EDITORIAL | Rich in resources, poor in results

If ever there was a need for the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) to step up to the economic-growth plate, that time is now.

Often accused of being an old boys’ club of liberation movement leaders helping each other to stay in power, Sadc’s critics say it has failed to adapt to the demands of a world changed beyond recognition since its founding. South Africa’s immigration crisis has accented its shortcomings and increased the pressure for a Sadc that energetically prioritises the upliftment of its people.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has now assumed the chairmanship of the bloc, coincidentally amid the upheavals triggered by March and March and other organisations agitating against immigrants from Sadc countries supposedly taking locals’ jobs and using public resources such as hospitals and schools.

As the 46th ordinary summit of Sadc heads of state and government met in Durban this past week, immigration protesters aired their grievances outside the summit venue, their presence a stark reminder of the immediate and pressing challenges facing the regional body.

While much of the rest of the world has moved ahead, the Sadc countries have failed to capitalise on their strengths, despite sitting on vast reserves of minerals essential for the technological and energy revolutions reshaping the world. With huge stores of vital resources such as lithium, copper, cobalt and other elements essential to the global energy transition, Sadc countries surely need to develop the industries that will turn raw materials into products to be exported around the world.

Regardless of resolutions and fine-sounding promises of regional development, South Africa will remain a magnet for immigrants for years to come

With a combined population of 400-million people and some of the best agricultural land in the world, the region should be an economic powerhouse.

Yet manufacturing and beneficiation, in South Africa at least, have gone backwards in recent years. It seems obvious, though, that a combined regional effort should, in theory at least, be better able to reap the fruits of our natural endowments.

Ramaphosa is proposing a move towards an EU-style economic co-operation model that places minerals and industrialisation at the centre of a new development agenda. With 82,875 fellow Africans sent home from South Africa in recent months in painful circumstances, the goodwill necessary to promote a common agenda may well be strained. But its necessity cannot be denied.

Regardless of resolutions and fine-sounding promises of regional development, South Africa will remain a magnet for immigrants for years to come.

But the time to put rhetoric into action is long past. To the extent that it fails to do so, Sadc will further lapse into irrelevance unless it can help harness the bounty that now benefits the region’s people far less than it should.