Europe divides Southern Africa

Big news on the 4th of July in Brussels: an Economic Partnership Agreement has been negotiated with a number of Southern African countries – it’s a temporary EPA. Previous European colonies were offered that kind of EPA years ago, but to this day only one definitive EPA was signed, the one with the Caribbean.
Since some time now, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, South Africa and Angola are negotiating together their EPA. Apart from Angola and Mozambique, these countries form together a customs union, the Southern Africa Customs Union. All seven are also part of the much larger Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), with fifteen countries in total. But even among themselves, the seven countries do not agree about the EPA-proposal of the EU.
Angola and South Africa already announced they won’t participate for the moment, but at the signing ceremony in the Justus Lipsius building on the Schuman square in Brussels Namibia also didn’t show up. The responsible minister of Mozambique on his part was ‘occupied’. Only three of the seven countries with which the EU had negotiated, signed formally the European free trade plans that morning of the 4th of July.
According the statutes of the SACU however, no member can individually consent to trade agreements with third parties. Everybody should stick together, that was the idea. Now it looks like the world’s oldest customs union lies shattered into pieces. ‘Following its policy document ‘Global Europe’, Europe pursues an offensive economic strategy, by negotiating extremely liberal trade agreements’, says Marc Maes of the Flemish NGO-umbrella 11.11.11. ‘If the union has to play different member states off against each other, so be it.’

A lot to lose

But according to informal talks before the signing, it seems that there were problems in the region anyhow. We gave ear to some diplomats and ministers who gathered together a day before the signing for a conference about diamonds.

A source from the Namibian embassy says: ‘We demand more guarantees for some of the points of discussion in the text, but Botswana has chosen to sign already, even without us. What can we do about it? We are brothers and you can’t choose your brothers.’ A leading diplomat from Botswana fulminates against South Africa because that regional power keeps on saying ‘no’ to the present EPA-text. ‘When South Africa signed its free trade agreement with Europe (TDCA) we, as a part of the SACU, had to follow although we had nothing to gain with such an agreement, to the contrary! We are de facto part of a free market. Now we ask from South Africa something in return by supporting the for us important EPA but they won’t play ball.’
And why is it that Botswana is signing and others aren’t, we ask an important negotiator for the EU. ‘Angola has its oil and wants to develop its industry behind a wall of high tariffs. South Africa already has a free trade agreement with Europe.’ The country is furthermore afraid to encounter European competitors in ‘its’ backyard. Lesotho and Swaziland are ‘Least Developed Countries’ and therefore keep their free export to Europe anyway. ‘Only Botswana and Namibia have something to lose by not signing the interim-agreement. Europe could, in a worse case scenario, remove them from the list of countries that have access to the European market without charges or quota. That would lead to a disaster for the export of beef from Botswana and Namibia for example.’

So why is it that Namibia still takes such a firm stand? ‘In Namibia cattle breeders are mostly white large landowners and they will be the first to be affected by a closure of European borders for Namibian meat. That might explain why the black people in power in Namibia are less motivated to quickly sign this interim-EPA compared to Botswana, where the cattle breeders are mainly black.’

Everything depends on the severity of the European Commission. They say off the record to be surprised about the attitude of Namibia. If the Namibians demand much extra time to reflect, they might risk sanctions. In Botswana they rather avoid that risk apparently, definitely with the elections coming up later this year.

Struggle for power in the region

A day after the signing the South African minister Rob Davies declares to a South-African newspaper that this will put the customs union in a very difficult position. ‘We won’t allow that goods not included in our free trade agreement with Europe will enter South Africa via those countries. If this means we have to take up border control again between us and Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, then so be it.’ Does this mean the customs union is as good as dead? And is Europe to blame or rather the struggle for power within the region itself? Or both?

According to the EU-negotiator mentioned above, the EPA’s have merely unveiled the weak regional integration of Africa, rather than being a cause. ‘A lot of African states are apparently proud to have three hours waiting queues at their borders and they don’t realize how much money they miss out on with that kind of obstructions, with bad roads, with insufficient telecommunication.’
The man has to agree that Europe took the wrong guess with its ‘regional integration’, by pursuing a now apparently absent tendency to more collaboration. If in the end not all seven countries sign an EPA, Europe indeed will have contributed to more disorder then there already was.

Chris Stevens of the British think tank Overseas Development Institute: ‘The EPA’s have undermined regional integration anywhere, apart for exceptions like the East African Community or Cariforum. I see non the less no objective reason for the signing of this EPA to mean the end of SACU, but it can sharpen the internal discords, for instance concerning the division of custom-revenues. As a result of the EPA’s it became impossible to organize an even larger customs union in the SADC-region. Because which country not having a EPA will want to join a customs union that already promised free access to European goods? On the other hand, even before the EPA, the support for that kind of larger customs union was very much declined. De EU has, one might say, shot an already dead cow.