T Mbeki: Plenary Assembly of Southern African Development Community
Parliamentary Forum

14 November 2006

Programme Director,
Chairperson of the SADC Parliamentary Forum, Amusaa Mwanamwambwa
Secretary General of the SADC Parliamentary Forum, Kasuka Mutukwa
Honourable delegates and Members of the Parliaments of the SADC region,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for inviting me to this 21st Plenary Session of the SADC
Parliamentary Forum. On behalf of the government and people of South Africa, I
convey our warmest greetings to the Honourable Parliamentarians and elected
representatives of the sister peoples of Southern Africa.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish our Pan African
Parliament, whose sixth sitting started yesterday, on Monday, a successful
session, as it grapples with various matters such as the elections in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, the situation in Darfur, the transition programme
in Cote d'Ivoire, progress towards African political integration, the
implementation of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
programme, the outcomes of the African Peer Review Mechanism and other
challenges facing our continent.

As we know, SADC celebrated its Silver Jubilee in 2005. When it was
constituted in 1980, SADC comprised of only eight Member States. But these
eight states were driven by a strong determination to end colonialism and
apartheid in our region.

Indeed, the spirit that united some of the independent states in our region
to form the important group known as the Frontline States and the determination
to ensure that this region is constituted of free and independent member
states, despite the huge military and economic damage that would incur as a
result, should similarly drive all of us as we confront the twin enemies of
poverty and underdevelopment.

We clearly need the same resolve to ensure that all citizens in our
countries are properly empowered with education, knowledge, information and
skills fully to participate in the liberating democratic processes and economic
activities in our region and thus reinforce their role as agents of change, in
their own interest.

This is very central to the success of our common endeavour to create a
better and prosperous future for our region. This strong resolve is critical
for us as a region if we are to redefine the content of the leadership we must
provide, as our predecessors who constituted the Frontline States provided the
leadership that shaped Africa as a continent free of colonialism and
apartheid.

To guide us in this regard, we will rely, among other things, on the
objectives contained in the SADC Treaty. These objectives include the
imperative for us to:

* achieve development and economic growth, alleviate poverty, enhance the
standard and quality of life of the peoples of Southern Africa and support the
socially disadvantaged through regional integration
* evolve common political values, systems and institutions
* promote and defend peace and security
* promote self-sustaining development on the basis of collective self-reliance
and the inter-dependence of Member States
* harmonise political and socio-economic policies and plans of Member
States
* mobilise the people of the region and their institutions to take initiatives
to develop economic, social and cultural ties across the region
* develop policies aimed at the progressive elimination of obstacles to free
movement of capital and labour, goods and services and of the peoples of the
region generally within the Member States.

With reference to all this, in your own "Strategic Plan 2006 - 2010", you
said:

"The slow pace at which regional agreements and programmes are being
implemented is adversely affecting the quality of life of citizens. Part of the
problem is the slow pace with which national laws that are being harmonised and
aligned in order for SADC Protocols to be implemented. The Forum believes that
through these objective parliamentarians will become more involved in regional
integration issues and provide the link between the regional and national
platforms."

This year's Annual SADC Summit held in Maseru, prompted by observations made
by its outgoing Chairperson, President Festus Mogae, endorsed your conclusion,
that "The slow pace at which regional agreements and programmes are being
implemented is adversely affecting the quality of life of citizens."

Accordingly, as the Forum is aware, last month, on 23 October 2006, we held
an Extraordinary Summit Meeting of SADC to address this common concern. With
your permission, I would like to reiterate at this important meeting remarks I
made in an article I wrote immediately after the Extraordinary Summit Meeting,
in which I sought to communicate my views of what our region needs to do to
accelerate the process of regional economic integration, the area of regional
integration on which the Summit focused.

I do not repeat these remarks to say anything new, but to emphasise the
importance of the need for us to do better today and tomorrow than we did
yesterday and the day before. This is what I said in part:

"After detailed discussions, the Extraordinary Summit confirmed previous
SADC decisions that we should still aim to transform the SADC region into a
Free Trade Area (FTA) by 2008. This means that products and services
originating from within the region would be traded among the SADC Member States
free of tariffs.

"The Summit also agreed that we should still aim to create a SADC Customs
Union (CU) by 2010. This would mean that in addition to the duty free tariff
regime within the FTA, the SADC region would maintain a common external tariff
with regard to goods and services originating from the rest of the world. This
means that the customs revenues collected by the Member States would be put
into a common pool and then shared out according to an agreed formula.

"It is obvious that these developments, the FTA and the CU, would represent
major steps forward towards the economic integration of the SADC region. Of
course, we must make the point that this integration is not an end in
itself.

"It is an important part of the objective shared by the SADC Member States,
as rapidly as possible to reduce poverty and underdevelopment, improve the
lives of all our people and achieve balanced and shared growth and development
for the countries of our region.

"It therefore follows the steps that we must take along the path to
integration cannot be measured just against technical indicators but by the
extent to which they contribute to our shared developmental goals."

