instabilities;

the promotion of democracy and human rights;

the development of a common foreign policy;

co-operation in the fields of security and defence;

a regional defence treaty; and

regional peacekeeping.

However, the founding of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security did not strengthen SADC. On the contrary, the Organ added many serious problems to existing ones, with far too many questions absolutely vital for the proper functioning of SADC being left unanswered. Only the top of the Organ actually exists. Yet, interestingly enough, this top does not consist of a council of ministers of foreign affairs or of defence as had been envisaged, but of a summit of heads of state. No decision has yet been taken whether its chairperson will rotate. Indeed, SADC governments have not agreed until now whether this Organ council — like the SADC council of ministers — will be subordinate to the SADC summit. More damning is the fact that the Organ is without any administrative support. Since its inception, president Robert Mugabe has been the chairperson of the Organ. He initially seemed intent on ensuring that this position will be permanently held by the president of Zimbabwe as a move to prevent South Africa from dominating SADC politically. Such political moves served to divide rather than unite the Community’s members. The Organ played no role at all when, at the request of the government of Lesotho, South Africa and Botswana sent troops into the mountain kingdom in September 1998 to suppress a coup by members of the country’s security forces. Similarly, but for different reasons, the Organ did not figure when Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia sent troops into the DRC a month earlier, and thus saved the dictatorial Kabila regime from being toppled by rebels.

Being aware of the dangers resulting from the non-functioning of the Organ, ministers of foreign affairs, defence and security of member states proposed a set of important reforms late in 1999. If accepted by any upcoming SADC summit, the Organ will have a better chance to be effective for the first time. According to these proposals, the Organ will be subordinate to the SADC summit. The council of heads of state will be replaced by a troika, consisting of the acting, preceding and succeeding chairpersons. Under the troika will be a council of ministers of foreign affairs, defence and security, with a rotating chairperson. The activities of the council of ministers will be supported by a permanent secretariat.

In the current uncertain circumstances, however, the fact has to be commended that troops from all SADC member countries — with the exception of the DRC and Seychelles, and with the support of some foreign, mostly EU countries — took part in Exercise Blue Crane, a subregional peacekeeping training exercise in South Africa’s Northern Cape in April 1999.⁸ The troubling role of South Africa’s armed forces has aggravated the uncertainty in the region. Observers at Blue Crane noticed with concern that the quality of participating SANDF units had apparently declined sharply. It leads the EU — and other outside observers — to question the potential role of the South African forces in future peacekeeping and peacemaking missions. Weaknesses in the SANDF had already been noticed before, particularly during the campaign in Lesotho. The SANDF currently seems to experience a crisis similar to the one which the police, customs, immigration, public schools and hospitals, and other institutions have gone through since the historic transition to democracy. Among other factors, it seems as if affirmative action, however understandable, has been implemented with too much haste, often leading to even more corruption and inefficiency.

The consolidation and deepening of SADC is one of president Mbeki’s highest priorities. It is particularly here that his vision of an African Renaissance will succeed or fail. The tasks lying ahead of him in the region are as demanding as the problems he is confronted with at home, where Africans took over a ruined country from the Afrikaners. It is important that the outside world, particularly the EU, provides him and his democratic government with as much support as it can afford.

THE ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The late 1980s and early 1990s were the decisive years of the breakthrough towards democracy. In pursuit of its own national interests, the diplomacy practiced by the United Kingdom steered most of the decisive transformation process in South Africa, as well as developments in Namibia, Mozambique and, to a lesser extent, in Angola. At the time, the British government disregarded efforts by the EU to shape a common foreign policy towards Southern Africa, in general, and individual countries, in particular. Only when president Nelson Mandela took over from F W de Klerk did the EU and its other members have the opportunity to play a role. Arguably, British diplomacy then did and still does play the most active part in shaping Europe’s policy towards modern-day South Africa.

However, it was the diplomacy of Klaus Kinkel, the German foreign minister at the time, that led to the opening of a dialogue between the EU and SADC. This paved the way for SADC and most of the EU countries to convene in Berlin in September 1994, when they signed a general and very ambitious co-operation agreement. It was agreed that ministers of member states of the two communities would meet every two years. Current affairs would be dealt with by a common EU/SADC steering committee of high ranking public officials, meeting every six months. The two bodies have given special emphasis to the following issues of mutual interest:

the development of SADC;

the future of the Lomé convention;

human rights and democracy;

the conflicts in Kosovo, Angola and the DRC;

the EU’s Agenda 2000;

the EU’s opening towards new member countries in the East; as well as

the fight against drugs and HIV/Aids.

