ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the impact of Nkomati on the operation of and the outlook for Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), the Southern African Development Coordination Conference. "SADCC's basic commitment and raison d'etre," a conference report declared in 1981, "is to development." The attitude of SADCC members to the liberation of South Africa has always been somewhat ambivalent, in sharp contrast to their firm commitment to the independence of Namibia. Mozambican acceptance of unreformed apartheid as essentially a South. African domestic concern has accorded respectability to a policy that was already implicit in the action of other Front Line States, notably Zimbabwe. The most positive potential outcome of Nkomati could well be the incentive it gives member states to "think SADCC", rather than "South African", especially with respect to regional trade and development planning. The constraints on development within the SADOC area axe not simply regional: national and international factors are equally critical.
