Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) Analysis of SADC’s Peace and Security Architecture

For long Southern Africa had been considered as a relatively peaceful region on a comparative basis considering the continued existence of protracted—and seemingly intractable—conflicts and instability in other African sub-regions such as the Great Lakes Region, the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and Central Africa. However, there has been a notable trend of conflict eruption and tensions in the sub-region (in the form of peace and security threats, terrorism, insurgency, maritime piracy, political violence, socio-economic unrest, xenophobia, election-related violence, non-peaceful transition-related tensions, among others) as witnessed in a number of Southern African countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lesotho and Mozambique, among others. Whilst SADC has made various interventions to address the emergent different forms of conflict, the results have been varied which in itself calls for the need for an in-depth and expansive interrogation of the regional body’s peace and security architecture (SADC-PSA). This paper therefore critically explores the SADC peace and security architecture, through a thorough and systematic strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. Focus will be on examining the SADC conflict prevention and management tools, instruments, institutions and processes in order to establish the efficacy and effectiveness of the SADC-PSA. Rodrigo (Tavares in Contemporary Politics 14: 107–127, 2008)’s regional peace and security analytical framework will be used for analysis whilst secondary data sources will be consulted for the study. Findings and recommendations from the study will be useful in providing options to strengthen the SADC peace and security architecture in light of disturbing regional trends in security threats, instability and conflict dynamics which are all threatening to affect, retard and reverse regional economic development and growth.