ABSTRACT
The coming into existence of the Southern African Development Community’s (SADCC) was met with counter-resistance from South Africa’s apartheid government. The regional military insecurities presented by South Africa limited the SADCC’s effective implementation of its industrialisation programme. In the immediate post-independence period, narrow nationalism shaped much of the SADCC policymaking approaches. South Africa’s push to re-conceptualise SADC’s notion of security in line with a neo-liberal paradigm resulted in serious differences between two strong heads of state: Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. In contrast to post-independence gendered structures of exclusion and marginalisation, the SADC from the 1990s onwards adopted inclusive measures to policymaking. The second phase can be traced from 2003, when gender and women-focused civil society groupings were invited to the Botswana-based SADC Secretariat to participate in the review process of the 1997 Declaration and its 1998 Addendum.
