Imagined Regional Communities: Integration and Sovereignty in the Global South (Routledge Studies in Human Geography, 5)

11

Imagined Regional Communities

11

11

111

111

111

111

In recent years, issues related to the formation and consolidation of regional blocs, such as the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), have generated considerable interest and discussion. These ‘regionalisms’ can be subject to contradictory interpretations, for example they are seen as possible stepping stones towards global integration, yet simultaneously they imply fragmentation into discrete blocs. They are also challengers for – and enablers of – state sovereignty. Imagined Regional Communities provides an original approach to thinking about the processes of regional integration. Focusing mostly on communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America (the ‘Global South’), it develops detailed case studies based on archives, interviews and critical readings of existing texts. These case studies are related to each other and the overall themes of the book, so that a set of narratives and theoretical elaborations emerge that critically reformulate understandings of regional communities, statehood and sovereignty. The re-imagination of sovereignty and statehood here comes in part from examining communities in Africa, America and Asia: the book asks, for example, how a study of these transforms thinking about the European Union? Drawing inspiration from a heterodox array of theoretical texts, James D. Sidaway explores art, film, literary and psychoanalytic theories as well as the political theory, international relations and political economy that are more usually brought to bear in accounts of regional communities. The originality of the book lies in the ways that semiotics, and literary and art theory are used to foreground the question of representation in ways that are suggestive of the logics at work in diplomacy and statecraft. Imagined Regional Communities will be rewarding for all readers interested in poststructuralist and postcolonial theory as well as those interested in sovereignty, development and integration as rehearsed in more familiar terrains of political economy and international relations. James D. Sidaway is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. He recently co-edited Human Geography: Issues for the 21st Century.

1

Routledge Studies in Human Geography

1

1

This series provides a forum for innovative, vibrant and critical debate within Human Geography. Titles will reflect the wealth of research which is taking place in this diverse and ever-expanding field. Contributions will be drawn from the main sub-disciplines and from innovative areas of work which have no particular sub-disciplinary allegiances.

11

1. A Geography of Islands Small island insularity Stephen A. Royle 2. Citizenships, Contingency and the Countryside Rights, culture, land and the environment Gavin Parker 3. The Differentiated Countryside T. Marsden, J. Murdock, P. Lowe, N. Ward and A. Taylor

11

11

11

4. The Human Geography of East Central Europe David Turnock 5. Imagined Regional Communities Integration and sovereignty in the Global South James D. Sidaway 6. Mapping Modernities Geographies of Central and Eastern Europe, 1920–2000 Alan Dingsdale

11

Imagined Regional Communities Integration and sovereignty in the Global South

11

11

James D. Sidaway

111

111

RO

• l

ou

y Ta

or

p

•

111

GE

111

LE UT D

& F r n cis G a

r

London and New York

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2002 James D. Sidaway All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sidaway, James D. Imagined regional communities: integration and sovereignty in the Global South/ James D. Sidaway. p. cm. – (Routledge studies in human geography; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Regionalism. 2. Sovereignty. I. Title. II. Series. JF197.S53 2002 327.1′7′091814–dc21 2001048572 ISBN 0-203-20176-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26597-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–18347–2 (Print Edition)

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

‘Narration, narrative, relation, recital, rehearsal, telling, retelling, recounting, recountal, review, storytelling, tale-telling, yarnspinning or yarning.’ (Roget’s International Thesaurus, fourth edition 1977: 608.1, emphasis in original) ‘. . . insist upon your right to go off at a tangent.’ (Marechera 1978: 122) ‘It may also be possible, it has occurred to me, to detect a fundamental mutation in the way that people are coming to talk about historical and economic change in the [Southern African] region. When I have heard Zambians in recent years talk about different parts of Africa, for instance, it seems to me that they no longer speak about this or that place as being ahead or behind, progressing well or too slowly. Instead, people are more likely to speak in terms of nonlinear fluctuations of “up” and “down” (as in Mozambique is very bad right now, but I hear that “Tanzania is coming back up” or “Zaire has been down so long, it is bound to come back up soon”), or in terms of particular niches and opportunities that might provide a bit of space here or there.’ (Ferguson 1999: 252)

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

11

Contents

11

11

111

111

111

111

List of figures Preface and acknowledgements List of abbreviations Act One: Introducing the plot and cast

viii ix xv 3

Act Two: The SADC: sovereign simulations

49

Act Three: Pushing the boundaries/sovereignty deferred

93

Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

111 115 128 147

1

Figures

1

1

11

11

11

11

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The number of regional economic communities The Economist front cover 7 December 1996 Cartoon from Asiaweek 4 December 1998 Cartoon from The Financial Gazette 21 October 1993 The formal structures of the SADC The relative size of the SADC economies SACU Common Revenue Pool data Pacific by Yukinori Yanagi

16 29 33 36 54 57 84 96

11

Preface and acknowledgements

11

11

111

111

111

111

We all know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. (Barthes 1977: 146)

This short book has a drawn-out history and I have long had the main title (which is indebted to Benedict Anderson’s 1983 Imagined Communities) in mind. The book began as a project on the geography of Southern African transformations (1995–1998), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Research Fellowship Award H536 27 500595). Work in Southern Africa in 1996 and 1998 including visits to the SADC (Southern African Development Community) secretariat was later supplemented by a brief visit to Singapore and the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) secretariat funded by the Twentieth International Geographical Congress Fund. At this stage I planned similar work on Mercosur. But family and research commitments in Europe precluded extensive time in South America and the broader aim of comparative study exploring communities and connections across Africa, Asia and the Americas (the Global South of the subtitle) remains only partially fulfilled. Africa however is read symptomatically. Convention holds that Africa lies outside the main narratives about how modern statehood and integration operate. Emmanuel Obuah (2001) thus notes in a review of a recent edited collection on African regional communities how more typically such communities are discussed with reference to European, American and Asian examples. Instead, here an analysis of Southern African sovereignty stands in for and leads back to European and other sovereign powers. Part of this research on the SADC was first published in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Although it has been substantially reworked here, I am grateful to Nigel Thrift, three anonymous referees and Jeff Popke for comments on earlier drafts of what has become part of Acts Two and Three. In addition to staff at the SADC secretariat and at a number of diplomatic missions in Gaborone, I would also like to acknowledge the time and

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

x Preface and acknowledgements assistance of staff at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, at the South African Department of Foreign Affairs in Pretoria, and at a number of South African ministries. Margaret Hall and the late David Drakakis-Smith were instrumental in helping the research on the SADC to happen in the first place. Steve Kibble and Balefi Tsie were very helpful at an early stage with suggestions and guidance. Other parts of Acts Two and Three were developed in a joint publication with Richard Gibb (published in Simon 1998). Richard’s experience, insight and suggestions and the editorial guidance of David Simon shaped that publication and its partial reworking into sections of Act Two and Three. Other descriptions and ideas in these Acts appeared first in two International Policy Updates (Numbers 13, 1996 and 10, 1998) published by the South African Institute of International Relations. Throughout this time, two graduate students working in Southern Africa kept feeding me theory and tales from the region. Big thanks then to Andy Crampton and Marcus Power. Many of the ideas in Act One were first aired in an essay published in a collection on Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns edited by Ian Cook, David Crouch, Simon Naylor and James Ryan. I am therefore particularly indebted to Ian Cook for his comments and support on what would, in due course, become part of Act One. Before the book could be written a twelve month period at the University of Seville, funded by an EU Training and Mobility of Researchers Fellowship, transformed my take on regional communities in what feel like fertile ways. I am very grateful to Leandro del Moral for his hospitality and support in Andalucía. The manuscript was read in draft form by John Agnew, Alan Lester, David Simon and Nigel Thrift. Although I have not been able to do proper justice to all their comments, their critical support and suggestions are appreciated. Ann Michael and Andrew Mould at Routledge also helped to steer the manuscript into print. A few words about my approaches and the use of sources. This book is about – as Act One explains in more detail – regional communities, states, politics and culture. In the questions it poses and the answers it offers I am very aware that certain avenues of analysis are closed off. In an attempt to make this explicit (and render the narrative as a whole as suggestive as possible), I allow myself a few digressions and departures. Extensive endnotes permit me to get away with this and retain something (remnants perhaps) of a scholarly tone. But it is important to point out at the outset that this opening and closure is also in response to the limits of language. The category of discourse is invoked throughout the account as a way of understanding regional communities (and that which goes with them, such as the state, summits, development and so on). Such discourse is understood as a domain of language use, understanding and action. As Catherine Belsey expresses this: A discourse involves certain shared assumptions which appear in the formulations that characterize it. The discourse of common sense is quite

11

11

11

111

Preface and acknowledgements xi distinct, for instance, from the discourse of modern physics, and some of the formulations of the one may be expected to conflict with the formulations of the other. Ideology is inscribed in discourse in the sense that it is literally written or spoken in it; it is not a separate element which exists independently in some free-floating realm of ‘ideas’ and is embodied in words, but a way of thinking, speaking, experiencing. (1980: 5) In terms of geopolitical discourses this means words, contexts, practices and actions. Each of these spilling over into the other.1 This text is inside the limits of language and reflects, to coin a phrase, a particular vantage point (or set of vantage points). But the narrative here seeks to become aware of the way that it is compromised by the values that go into its ‘vantage point’ and construction. The text works within a mode of representation classically termed diegesis (narrative description). However, in its mirroring of performance in three Acts, it shadows the (alternative) representational form of mimesis (imitations). In its investigation of the performative aspect of regional communities (and states), of the ways that they are magicked into existence, the book therefore explores metaphors of drama. At the most basic level, the exploration of diplomacy and statecraft as drama or theatre impressed itself upon me through my attendance at formal international events over the years: amidst introductions, appeals, applause and speeches. However, in its Acts and plots, this text is also inspired by those forms of experimental drama that foreground the processes and apparatus (dispostiff ) of the production of dramatic meanings, through what the pioneering works of the Prague School and Russian formalists (writing in the 1930s) termed ostranenie (defamiliarisation or making strange) and aktualisace (foregrounding). David Lodge describes the former as:

111 another of those invaluable critical terms coined by the Russian Formalists. . . . What do we mean – it is a common term of praise – when we say that a book is ‘original’? Not usually that the writer has invented something without precedent, but that she has made us ‘perceive’ what we already, in a conceptual sense, ‘know’, by deviating from the conventional, habitual ways of representing reality. (1992: 53) On aktualisace, Keir Elam explains that:

111

111

Theatrical foregrounding may involve the ‘framing’ of a bit of the performance in such a way as, in Brecht’s words, ‘to mark it off from the rest of the text’. . . . This can amount to an explicit pointing to the representation as an event in progress . . . or a rendering opaque of representational means through a range of devices such as freezes

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

xii Preface and acknowledgements . . . etc. Much experimental theatre of 1960s and 1970s was devoted to the development of techniques for framing and estranging the signifying process. (1980: 18) There is a useful precedent in the anthropology of South American statehood produced by Michael Taussig. Written with overtures to Brecht, Taussig’s (1997: ix) account is neither wholly fiction nor purely documentary. He is however conscious that such a ‘privilege’ also belongs to what he calls the ‘being-in-the-world of the modern state itself’. Echoing Taussig, what emerges here is a complex domain of enquiry and theory and a contribution both to understandings of regional communities and to the particular forms of sovereign subject that are claimed by the state. In pursuit of this – and to help me on my way – at times I quote extensive passages from other sources. Let me supplement the acknowledgements here with one of these, which will also explain as well as a thousand words of ‘my own’ (if there ever could be such a thing) what inspires such citations: quotations are at the center of every work of [Walter] Benjamin’s. This very fact distinguishes his writings from scholarly works of all kinds in which it is the function of quotations to verify and document opinions, wherefore they can safely be relegated to the Notes. This is out of the question in Benjamin. When he was working on his study of German tragedy, he boasted of a collection of ‘over 600 quotations very systematically and clearly arranged’ (Briefe I, 339); like the later notebooks, this collection was not an accumulation of excerpts intended to facilitate the writing of the study but constituted the main work, with the writing as something secondary. The main work consisted in tearing fragments out of their context and arranging them afresh in such a way that they illustrated one another and were able to prove their raison d’être in a free-floating state, as it were. It definitely was a sort of surrealistic montage. Benjamin’s ideal of producing a work consisting entirely of quotations, one that was mounted so masterfully that it could dispense with any accompanying text, may strike one as whimsical in the extreme and self-destructive to boot, but it was not, any more than were the contemporaneous surrealistic experiments which arose from similar impulses. To the extent that an accompanying text by the author proved unavoidable, it was a matter of fashioning it in such a way as to preserve ‘the intention of such investigations’, namely, ‘to plumb the depths of language and thought . . . by drilling rather than excavating’ (Briefe I, 329) so as not to ruin everything with explanations . . . it was equally clear to him that this method was bound to be ‘the cause of certain obscurities’ (Briefe I, 330). (Arendt 1968: 47–48)

11

11

Preface and acknowledgements xiii Reading Benjamin is proving to be a fertile departure for work on diplomacy and international relations and before Imagined Regional Communities was ‘completed’, I was inspired by and benefited from the precedent of Susan Buck-Morss’s (2000) Dreamworld and Catastrophe, a re-evaluation of the Cold War. With Benjamin (plus Adorno and Foucault and Russian philosophical critiques) in mind, Buck-Morss offers a text that: ‘Although written in fragments . . . is meant to be read as a whole, as the argument cannot be divorced from the experience of reading’ (2000: xv). Buck-Morss thereby explicitly offers a book that ‘can be read on several levels’, splitting her text not only into sections and chapters, main text and footnotes, but also into sections with divided pages of text (above) and hypertext (below). Not only a re-evaluation of theories of the Cold War:

11

111

111

111

111

the book is a compendium of historical data that with the end of the Cold War are threatened with oblivion. It rescues these data within new constellations that may be useful in thinking critically about the present. The book is also an experiment in methods of visual culture. It attempts to use images as philosophy, presenting, literally, a way of seeing the past that challenges common conceptions . . . a cognitive experience that surprises present understandings, and subverts them. (2000: xv) In common with Imagined Regional Communities, Dreamworld and Catastrophe is also a story about dreams and the unReal; the utopias and the ‘phantasmagoric deceptions’ of sovereignty. Finally, before Act One begins, three more points. First it is important to record, and for readers to remember, that none of the interviews cited represents official views of the employing institutions of interviewees. Second, I have struggled to make the account relatively up-to-date. Material has therefore been reworked in the light of developments since the interviews were conducted. However the movements of regional communities are dynamic and international trade issues are changing fast, so please bear in mind the provisional nature of much of what follows. Moreover things have moved on. The interviews on which Act Two draws its reading of diplomacy in Southern Africa were conducted whilst the transition of 1994 in South Africa was still relatively fresh, indeed it was unfolding in the South African state apparatus when the research began in 1996. The interviews thereby describe a moment whose immediacy is fading but whose reverberations continue. These interviews and the data in Figures 5, 6 and 7 depict this mid- and late 1990s moment in all their phantom objectivity. Third, I thank you the reader. I hope that the book and its departures will help you to think differently about regional communities and sovereignty. In this task, I have drawn on a heterodox array of existing theoretical works. Inspiration has come as much from art, film and literary theory

1

1

1

11

11

xiv Preface and acknowledgements (including those variants indebted to psychoanalysis) as from the state theory, international relations and political economy that are usually brought to bear in accounts of regional communities. As others have already noted (notably Constantinou 1996), semiotics, literary, art and film theory foreground the question of representation in ways that are suggestive for an investigation of the logics at work in a diplomatic forum. However, for those readers who come to this text with an interest in regional communities rehearsed in more familiar terrain of political economy, mainstream international relations and so on, parts of Imagined Regional Communities may require a certain effort and imagination. Besides, going off on tangents means following aporia: tracks that snake or peter out. Of course, I am far from alone in developing alternative interpretations of regional communities. Other work is copiously cited and referenced in the main text, so I will mention here only Pekka Korhonen’s (1998) inspiring tale of Pacific Romances. Like me, Korhonen is interested in figures of speech and language, what he terms ‘tropes of discussion’: metaphors, metonymy and synedoche. Before readers more versed in political economy or mainstream international relations despair or reach for a dictionary of stylistics, allow me to quote another source of stimulus and inspiration on the definition of academic work, to whose format this polygraph belongs: that which is susceptible of introducing a meaningful difference in the field of knowledge, albeit with a certain demand on the author and the reader, but with the eventual recompense of a certain pleasure, that is to say of an access to another figure of truth. (Foucault 2000a: xxi)

Acknowledgements The authors and publishers would like to thank the following for granting permission to reproduce material in this work:

11

The Economist for the use of the front cover of their 7 December 1996 edition. The Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate (www.cartoonweb.com), for use of the cartoon Apec Bus Asunder, by Heng. The Financial Gazette, Harare, Zimbabwe, for use of a cartoon from their 23 October 1993 edition. Tate Gallery Publishing Limited and the Yanagi Studio, for use of the image ‘Pacific’, by Yukinori Yanagi.

11

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.

11

Abbreviations

11

11

APEC ASEAN Caricom CIA COMECON/CMEA COMESA

111

EAC ECOWAS ECSC EEC EU FCO

111

111

GATT IBRD IMF Mercosur NAFTA NATO OECD OEEC SACU SADC SADCC UN UNCTAD

111 WTO

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Association of Southeast Asian Nations Caribbean Community and Common Market Central Intelligence Agency Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa East African Community Economic Community of West African States European Coal and Steel Community European Economic Community European Union Foreign and Commonwealth Office (previously Foreign and Colonial Office), London General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) International Monetary Fund Mercado Común del Sur [Common Market of the South] North American Free Trade Area North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Organisation for European Economic Cooperation Southern African Customs Union Southern African Development Community Southern African Development Coordination Conference United Nations United Nations Conference on Trade and Development World Trade Organisation

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

11

11

11

A paregon [frame] comes against, beside, and in addition to the ergon [work], the work done [fait], the fact [le fait], the work, but it does not fall to one side, it touches and cooperates with the operation from a certain outside. Neither simply outside nor simply inside. Like an accessory that on the border, on board [au bord, à bord]. It is first of all on the bo(a)rd(er) [Il est d’abord l’à-bord]. (Derrida 1987: 54)

111

111

111

111

The scene opens in a bookstore in Chandigarh, India. The author is in India for a conference on critical approaches to the study of state boundaries. Here the author picks up a copy of an Indian textbook on International Relations. He begins to think that it might provide the opening lines to the uncompleted manuscript of Imagined Regional Communities which he has been contracted to write for Routledge.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

11

Act One

Introducing the plot and cast

11

11

111

111

111

111

What is economy? Among its irreducible predicates or semantic values, economy no doubt includes the values of law (nomos) and of home (oikos, home, property, family, the hearth, the fire indoors). Nomos does not only signify the law in general, but also the law of distribution (nemein), the law of sharing or partition [partage], the law as partition (moira), the given or assigned part, participation. Another sort of tautology already implies the economic within the nomic as such. As soon as there is law, there is partition: as soon as there is nomy, there is economy. Besides the values of law and home, of distribution and partition, economy implies the idea of exchange, of circulation, of return. The figure of the circle is obviously at the center, if that can still be said of a circle. It stands at the center of any problematic of oikonomia, as it does of any economic field: circular exchange, circulation of goods, products, monetary signs of merchandise, amortization of expenditures, revenues, substitution of use values and exchange values. This motif of circulation can lead one to think that the law of economy is the-circular-return to the point of departure. (Derrida 1992: 6–7) Society, economy, culture: each of these ‘areas’, now tagged by a concept, is a comparatively recent historical formulation. ‘Society’ was active fellowship, company, ‘common doing’, before it became the description of a general system or order. ‘Economy’ was the management of a household and then the management of a community before it became the description of a perceived system of production, distribution, and exchange. ‘Culture’, before these transitions, was the growth and tending of crops and animals, and by extension the growth and tending of human faculties. In their modern development the three concepts did not move in step, but each at a critical point, was affected by the movement of the others. At least this is how we may now see their history. But in the run of real changes what was being put into the new ideas, and to some extent fixed in them, was an always complex and largely unprecedented experience. ‘Society’ with its received emphasis on immediate relationships was a conscious alternative to the formal rigidities of an inherited, then seen as imposed order: a ‘state’. ‘Economy’, with its received emphasis on management, was a conscious attempt to understand and control a body of activities which had been taken not only as necessary but as given. (Williams 1977: 11–12)

1

1

1

11

4 Introducing the plot and cast Since Copernicus, we have known that the earth is not the ‘centre’ of the universe. Since Marx, we have known that the human subject, the economic, political or philosophical ego is not the ‘centre’ of history – and even, in opposition to the Philosophers of the Enlightenment and to Hegel, that history has no ‘centre’ but possesses a structure which has no necessary ‘centre’ except in ideological misrecognition. (Althusser 1971: 201)

Tracing the state Amongst the two-dozen chapters of a textbook entitled the Unique Quintessence of International Relations (Ghoshal et al. 2000), designed to cater for students preparing for the competitive entry examinations of the largest national–civil service in the world (that of India) are a fairly predictable list of themes from the corpus of international relations: the nature and functioning of the nation-state system, the Cold War, the Third World in International Relations and so on. It is no surprise therefore to find a chapter entitled ‘Regional organisations’ within the Unique Quintessence of International Relations. Imagined Regional Communities will have more to say about essences – or quintessences – later. So leaving aside (for now) the issue of what the quintessence of international relations might be, let alone whether this can ever be unique as the title of the Indian textbook promises, I will reproduce an extract from it. The quote is representative of a relatively widespread narrative in international relations about regional communities which views them as expressions of component states.1 The primary units of analysis and of the international system are thereby held to be states, even if the alliances of these in the form of regional communities is a manifest or developing feature of the international system:

11

The development process of regionalism has been evolutionary. The evolution process and potentialities for further changes can be understood in the context of environmental development, compulsions of common problems and the experiences gained due to draw-back [sic] and inadequacies of the existing larger international organisations. It is considered that the nation state system is evolving towards a system in which regional groupings of states will be more important than independent sovereign units. (Ghoshal et al. 2000: 328)

11

However through comparing, contrasting and moving between political science, international relations, economics, cultural studies, critical geopolitics and cultural, political and economic geography, this book provides a study of how circles of cultural, economic and political (all of which are also social) powers intersect and reproduce each other and how the state emerges out of the trace marked by these interplays. Amongst other things,

11

11

11

11

111

Introducing the plot and cast 5 Imagined Regional Communities is therefore interested in what the jargon of philosophy calls the ‘ontological status’ of the social, cultural and political and the state. That is, in simple terms: what are they are like and how do we come to know them as such? For example, is the state to be conceptualised as a thing in itself, or as a result of (more fundamental?) economic or cultural expressions? Or rather, what are the consequences of (what is at stake within) different conceptualisations? In turn, how do these categories and concepts relate to each other? These are big questions and for many years the idea of a general theory that resolves once and for all such issues has been recognised as problematic or impossible. Indeed, as Raymond Williams (as cited above) explains, these terms have complex histories and have signified different things in different times and places. So there can be no question of a perfect and complete theory in general of how, say, ‘culture’ relates to the ‘economy’. In other words, such questions and the issues they raise (or if you prefer, the problematics they pose) cannot be resolved theoretically – at least not in a way that leaves no remainder, no supplementary questions. Therefore, whilst a great deal of theoretical work is in order, ultimately we are forced to study what forms such relations have taken in specified historical and geographical contexts, and to explore the consequences of different theorisations of these. This is also a political task, since the criteria of judgement and distinction are not absolutes or essences, but political judgements. We are in the realm of fundamental belief systems, of politics, amidst questions of: how entire cultures come to consider reality in specific ways, in terms of the interaction between visible and invisible forces which they believe to constitute the world and to determine its evolution. (Ellis and ter Haar 1998: 186)

111

111

111

Imagined Regional Communities therefore provides an examination of states, culture, politics and economy through reference to the trajectories of formal regional associations of states. Of these the (currently) fifteen-member European Union is probably the best known. But a huge variety of other regional communities of states have been established in recent years, widely held to be inherent features of the Weltgeist. They are thereby often described as responses to putative ‘globalisation’2 or as a feature of the post-Cold War world. Indeed the terms of such contemporary issues and debates – about sovereignty, nationality, regulation, free trade and so on – relate to many of the dilemmas of politics and governance in a world held to be both globalising and avowedly beyond an old geopolitical order (in which a number of new orders have been proclaimed). Yet narratives about continental or regional communities have been around for decades. In the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell (1949) imagined a geopolitics of three great pan-regions (called Eurasia,

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

6 Introducing the plot and cast Eastasia and Oceania) perpetually at war with each other. Moreover the warring parties were subject to sudden shifts in allegiance whereby prior alliances have to be forgotten and reinscribed as eternal and implacable enmities, whilst prior enemies were dramatically rescripted as perpetual allies. Ellen Hertz notes how: What Orwell captures is the contrast between the eternal nature of the principles evoked to justify enmity or friendship between nations, and the ephemerality of their effects. We might think that diplomatic relations could be conducted in the language of Realpolitik, as they are analyzed in the press or the academy. But it seems that states cannot speak the language of the Real; allegiance or enmity between ‘Peoples’ invokes ‘Principles’. (1998: 84 n. 9) Act Three will have course to reflect more systematically on such languages of the sovereign ‘Real’. For the time being, we should note that Orwell wrote at the onset of what was soon to become known as the age of ‘superpowers’, and it was already clear that there would only be two or three of these. Orwell’s biographer, Michael Sheldon notes how: As a correspondent in Occupied Germany at the end of the war, Orwell had a brief glimpse of what life might be like in a world divided by large powers into ‘zones of influence.’ He reported on the pressures being exerted by the Soviet Union on the other powers and suspected that at some point – if these pressures were not resisted – they might lead to a war, or perhaps even a condition of more or less permanent warfare among the various zones. He suggests such a possibility in his novel, in which the big powers who have divided the world into zones of influence wage constant war with each other. Arthur Koestler’s interest in power politics – in Darkness at Noon, ‘The Yogi and the Commissar,’ and other works – helped to influence Orwell’s thinking in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but the entire range of influences is enormous because the novel is a kind of summing up for Orwell, a representation of ideas and influences that had been at work in his mind for two decades or more. (1992: 516–517) Orwell thereby also invoked the long (even in his times) and complex history of debates about, proposals for and actions to create economic and political organisations at continental or regional levels. As he was well aware, this history was tied up with the great geopolitical transformations and rivalries of the twentieth century, notably the rise and eclipse of competing imperialisms and social systems. It is in these contexts that this introduction – and the subsequent examination of Southern African