"Regional integration is rightly being pursued not just in our own region,
but across our continent, as a critical instrument to boost economic growth and
raise living standards. But we need to recognise that regional integration in
the developing world has all too often been a graveyard of failed expectations.
It is therefore important that our region carefully prepares the ground to make
any integration steps it takes sustainable.

"Currently available figures indicate that in the six or so years up to
2003, intra-regional SADC trade increased from 20% to 25% of total regional
trade. Undoubtedly, this represents progress. But a critical question we must
answer is - what is the pattern of this trade?"

"All indications suggest that much of it continues to be made up of exports
of manufactured goods from South Africa to the rest of the region, with a much
smaller volume of imports into our country from the rest of the region. In
reality, the trade imbalance in our region remains virtually unchanged, despite
the measures that have been taken to implement the 1996 SADC Trade Protocol
that directed that we should create the Free Trade Agreement (FTA)."

"Why is this so? It cannot be fundamentally because of tariffs. This is
because our country has, as a result of the implementation of our obligations
under the SADC Trade Protocol, already removed duties on over 90% of goods
originating from SADC countries."

"Unquestionably, the fundamental reason for this imbalance is due to
underdeveloped production capacity and inadequate infrastructure in the sister
SADC Member States - in other words, the historically evolved supply side
capacity constraints. (This underlines the importance of ensuring that as we
work to promote the economic integration of our region, the obviously dominant
position of the South African economy does not serve further to entrench the
underdevelopment of the other SADC Member States)."

"What this highlights is that any programme to promote greater trade
integration in a region such as ours, must be complemented by programmes of
sectoral co-operation focused on the creation of the conditions that would
enable producers to emerge in the SADC countries, who would be able to take
advantage of the additional market access opportunities that regional
integration would create."

"Practically, this means that we need to give clear guidelines for an FTA
Work Programme to identify and implement a range of complementary programmes
that are necessary to make a SADC FTA function effectively as a tool to promote
equitable and mutually beneficial developmental economic relations among
us."

"Among other things we need to ensure that:

* we are on track to promote macro-economic convergence around agreed
indicators
* our infrastructure development co-operation programmes, Spatial Development
Initiatives and sectoral programmes make the necessary progress
* we begin to achieve some level of harmonisation of industrial development
strategies and competition policies, as called for in the 1996 SADC Trade
Protocol; and in general, we carefully elaborate a detailed and realistic but
muscular Activity Matrix necessary actually to create the FTA, with the
processes in place to achieve the objective of balanced, mutually beneficial
regional economic integration."

"Everything we know from global experience, our actual regional reality, as
well as general economic postulates, has convinced us that only by laying a
solid basis for a properly functioning FTA will we be in a position to advance
towards a Customs Union (CU)."

"Without establishing a proper basis for duty free trade within the SADC
region, and putting in place programmes that will boost the capacity of our
partner SADC countries to produce tradable goods, resulting in better trade
balances within our region, a common Customs Union external tariff would be
meaningless."

"The Summit agreed to authorise a study to identify an "appropriate model"
for a SADC Customs Union. Necessarily, the study will have to canvass
thoroughly all issues and options. Obviously, afterwards, we will have to allow
time and space for all our countries to participate in the elaboration of a
practical programme of action for the creation of a SADC Customs Union, based
on the necessary analytical rigour to ensure that we do not make a false
start.

"Inevitably, among others, these negotiations will have to answer such
questions as:

* How do all of us disengage from all regional economic structures outside
SADC?
* How do we relate to all other extra-SADC trade and economic agreements into
which we might have entered?
* How do we ensure that the Economic Partnership Agreements currently being
negotiated with the European Union (EU) by all SADC Member States, except South
Africa, do not serve as an obstacle to the envisaged SADC Customs Union?

"Once again, a series of complementary measures in areas of sectoral
co-operation and macro-economic convergence would need to be identified and
implemented to achieve the developmental objectives of a SADC Customs
Union."

"The timeframes we set ourselves earlier, relating to the FTA and the CU,
were based on our estimation of the time it would take us, based on perceived
objective reality, to achieve these outcomes. It is only logical that our
experience, or dynamic objective reality mediated by practice, will serve as
our teacher, telling us whether the circumstances necessitate any changes in
our target dates."

"With regard to the CU, because of our commitment to balanced and shared
economic development in our region, (the South African) government acknowledges
and accepts the need for an asymmetrical distribution of the common customs
revenues that would accrue to the Customs Union, using, inter alia, such new
institutions as a development fund to enhance the trade capacity of all our
Member States, especially the most disadvantaged."

"To avoid unnecessary tension and conflict among ourselves in future about
such compensation for various Member States as may be necessary as a result of
the establishment of the SADC CU, it would be important that the Member States
agree upfront that these costs would be shared among the Member States on an
agreed basis, and strictly defined in terms both of timeframes and relative
dimension, taking into account the interests of all Member States."

"Fundamental to our approach with regard to all the issues we have
discussed, we must also emphasise that we would prefer options that would allow
us to maintain the unity of SADC. In this regard, we can never forget that SADC
was forged in the struggle for freedom from colonial and apartheid rule, among
a group of countries that have been part of one region that has had meaning in
more than a mere geographic sense since, at least, the 3rd quarter of the 19th
Century."