An important step towards the restructuring of relations between the EU and the whole of Southern Africa was taken when, after nearly four years of intensive negotiations, a free trade agreement was signed between the EU and South Africa.⁹ The time these negotiations took, should make it clear how difficult they were. Even on 1 January 2000, the date of the agreement’s provisional implementation, not all details had been cleared. The Greek and Italian governments, supported by other Mediterranean EU members, made it clear that the parliaments in Athens and Rome would not ratify the agreement if South Africa continued to export its respective schnapps under the trademarks Ouzo and Grappa. Other than trade issues, those dealing with development co-operation were not problematic. The European programme for reconstruction and development in South Africa, the accord signed in 1994, was simply included into the free trade agreement.

According to the key chapter of the free trade agreement, 95% of South Africa’s exports into the EU will be allowed free of any custom duties after a ten-year transitional period. After 12 years, 86% of EU exports will have free access to South African markets. As far as South Africa’s exports are concerned, a considerable number of ‘sensitive’ agricultural products are exempted from this agreement to protect the interests of European farmers. It remains to be seen whether these limitations will survive future World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations on the liberalisation of trade in agricultural products. Despite this, it can be expected that mutual trade will grow further. Currently, South Africa buys 43% of its imports in the EU and sells 30% of its total exports to the EU.

The EU-South Africa deal undoubtedly influenced the post-Lomé negotiations, conducted by the EU and its 71 ACP partners from September 1998 to February 2000. The Suva convention, signed in May 2000 in the capital of the Fiji islands, represents the most fundamental change in more than 40 years of EU-ACP co-operation. With the exception of South Africa, which was admitted into the group in 1997 as a member with very restricted rights, all ACP countries benefited from the generously endowed European Development Fund and from non-reciprocal trade preferences.

European negotiators insisted that such preferential treatment towards ACP countries, according to current WTO rules, could only be granted to LLDCs. In other words, after a transitional period, the EU and the non-LLDCs among its ACP partners will be linked by mutual FTZs. In the SADC region, this means that Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, SwaziIand and Mauritius will also have to concede trade preferences to the EU in the longer run. In addition, the EU and its partners agreed that, from 2008 onwards and again after a transitional period, the EU will no longer co-operate with individual ACP countries, but with whichever regional organisations that represent their interests as member countries. Decades of EU efforts to make its African partners co-operate on a regional level were more or less a total failure. This new criterion might force neighbouring ACP countries to be more serious in closely co-operating with one another on an institutionalised basis. It remains to be seen how the EU will combine the different patterns of co-operation with LLDCs and non-LLDCs belonging to one regional organisation.

The free trade agreement between the EU and South Africa might serve as a model here. Clearly, this agreement will involve more than just an EU/South Africa deal in practice, as it will include, in terms of Southern Africa, the whole of SACU. As this agreement changes South Africa’s external tariffs, the country’s four SACU partners must approve these changes, according to article 19 of the SACU constitution. They will clearly only approve this, if the EU is prepared to compensate them for their serious economic losses as a result of the EU’s dealings with Pretoria. These losses will be manifold. Two important factors will determine the extent of these losses. The first is the reduction of income through tariffs for BLNS countries. Until now, tariffs must be paid for EU products upon entering a BLNS country, as these countries, according to their ACP status, still enjoy the privilege of having a non-reciprocal FTZ with the EU. As costs do not allow for the establishment of tariff borders for EU products entering the BLNS countries via South Africa, they will also enter free of any duties into South Africa’s four SACU partners. Furthermore, products from BLNS countries will have to compete with EU products — some of these exports are even subsidised — on the South African (and even local) markets in future. These issues are currently being negotiated between the EU and BLNS countries. Secondly, it is likely that these issues will be combined with the agenda of deliberations since the mid-1990s, in which the five SACU members have tried to agree on a new formula for distributing SACU’s income from tariffs and excise duties. This will depend upon South Africa’s willingness to make the relevant concessions to the BLNS countries as they will hardly approve Pretoria’s deal with the EU otherwise. Perhaps today, for the first time in the history of SACU, the BLNS countries could act from a position of strength in their negotiations with Pretoria.