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 7 regionalism in Acts Two and Three – examine the complex colonial and post-colonial genealogies of contemporary regional communities. First however, I wish to consider some of the ways that, in the years between Orwell’s novel and the decline of the Cold War in the 1990s, a number of theoretical approaches to understanding regional communities became established. Indeed, since the middle of the twentieth century, regional communities (including the European Coal and Steel Community, which was established in 1953 and which later grew to be the European Union) have been subject to a corpus of theoretical treatments of which the bulk have been conducted in branches of economics or political science. They provide the main (and it may even be said, the hegemonic) academic understandings of regional communities and are widely internalised within the communities (amongst employees) as rationale, understanding and (in the case of economics) as procedure. Therefore they will be briefly described here, together with some influential contributions from international relations and history. The most significant accounts have come from the discipline of economics. The significance of the abstract models of customs unions and trade blocs that have been formulated, debated and refined by economists arises from the way that economics has come to occupy a privileged position as a source of policy. The introduction will describe later how this has operated through a series of institutions, set up under American leadership in the 1940s, to regulate global ‘free trade’. Accompanying this, economic science has developed normative models of ‘the market’ into which regional communities are expected to fit. They are productive of their object of study; the domain of ‘national economy’ and its comparison with others. Visualised and tabulated, the economy is rendered transparent, comparable and governable. Although they largely side-step questions of power, subjectivity and agency, such economic models have therefore proven powerful. In other words, the ‘science’ of economics abstracts from the world a highly rarefied vision of how the world operates, usually described by a set of equations or graphs. But, in turn, these abstractions become reimposed as the world is forced to become more like them through policy; in other words, they function as a discourse, a power/knowledge and a strategy. As critical commentators (for a selection, see Miller 1994; Barnes 1996; Carrier 1997; Carrier and Miller 1998), have argued, this abstraction and reimposition in the form of policy is a deeply political process with profound social consequences – but is disguised as the technocratic, scientific and ‘neutral’ rational jargon of economics. This rationality, evident amongst cadres of economics, largely coincides, as Van der Pijl (1998: 142) describes, with a ‘modern’ self-image: Rationality here comes in such shapes as the application of science, as scientific management . . . based of course, on ‘hard data, mathematics allowing hard headed, value-free analysis, etc. . . . This

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

8 Introducing the plot and cast approach is maintained as long as possible to postpone overt political conflicts hidden by figures and other scientific symbols, and reserve the terrain for experts rather than politicians or actual representatives of the ruling class. (1998: 142) Around the margins however, this rationality (and the ontological security that goes with it) collapses. As Arouh notes: After all, economists have been compared before to ‘tribes’ . . . to actors . . . power hunters, bureaucrats . . . magicians . . . philosophers, priests and hired guns . . . why not economists as a congregation of believers and bickering practitioners of different religions? (2000: 197) I will return later to the ontological status of the economic and its peculiar combinations of seen and unseen presence. Although it has less mathematical ‘rigour’, something similar to the occlusions of mainstream economics occurs in much political science. Political science is by no means as influential as economics. But the impact of political science theories of integration should not be discounted. Elaborated in part as a way of understanding (and therefore providing a formula for accelerating) European integration, so-called ‘functionalist’ theories described how new regional communities would develop following a logic of ‘spillover’, whereby economic, social and political functions would be ceded by states to a higher ‘supranational’ authority. The ceding of functions in one domain (for example, an aspect of economic policy) was expected to create demands and pressures for a similar assignment of others. Functionalism was particularly influential amongst many of those involved in establishing European integration in the 1950s and 1960s, and despite problems with demonstrating when or exactly by what means ‘spillover’ really operated, functionalism and a reworked ‘neo-functionalism’ have continued to exercise a certain influence. It is important therefore to point out that as Milward and Sorenson note, functionalist theorisations are, at least in part, to be located as: essentially models of social engineering for the containment of communism and the promotion of economic growth . . . [in particular] neo-functionalism was developed by a relatively small and selfconscious circle of American scholars concerned not so much with European integration as with the construction of a systematic predictive theory of international political integration. Within a short span of years they came to dominate studies in the field of European integration as well as that of international relations in general: an academic success which owed much to the fact that neo-functionalism in the

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 9 1950s and 1960s became the intellectual foundation for a hegemonic foreign policy architecture. (1993: 1–3) Something of the consequences of this will be dealt with later. In the meantime we might mention that Tom Nairn, with his eye on ‘integration theory’ (such as neo-functionalism), notes in the 1970s how: All students of the subject soon become aware of one important fact: the monumental sterility, pretension and evasiveness of most theoretical discussion of the European Community. This is one topic upon which modern ‘political science’ has concentrated much of its effort, and done its very worst. . . . Most of it fulfils Alfred Cobban’s description of political science as mostly a device for avoiding politics without achieving science. . . . The novelty of many aspects of the EEC, plus the absence of a genuine ‘European’ or cross-frontier intelligentsia, allowed American political science to invade and expand into somewhat monstrous forms. (1977: 306) However it is to the related discipline of International Relations (sometimes associated with the specialist subjects of Diplomatic History or European Studies) that we may turn for some more subtle (and culturally grounded) theoretical treatments of regional communities. Such subtlety is not always evident, for sometimes international relations theory (backed up by those historical accounts) simply reduced regional communities to the interaction of sovereign state interests (as detailed in note one). But such approaches (which are known as ‘realist’) have come in for considerable criticism for taking for granted and reifying the identity and power of the states, almost as if the latter were features of the natural, not social world. The sense of accelerating ‘globalisation’ has reinforced such criticism. Indeed, the end of the big picture of the Cold War (The Fifty Years War as Richard Crockatt (1995) recently called it) combined the sense of disorientations and juxtapositions which go under the sign of globalisation allows many narratives of global politics, including debates about culture, values and scales and objects of analysis. Traditional realist approaches remain, indeed they are still evident in theoretical and ‘practical’ domains (in the discourse of sovereignty, so evident in mainstream British debates about European integration) but with so much going on, they have become less credible. In such contexts, a certain ‘cultural turn’ might be detected in the minds of some senior civil servants at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). One senses that something is afoot when men such as Robert Cooper3 (at the time the director for Asia and the Pacific at the FCO) tells readers of monthly Prospect magazine (which calls itself ‘Britain’s Intelligent Conversation’) that:

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

10

Introducing the plot and cast It is time we had a new theory of international relations . . . an existentialist/post-modern perspective [might be] right for the spirit of the times?. . . International relations today is about values and identity at least as much as it is about ideas of balance or plans to engineer peace or romantic theories of progress. (Cooper 1998: 58)

Whilst it could credibly be argued that ‘values’ and ‘identity’ are in fact exactly what traditional FCO discourse was about, a call for existentialism or postmodernism is rather novel. For all the creative thinking about changing roles and shifting balances, I think that it is fair to say that practical minded Foreign Office mandarins are not known for their embrace of postmodernism or continental theories. The FCO’s most significant ‘theoretical’ contributions were in the days of British colonial empire. Together with anthropologists and geographers, functionaries of the British Foreign and Colonial Office developed elaborate notions of cultural and racial difference, masculine heroism (the boy scout, Kiplingesque world of adventure) and colonial administration, to be applied in Africa and Asia with a mixture of ‘civilising mission’ (an imperial mission to bring civilisation or as it was later called modernisation to the ‘natives’) and brute force. Colonialism contained visions of global, intercontinental or, as the Portuguese used to say, pluricontinental community. But these colonial visions were not communities of equals. But in what he judges is now a ‘post-heroic, post-imperial, post-modern society’, Robert Cooper is interested in thinking: ‘about the imagination of international communities, and about the re-imagining of the countries that make them up’ (1998: 58, italics in original). Wondering about how they might also apply for ‘international communities’, Cooper mentions Benedict Anderson’s idea of nations as Imagined Communities: Identity has long been important for the internal cohesion of nations. Nations, as Benedict Anderson taught us, are imagined communities. A nation must first exist in the mind of its citizens before it can hold together on the battlefield or football terraces; or before its parliament can exact loyalty and taxes. (ibid.) Cooper seems to read Anderson’s (first published in 1983, but revised and expanded in 1991) Imagined Communities rather narrowly here. For as Tønnesson and Antlöv explain: Anderson argues that the nation is a cultural construct, not in the sense of building on historical tradition but in that of being collec-

Introducing the plot and cast 11

11

tively imagined by all those going to the same kinds of school, viewing or listening to the same media, sharing the same mental map of the nation and its surrounding world, or visiting the same museums. There is thus nothing immanent or original about the nation: it is a construct, similar everywhere, only using different symbols, but it always considers itself as antique: it creates its own narrative, imagining itself as ‘awakening from sleep’. (1996: 7)

11

Anderson’s understanding of the rise of the nation is therefore of a certain political economy of culture, a cultural economy, based around many things, but with a special emphasis on the rise of the media and the circulation of texts that declare and regulate nationhood:

11

111

111

111

111

What, in a positive sense, made the new [national] communities imaginable was a half-fortuitous, but explosive interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of human linguistic diversity. (Anderson 1991: 42–43) This economy of circulation was at first mostly restricted to the Americas and Europe. But: since the end of the eighteenth century nationalism has undergone a process of modulation and adaptation, according to different eras, political regimes, economies and social structures. The ‘imagined community’ has, as a result, spread out to every conceivable contemporary society. (ibid.: 157) Although his rendition of Anderson’s book might be a somewhat restricted reading, Cooper remains suggestive in so far as he appreciates that something in Anderson’s thesis might be applied to thinking about certain international communities, such as the (re)invention of Europe in the form of the European Union. This has not escaped other observers. Expressing it simply, Andrew Hurrell says that: ‘As with nations, so regions can be seen as imagined communities which rest on mental maps whose lines highlight some features whilst ignoring others’ (1995: 41). In similar terms, in an original analysis of ‘region building in Northern Europe’, Iver Neumann (1994) insists that formal regional communities of an international form, such as the EU or the Nordic countries, are constituted in part out of a discourse whereby spokespersons for the community: ‘. . . as part of some political project imagine a certain spatial and chronological identity for a region and disseminate their imagined identity to others’ (Neumann 1994: 58).

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

12

Introducing the plot and cast

From a different vantage point, Kees van der Pijl identifies a central role for an ‘imagined [transnational] community’ in what he understands as: ‘a process of transnational class formation’ (1998: 98). Tracing the extension of a transatlantic liberal capitalism and its challenges in the form of ‘the crystallisation of a closed, rival bloc’ (ibid.: 114), van der Pijl identifies a series of transnational imagined communities: The first of the imagined communities in which we may discern the formation of a transnational bourgeoise is Freemasonry . . . masonry served to provide a passport of gestures and signs of recognition that allowed otherwise anonymous members of the upper and middle classes to gain the confidence and credit of their counterparts abroad. . . . In addition, masonry rehabilitated earlier transnational links by its references to the medieval guilds and myths about Templar origins and other knightly orders. (ibid.: 99) Subsequently, a series of transatlantic political and financial networks, alliances and planning groups4 branched off from this. Often weak and divided or fragile, they could not transcend the national imaginaries that dominated in and after the First World War and came into direct conflict between 1939 and 1945. I will return to reconsider this moment a few pages on. For the time being however, I want to note how the presence of regional communities has been extensively noted in recent years (and thereby rendered more real and important) in a variety of media and academic discourses. For example, Walter Rostow (1990) detected the signs of ‘The coming age of regionalism’. Back in the 1960s, Rostow had been assistant national security adviser to the Kennedy Administration and codifier of highly influential theories of (Western-led) modernisation for the Third World. These and other codifications of ‘development’ will require our critical consideration in a moment. More recently though for Rostow (1990: 3), writing in Encounter (a conservative American policy journal previously funded by the CIA), regionalism in general could be ‘a metaphor for our time’. In similar terms, Ken Ohmae (1985) wrote a bestseller on Triad Power diagnosing an emerging world of competition between North American, European and Japanese multinationals across ‘Triad regions’. A decade and a half on, newspapers and the business press are full of renewed concerns about ‘trade wars’ and growing policy and political divisions between the main capitalist ‘blocs’, notably North America and the European Union. Other influential commentators would have it that, in an age of supposed ‘globalisation’, to talk of nations and states (let alone nation-states) is not always enough. For example, during his first official visit to Portugal in July 1995, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then recently elected as Brazil’s

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 13 president (and one time academic sociologist who had written critiques of Rostow’s version of development) discussed links between the seven independent countries with Portuguese as an official language. President Cardoso commented that, today: ‘We can’t reason only in terms of countries – there are regional blocs’ (cited in de Vasconcelos 1995: 9, my translation). There are other regionally orientated organisations and communities. Indeed there is a wealth of organisations that defies easy summary. By way of an approach to this profusion, readers may wish to consult the thirty-fifth edition of the Yearbook of International Organizations (published with UN support by the Brussels-based Union of International Organizations). The Yearbook reports 182 ‘Intergovernmental regionally orientated membership organizations’ and 4,172 non-governmental organisations in 1998. The Yearbook also describes thirty-five ‘Intergovernmental intercontinental membership organizations’ and 1,074 non-governmental ones plus thirty-six ‘Universal’ (global) intergovernmental organisations and 483 non-governmental ones (Union of International Organizations 1998). This is a picture of enormous complexity, which is reinforced by the statistical evidence for regionalisation of trade and investment flows that points to: ‘network regions rather than contiguous continental “regions” or “blocs”’ (Poon et al. 2000: 440). With these facts and figures, plus President Cardoso’s stark declaration and Ken Ohmae’s and Walter Rostow’s divinations in mind, following the suggestions by Robert Cooper, Iver Neumann and others (and wishing to take into account the circles of ‘economy’, ‘politics’ and ‘culture’ mentioned in the opening words), the bulk of what follows reconsiders the imagination of regional communities.5 This is done through attention to some of the metaphors and images that are invoked when regional communities are spoken of. In turn, this allows a reflection on the way that imagination of regional communities is also re-imagination of the nations or states that constitute them. I will suggest that the ‘regional community’ is therefore always something through which the state (and the nation, which the state claims at once to arise from and to build) are also able to appear as real. The introduction will indicate that it might be impossible to decide if the constituent states produce the regional community or if the latter (together with other diplomatic fora) serve to reproduce the state. In turn, this allows some broader reflections about the interlocked circles of ‘culture’, ‘economy’ and ‘politics’. Prior to this however, some basic contextualisation of contemporary regional communities is in order.