"It is clear that we have major tasks ahead of us, to elaborate and
implement the organically related measures that will enable us to achieve the
critically important, balanced and equitable regional integration that is a
fundamental condition for:

* the sustained and sustainable development of the SADC region
* our shared success in freeing the ordinary working people of our region from
the scourges of unemployment, poverty and underdevelopment
* creating a firm basis for our region successfully to respond to the
challenges of globalisation, including strengthening South-South relations of
equitable and mutually beneficial co-operation
* the creation of the possibility for us to make our necessary contribution as
a region to the vitally important project of African integration and unity; and
our related capacity to contribute to the emergence of a new world order that
would fully restore Africa and the African Diaspora to their rightful place
among the world community of nations."

I believe that what I have said constitutes a realistic and necessary agenda
to which SADC must respond with a sense of urgency. Last month's Extraordinary
Summit Meeting took the necessary practical decisions in this regard,
reflecting the resolve of the executive authorities in our region to achieve
progress.

The sad reality is that this Forum was not represented at this Extraordinary
Summit Meeting. Despite its importance, derived from the fact that it is a
collective representative of our democratically elected legislatures, this
Forum was not factored into the decisive regional dialogue that has begun,
focused on accelerating the process of our regional integration.

Obviously, this cannot be correct. Together we must therefore answer the
question - what is to be done? If I may, I would like to make a few supremely
practical suggestions, as follows:

* The Forum should contact the SADC Secretariat to access all documentation
that bears on the decisions of the Extraordinary Summit Meeting.
* The Forum should persuade the SADC Secretariat to agree on processes that
would ensure that it forms a partnership with the executive authorities
delegated the task to implement the decisions of the Extraordinary
Summit.
* In order to establish itself as a credible partner in this regard, the Forum
will have to do the necessary work to ensure that it makes a meaningful
contribution to the elaboration of the realistic regional integration programme
that informed the decisions of the Extraordinary Summit.
* And as this work progresses, the Forum will have to take the necessary steps
to ensure that all the SADC parliaments and the public in general are briefed
regularly about the work being done, especially to ensure that the masses of
our people, throughout the SADC region, feel a sense of ownership of the
integration plans that will emerge from the processes decided by the
Extraordinary Summit.

I make these proposals in part to respond to the concern you expressed in
your "Strategic Plan 2006 - 2010", in the following words:

"It is clear that the Forum was convinced of the need to constitute a
regional assembly right from the outset. The issue of a regional assembly was a
consistent item on the agenda of the Forum plenary sessions. The Forum made
concerted efforts to promote the establishment of a regional parliament, for
which it submitted motivational documentation to the SADC Secretariat. After
review of such submissions the Council of Ministers recommended the approval
for the establishment, in the long term, of a SADC parliament by the
Summit.

"The Summit in turn concluded that while the proposal to establish a
regional parliament would be welcome, the institutionalisation of the recently
established Pan African Parliament (PAP) should take precedence. The Summit
resolved that as the region hosting the PAP, Southern Africa should, for the
time being, work for the successful establishment of the continental
parliament. Consequently, the establishment of a regional parliament was
deferred, to be considered as a long-term objective."

I know that you are not entirely happy with this outcome. I agree fully with
you that you should continue to advocate the establishment of a regional
parliament. However, I also believe that as this discussion continues, we
should insert the Forum into the current processes to address the challenge of
"the slow pace at which regional agreements and programmes are being
implemented," without waiting for the establishment of the regional
parliament.

I am convinced that the fact of the involvement of the Forum in the
practical work of accelerating the process of regional integration would, in a
concrete manner, demonstrate the need for the establishment of the regional
parliament to which all of us, in principle, have agreed.

In the article to which I have referred, I said:

"It is clear that we have major tasks ahead of us, to elaborate and
implement the organically related measures that will enable us to achieve the
critically important, balanced and equitable regional integration that is a
fundamental condition for:

* the sustained and sustainable development of the SADC region
* our shared success in freeing the ordinary working people of our region from
the scourges of unemployment, poverty and underdevelopment
* creating a firm basis for our region successfully to respond to the
challenges of globalisation, including strengthening South-South relations of
equitable and mutually beneficial co-operation
* the creation of the possibility for us to make our necessary contribution as
a region to the vitally important project of African integration and
unity
* our related capacity to contribute to the emergence of a new world order that
would fully restore Africa and the African Diaspora to their rightful place
among the world community of nations.

"Our regional organisation, SADC, faces the critically important task to
respond to these historic challenges. I am certain that our regional leadership
will not fail our peoples and the peoples of our Continent and the African
Diaspora in this regard, as it did not fail them in the difficult struggle to
defeat colonialism and apartheid."

The SADC Parliamentary Forum has a critical role to play with regard to the
achievement of these objectives. I wish the Forum success in its
deliberations.

Thank you.

Issued by: The Presidency
14 November 2006
Source: SAPA