ABSTRACT
The presidency is one of the major public institutions that is critical to the promotion and consolidation of democracy and development in any region of the world including Southern Africa. This is because the presidency has the overarching responsibility for providing leadership in various areas of development governance, including the formulation and implementation of development vision and the resulting policies. This chapter interrogates the specificities of the institutional design of the presidency in Southern African states in the context of the promotion and consolidation of democracy and development in Southern Africa. Like in the rest of Africa, the presidency in Southern African states with presidential and semi-presidential systems of government has been shaped and conditioned by three major historical currents: the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras. The chapter discusses each of these currents in terms of their nature, dynamics, and the resulting implications for the development of the presidency.