1

1

1

11

14

Introducing the plot and cast

Summary of the plot As Marx said, every child knows that a social formation which did not reproduce the conditions of production at the same time as it produced would not last a year. (Althusser 1984: 1) Order is, at one and the same time, that which is given in things as their inner law, the hidden network that determines the way they confront one another, and also that which has no existence except in the grid created by a glance, an examination, a language; and it is only in the blank spaces of this grid that order manifests itself in depth as though already there, waiting in silence for the moment of its expression. (Foucault 1970: xx) This war is not as in the past: whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his armies can reach. It cannot be otherwise. (Stalin to Djilas, 1944. Cited in Calvocoressi et al. 1989: 578–579) The skyscrapers, which he saw as ‘fortresses of capital’, reminded him of ‘the old pictures of the towers in Bolonga and Florence’. (On Max Weber in New York. Cited in Gerth and Mills 1946: 15) Editorial: Whither this boom. . . . The full role and task of free enterprise in the next decade is not confined to the US. The materials are all at hand for another breakthrough to new levels of world trade and prosperity. Our boom and our system are the chief of these materials; but they need more friends and more room. Without real American leadership there will be no world market. Without a world market and an expanding environment, even US free enterprise and a prosperity have a limited future. (Life Editorial, Life 1955: 55)

11

11

11

There are many regional communities – with distinct histories and contexts, making generalisation at once difficult and problematic. The idea that one theory (or set of theories) may provide appropriate understandings of them all has long been criticised. This has not stopped some commentators from producing universal models of (political and/or economic) integration, or projecting theories developed in highly specific contexts (usually European integration) on to other communities and contexts (such as Asia, Africa or South America). I shall not be directly concerned much more with these formal theories of integration, for which many commentaries are anyway already available.6 As has been noted, such theories (functionalism, federalism, economic ‘models’ of customs unions and so on) have their impacts and insights. But my interest in irreducible and intertwined circles of (economic, cultural and political) power requires that I ask questions of regionalism that such theories largely take for granted. This allows a few claims that I hope will prove suggestive and which will

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 15 form points of departure and encounter taken up in the rest of Imagined Regional Communities. A good way to begin our select(ive) story here is with a subsequent commentary on President Cardoso’s words, in which a Portuguese journalist decided that they implied that: The Portuguese-speaking community is not an alternative to the insertion of the countries that constitute it into their own regional spaces. . . . For example, the case of Portugal and Brazil is not different to that of Angola and Mozambique in relation to Southern Africa. When the links of the countries that compose the respective regional spaces are stronger, the international clout of the Portuguese-speaking community is greater. (de Vasconcelos 1995: 9, my translation) The ‘Portuguese-speaking community’ mentioned by the journalist is a formal organisation, established in 1995 (though the first official summit was not held until July 1996) which ‘brings together’ the five states in Africa or off Africa’s Atlantic coast which have Portuguese as an official language (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Principe) plus Brazil and Portugal, in a loose cultural and political association. Until the mid-1970s all of these African and Atlantic island territories were ruled from Portugal. Brazil had also been a Portuguese colony until 1822. Indeed the Portuguese-speaking community represented a project by the Portuguese government to set up the style of organisation (bringing together the metropole and former colonies) that Paris (via the Communaute Francophoné) and London (via the Commonwealth) had long sought to utilise to project certain versions of French and British culture in the world. However, despite substantial economic, cultural and political links that endure from the age of empire, these post-colonial clubs have not precluded members (including the former colonial powers themselves) participating in various sorts of regional communities on a continental or sub-continental basis with neighbouring countries. The putative complementarity or synergy between continental or regional communities and linguistic/cultural associations of places previously united by old imperial links is what our Portuguese journalist was referring to in his commentary on Cardoso’s words. As has been noted, the best known of these regional, continental or transcontinental groupings is the European Union (née European Community 1992–1994, European Economic Community 1957–1992, European Coal and Steel Community 1953–1957). But there are many others: for example, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom), the Southern African Development Community

16

Introducing the plot and cast

1 Blocking up Number of regional integration agreements notified to GATT/WTO and currently in force cumulative as at:

80

60

1 40

1

11

11

11

11

20

0 1960

1970

1980

1990

1996

Source: WTO

Figure 1 The number of regional economic communities. Adapted from The Economist 7 December 1996.

(SADC), the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), and the Mercado Común del Sur (Mercosur, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay). And whilst these are some of the best known and most active communities, there have been many more. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) noted in 1995 that in the forty-seven year life of its forerunner (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or GATT, which operated from 1947 to 1994) a total of 108 bilateral or regional agreements had been notified to it. Within these, over seventy notifications of regional agreements (or amendments to expand them) had been registered. Furthermore, as the Economist magazine detailed in a 1996 cover story (to which we will return in the next section) on regional economic communities, of the: ‘76 free trade areas or customs unions set up or modified since 1948 . . . more than half have come in the 1990s’ (The Economist 1996c: 27) (see Figure 1). Many of these, notably those in the ‘Third World’, were post-colonial projects, bringing together states and societies that had been divided by colonialisms. Notions of ‘civilisational’, cultural–linguistic and political unity form reference points for example in Arab, African and Latin American politics and have at times been articulated in Asia. These found expression in the anti-colonial revolts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh comment:

11

11

Introducing the plot and cast 17 Cultural reorientations during the colonial era range from reorientations in a religious framework (such as the Nahda, renewal or reawakening in the Middle East, religious revival and humanism in Asia) to the ‘Pan-’movements of the turn of the century that were avowedly ‘cultural’, sometimes with religious, at other times with biological– racist, overtones. Ethiopianism and Pan-Turkism belong to the earlier expression, and the momentum of Pan-Europeanism, Pan-Islam, PanArabism, Pan-Africanism, and indigenismo and mestizaje in Latin America still lives on in different guises. The common denominator is the mobilization of the cultural resources of civilizational areas, supplementing, amplifying and superseding nationalism. (1995: 6–7)

11

111

111

111

111

Many of these references and articulations are present (and sometimes made explicit) in contemporary regional communities. Such visions have taken an array of forms, always mediated through local conditions and conditioned by shifting narratives of global power. To begin to sketch these forms here is a task beyond the scope of this text. What will become evident however (starting with the brief considerations of APEC later in this introduction and more clearly in the focus on the SADC in Act Two) is just how significant they are in shaping the parameters, the discourse, of contemporary regional communities. In addition to this post-colonial element, most regional communities in the South cite ‘development’ amongst their aims and rationale. This combined frame: ‘post-colonial’ and in pursuit of ‘development’ forms a very powerful discursive grid. We have already briefly noted the codification of ‘development’ by the US state department official Walter Rostow. To this, it should be added that the post-Second World War era was one in which the discourse of development took hegemonic form. Development took the form of a set of knowledges, interventions, rationalities and worldviews (in sum, a discourse) which are also powers – to intervene, to transform, to improve, to rule, in short ‘to develop’.7 It embodies a geopolitics (see Slater 1993), in that the origins of development are bound up with Western power and strategy for the Third World, enacted and implemented through local Third World elites or technocrats. Such was the form specified by Rostow (1960) and other theorists of modernisation (for example, Apter 1965); a series of stages of growth, with Western (in fact US) society at its end point. Yet Western renditions of development were challenged and modified in the South. Today, for all the shifts and transformations of the past couple of decades (among them, the rise of neo-liberalism and discourses of ‘open regionalism’ – of which more will be said in a moment, the collapse of the Second World and the decline of radical Third Worldism) something of a radical current remains. Populist ideas about the value of peasant and artisan lives, or of selfreliance and fulfilling ‘basic needs’, have long been sceptical of many of

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

18

Introducing the plot and cast

the Western claims of development; particularly when the latter takes the forms of mass consumption, industrialisation and urbanisation (see Kitching 1989). Subsequently, the history of ideas of dependency has been, in part, a rejection of Western claims of development as a universal panacea to be implemented in a grateful Third World. From its Latin American roots (see Kay 1989), dependency ideas were disseminated very widely and sometimes took the form of a rejection of Western modernisation/development as corrupting and destructive (see Bloomstrom and Hettne 1984; Leys 1996; Rist 1997) or as continuation of colonial forms of domination (for example, Rodney 1972). In particular, writers from predominately Islamic countries (most notably Iran) saw the obsession with development as part of a misplaced ‘intoxication’ with the West (see Dabashi 1993) Yet such practical critiques of Western-style development operated or remained framed by a commitment to develop, albeit on adapted or transformed terms. In other words, Third World critiques, however original, continued to operate within a commitment to ‘develop’; the ‘space in which only certain things can be said or even imagined’ that Escobar (1995: 39) diagnoses. Moreover this meant that renditions of development were able to subsist with and articulate anti-imperialism. For development was an act of national becoming, and if sometimes this national formation transcended the boundaries derived from the colonial epoch (which was also inscribed as an age of underdevelopment) to form a new imagined regional community (sometimes, as with the SADC, with ‘development’ in its very title), so much the better. Therefore complex contaminations and cross-overs between racial imaginaries, cultural and political anti-imperialisms and projects for development are enfolded into regional communities. In other words, there is an immensely complex story here. Consider, for example, the roles of conceptions such as a transatlantic Négritude in feeding into PanAfricanism, Afro-Asian Solidarity (a formation that was formalised at the 1955 Bandung conference in Sukarno’s Indonesia) later finding expression in Third-Worldism, South–South cooperation, conceptions of dependency– delinking, demands for a New International Economic Order, cartels and the roles of the UN institutions (first UNCTAD, with its Third Worldist agendas and later the responses from the IMF and World Bank) and the GATT.8 The genealogies of contemporary regional communities, and that which shapes their discursive horizons, defy easy summary. Acts Two and Three will indicate some of the ways in which, in the case of Southern Africa, the combinations of colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial discourses and invocations of development form frameworks of action and understanding for contemporary regional communities. Meanwhile, it must be noted that, in a parallel sense, the EU was also given impetus by the perception amongst the old imperial powers that the world ‘led’ by European imperialism had been supplanted by continental superpowers (the USA and the USSR). At the end of the Second World War, most of the European overseas colonial empires were still intact

11

11

11

111

Introducing the plot and cast 19 (though terminally weakened). Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands and France sought to regain and reconsolidate empires in what had become known during the war as South-East Asia.9 Britain was also still a colonial power in what would soon usually be designated as South Asia as well as in Africa (with France, Portugal, Spain and Belgium), what was now called the Middle East (with France) and the Caribbean (with France and the Netherlands). All of these imperial projects operated various kinds of preferential trade. Indeed, protected markets, imperial preferences and so on, had been put in place by and formed part of the rationale for colonialism (itself, at once, economic, political and cultural). Yet by 1945 the colonial projects were all decisively weakened, even if this was not always obvious to all of the imperialists at the time. It had already been clearly demonstrated that for all the racist mythologies about the superiority of white (European)10 civilisation or ‘races’, Western colonial power was neither invulnerable nor eternal. The speed of its collapse when faced by the military challenge of Japanese imperialism in South-East Asia in 1941 and the rise of formal anti-imperialism11 in the form of US and Soviet (super)power provided the global backdrop to the rise of national liberation movements which would contest the old colonial powers. The ensuing collision of national liberation struggles, superpower politics and dying colonialisms is vastly complex, and our story really ought to become fractured here.12 But amidst all the collisions and complexities was a strong American commitment to global ‘free trade’. This was in the making through the rise of continental and hemispheric American power in the nineteenth century; cemented in the 1898 war with Spain and the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary which added the right of pre-emptive US intervention to the demands that Old World powers keep out of the Americas as specified in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. Buck-Morss notes that:

111

111

111

In its original articulation, the Monroe Doctrine (1823) established US foreign policy as part of the abstract imaginary of political SPACE, drawing a line in the ocean to exclude European intervention in the Western Hemisphere. At the beginning of this century, however, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine justified US military intervention to protect the freedom of capitalist enterprise in the Western Hemisphere, giving the doctrine the new valence discussed here. (2000: 287) Buck-Morss notes too the codifications of the US naval strategist Alfred T. Mahan, who set out a maritime geopolitics and Pacific destiny for early twentieth century USA. But in the context of the evolving American commitment to global free trade, what is more relevant here are BuckMorss’s excavations of the particular variant of the sovereignty-concept that accompanied rising American power:

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

20

Introducing the plot and cast While keeping up the appearance of a separation between the economic and the political, it made a connection between these categories, so that ‘freedom’ took on an economic meaning and political intervention was the way to achieve it . . . Schmitt calls this the American principle of Grossraum (great space), a form of economic expansion that employed state violence without political annexation. (ibid.: 17)

