Regional Integration In The Southern African Development Community (Sadc): A Case Study Of Namibia’s Cross Border Migration Issues In Oshikango

Abstract

The main objective of this dissertation was to investigate issues of cross-border migration and their effects on the project of SADC regional integration. The principal theoretical grounding comes from theories on migration, inclusive of their gender perspectives. Inclusive in this framework were perspectives of regionalism and its subsets of regionalisation, regional cooperation, regional integration and regional awareness/identity. The dissertation also examined competing theoretical approaches to regional integration, among these, federalism, functionalism, neo-functionalism and inter-governmentalism, to determine a model to achieving a political community at the end of the SADC integration process.

Based on these theories the study investigated the extent to which the grassroots communities were involved in the SADC regionalisation process. Indicators, in this regard, were the SADC Protocol for the Free Movement of Persons of 1995 and its successor, the SADC Protocol for the Facilitation of Free Movement of Persons of 1997, which all failed. The dissertation traced the background of regional integration at the global, continental and regional level and compared scenarios especially on cross-border migration issues.

A qualitative research design in the form of a case study of Oshikango informed the collection of the data. The data were gathered about the distribution of variables such as the grassroots community’s understanding and attitudes towards implications of cross border migration as measured against the SADC project of regional integration. Other important variables that were illuminated by the investigation techniques are gender, age and education level of respondents.

Informed by this investigation and based on the Oshikango case study this dissertation has arrived at the conclusion that SADC is currently unable to achieve its goal of regulating free movement of persons in the region. The problem seems to be that since SADC is a state-based regime, member states take their refuge in the doctrine of state sovereignty, often at the expense of the common regional agenda. In other words they talk regionalism, but they act nationally. Consequently, SADC is an example of shallow integration with limited involvement of civil society and local communities. Thus, cross-border migration control in the region is an issue that will have to be resolved. Informed by these conclusions, this dissertation leads to recommendations for the acceleration of trans-frontier spatial development, such as parks and development corridors. The SADC Forum for Traditional Authorities should also be established to further deepen trans-border interaction and facilitate intra-regional migration management.