In August this year, the 46th Ordinary Summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Heads of State and Government will convene in Durban. Held annually, the summit is the bloc’s highest decision-making body, setting its overall policy direction and taking key decisions on regional, economic, and security issues. As SADC prepares to convene, it is worth reflecting on the state of democracy across the region and the extent to which the bloc is realising its collective commitment to free and fair elections, the prevention of unconstitutional changes of power, and the protection of citizens from related violence and insecurity.
In October 2025, Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina was ousted in a military-backed coup, prompting the African Union (AU) to suspend Madagascar and forcing South Africa to assume the SADC chair early. In Zimbabwe, the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Bill, introduced in parliament in June this year, now signed into law, proposed extending presidential and parliamentary terms from five to seven years, replacing direct presidential elections with a parliamentary vote, and extending President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s term in office.
In Mozambique, the October 2024 general elections were followed by months of violent state repression, with security forces killing hundreds of protesters who contested the results. In Tanzania, the October 2025 elections saw the main opposition barred from participating, a nationwide internet blackout, and a security force crackdown that rights organisations say killed hundreds more.
SADC’s founding treaty commits its members to the principles of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. It calls for the promotion of “political values, systems, and other shared values which are transmitted through institutions which are democratic, legitimate, and effective.” Member states are also committed to preventing unconstitutional changes of power and to holding free and fair elections in accordance with SADC’s Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. While these commitments are regularly reaffirmed in summit communiqués, protocols, and strategic plans, SADC continues to struggle to hold member states to account when they engage in state repression or actions that undermine democracy, leading to constitutional crises, instability, and violence.
The challenge of advancing a collective commitment to democratic norms within SADC is not new and can, in part, be traced to the bloc’s origins. SADC’s roots lie in the Southern African Development Coordination Conference, founded in 1980 by the Frontline States as a coalition to reduce economic dependence on South Africa and form a united front against the apartheid regime. That shared struggle against colonialism and white-minority rule forged deep norms of political solidarity and non-interference among member states. These norms served the liberation cause well, creating a unified front against the apartheid state and its international allies.
However, they have proved difficult to reconcile with the democratic governance commitments SADC adopted when it reconstituted itself as a regional economic community in 1992. These commitments call on states to hold one another to account and forge a common set of democratic norms. However, the instinct to close ranks and avoid public criticism of fellow members, born of a common fight against external oppression, continues to shape how SADC states relate to one another on sensitive political questions. It hinders the bloc’s ability to speak out when member states engage in undemocratic practices or to intervene effectively in moments of violence or governance crises, which are instead treated as domestic affairs. This instinct also extends to how SADC engages with civil society, which the bloc often perceives as foreign-funded interference in domestic affairs.
In 2012, Laurie Nathan, author of Community of Insecurity: SADC’s Struggle for Peace and Security in Southern Africa, argued that SADC states’ unwillingness to surrender a measure of sovereignty to regional structures and embrace a collective security regime encompassing formal rules, binding decision-making, and the possibility of interference in domestic affairs has deeply impaired the bloc’s effectiveness on peace and security issues. Perhaps the clearest example of this was the SADC’s decision to disband the SADC tribunal, an institution provided for in the SADC Treaty.
In 2008, the tribunal ruled that the Zimbabwean government’s seizure of land owned by white farmers violated the treaty principles of non-discrimination and the rule of law. Harare ignored the court and continued to advance its policy of land seizures. Instead of upholding the treaty and defending the tribunal, the 2011 SADC summit agreed to dissolve the regional court. This decision made clear the limits of member states’ willingness to subject their domestic governance to regional oversight.
More recent examples bring this challenge into sharper focus. Despite the emergence of a violent Islamist insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province in 2017, which has regional security implications, Mozambique resisted SADC involvement for years, declining to table the issue at meetings of the Organ Troika (the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation is the primary body within SADC mandated to address conflict resolution, security cooperation, and elections). It was only after the widely publicised March 2021 attack on the port town of Palma that the SADC was finally able to deploy the SADC Mission in Mozambique, by which point the insurgency had escalated considerably, and the regional body was effectively playing catch-up.