INTERNAL STABILITY IN SOUTH AFRICA: PRECONDITION FOR SADC’S SUCCESS

Since Mandela took over from De Klerk in May 1994, South Africa has been governed by the African National Congress (ANC) and its alliance partners, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The alliance’s coalition partner, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) only seems to play a minor role. During the decades of the struggle, the SACP and large parts of the ANC and COSATU worked very closely with the ruling party and the government of the German Democratic Republic and of other socialist states. Not surprisingly, their successful fight against apartheid also had a strong influence on the alliance’s direction with its economic policies in post-apartheid South Africa. However, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of socialism forced the alliance to throw its plans of a socialist development agenda overboard. Circumstances further forced the non-Marxists, the strongest wing in the ANC, to get rid of the ‘Swedish model’.¹⁰ Advised by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and leading western governments, the ANC came out in favour of an unequivocally market-oriented policy — as elaborated upon in the Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy (GEAR). This put them on a collision course with the SACP and COSATU. The view was that economic growth would be created so that the national income could be redistributed. It was never disputed that redistribution was a social, economic and political necessity, given that South Africa remains one of the countries with the most unequal national income distribution in the world. However, GEAR could only have succeeded if South Africa’s first democratically elected government had been able to create a favourable investment climate and thus to attract mostly foreign capital. But, in this Pretoria has been failing. Since the triumph of democracy, South Africa has lost capital more or less continually. One of the consequences was that its 1.5% annual growth remained far behind the envisaged 6%. In addition, it was impossible to create 100 000 jobs annually, as promised in the 1994 electoral campaign. Instead, the opposite happened, with the country losing at least half a million jobs between 1994 and 1999.

On its return to the international community, South Africa was again submitted to the regimes of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and later that of the WTO. GATT forced Pretoria to dismantle the high protection tariffs that had been built up around the apartheid state. One consequence was that local producers suddenly had to compete with strong rivals from abroad. Local production sites had to be modernised if they were to become competitive. These plans could only have been realised if huge sums were invested. But this did not happen. The poor quality of training among many people, the militancy of SACP- influenced trade unions and crime often negatively influenced foreign and local business decisions to invest capital.¹¹ Black South Africa, for very good reasons, are too proud of their victory over 350 years of racism to question the ANC’s policies seriously. Every potential investor today knows that, due to the mixed results of affirmative action and due to the view held by many Afrikaners to be in a Versailles-like situation,¹² police corruption, the breakdown in the criminal justice system and the problems in prisons could disintegrate beyond the control of the government. The country’s élite will therefore continue to emigrate and South Africa might well decline to the development levels of some of its neighbours in the long run.

Sadly, South Africa’s young and fragile democracy could pitiably fail. Unfortunately, no-one in the EU or elsewhere seems to have the political courage to tell South Africa’s new leaders to heed the words of Klaus von Beyme, an eminent German political scientist: "Demokratie ist nicht gegeben, Demokratie ist aufgegeben" (democracy is not given, democracy is a continuous challenge). Of course, democracy has to be developed and this requires stability. To quote Patti Waldmeir, an excellent American journalist, democratic niceties will have to wait upon the overwhelming need to restore stability, so that a lasting democratic order can evolve in the longer run.

The EU and its partners should urgently and strongly advise Mbeki and his government to include strong Afrikaner individuals into key positions in cabinet, such as Constand Viljoen and a representative of Afrikaner business concerns. Far too many gifted Afrikaners have withdrawn into apathy and, to quote one of Afrikanerdom’s great sons, Breyten Breytenbach, it would be most surprising if this apathy does not turn into counterviolence and even counterrevolutionary activities in future.¹³ It would be naive to believe that conservative and even not so conservative Afrikaners in such a situation will lack the necessary will and organisation to resist. The great catastrophe can still strike the country. South African and foreign leaders must be reminded of what Van Zyl Slabbert¹⁴ said in July 1987 in Dakar when his group of progressive Afrikaners met with a delegation of top ANC officials, headed by Mbeki: "If you want to overcome Apartheid you must convince Whites, and particularly Afrikaners, that there is life beyond Apartheid."¹⁵ Not so long ago, this was repeated by Beyers Naudé, one of the Afrikaners who identified with the ANC’s struggle. The Afrikaners’ great potential is still there and could still be easily abused to destroy the country when it should be used to achieve the opposite: to stabilise and develop democratic South Africa.