The specificity of this concept of sovereignty becomes clearer when contrasted with those nationalist (later Third Worldist and communist) notions of sovereignty that signify national or popular control over both political and economic space. Buck-Morss cites the example of the revolutionary government of Mexico (which the USA refused to recognise) and its 1917 ‘nationalisation’ of its subterranean oil and minerals. For the USA, Mexico’s position was evidence of a ‘Bolshevik threat’: ‘At issue is nothing less than the concept of sovereignty. Does it rest on a separation between the economic and the political, or does political sovereignty necessarily imply economic sovereignty?’ (Buck-Morss 2000: 287). In due course, the US national security state and containment of communism would be constructed on the basis of this sovereignty of enterprise. But the development of the global commitment to free trade was also a reflection of other complex shifts in America’s self-understanding in the twentieth century. Van der Pijl designates certain of these as ‘a new configuration of forces’ associated first with the New Deal: By several steps the initial state-monopolistic orientation of the New Deal [announced by US President F.D. Roosevelt] was deflected towards a corporate liberal concept which rehabilitated internationalisation of capital as an escape route out of domestic class compromise. . . . Its full implications perhaps became apparent only with the New Deal’s extrapolation to Western Europe in the Marshall Plan and after, because then the aspect of internationalisation allowed the broadening of the class alliance to include the pre-war liberal internationalists. . . . The backbone to corporate liberalism however were the ascendant . . . industries in which progressive accumulation had matured, first of all the automotive complex and ‘Fordism’. (1998: 119–120) Thirty years of transformations had gone into the making of this. Indeed, there were pre-Second World War forerunners in US transnational investment in Europe and the transatlantic circulation of new commodities: Nylons (short for New York and London), radios, records, movies and Hoovers, and the production of new arterial and suburban spaces. All this anticipates post-1945 Fordism. But only after 1945 could the relative hegemony of this be secured. It built too on the fragile alliances and elite

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 21 communities that had begun to emerge in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kees van der Pijl again: State monopolism in the early twentieth century militated against transnational integration, but [after] World War I investment bankers attempted to resurrect liberal internationalism in changed conditions. The central forum for transnational consultations available to the capitalist class . . . was the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris, the successor body to the pre-1914 International Congress of Chambers of Commerce. A petition to reduce German and Austrian reparations was started by British and American bankers jointly with neutral Dutch and Swedish colleagues. . . . After . . . 1924, a German contingent was admitted. . . . This paved the way for the 1925 Locarno Treaty fixating Germany’s western borders. . . . The International Steel Cartel, set up in 1926 and on a revamped basis again in 1933 . . . also should be understood as a meeting ground of Anglo-Saxon and continental European capitalist interests. Private co-operation agreements between German and American capital (e.g. IG Farben and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, NJ), direct investments (General Motors in Opel, General Electric in AEG) . . . in the late 1920s created many additional links. . . . Appeasement with Hitler built on these connections and also prefigured postwar European integration. In the Anglo-German Fellowship, a key role was played by the Dutchman, Paul Rijkens, of Unilever, and his fellow director D’Arcy Cooper, in addition to British economic statesmen with links to German capital such as the Chamberlin family and Oliver Lyttelton. . . . But the ‘offshore’ fraction in Nazi Germany, grouped around Carl Goerdeler (the internationalist mayor of Leipzig, advisor of the Robert Bosch electrical concern, and main organiser of the July 1944 coup attempt) was weak and divided – as was, in this case the Milner Group. (ibid.: 119–120) What had been in potential formation since at least 1918 could come to fruition after 1945. In the terms of Richard Pells’ account of interplays and linkages between Europe and America: In many ways, America’s impact on Europe following World War I was a precursor of what happened, on a much larger scale, after 1945. The United States had emerged by the 1920s as a formidable, though not yet dominant influence in European life. But it was during the decade that America embarked on policies that eventually led to its economic and cultural supremacy. And the ambivalent reactions of European politicians, businessmen, and intellectuals anticipated the greater confusion of their successors about how to understand and cope with the ‘Americanization’ of their continent in the second half of

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

22

Introducing the plot and cast the twentieth century. . . . The combined effect of exports, investments, and tourism drove many European intellectuals to consider with a greater sense of urgency the meaning of Americanism or Americanization. . . . By the 1920s, even more than in the nineteenth century, the United States had come to stand in a vague and symbolic way for modernity, and for a ‘future’ that seemed inescapable. . . . Here again was a thoroughly imaginary America, a land somehow exempt from the burdens of history and human suffering, where the future had already arrived in the form of unbridled industrial power – a land filled with omens and prophecies of Europe’s inexorable fate. (1997: 9–12)

Or in David Harvey’s estimation: The themes of internationalism and multilateralism run up hard against the desire for autarky as the means to preserve the position of some particular region in the face of internal contradictions and external pressures – autarky of the sort that prevailed in the 1930s, as Britain sealed in its Commonwealth trade and Japan expanded into Manchuria and mainland Asia, Germany into eastern Europe and Italy into Africa, pitting different regions against each other, each pursuing its own ‘spatial fix’. Only the United States found it appropriate to pursue an ‘open door’ policy founded on internationalism and multilateral trading. In the end the war was fought to contain autarky and to open up the whole world to the potentialities of geographical expansion and unlimited uneven development. That solution, pursued single-mindedly under United States’ hegemony after 1945, had the advantage of being super-imposed upon one of the most savage bouts of devaluation and destruction ever recorded in capitalism’s violent history. And signal benefits accrued not simply from the immense destruction of capital, but also from the uneven geographical distribution of that destruction. (1982: 444) However, even after 1945, the US-led transatlantic hegemony remained relative in two (interrelated) senses. First, there was the resistance of the Soviet-led regimes behind what was soon being scripted as an ‘Iron Curtain’ – more will be said about this in a moment. Second, it had to contend with nationalist imaginaries (and a related complex of state monopolistic and anti-American formations) in a number of the West European democracies. With Western Germany (militarily, ideologically and economically) more subservient to US power, this was most evident in France. France (or rather Paris) had long understood itself as the core European cultural–political space, as the key embodiment of Western (and that was understood as European) civilisation. Although the relative manoeuvre and

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 23 alternative, national or ‘European’ frame of reference was at first rather tokenistic, it suggested future possibility. In due course therefore, the global ambition of US-led Fordism and a cultural space of ‘liberal’13 capitalist flows were embodied in American aid (always also a trade policy) and more directly in the regulatory regimes established, under American leadership in the 1940s. The latter regimes – the GATT (of which more will be said in a moment), the World Bank and the IMF (together with the machinery of the UN) – had universal aspirations, but were profoundly shaped by American power. What went with them was the construction of a relatively open trading order. The regulatory bodies were supposed to ensure this openness. All the power of the discipline of economics was also invoked and harnessed here, in part via analyses of the way that regional communities could best complement and operate within the logics of ‘the Market’, ‘the State’, ‘Development’ or ‘Growth’. Systems of comparison and difference were invoked. For example: the collection and comparison of national economic statistics by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in the period after the Second World War opened up a new vision of competing national economies: the charts and tables stabilized economies in terms of a few simple and elegant figures, and hence rendered them comparable, allowing their strength and health to be measured, followed over time, ranked in terms of such indicators as rate of growth. (Rose 1999: 37) All this not only suited US transnational corporations, but was an expression of a new US strategic commitment to what it scripted as the noncommunist ‘Free World’. Such commitment was expressed too in a series of military alliances with the USA at their core. These alliances and the trade regimes which were associated with them, combined to produce a certain space of flows14 (at first, with the exception of raw materials, overwhelmingly from the USA) of capital, commodities, diplomatic exchange, cultural artefacts (such as music, cinema and fashion) and military forces. After 1945, the Soviet bloc was partly constituted and imagined as a space of resistance to these flows. In Eastern-Central Europe (Yugoslavia and Albania aside, where the revolutions took form without extensive Soviet occupation-direction), the USSR variously directed, regulated and imposed a revolutionary process. In part this amounted to nationalisations, in the dual sense of ethno-national assertion and the establishment of new republics with constitutions and parties modelled on a Soviet reference and state ownership of the means of production (in the first instance also including agricultural lands). All this was soon firmly controlled from above, what Bloomfield (1979) termed ‘passive revolution’, utilising working class

1

1

1

11

24

Introducing the plot and cast

organisation (where it existed, such as in Czechoslovakia and parts of Hungary) mostly as a transmission belt. The passive revolutions in EastCentral Europe and in due course the revolutionary system in the USSR itself would have been vulnerable without a relative closure to transatlantic capitalism. Revisionist histories of the origins of the Cold War in Europe have accordingly stressed how it emerged in part from Soviet reaction to the potential extension of such a space of flows into Soviet-occupied Eastern and Central Europe.15 As Stalin recognised, this would have undermined Soviet hegemony in the region. Since the latter had been established at such great cost and was seen as a vital buffer against further German or Western aggression, the logic of resistance left the Soviets little alternative but to seek to close off this space (at least partially) and to constitute an alternative. It immediately posed problems for Stalinism, insofar as questions about the relations between national communisms and the whole issue of what was termed an ‘International Socialist Division of Labour’ came into focus. The regulation of ‘Socialist Community’ in the form of the Cominform (set up in 1948 to coordinate national party organisations) and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA, set up in 1949 as a Soviet response to American proposals for European economic reconstruction) could not contain such questions. After Stalin’s death in 1953, these came to the surface. The 1949 break with Yugoslavia was a forerunner to the Sino-Soviet split of 1960 and the fracture of communist orthodoxy. We will return to these themes and the trajectory of the CMEA below. To return to the main plot however, it is important to note that the presence of a Soviet-Communist other just across the Iron Curtain and the possibility of its spread through revolutionary upheavals in the Balkans and soon afterwards in Asia (and the wider ‘Third World’), further embedded the American-led ‘space of flows’ in the West. In Arrighi’s words:

11

11

11

Roosevelt’s ‘one worldism’ – which included the USSR among the poor nations of the world to be incorporated into the evolving Pax Americana for the benefit and security of all – became ‘free worldism’, which turned the containment of Soviet power into the main organizing principle of US hegemony. Roosevelt’s revolutionary idealism, which saw the institutionalization of the idea of world government the primary instrument through which the US New Deal would be extended to the world as a whole, was displaced by the reformist idealism of his successors, who institutionalized US control over world money and over global military power as the primary instruments of US hegemony. (1994: 68) The Cold War thereby ensured that the USA and its local allies would entangle the Western ‘flow-space’ with military alliances and systems of

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 25 ‘containment’. These were extended across the Pacific to Japan (formalised in a treaty signed in 1951), into Korea, Indochina and South-East Asia, the Middle East (where they were complicated by a close relationship with Israel and the geopolitics of Zionism) and southwards into the American continents and surrounding seas. Beyond the fringes of the formally democratic transatlantic space that included the UK, France, Scandinavia, West Germany and the Benelux countries (who had signed a convention for a future customs union in 1944, prior to the cessation of war), this was deeply compromised by alliances of convenience with local elites. In parts of Asia, Southern Europe and Latin America, these elites were frequently drawn from the most reactionary elements of society (including the military). This is of course the familiar contradiction of American imperial destiny: rhetorically anti-imperialist, keen on establishing its difference from classical European colonialisms that it was supplanting, but actually reproducing key structural features of prior imperial sentiments and policy.

Tradegy or romance Yet the lesson of the war was unmistakable: The United States no longer languished as an appendage of Europe, backward and marginal. America was now at the center, a symbol of modernity and an exemplar of success. (Pells 1997: 9) The fear of Germany dominating Europe was the primary reason why the United States had intervened in two world wars. In the Cold War the United States intervened again in Europe, to contain the Soviet Union. And the US was still quite concerned about Germany’s role. The United States was obviously opposed to the integration of Europe if this took place under the leadership of a hostile power. Therefore, American support for European integration was clearly premised on certain conditions being fulfilled. By far the most important of these was that the more united Europe remain friendly to the United States. To make certain this happened, the new Europe had to be fitted into a wider Atlantic framework. This framework was established first through the Marshall Plan and the OEEC and then, much more importantly, through NATO. Gradually the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) also came to constitute an important part of this framework. To a large extent this ‘Atlantic Framework’ was a code phrase for overall American leadership. There was never any real doubt that Western Europe belonged to the American ‘empire’. (Lundestad 1998: 40)

In the preceding section I have condensed and retold a familiar story in order to note how the logics within it both allowed and shaped the formats for regional communities. Leaving aside the predominately transatlantic and transpacific military communities, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), it is notable that the USA had contradictory stances with regard to the emergence of potential economic and political regional

