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The SADC Summit, held in the Mozambican capital Maputo in
August, declared the Trade Protocol, which seeks to gradually introduce a
free trade area in southern Africa, will take effect in January 2000
following its ratification by seven of the eleven countries that signed the
pact in 1996, while two more have pledged to ratify before the end of 1999.
Lesotho and Malawi joined five other
countries - Botswana, Mauritius, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe - that had
already ratified the Trade Protocol before the SADC Summit, held on 17-18
August. The seven countries now make a two-thirds majority.
The other countries that signed but have not ratified are
Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zambia.
Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland
have indicated that they will ratify the protocol, seen as they key to
meaningful regional integration before the end of the year. This, said the
summit in a communiqué, will ensure that the protocol enters into force in
January 2000 as scheduled.
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This, said the summit in a communiqué,
will ensure that the protocol enters into force in January 2000
Economic commentators say, however, that
although it may be legally binding that with seven countries, the protocol
can come into force, much will depend on South Africa.
Without its commitment, they say, the
protocol will be difficult to implement.
South Africa controls more than
two-thirds of the regional economy put together.
However, the South African President
Thabo Mbeki, who handed over the SADC chairmanship to President Joaquim
Chissano at the same summit, gave his assurances saying his country will
speed up the process of ratification, hoping to complete it before the end
of the year
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He left his continent that will guide Africa's
renaissance into the new millennium.
He died at 77 and was buried at his home in Butiama
near Lake Victoria after the poor, the ordinary and the famous honoured
him with their grief in Dar es Salaam.
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Africa mourns the death of its beloved Mwalimu
Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the charismatic but humble retired president
of Tanzania
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by Munetsi Madakufamba
When politicians and business-people meet
to discuss devel-opment issues, the question that is often asked at the end
is whether a conference was well attended, and at what level, as a measure
of its success.
Quite often, very little is said about
the ground that was covered since the last conference, or the cost in terms
of time spent sitting in such meetings.
Recently, a record 600 representatives of
business, trade unions and the media had a chance to interact with 14
political leaders from most southern African countries, Ghana, Kenya,
Uganda and Malaysia at the third Southern African International Dialogue
(SAID'99) in Zimbabwe's resort town of Victoria Falls.
The last two editions, in Botswana (1997)
and Namibia (1998), had not attracted so many participants nor were they
attended by so many political leaders. The conferences at Kasane and
Swakopmund were each attended by between 300 and 400 participants.
By usual standards, would one be wrong to
conclude that the Victoria Falls dialogue was the most successful of the
three? You would never be forgiven for making such a conclusion after
listening to South African President Thabo Mbeki's dinner message at
SAID'99.
"We meet in conference to answer the question - what is to be done!
At the conclusion of a successful conference we should have come to a
determination as to what is to be done," President Mbeki told the
participants in his speech entitled "From Swakopmund to Victoria
Falls".
"However, the fact that we knew [at Swakopmund] what needed to be done
did not mean that what we planned to do was therefore done," he said.
"Nothing is done until it is
done," he reminded his colleagues before embarking on a recital of
Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's "Conference Crazy". In this
light but serious recital, President Mbeki called for future conferences
where political leaders would be asked to explain what they had done to
implement decisions taken at the last conference.
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"The question that all of us should
answer as smart partners is - since Victoria Falls, what have we done
actually to implement the decisions we took to realise the perspective of
smart partnership?" he said, adding that
"The first political leaders to
report would be ourselves, given that we were the last in our region to be
exposed to the excellent idea of smart partnerships."
He summed up his contribution with the
call to include time factor as a cost of production. "Perhaps to
declare war on the misuse of this resource [time], we could count the time
spent on planning as a cost and the time spent doing what we had decided to
do as a benefit," he advised delegates.
The concept of smart partnership was
adopted from Malaysia, which started it four years ago as an attempt to
bring to dialogue, governments, business and labour. Meeting in an informal
interactive atmosphere, away from the usual "jacket-and-tie"
formalities, the players engage in frank discussions with the hope of
finding solutions to the many problems that plague society today.
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"He carried the torch that liberated Africa"
Exerpts from address by President Mkapa at
funeral
The week that Southern Africa will long to
remember
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SAID'99 was unique in that it brought
into the fold a fourth "smart partner" - the media. This also
marked a reversal of roles - when heads of state and government fired
questions to media chiefs. In a no-holds-barred two-hour discussion,
political leaders grilled journalists on whether they believed in the
efficacy of a partnership in development and how the latter could
contribute to the process.
The media's first contribution, the
editors concurred, would be to monitor the process of development,
beginning with assessing progress on implementation of conference
decisions.
To be able to do that, the politicians
were told, journalists needed a constitutional guarantee on the freedom
of the press.
The pledge to monitor development
progress could not have come at a better time, especially given the long
wish-list of projects drawn at the end of the conference. The dialogue
agreed on an economic programme that will promote cross-border investment
especially in tourism, transport and energy sectors.
"Several business projects, such as regional tourism, have been
identified as having immediate and great potential.
The economic benefits of regionally packaged tourism in terms of labour
intensive employment, and the potential from the development of
infrastructural and other ancillary services, were recognised," said
host President Robert Mugabe in his closing remarks entitled "The Way
Forward".
So much to be implemented by governments, business and labour as they
race against time in the run-up to SAID'2000 planned for Mozambique in the
new millennium.
But for the media, the way forward as watchdog of the society would be
to continuously remind their fellow "smart partners" that
"nothing is done until it is done."
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