DAR ES SALAAM, 26 August – Tanzanian President Benjamin William Mkapa who has assumed the rotating chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), has called on member states to adopt strategies that translate summit decisions into real benefits for ordinary women and men.

Speaking at the start of the 23rd Summit of heads of state and government, Mkapa called for closer regional integration which he said is an imperative in the wake of pressures posed by globalization.

“Our people are not asking for anything new. They only expect us to recognize our duty to transform the decisions we took at previous summits – embedded in multiple protocols and declarations – and those we are going to arrive at in this summit, into time-framed, workable action plans,” said the Tanzanian president.

Since 1992 when SADC transformed from a “coordinating conference” to a “development community”, a total of 23 protocols and a number of other legal instruments such as charters and declarations have been signed. Of these, only 11 protocols received the requisite two-thirds majority ratification by member states, allowing them to come into force and thus become ready for implementation.

The current summit is expected to approve another charter on Fundamental Social Rights. Once a legal instrument has come into force, member states are required to harmonize its provisions with national policy. This process has been painstakingly slow in most member states, limiting the effectiveness of SADC’s regional integration project.

Mkapa reminded his fellow leaders of the importance and relevance of SADC. He said it is critical to move beyond regional cooperation and focus on sectors that can enhance regional integration. He cited the pillars of regional integration as trade, transport, information and communication technologies, energy and water resources.

“We need to prioritize and focus on these regional veins of growth, as well as connective sectors and sub-sectors such as railways, road networks, telecommunications, and electricity grids for faster economic and social development,” said Mkapa who will chair SADC for the next 12 months.

He took over from Angolan President Jose Edwardo dos Santos at a ceremony to mark the official opening of the 23rd annual summit attended by all SADC heads of state and government with the exception of Seychelles. The Indian Ocean island state of 80,000 people gave a one-year notice in July to withdraw from membership of SADC.

SADC is in its final stages of restructuring, centralizing management at the Botswana-based Secretariat. Sectors that were previously coordinated by member states have now been collapsed into four directorates that are now managed by the Secretariat, headed by Executive Secretary Prega Ramsamy.

A new Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan, which is expected to be endorsed by the leaders here, is seen as the road map through which the organization can achieve, as Mkapa put it, its long-awaited dream of common destiny.

It is in this context that Mkapa called for the need to “devise strategies for the implementation of time-bound, prioritized, short and medium term projects that will have impact that is more meaningful in identified intervention areas”.

The Tanzanian president urged member states to convert the region’s abundant natural resources into marketable products, that can act as catalysts for broad human development.

He said, “… unused or underutilized, resources have little impact on our development – locally, nationally and regionally. They [the natural resources] may satisfy our egos, but those will be egos wallowing in poverty.”

On trade, the SADC chairperson called for more effective implementation of the SADC Trade Protocol. He said with the exception of South African exports to SADC member states, intra-regional trade is still too low.

“Intra-SADC trade is estimated at only 22 percent of total SADC trade. Even if we reach the 35 percent target by 2005, that is still too low for an integrated market, and the rate at which intra-SADC trade is growing is not too encouraging,” he said.

In his wide-ranging speech, Mkapa spoke about fighting HIV and AIDS, and the need to incorporate key social targets including ensuring that regional integration includes goals such as respect for basic human rights, the overall employment rate, poverty reduction, social protection and security, and educational opportunities.

He said the social dimension to regional integration “must be regularly measured, and its results reported, disaggregated by gender”.

On democracy and governance, Mkapa called for ways to evolve and bring to an operational level, the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation. He said for SADC, the organ presented the best platform to show commitment and application of the concept of African solutions to African problems.

He said that with the wars in some of the member states coming to an end, and with no perceived potential for new wars in the short to medium term, “SADC can be our sub-regional mechanism and vehicle for the practical implementation of the NEPAD peer review mechanism, and of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, at the regional level”.

Calling on member states to stand together in defence of their history, common identity and sovereignty, Mkapa attacked sanctions on Zimbabwe, urging those who have imposed them to lift them without further delay.

He spoke strongly in favour of the land redistribution in Zimbabwe saying, “I find it insulting that there are powers and people who believe food shortages in the region can only be averted when Africans become servants on white people’s land, rather than when they work on their own land.”

Mkapa is credited for turning around a flagging economy since taking over as third president of the United Republic of Tanzania in 1995. He reduced inflation from as high as 20 percent to the current average of five percent. He introduced policies that have boosted growth in gross domestic product to an enviable 6.2 percent recorded last year.

Since independence in 1961, and the unification of the mainland and the islands of Zanzibar in 1964 to become the United Republic of Tanzania, the country has been a bastion of peace and a symbol of unity. Under the leadership of its first President, the late Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the United Republic of Tanzania became the home of many southern African freedom fighters and revolutionaries.

At the helm of SADC, President Mkapa will be seeking to further Nyerere’s spirit of selflessness, providing leadership not only to the 33.5 million Tanzanians, but SADC’s estimated 200 million citizens. (SARDC)

Southern African News Features can be reproduced in print or broadcast with credit to SARDC and the author. SARDC has been reporting on SADC from a regional perspective since 1990.