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

26 Introducing the plot and cast communities. On the one hand, Washington was disposed to see them as ways of consolidating capitalism and (at least in Western Europe) forms of liberal democracy, that would keep communists and radical forces outside the main power structures. In realist terms this both ‘contained’ the USSR and integrated the defeated Axis powers (notably Germany and Italy) into a transatlantic space. On the other hand, America (along with the US dominated regulatory institutions) was wary of the possibility that regional communities could become protectionist blocs and disrupt the space of flows in which the USA was represented as having a great stake. This is clearest in the case of the European Union. When it was first established as the six-member EEC in 1957 (building on a Coal and Steel Community that had been in existence since 1953 and the Benelux customs union established in the closing months of the war), it broke GATT rules but was allowed to pass in part because the USA was supportive of it partly as a means to promote capitalist and democratic (relative) stability in Western Europe and bind together American allies on the European continent. The founding states of the EEC also threatened to withdraw from the GATT if not permitted to proceed. Regional communities would be allowed to emerge where on balance it suited visions of US interest – even if they ran against the spirit and letter of ‘multilateralism’ that had been formally established as part of the architecture of global capitalist regulation after 1945. Such multilateral agreement was most evident in the GATT. The latter was in great part a US-led Treaty. As such it was the partial internationalisation of protocols and laws that had been established in the USA as part of the New Deal order.16 GATT was a Treaty, so had only contracting parties (not members) and initially had no permanent secretariat. In the spirit of multilateralism, envisioning a universal (US-led) space of capitalist flows into which all ‘contracting parties’ were interpellated in an equal and uniform (‘non-discriminatory’) manner, the GATT permitted regional communities (‘Free Trade Areas and Customs Unions’) only under the strict condition that ‘trade barriers after integration do not rise on average’. This was the envisaged open Cartesian space of US hegemony; respecting (and therefore productive) of sovereignty. A space in which all recognised sovereigns are (at least in economic realm) subject to universal norms and regulation. This universal (though American-centred) space was in part rendered a viable imaginary by the extreme weakness of other capitalist powers and spheres. As Europe and Japan ‘revived’ so they had to be accommodated. The issue of Japanese power and East Asian regionalism was effectively deferred until the 1970s and 1980s. The fracture and complexity of Asian regional relations meant that bilateral and/or the univeralist multilateral frames would be brought to bear in Asia with the Pacific in US military-strategic visions an ‘American Lake’. But Europe required more urgent consideration given the rapid revival of German capitalism in the 1950s, and the sense that West European

11

11

Introducing the plot and cast 27 unity-integration could shift the balance of forces against communism. Therefore in terms of the GATT, at the founding moment of the EEC: A conscious political decision was made by contracting parties [of the GATT] in the late 1950s not to closely scrutinize the formation of the EEC, as it was made clear by the original six EEC member states that a GATT finding that the EEC violated Article XXIV could well result in their withdrawal from GATT . . . at the end of the day the GATT ‘blinked’. Given that the EEC probably did not meet all the requirements of Article XXIV, this created a precedent that was often followed subsequently. (Hoekman and Kostecki 1995: 219)

11

111

111

111

111

In other words the compromise that allowed the establishment of the EEC embodied, and therefore furthered, the unfolding of contradictory political and economic forces and rationales at work within Western capitalism. In a much broader sense, uneasy compromises have been characteristic features of the post-war order.17 The capitalist world order after 1945 retained deep continuities with and recompositions of the pre-1945 order. Perhaps this was most evident in the former axis powers. In parts of Western Europe, quasi-fascist governments endured and were quite rapidly (more or less immediately in the Portuguese case, with a lag of nearly a decade in the Spanish case) integrated into the transatlantic space of (military, economic, cultural, political) flows. Whilst post-war Germany and Italy saw the economic order become more thoroughly transnationalised, they also retained deep personal and structural continuity with what had gone before. Meanwhile – since all the above was already fairly evident to them and since it suited their purposes to draw attention to it – Soviet international relations ‘experts’ and politicians were scripting the EEC as one of a range of economic, political–ideological or military institutions, designed to ‘integrate’ or ‘fuse’ what they termed the aggressive bloc of Western (monopoly) capitalist states supported or led by the USA. Whilst it is clear that after Stalin’s death (and for all its famous totalitarianism) Soviet foreign policy and academic circles produced a variety of scripts about the ECSC and EEC, the dominant story was of the EEC as a mode of Western encirclement-monopoly and danger (see Neumann 1989). Indeed the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist republics (variously terming themselves ‘People’s Democracies’, ‘Democratic’ or ‘Socialist’ Republics) established a Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON or CMEA) that was soon posited (although it was later to include Cuba and Vietnam too) as a socialist alternative to the EEC. When viewed from different vantage points and through different lenses, the EEC had no single essence; it could be accommodated to contrasting scripts.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

28

Introducing the plot and cast

Sub-plots: a host of metaphors Although inseparable from essence, the proper is not to be confused with it. Doubtless this division is what permits the play of metaphor. The latter can manifest properties, can relate properties extracted from the essence of different things to each other, can make them known as the basis of their resemblance, but nonetheless without directly, fully, and properly stating essence itself, without bringing into light the truth of the thing itself. (Derrida 1982: 249) – But Prime Minister, we don’t really belong to the region do we? We’re not at the centre of it are we? – Well, it’s a basin – the Pacific Basin. There’s no-one at the centre. We’re at the edges of it and so is everybody else. ([Australian Prime Minister] Paul Keating, interviewed by Paul Lyneham The 7.30 Report 5 March 1992. Cited in Gibson 1994: 83) For Britain to get the best out of the EU we must be players on the pitch, not commentators from the stands. (British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, 2 February 1999. Cited in White 1999: 2)

Since its 1950s foundations, the European Economic Community has evolved into the European Union, now with a single currency (at least for most of its members) which may come to challenge the dollar as the global reserve currency. All this, plus the end of the Cold War (which had served to allow something of a common Western identity to be scripted against a Soviet other) and periodic trade disputes between the EU, Japan and the USA, has allowed a geoeconomic script to circulate about the prospect of (re)newed global ‘tripartite splits’ between ‘blocs’ constructed around each of these. The establishment of a North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and Japan’s more assertive role during the early 1990s (after which severe recession hampered it) are also part of what grants such stories greater power and credibility. The weekly Time magazine has frequently served as a forum for codifying American strategy to the ‘educated citizen’ (see Sidaway 1998a). The 15 June 1992 issue duly reminded its readers of George Orwell’s (1949) dystopian vision of three ‘regions’ (Eurasia, Eastasaia and Oceania), perpetually at war with each other. As noted, although nominally writing about the future, Orwell also incites memories of the pre-1945 inter-imperialist competition (which contained a geopolitical discourse of ‘panregions’).18 With this dreadful backdrop in vision, Time would have it that unless care is taken to preserve American-led global ‘free-trade’ from its many potential opponents, then the world could ‘split’ into three competitive regions. Likewise, for the UK based weekly Economist magazine, in the mid-1990s, the greatest threat to global ‘free-trade’ was in the proliferation of regional

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Figure 2 The Economist front cover 7 December 1996. Reproduced with permission.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

30

Introducing the plot and cast

communities. On its front cover of 7 December 1996, the Economist featured a vision of the proverb of ‘too many chefs spoil the soup’. The ‘chefs’ in question being regional communities and the ‘soup’ world trade (see Figure 2). Four years on, the Economist feared a tragic outcome. Reporting ‘A different New World Order’, the magazine claimed that: World trade policy has been in a state of flux since last year’s debacle in Seattle, when members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) tried unsuccessfully to launch a new round of trade talks. Contrary to popular wisdom, the reason for the collapse in Seattle was not the presence of several thousand disgruntled demonstrators. Instead, it was a failure of the self-appointed vanguard of America and Europe to respond to the concerns of developing countries. Since Seattle, the big two have been further distracted by a string of ugly bilateral trade disputes and by their efforts to shepherd China into the WTO. . . . To complicate matters, the WTO is no longer the only game in town. Bilateral and regional trade agreements have flourished during the past two decades, to mixed effect. (The Economist 2000: 141–142, italics mine) Such metaphors, whilst seemingly trivial or banal figures of speech, are the very stuff of both elite and popular forms of discourse about regionalisms and of geopolitics more widely. Analysis of or a focus on metaphor might be regarded as a diversion from real issues of understanding and power. But such ‘real’ understandings/powers are not outside the realm of metaphor. Indeed Derrida demonstrates that there can be no rigorous distinction between metaphorical and so-called non-metaphorical, ‘realistic’ language and thought. In a footnote to the English translation of Derrida’s essay ‘White mythology: metaphor in the text of language’, Alan Bass therefore explains how Derrida: wishes to demonstrate both the generalization of metaphor, its infinitely reflective capacity, and the necessity of this (hidden) generalization in the production of so-called ‘non-metaphoric’ concepts, by means of the ‘ruination’, the ‘plunging into the abyss’ of a particular metaphor. We might think of what Derrida calls ‘the logic of the abyme’ as the ‘figurative ruination’ of logic as we know it, as for example when the distinction between the reflected and the reflecting falls apart. (Derrida 1982: 262, n. 73) So metaphor is not only an accessory to language/thought, but it is always present. Whilst foregrounding metaphor makes us suddenly conscious of its presence, language and social life are always already metaphorical.19

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 31 Having said that, it has also been pointed out how specific metaphorical formations have become common in the narration of international relations. In addition to the languages of imperial and Cold War geopolitics; ‘heartlands’, ‘rimlands’, ‘dominoes’, ‘blocs’, ‘polarity’ and so on (see Ó Tuathail 1996; Ó Tuathail et al. 1998), territorial metaphors of centre and margin, or inside and outside, provide the often taken for granted structure to virtually all elite, academic and popular discourses about ‘international’20 relations (see Walker 1993; Agnew 1994; Agnew and Corbridge 1994). Similarly, in the case of regional communities, the notion of them as containers with varying degrees of openness or closure has been important in debates about the threats that they might pose to global ‘free-trade’. These have acquired particular currency across the Pacific. Speaking in the name of APEC, member-state politicians have reiterated its openness and complementarity with global free-trade and capital mobility. At the same time however (as with Europe), there is no consensus on the issue. Whilst APEC’s official discourse stresses ‘open regionalism’, other versions of what it is and might become are articulated. In part, this is because APEC represents a response by Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada to versions of Pacific or East Asian cooperation which might exclude them. This is not the place for very lengthy comment on the contested geopolitics of APEC, about which a great deal has been written.21 Instead, I will briefly note how, particularly for Australia, New Zealand (and to an extent for Canada and the USA), a sense of rising Asian confidence and the threats that this might pose, produced the possibility of responding to it or engaging with it through projection of a new Pacific Age. Seeking a sense of renewal, the old colonial-settler states are held (also) to belong to such a bright future, along with dynamic post-colonial Asia.22 The ‘Pacific Rim’ thereby becomes a signifier filled with a whole set of (‘white’) fantasies, fears and senses of possibility (Dirlik 1993). But for many of the Asian countries a rather different notion of a (shared) Asian modernity, which is distinct from European or American cultural and political forms (or as they are sometimes called, ‘civilisations’), is registered in discourses about and metaphors of an ‘Asian-way’ projected through APEC and other regional communities such as ASEAN.23 All these are contained (at least for a moment) at symbolic gatherings. Ruth Phillips notes how the Canadian government hosted a 1997 APEC summit, making great efforts to produce a certain right appearance: These efforts to perfect the view through the windows and the area selected for the taking of the leaders’ traditional ‘family photo’ were needed to produce the ‘sight bites’ that, together with sound bites are a principle product of meetings such as this. (Phillips 2000: 181–182)

1

1

1

11

32

Introducing the plot and cast

APEC lacks one of the usual signifiers of community, namely the term community itself. Most others have adopted terms such as community, union or association. Frequently, development is directly encoded (as in the SADC). NAFTA is notable in being nothing more than ‘North American’, about ‘Free Trade’ (itself a key signifier of American, especially United States, culture) and an ‘Area’. Likewise Mercosur declares itself simply as a common market of the south. But APEC, containing contradictory agendas, expresses ‘Asia-Pacific’ imaginary, the uncontroversial domain of the ‘Economic’ and the universally acceptable ‘Cooperation’. Prior Pacific and Asia-Pacific ‘communities’ have also generally felt unable to express themselves as such. Cooperation Councils, Economic Councils, Organisations for Trade and Development abound, but only ASEAN offers itself as an Association. APEC was declared into ‘existence’ (or rather declared itself) at a meeting centred on negotiations to the Uruguay round of the GATT. Korhonen describes the range of other visions and positions that were bought to this meeting of foreign and economic ministers in Canberra in November 1989, but also reminds us how: The horizon of the meeting was not even centred on Pacific affairs, but on the Uruguay round, and ways of bringing the negotiations to a successful conclusion by December 1990, which had been set as the deadline. The conference decided to meet again at least twice before that date. . . . The purpose of continued cooperation established the meeting as an international organization, and this fact was sealed by giving it a name. (Korhonen 1998: 162, italics mine) More widely Davis Bobrow writes of:

11

The complex mixing of issue domains [in ‘South-East Asia’ and the ‘Asia-Pacific’] and the diversity of role scripts underlies jostling for position at home and abroad and varied attempts to justify or legitimate courses of action in terms of fashionable ‘ideas’. These manoeuvres can be interpreted in terms of implications for hegemony in the AsiaPacific. The cueing terms may be about processes (e.g. globalization), roles (e.g. latecomers), or strategies (e.g. the Washington consensus . . . flying geese, leapfrogging . . .). (1999: 174)

11

An entire set of metaphors stresses forward movement or travel, or a (sometimes difficult) journey. This cropped up following the contentious 1998 APEC summit, when the Hong Kong based Asiaweek magazine published an editorial calling for a rethink of APEC’s rationale. With political differences between the USA and host country Malaysia particularly evident, the (metaphorical) notion of the integrative vehicle of APEC, with

11

Introducing the plot and cast 33

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Figure 3 Cartoon from Asiaweek 4 December 1998. Reproduced with permission.