All this was clearly seen by Princeton Nathan Lyman, a former United States’ ambassador in South Africa, and his colleague from the UK, Sir Anthony Reeve. Both were present on 23 April 1994 when, hours before the country’s very first democratic elections, Thabo Mbeki and Constand Viljoen signed the Accord on Afrikaner self-determination after nearly nine months of deliberations. For the author of this article — one of two EU observers, present at the signing ceremony in the West Wing of the Union Buildings — it was painful to see that the German government was not represented. Like so many others, the Germans apparently did not have a clue then, and neither do they have now of what was at stake.

London and Washington, of course, knew the latent dangers. What is less understandable, is their apparent indifference after the accord had been included into the South African Constitution (article 235). As such they did their own diplomacy a fatal disservice. But, it was disunity in Viljoen’s political camp and ideological reservations in parts of the ANC that predominantly prevented progress. With Viljoen’s marginalisation in the 1999 elections, the whole of South Africa and its EU partners suffered a serious setback. The many Afrikaners who were not prepared to follow F W de Klerk into capitulation, but who were prepared to give the new South Africa a chance on the condition that, as prepared by Mbeki and Viljoen, their right to self-determination was respected, became leaderless. In June 1999, many of them did not go to the polls at all, or voted for the Democratic Party (DP) whose seemingly racist slogan — "slaan terug" (hit back) — reflected their desperation and frustration. Many Afrikaners now ask when the ANC/SACP/COSATU alliance (and also the Western world) will understand the open letter, published late in 1999 by Breyten Breytenbach, Johan Degenaar, Deon Geldenhuys, Hendrik Willem van der Merwe and other progressive Afrikaners, asking the government to respect international standards on minority rights.¹⁶

THE THREAT OF SADC’S COLLAPSE: A CHALLENGE TO THE EU

The chances to turn SADC into a genuine success are arguably slim. However, the disintegration of South Africa and of the other SADC countries is by no means inevitable. The EU must be made aware of the fact that chaos and anarchy in South Africa, from a security point of view, would confront the Union with challenges with which it could not cope.¹⁷ As is well known, more than a million citizens from EU countries, among them mostly Britons, Portuguese and Germans, still live in South Africa. Scenarios might arise that make it necessary to evacuate them through the mysterious US airbase at Molepolole in Botswana, or through South African airports and harbours. None of the EU countries and not even the US has the necessary transportation capacities at its disposal. The alternative will be for the EU and its members to do everything possible to help South Africa to consolidate its fledgling democracy.

In considering Germany’s experiences with ethnic minorities in a number of eastern European countries, the question arises whether solutions cannot somehow be comparatively transferred to South Africa. The government in Berlin should remember that, only a few years ago, it tried to compel the Russian government to hand back what belonged to the so-called Sowjetdeutsche (Soviet Germans) from 1924 to 1941, in order to be able to preserve their identity in a culturally foreign environment — the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans (a kind of volkstaat) and closed settlements (Sprachinseln, or linguistic islands) in the other parts of the USSR. The leaders of the young Soviet Union, by the way, had conceded these privileges to their ethnic German community and so successfully overcame its counterrevolutionary tendencies. It should not be a problem at all for Germany, being one of the EU’s key members, to introduce this expertise into European discussions on developments in South Africa and into any EU/South African and/or EU/SADC dialogue.

If the EU and South Africa succeed in stabilising democracy in South Africa, they will have a much better chance to help with the settling of conflicts in other SADC countries. Hopefully, SADC and its members will then be better prepared to use the many available possibilities. The existing web of treaties with Western Europe offers them the opportunity to develop SADC further. The EU/SADC co-operation treaty of September 1994 is particularly filled with opportunities that have not yet been fully utilised. SADC and its members should use the opportunity of frank dialogue to learn from the EU’s successes and failures over the last 40 years. They should be prepared to admit, for example, that the hasty agreement on a common market within a few years only, the founding of the far too ambitions Organ on Politics, Defence and Security and the inclusion of the war-torn DRC into SADC, endanger SADC’s very existence. Furthermore, when considering reunited Germany’s not too powerful role within the EU, the EU and SADC may together find ways to deal with South Africa’s place within the Community. The French politician and EU commissioner, Claude Cheysson played a most fruitful role in the founding of the SADCC some 20 years ago. This example should urge the EU to sponsor SADC, albeit under totally different circumstances. Together, both regional organisations stand a chance. If their co-operation fails, it will be a disaster for the EU as much as for SADC.

