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SADC marked its silver jubilee on Thursday, a celebration that preceded the regional bloc’s 37th Sadc Summit of Heads of State and Government in Tshwane, South Africa’ by two days.

On August 17, 1992, in Windhoek, Namibia, leaders from southern Africa signed the Sadc Treaty and Declaration, transforming the then Southern African Development Coordination Conference (Sadcc), which had a largely political focus, to Sadc which has an economic development agenda.

But the history of Sadc goes back to 1977, when active consultations were undertaken by the leadership of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia, working together as Frontline States. This led to a meeting of Foreign Ministries of the Frontline States in Gaborone, Botswana, in May 1979, which called for a meeting of ministers responsible for economic development.

That meeting was subsequently convened in Arusha, Tanzania, in July 1979. The Arusha meeting led to the birth of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC) in 1980.

SADCC was officially formed on 1st April, 1980 comprising all the majority ruled states of Southern Africa, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Heads of State and Government of the Frontline States and representatives of the governments of Lesotho, Malawi, and Swaziland signed the Lusaka Declaration “Towards Economic Liberation” in Lusaka, Zambia, and thus SADCC was born.

The SADCC was subsequently formalised by means of a Memorandum of Understanding on the Institutions of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference dated 20th July 1981.

In 1989, the Summit of Heads of State or Government, meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, decided that SADCC should be formalised to “give it an appropriate legal status … to replace the Memorandum of Understanding with an Agreement, Charter or Treaty.”

The 1992 treaty was signed by the leaders of the 10 countries that were members of the SADCC at the time — Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Five more states — the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa — signed the documents later as they joined the organisation.

In addition to adopting an economic development and integration focus, the signing of the founding treaty occasioned a number of fundamental changes to the operations of the bloc and management of its activities.

Before 1992, the grouping was a loose coalition of members, each of whom was charged with overseeing implementation of one portfolio but the new agenda demanded the creation of a central coordination structure, the secretariat that is based in Gaborone, Botswana.

Sadc has achieved a lot in deepening economic and political co-operation between member states.

Politically, the region is one of the strongest and most stable in Africa. Member states are good neighbours who never shout at each other across national boundaries. The peace has been witnessed within member states as well and democracy, marked by free speech and regular elections, prevails.

Where and when political challenges have occurred, the region has worked through its various organs to resolve them. Some of the achievements scored over the past few years include the intervention of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola in helping the DRC government in fighting rebels and their foreign backers in the late 1990s into the early 2000s.

Sadc also helped in the signing of the global political agreement in our country in 2009 after difficulties ensued over the 2008 harmonised elections that yielded a hung parliament. The agreement, reached through the efforts of a Sadc appointed mediator, former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki, led to the inauguration of an inclusive government of Zanu-PF, MDC-T and MDC. Elections were held in 2013 which Zanu-PF won cleanly.

A few weeks ago, Sadc also brokered elections and peace in Lesotho after months of political and military instability.

In terms of economics, Sadc is a very integrated grouping in which member states co-operate in a wide range of issues to promote trade and investment across national borders.

King Mswati III of Swaziland, who was chairperson of the region until the 37th summit over the weekend issued a Sadc Day message on Thursday, looking back over the past 25 years of success for the region.

Some of the achievements, he said, include the approval of the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP), review of the Strategic Plan for the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation (SIPO), development of a Regional Infrastructure Master Plan in 2012, the Sadc Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap (2015-2063) in 2015 and its Costed Action Plan that was adopted by an Extraordinary Summit in March 2017.

“I do hope this will gradually move the region towards achieving the goals for which Sadc was established, which is to reduce the levels of poverty and improve the standard of living of the people in the region,” he said.

“These are indeed milestones which cannot go unnoticed yet there is still a lot of effort we need to put to realise more fruits for the future growth of our region.”

But there are obviously a few challenges that must be addressed. These include food and water insecurity, energy insecurity, cross border crime and environmental degradation.

More must be done to further integrate the region. Leaders have done well to abolish visas for Sadc citizens travelling across borders in the region but there is no harm in us coming up with one common passport. This will ease the movement of people and goods in the bloc.

A common currency will deepen the integration too.

But without a deliberate regional drive towards greater value addition and industrialisation, Sadc will not achieve much, poverty will continue and wealth accumulation poor. This is a challenge that Sadc leaders, at the behest of President Mugabe during his time as chairperson of the bloc a few years ago, have taken on board.

We look forward to deeper full-spectrum co-operation for Sadc for greater social, economic and political development of the grouping’s estimated 277 million people.