its members as passengers being shaken by the rocky road of ‘politics’ was portrayed in a cartoon that headed the Asiaweek editorial (see Figure 3). At other times a metaphor of flight provided a more elegant visualisation of East Asian or Pacific ‘integration’. A pre-war Japanese economist, Kaname Akamatsu compared the destiny of East Asia with the flying pattern of wild geese (ganko keitai). In this, the pilot bird of Japan leads the flock and other ‘birds’ (i.e. countries) are aided in the slip-stream of Japanese energy. The notion of ganko keitai was recycled in the 1970s and 1980s by influential Japanese economists and one time Foreign Minister Okita Saburo. In the 1990s, it enjoyed a new life within discourses about integration. But whenever it has been restated, ganko keitai has complex historical resonances with Japanese imperial geopolitical discourses24 and permits naturalisation, or at least an assertion, of potential Japanese leadership of Asian or Pacific-Asian integration. Consider first, Japanese imperial geopolitics of the 1930s and 1940s, in particular the notions of Daitowa Kyoeiken (Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere): mere exposure and condemnation of Western imperialism was insufficient to legitimize similar Japanese imperialist policies. As an alternative ideology, they were obliged to construct ‘Asianism’, a communal unity binding Asian people together. This was an extension of the idea of the communal state centred on the tenno family and applied to the Asian community as a whole. In order to exalt this communalism, they mobilized an indigenous ideology which underlined familial and pseudo-familial ties as the basis of social organization. (Takeuchi 2000: 81)

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

34

Introducing the plot and cast

Whilst it is easy to see the usual operations of reinscription and difference operating in Japanese stances towards East and South-East Asian regionalism through the twentieth century, the main point of continuity is arguably not direct recycling of imperial narratives, but the enduring discursive significance in shifting contexts of what (in English) has become known as South-East Asia. As Shiraishi explains: The region [nanyo or nanpo in pre-1945 parlance, Tonan Ajia thereafter] has repeatedly figured as a ‘solution’ for Japan in crisis. It appeared to offer a way out of the mess Japan found itself in in China toward the end of the 1930s [notably international condemnation/sanction for invasion and occupation of Manchuria]. It seemed to offer a solution for Japan’s economic recovery when China was closed in the 1950s and 1960s. And the region is again seen in Japan as a way out the current predicament. (1997: 171) The ‘Flying Geese’ metaphor seeks to contain all these and more resonances – including a century long history of narratives about Pacific potentials, a history whose parameters are formed within colonial and imperial discourses and practices. Arif Dirlik (1993) provides a critical examination of the making the discourse of Asia-Pacific, what he terms ‘[Pacific] rim-speak’ in the past thirty-odd years, and Ngai-Ling Sum (2000) points to the shifting spatial–temporal categories deployed around ‘Flying Geese’. But, we may turn to Pekka Korhonen’s (1998) work for a sense of historical ‘evolution’. In his study of the etymology of the Pacific age, Korhonen seeks origins: The first person to use the term ‘Pacific age’ was the Japanese political economist Inagaki Manjiro¯ (1861–1908). . . . Inagaki studied [the history of British overseas imperialism] during the 1880s at Cambridge University, under the guidance of the British historian John Robert Seeley. . . . Seeley in turn, was inspired by the German geographer Carl Ritter. Through Inagaki a certain style of European nineteenth century visionary rhetoric was introduced into discussions about the future Pacific. (1998: 89) But Korhonen allows that Inagaki was not the sole (‘authentic’–‘original’) source. An array of fin de siecle discourses about new Pacific ages, and renditions of manifest and imperial destinies were circulating in Asia, Europe and the USA. Some of these went under the name of ‘geopolitics’ (see the collection in Dodds and Atkinson 2000), but the array of discourses was wider than

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 35 a ‘geopolitical tradition’. What was common to all was their formation in the context of great power, especially imperialist competition. This shared horizon incorporated racist codifications about different types of (‘White’ and ‘Yellow’ for example) peoples and visions of modernity. Such scripts were reproduced, albeit in transformed forms (such as debates about ‘civilisational’ differences), through and beyond the twentieth century. Working in the terms that also inform this book, Korhonen traces later visions of integration/community in what has become the ‘Asia-Pacific’. Appropriately for a study influenced by postmodern historical and linguistic theories, Korhonen is more interested in the fluidity and contingency of what he terms ‘Pacific Romances’: metaphors and other linguistic tropes influence our way of structuring reality. In a study of regional integration, geographic metaphors are crucial, because they define so clearly which country belongs to a certain group and which country is not. . . . Asian countries on the Pacific have presented a far more complex conundrum. During the postwar period various metaphors with shifting meanings, such as Far East, Extreme Orient, Western Pacific, Western Pacific Rim, Asian Pacific, Asia-Pacific, or East Asia, have been used. . . . This multitude of metaphors reflects the rapidity of changing viewpoints in regard to them, and the subsequent groupings, dispersions, exclusions, and regroupings among them. (1998: 3) Tempting though it may be to remain with ‘Pacific Romances’, we move now to the regional community that will form the main subject of detailed analysis in Act Two. The Southern African Development Community25 is the destination depicted in the third cartoon reprinted here. The collective vehicle pictured in Figure 4 is the state (of South Africa) whose post-apartheid government is keen to set out on the path to integration (following the road marked by the sign pointing to the regional community of the SADC), but whose vehicle of state lacks the required motive capacity (the wheels!). The new government is in the driving seat (it occupies the government offices), but cannot translate this formal political power into the requisite energy to propel South Africa in the specified direction. A decade earlier, just after the launch of what was to become the SADC, a Malawian minister had invoked ‘roads’ and ‘battles’: There are countless pot-holes on the road to economic liberation and what SADCC [the Southern African Development Coordination Conference, the predecessor to the SADC] has managed to achieve so far is only a very short distance on the long road to economic independence. But united we are, and with the support received from

36 Introducing the plot and cast

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

Figure 4 Cartoon from The Financial Gazette 21 October 1993. Reproduced with permission.

many governments and organisations, we are confident that we will, with good intentions win the battle. (L. Chakakala Chaziya, Malawian Minister of Finance, cited in SADCC 1981b: 7) Leaving aside (for the time being) the ‘trajectory’ of the SADC, we should note that such metaphors of a path, road or railway to development and integration, ‘driven’ by the ‘motor’ of the regional community are very common. They have cropped up in most of the (albeit limited) range of examples that I have drawn upon here and their apparent frequency is so much the case that they start to form part of the basic maps of meaning, the discursive horizons, involved whenever integration is discussed. That the associated notion of forward progress is also more or less universal within the global discourse of development would suggest that a deeper, common element of discourses of modernity26 is finding expression. I return to this in Act Three. For the time being, I should add that we have not exhausted the metaphorical repertoire here. For example, in the case of debates about and discourse of the EU, Chris Shore (1997: 139) notes how an architectural metaphor of ‘building’ Europe has (like ‘building communism’ in the old Soviet Union) ‘become part of the ideological formula’. He goes on to note that: Other metaphors of Europe included containers (‘entering the ERM’, ‘going into Europe’), gastronomy (France says ‘no to à la carte Europe’), weddings (‘the ERM marriage’), mathematics (‘variable geometry’,

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 37 ‘concentric circles’), illness (‘healing Europe’s wounds’) and rites of passage (the ‘death of the ERM’, the ‘birth of the new currency’, ‘the christening of the Euro’). To this list John Major added ‘sport’ when he summed up the 253 pages of the Maastricht Treaty signed in February 1992 as ‘Game, set and match to Britain’. . . . What is significant about these metaphors is the way they are used to set the terms for debate and provide discursive models for promoting alternative scenarios. In each case, use of these metaphors can be linked to rival and often conflicting visions of Europe, and reflect attempts by different political agents to exert hegemony over the European debate. (ibid.: 140) And the stage again, this time as economists forecast regional currency zones: Some economists are predicting that the world’s currencies – the dollar, euro, mark and the yen – will bring the curtain down on small currencies. Nobel prize winner Robert Murdell predicted this week that in 10 years time the euro zone will have expanded to cover 50 countries, the dollar will have spread throughout Latin America and much of Asia will look towards the yen. (Milner and Donny 2000: 14, my italics) With such a diversity of metaphors in mind, in the remaining space of Act One I want to turn to what else is present within (albeit sometimes obscured or unacknowledged) and what unifies diverse discourses of integration.

Undecidable geographies27 Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined. (Anderson 1991: 6) . . . only something which has no history can be defined. (Nietzsche 1994: 57)

Although sometimes it is less than immediately evident, the idea or claim of integration expressed through a regional community presupposes the existence of states. We might say that rather than the state simply preceding and constituting (together with other such ‘sovereign actors’) the community, the latter allows the state to be invoked and made to seem more real. The community is ‘other’ to, an extension of, or exterior to the state. But once it is constituted, once a treaty to establish it is signed by representatives of the member states, then the community also serves to remind

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

38

Introducing the plot and cast

anyone who would interact with it (or come into contact with another representation of it), that the states of which it is formed apparently exist as sovereign, tangible, real things (rather than, for example, as contested, simulated and ramshackle sets of social relations masquerading as states). At first, all this is simply in the form of signatures on a piece of paper. These invoke and create a community and at the same time presume a state by and through those who sign, in place of, in the name of, or as we might say, representing the latter. There is a certain ceremony to these signatures. An event is usually staged to sign and reaffirm the signatories as representatives. Not every ‘original’ document carries the kind of magical marks within itself that Richard Mayne reports: on 18 April 1951, the copy of the [ECSC] Treaty signed in Paris was printed by the French Stationery Office on Dutch Vellum in German ink, and was bound in Belgian parchment with Italian silk ribbons and Luxembourg glue. (1983: 307) But there is always that sorcery of signatures, whose presence is seen to establish the community and represent the state. Subsequently, meetings, ratifications, declarations, secretariats and commissions all come into force to reconfirm these. Whilst the regional community is in place we are stuck with a certain circularity. We can read and hear about how the community overcomes, pools or perhaps is hostage to the sovereign states of which it is made. These states are therefore confirmed as having a real existing presence. That such ‘presence’ is itself in part the result of such signatory acts (and similar declarations, proclamations and constitutions) is taken for granted and the state is naturalised, made to seem simply a thing, in and of itself, with its own secure proper identity and history. Consider 22 January 1949, when a joint communiqué was published (citing the governments of Eastern Europe, minus Yugoslavia) establishing the CMEA. What national-subjects were being invoked? Allow Mark Blacksell’s Post-War Europe: A Political Geography to resume the account: It was a brief statement, only about 400 words in length, but it set out in clear and unequivocal language the aims and objectives of the new organization. The main objective was to further enhance the already close economic relations between member countries and to increase the general level of trade, as a means of accelerating the reconstruction of their war-torn national economies. Great emphasis was laid on the need for each national economy to be independent. [US] Marshall Aid and the [US-led] European recovery Programme were specifically rejected, because they represented undue interference in national sovereignty. (1977: 57)

11

11

Introducing the plot and cast 39 All this takes place amidst Stalinist orthodoxy and the dominating presence of the Red Army. In these contexts, the symbolic (indeed fictitious) format of the CMEA is evident. Yet, at the same time, a drama is unfolding here. On the one hand the national members of the CMEA represent ‘the people’. They were already being constituted as ‘Peoples’ Democracies’, engaged in simulating sovereign claims and producing good national communist subjects, able to take their places in an international ‘socialist community’ as specified by the CMEA. In due course contradictory readings of the communiqué and of the CMEA also produced vehement dissonances between claims and agendas of ‘national sovereignty’, ‘integration’ domination and cooperation. The remarkable memoirs of the leader of communist Albania, Enver Hoxha,28 bear witness:

11

111

111

The way in which these meetings [of the CMEA] were organised and our friends behaved towards us . . . more and more impelled us to ask ourselves: are we dealing with Marxist-Leninists or hucksters? Ulbricht, Novonty, Ochab, Dej, Kadar, Gomulka, Cyrankiewicz, Zhivkov, and the others, were at one another’s throats; each of them complained that he was in dire straits; they all called for ‘more aid’ from their friends, because they had ‘pressure from below’; they tried to elbow one another out, presented all kinds of ‘arguments’ and figures; they tried to dodge their obligations and to grab as much as possible at the expense of the others. Meanwhile Khruschev or his envoys would get up, deliver lectures on the ‘socialist division of labour’ . . . and demand ‘unity’ and ‘understanding’ in the ‘socialist family’. (Enver Hoxha, cited in Jon Halliday 1986: 163–164) Yet the illusions (of popular representation and socialist unity) must be maintained. This effort is perhaps (with a certain hindsight) more evident in the disjuncture between the socialist rhetoric and Stalinism, but it is present in all claims of political representation. Michael Ryan explains:

111

one could say that the ‘people’ is not a homogeneous entity that exists prior to representation. Rather it is constituted retroactively as something homogeneous by the very representation it seemingly delegates and for which it seems to function as an origin. The ‘people’ is a necessary fiction of origin and homogeneity which allows the part-forwhole structure of political representation to take on the appearance of a system whereby the ‘whole’ populace is represented. (1982: 119)

111

Ultimately such practical questions concerning sovereignty and the multiple dilemmas of resisting the capitalist space of flows, imitating it with a socialist division of labour between nationally specific ‘sovereign’ People’s Democracies, which at the same time were subject to Soviet intervention