In eSwatini, when pro-democracy protests erupted in June 2021, SADC dispatched a fact-finding mission to the kingdom, only for King Mswati III to refuse to meet the delegation and subsequently work to remove eSwatini from the agenda of SADC Organ Troika meetings altogether, effectively blocking the regional body from addressing the crisis.
Reforming this dynamic will not be easy. SADC has no transcendent status or authority. As Nathan (2012) argues, “the capacity and orientation of a regional organisation derive from, and are constrained by, the capacity and orientation of its member states.” As member states in southern Africa drift towards authoritarianism, as unfortunately appears to be the trend in parts of the region, the bloc will only become less capable of advancing the democratic norms it is treaty-bound to uphold, resulting in a further breakdown of the rule of law, conflict, and instability.
The best prospects for reform lie with a core group of democratic member states willing to advocate for change. While the current political landscape in the region may not be immediately conducive to this, South Africa, as chair, can work to make incremental but meaningful progress. For example, to work around the norm of non-interference that often prevents the bloc from responding swiftly or effectively to emerging constitutional crises, South Africa could push for a mechanism enabling SADC to initiate early engagement (whether through preventive diplomacy, fact-finding missions, or mediation) without waiting for an explicit invitation from the affected state. A member state could, of course, still refuse entry to a SADC mission, but the point is to raise the diplomatic cost of refusal and shift the burden of justification onto the state that blocks engagement rather than the region that seeks it.
There is continental precedent for this. The AU Constitutive Act already grants the Union the right to intervene in a member state in grave circumstances, while the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 1999 Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security provides for intervention without the host state’s consent under defined conditions. This provision was effectively invoked during The Gambia’s 2016-17 constitutional crisis.
These frameworks could be drawn on to model a mechanism suited to the region’s history and norms around non-interference, one that defines specific triggers such as the scale of civilian casualties, the suspension of constitutional processes, or a government’s sustained refusal to engage, that would automatically activate SADC’s diplomatic machinery. This would make it harder for a single member to obstruct a SADC diplomatic mission while still respecting the principle that intervention should be proportionate and criteria-driven.
Another area in which South Africa could advance during its tenure as chair is SADC’s engagement with civil society on peace and security issues. Historically, SADC has been relatively more open to engaging civil society on its regional integration agenda, but there has been no structured channel for civil society input into the organ’s work on governance, conflict prevention, and related peace and security matters. While the involvement of civil society in track-one mediation or other sensitive political discussions may not be appropriate, it can play an important role in early warning and provide valuable insights into local security dynamics.
The ECOWAS Early Warning and Response Network, for example, integrates civil society into its early warning and conflict prevention work through a network of civil society organisations that collect on-the-ground information and feed it to the regional body. Similar initiatives could be developed within the SADC Mediation, Conflict Prevention and Preventive Diplomacy Structure, comprising the Panel of Elders, the Mediation Reference Group, and the Mediation Support Unit, thereby strengthening the bloc’s early warning capabilities and enabling more effective preventive diplomacy and mediation.
Rather than hoping the next crisis produces a more cooperative host government, South Africa should use its chairship to champion measures that address the structural design challenges at the heart of SADC’s limitations and push for mechanisms that enable earlier engagement, lower the barriers to preventive diplomacy, and create space for civil society to contribute to the bloc’s peace and security work.
Stephen Buchanan-Clarke is a security analyst with several years' experience working in both conflict and post-conflict settings in Africa, primarily on issues of peace and security; transitional justice and reconciliation; democratisation and governance; and preventing and countering violent extremism. He currently serves as head of the Human Security and Climate Change (HSCC) project at Good Governance Africa and is a co-editor of the Extremisms in Africa anthology series.
