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Milestones/Achievements at a Glance _______

PEACE AND SECURITY

✒ Southern African Liberation
The region was at the forefront of the global campaign to end apartheid, aligned with the
people of Namibia and South Africa. The combination of the national, regional and international
pressure led to the collapse of the apartheid system and the independence of Namibia (1990)
and South Africa (1994). The 38th Summit in Windhoek, Namibia in 2018 endorsed an annual
commemoration for Southern Africa Liberation Day on 23 March, marking the end of the battle
at Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola in 1988.

✒ SADC Hashim Mbita Project on the Liberation History
The 34th SADC Summit held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, in 2014 launched a nine-volume
collection of publications on the liberation struggle in Southern Africa produced by the SADC
Hashim Mbita Project to document, preserve and disseminate the history of liberation through
the collection, cataloguing and compiling of oral narratives and data in SADC Member States
and outside the region.

✒ Regional Solidarity and Unity
SADC Member States have continued to speak with a common voice on continental and global
issues, and have stood together in addressing challenges facing individual Member States.
Evidence of this is seen in the regional interventions to address the political situation in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Kingdom of Lesotho, and support for Western Sahara. SADC
has handled the political and security challenges in Member States well and has been able to
6 solve its own problems without much outside interference.

✒ Sustained Peace and Security
Peace and security are well established as an integral component of development planning in
southern Africa, due the understanding that economic cooperation and integration require a
peaceful environment in which people can grow and contribute their full potential, including
men, women and youth. As part of efforts to ensure that the region remains stable and peaceful,
viable instruments were developed such as the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing
Democratic Elections in 2004 (revised in 2015).

✒ Early Warning and Prevention
SADC plays a pivotal role in early warning, preventive diplomacy, mediation, conflict pre¬vention
and resolution, with emphasis on preventing conflict at its early stages. A strong linkage has been
created between Early Warning leading to Early Action, through the es¬tablishment of the Regional
Early Warning Centre (REWC) launched in 2001 and the Conflict Prevention, Preventive Diplomacy
and Mediation Structure which was operationalised in 2014, which have strengthened the region’s
capacity to anticipate, monitor, prevent and resolve conflicts.

✒ SADC Standby Force
The SADC Standby Force was launched in 2007 and became fully operational in 2017 as a
multidisciplinary peacekeeping force made up of military, police and civilian components
which can be deployed swiftly in response to a crisis, based on a standby arrangement. From
January to June 2019, SADC fulfilled it responsibility to lead the African Standby Force (ASF),
which is an important tool of the African peace and security architecture for the prevention,
management and resolution of conflicts in the continent, based on standby arrangements and
leadership rotation among the five sub-regions of Africa.