THE SECURITY INTEGRATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA: SADC AND OPDS

Abstract

The African continent’s security problems are, for the most part, originating in the processes of colonization and decolonization occurred during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Southern Africa, particularly the apartheid regime from South Africa marked, in a very significant way, the construction of a common identity and the rapprochement among other countries in the region around security issues. The objective of this study is to evaluate the evolution of SADC over the 1990s and 2000s, with regard to International Security aspects in order to analyze to what extent the organization has contributed or not to the resolution of the political and security problems in the region, especially in periods of crisis. The analysis will focus on the creation and the modifications of the Organ for Politics, Defense and Security (OPDS) of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The central hypothesis of the study is that the SADC, and the OPDS in particular, are the main spheres of treatment of securitarian issues in Southern Africa and, over the years, contributed to the evolution of solving these problems. The study will use bibliographic and documentary review, adopting a historical approach, aiming a temporal comparison of the case.