NOTES

The author, a trained lawyer, was the representative of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) to the German federal parliament and the federal government until fairly recently. The SWP is Germany’s most important think-tank on foreign and security policy issues. Over the past three decades, shuttling between Germany and South Africa, he also worked as a freelance consultant on Southern African issues and the Lomé convention.

This is an edited version of an article which will be published later this year in: Jens van Scherpenberg & Peter Schmidt (eds), Stabilität und Kooperation: Aufgaben internationaler Ordnungspolitik, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden Baden, Germany.

The text of the agreement was published by the Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung (Bonn), 12 September 1994, pp 769-772.



With reference to the SADCC, see T Hawkins, A mere magnet for funds, in Southern Africa: The political and economic prospects for the region, Die Suid-Afrikaan, October/November 1992, pp 13-14. With reference to SADC, see the detailed papers by C Peters-Berries & M Marx, Regionale Kooperation und Integration im Südlichen Afrika (SADC), Chancen und Herausforderungen, KAS-Auslandinformationen 11, St Augustin, 1997, pp 64-98; and C Peters-Berries & M Marx, Regionale Integration in Südlichen Afrika: Die Southern African Development Community (SADC) im Jahr 1998, KAS-Auslandinformationen, 1999, pp 50-69.



See details about the different sectors in J Cilliers, Building security in Southern Africa: An update of the evolving architecture, ISS Monograph 43, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, November 1999, pp 13-14.



The OECD distinguishes between less developed countries (LDCs) and least developed countries (LLDCs).



"Fly the beloved country", as Anne Paton entitled an article in a London Sunday paper late in 1998.



South Africa’s capital crisis, The Wall Street Journal Europe, 9 September 1998, p 10. On the foreign investments in South Africa, see World Bank, Global development finance, World Bank, Washington DC, 1999, p 492. From a German point of view, see Southern African-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Fifth survey of German enterprises in South Africa: Views, opinions, judgements, intentions and considerations with regard to policy and economy, Johannesburg, 1998.



See J Cilliers, The SADC Organ on defence, politics and security, IDP Paper 10, Institute for Defence Policy, Halfway House, October 1996; M Malan & J Cilliers, SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security: Future developments, IDP Paper 19, Institute for Defence Policy, Halfway House, March; and Cilliers, 1999, op cit, pp 32-36.



See SANDF, Exercise Blue Crane, South Africa, 7 to 30-4-1999, booklet for military attachés. Compare in this context, E G Berman & K E Sams, Constructive disengagement: Western efforts to develop African peacekeeping, ISS Monograph 33, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, December 1998.



See European Commission, The European Union and South Africa: An overview of the relationship in light of the trade, development and co-operation agreement, EC, Brussels, 1999. Important information on the negotiations are to be found in Koordinationsstelle Südliches Afrika (ed), Europäische Union — Südliches Afrika. Freihandel oder handel mit Entwicklung, Bielefeld, 1997.



Sweden was the pioneer of democratic socialism. Later, while it could still be financed, it was widely copied by other members of the EU.



See, for example, Euro Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Southern Africa, European business confidence in South Africa: Survey of prevailing views and options, Johannesburg, October 1997.



After World War I and Germany’s defeat, Germany had to sign a ‘peace dictate’ in Versailles in Paris, instead of a ‘peace treaty’. As many Germans saw it, this humiliated the German nations and was therefore one of the main reasons for the next catastrophe, World War II. In German, the term ‘Versailles’ became synonomous wiht deep rooted hopelessness.



B Breytenbach, He Mann, lass mich nicht allein. Unerledigte Geschäfte in Südafrika...., Frankfurter Rundschau, 28 March 1998, p 18.



The author was a member of his groundbreaking delegation to Dakar, Senegal in July 1987.



Quoted by K Baron von der Ropp, Two years after Dakar, the dialogue continues, Democracy in Action, July 1989, pp 14-15. K Baron von der Ropp, Nuwe benaderings nodig vir Westerse inisiatiewe, Die Suid-Afrikaan, April/May 1988, pp 34-36. K B von der Ropp, Afrikaner-Israel kan ‘n tweede Lebanon verhoed, Vrye Weekblad, 27 October 1989, p 18.



Pres Mbeki, luister asb na ons..., Insig, November 1999, pp 24-25.



K Baron von der Ropp, Nicht undenkbar: Bundeswehr-Soldaten in Süd Afrika, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30 August 1999, p 10.