1

40 Introducing the plot and cast (the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine used to justify the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia), questions about the relative roles of popular, party, national and state sovereignty and conflicting visions of systemic (socialist) versus national governance proved too much for the ‘Soviet/Communist bloc’. But for fifty odd years these volatile and disputed points were contained by Stalin’s attempt to resolve them behind the Iron Curtain. Moreover this military and systemic frontier was a frontier of different ways of seeking to resolve the dilemmas of sovereignty. According therefore to Buck-Morss:

1

1

11

11

11

11

The COLD WAR ENEMIES were deployed on an ontological divide, and what Churchill named the Iron Curtain became its geophysical manifestation. This boundary was defensive not only in a military sense, but in the conceptual sense that it prevented contamination from the imaginary perceptions held by the absolute ‘other’. The boundary had a different meaning for each side, as we would expect. For the political imaginary of [Western] nation-states, it cordoned off socialism, which was perceived spatially by isolating it spatially, in order to prevent its spread to the ‘free world’. For the political imaginary of [Eastern] class warfare, the physical boundary was understood as providing a temporal bulwark, protecting the nascent socialist societies so they could develop in history uncontaminated by the economic and social distortions of capitalism . . . providing TIME to catch up with the capitalist West in terms of production, while not falling back from the historical level that the political revolution had achieved. (2000: 35–37) But time ran out, and as the space of capitalism overflowed its old limits, communist sovereignty would be reconfigured and then displaced. A further example may serve to indicate something of how sovereigntyrepresentation logics operate. Referring to the signatures on the Treaty which established the SADC,* Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos appears as a representative of (standing in for) Angolan sovereignty. The president signs in the name of his state and the people subject to it. Leaving aside the fact that the signature (t)here is reproduction of a reproduction (through electronic and mechanical means of photocopy, printing and so on), and that the original is itself an imitation, by dos Santos himself, of every other signature by him (that is, no two signatures by the same person can ever be identical, unless they are copies and not ‘originals’) it nevertheless stands (t)here as an uncontested representative of Angolan sovereignty – in the presence of his other cosignatories. * Footnote inserted at proof stage: Permission to reproduce the signatures of the Heads of State or Government has not been granted by the SADC. This might be interpreted as an indication of the power and sovereign presence attached to such signatures which are not usually re-iterated outside customary diplomatic contexts.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 41 Yet at the time that this signature was made, the Angolan government was not in basic administrative control of all of its war-torn ‘national’ territory. For example, swathes of the centre and south of Angola were controlled by the rebel guerrilla forces of the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA). Therefore when signing documents at a summit meeting of the SADC, Angolan ministers are uncontested embodiments of the Angolan government’s sovereignty. But within the geopolitical space called Angola, government forces, the insurgent movements of UNITA and Frente de Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda (FLEC),29 foreign oil companies, mercenaries, and at various times, Cuban, South African and United Nations peacekeeping troops have all invoked sovereign authority. Angola represents something of an extreme example (certainly in the scale of dislocation and human suffering). Yet at the same time it forces us to recognise what is taken for granted when sovereignty is invoked and discussed. Act Three returns to this. For the time being, it is sufficient to note that in terms of the role of regional communities as apparatus and technologies productive of sovereignty, a parallel point is made by Montecinos in respect to what she terms ‘Ceremonial Regionalism’ in Latin America: The organisations created to support regional integration should not be conceptualised as only a technical response to the problems of economic development. They have also served a ceremonial display. Regional agencies were intended to facilitate the obtention of resources, acceptance, and legitimacy from significant ‘outsiders’. To the extent that the ceremonial functions of integration were successful, failures in effectiveness were continuously overlooked. (1996: 120) Everywhere else, a kind of taken for grantedness or overlooking is an important part of what allows a circle of recognition, presence and simulation. It forms a condition of possibility for the claiming of sovereignty. Regional communities are not the only such basis to establish such a circle. For once states are recognised in and participate in other fora, notably and most significantly the United Nations, so another circle of discourse, of simulation, of sovereign presence–absence–difference is invoked. Spotting this, Tim Luke (1993) argues that the United Nations exists in part to demonstrate that all the member states are utterly ‘real’. Exceptions, those states such as Switzerland which has never joined, or Taiwan which lost its seat to mainland China, are rare and anyway not magically outside circles of presence–absence–recognition. For most countries of the world, Luke notes that their member-statehood is renarrated at the UN whenever a representative of that state is allowed to take a seat, make a statement or hoist a flag outside its institutions. Blowing in the New York wind, those flags continually reiterate the fixity, presence and reality of the member states. And with them, circulating

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

42

Introducing the plot and cast

around the manifestation, duplication or spectacle of the state, are conceptions of national economies and national cultures. Never mind what is going on elsewhere, stand in front of those flagpoles and the presence of all those countries seems perfectly real. Yet, since both the appearance of presence (in a territory and at the UN) and ‘representation’ (at the UN and in a territory) are required, who can decide exactly which is producing what? Usually therefore, one cannot decide if the delegation simply represents or if it produces the state. It turns out that this ambiguity, this undecidability, is in fact part of what is required to make the state seem real. This is an important source of the proper identity of the state and ultimately also that of the ‘imagined regional community’, whose ambiguous confirmations of authority are akin to those of the UN. More widely, it is in such repeated performances,30 inscriptions and claims that the state, the international or regional community, and for that matter, culture, economy and politics are constituted. None of these should be seen as stable fixed components that simply come together in some mixture or other to form a regulatory nexus. It is more helpful to read the state, the community, culture, the economy and so on as expressions of power whose meaning is itself constructed through the nexus. It is hard, indeed impossible, to decide what precedes what. If all this tautology sounds confusing, I can only plea that the confusion is not entirely of my own making. To simplify things (and bearing in mind the figure of the circle that was invoked in the opening quotation to this Act), we might say that the story is always circular, so that the apparent end of one is simply the beginning of another – and the beginning of another merely a sequel to that which has gone before. And so on and so forth, until the plot and cast start to seem thoroughly real. Or if you prefer, the identity of the state (along with economy, regional community and so on) are produced in discursive movements and operations. In this sense, discourse is something more than words – even if it includes these. Discourse is formulated in (and formulates) thought, understandings, social practice and institutions (systems of representation all). But not all thought at all times and in all places. Michel Foucault describes discourse as forming a system of representation peculiar to the last few centuries. Prior to the sixteenth century language (and other depictions, such as theatre, painting, mapping and so on) was not seen as a transparent system of representation. Signs (words and images) were not seen as exterior to or separate from the object being represented. They therefore were not a system of representation, but of resemblance and analogy: Up to the end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture. It was resemblance that largely guided exegesis and the interpretation of texts; it was resemblance that organized the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible, and controlled the art of representing them. The universe was folded in on itself: the earth echoing the sky,

11

11

11

Introducing the plot and cast 43 faces themselves reflected in the stars, and plants holding within their stems the secrets that were of use to man. Painting imitated space. And representation – whether in the form of pleasure or of knowledge – was posited as a form of repetition: the theatre of life or the mirror of nature, that was the claim made by all language, its manner of declaring its existence and of formulating its right of speech. (Foucault 1970: 17). Foucault examines Cervantes’ Don Quixote as a marker of the boundary between the fading epistime of resemblances and analogies and our modern one of representation, associated with the discourse of the novel. Don Quixote wanders across Castille invoking the old world of resemblances. A windmill appears as a giant, his own movement as a heroic quest, serving girls become ‘ladies’ and so on. As Don Quixote proceeds however in his incredible quest for similitudes, he encounters people who have read the story and recognise him as its protagonist. Don Quixote must then ‘live up to’ their expectations, preserving thereby the ‘truth’ of the text which he lives with and performs daily, but which the readers he meets know only as textual representation; as a literary discourse. According to Foucault:

111 Between the first and second parts of the novel, in the narrow gap between those two volumes, and by their power alone, Don Quixote has achieved his reality – a reality he owes to language alone, and which resides entirely inside the words. Don Quixote’s truth is not in relation of the words to the world but in that slender and constant relation woven between themselves by verbal signs. The hollow fiction of epic exploits has become the representative power of language. Words have swallowed up their own nature as signs. (1970: 48–49)

111

111

111

Henceforth, reasoning and understanding based on similitude is a mark of madness. The transparency and representative power of language is rationality. Systematic representations of identity and difference are opposed to mere ‘quixotic’ interpretations: The age of resemblance is drawing to a close. It is leaving nothing behind it but games. Games whose powers of enchantment grow out of the new kinship between resemblance and illusion; the chimeras of similitude loom up on all sides, but they are recognized as chimeras; it is the privileged age of trompe-l’œil painting, of the comic illusion, of the play that duplicates itself by representing another play, of the quid pro quo, of dreams and visions; it is the age of deceiving senses; it is the age in which the poetic dimension of language is defined by metaphor, simile and allegory. And it was also in the nature of things that the knowledge of the sixteenth century should leave behind it the distorted

1

1

1

11

44

Introducing the plot and cast memory of a muddled and disordered body of learning in which all the things in the world could be linked indiscriminately to men’s experiences, traditions, or credulities. From then on, the noble, rigorous, and restrictive figures of similitude were to be forgotten. And the signs that designated them were to be thought of as the fantasies and charms of a knowledge that had not yet attained the age of reason. (Foucault 1970: 51)

It cannot be mere coincidence that this is also retrospectively narrated as the moment of the rise of modern states (usually traced to the Peace (Treaty) of Westphalia of 1648) which is seen to signify the transition to sovereign statehood from a feudal system of powers, vassals and territories. Westphalia becomes the foundational fiction of a system of mutual recognition of sovereignty. Elsewhere in Foucault, in his works on governmentality, biopower and rise of the ‘rationality’ of state, there is reflection on this correlation: A new historical perception takes form; it is no longer polarized around the end of time and the consolidation of all the particular sovereignties into the empire of the last days; it is open to an indefinite time in which the states have to struggle against one another to ensure their own survival. And more than the problems of a sovereign’s legitimate dominion over a territory, what will appear important is the knowledge and development of a state’s forces: in space (European and global at once) of competition between states, very different from that in which dynastic rivals confront each other, the major problem is that of a dynamic of the forces and the rational techniques which enable one to intervene in those forces. (Foucault 2000a: 69)

11

11

11

It is a convention of international relations textbooks that since the Peace (Treaty) of Westphalia of 1648 sealed thirty years of European warfare and cemented sovereign recognition, we are seen to inhabit a system of diplomatic recognition and norms that regulates a ‘balance of power’ between states. The opening pages of Unique Quintessence of International Relations note, for example, that: The Nation state system in international politics started taking shape from the year 1648 when the thirty-year war in Europe was brought to an end by the Treaty of Westphalia. This Treaty paved the way for this development because it recognised that . . . [the] Pope has no right to interfere in the affairs of states in name of his highest spiritual authority. The state as such emerged supreme in its territory and over its people in both matters – secular and temporal. The concept of sovereignty of the state got full recognition and relations among

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Introducing the plot and cast 45 nations came to be conducted by the Sovereign States for securing their respective national interests by the use of their power. Even the use of power of the state for dominating other states came to be recognised as a right in the era of imperialism of European states over other states of the world. (Ghoshal et al. 2000: 17–18) In the passing reference to imperialism, the Indian textbook is sensitive to some contradictions, reminding readers that the Westphalian system was also an embodiment of the power of European sovereignty over other subjects. Leaving this aside for now, we should note that what is also distinctive about this Westphalian system is that it operates within the emerging system of representation shared with discourse. Thus Justin Rosenberg characterises the notion of the balance of power by: its impersonality, its emptiness, its abstraction, its anonymity, its almost scientific technicism. Indeed this mechanical quality was an object of fascination for Enlightenment observers; it encouraged discussion of a political arithmetic of equipoise, and suggested the spread of Newtonian reason to the affairs of state. (1994: 40) It is as such, as credible representations, that we still live with states (and therefore with regional communities) as real objects. The rest of Imagined Regional Communities explores the consequences and limits of this, returning to regional communities in the ‘Asia-Pacific’, the Americas, Europe and above all Southern Africa to do so.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

11

11

11

Discourses on painting are perhaps destined to reproduce the limit which constitutes them, whatever they do and whatever they say: there is for them an inside and an outside of the work as soon as there is work. A series of oppositions comes in the train of this one, which, incidentally, is not necessarily primary (for it belongs to a system whose edging itself reproduces the problem). (Derrida 1987: 11)

111

The conception of a world divided spatially seems to have been a distinctly European invention. . . . Beginning as far back as 1492 with the edict of Pope Alexander VI, lines were drawn, literally, to delineate which part of the globe ‘belonged’ to which European sovereign power. This ‘jus publicum Europaeum’ was the beginning of what Carl Schmitt calls ‘global linear thinking’, the first planetary political imaginary. The New World of the Americas, along with Africa and Asia, entered into this spatial order in accord with their relationship to the European center. All other lands either belonged to a European state or were declared with extraordinary arrogance ‘open spaces’, ‘free to be occupied’. . . . The United States challenged Eurocentrism by adopting Europe’s spatial principle as its own. Two aspects of the US political imaginary were ‘urforms’ in the sense that they anticipated later forms more generally. One was its systemic push westward in order to spread the progress it believed itself to embody by annexing what was referred to as ‘empty territory’. . . . It prefigured in certain (if not all) respects Hitler’s push to the east to acquire Lebensraum at the expense of an allegedly inferior ‘race’. The second was that by refusing to enter into European conflicts and by claiming that the Americas were not within the European terrain of politics, the United States’s conception of the world challenged the Eurocentric spatial order fundamentally. Because there could not be two planetary centers, this challenge resulted, in Schmitt’s terms in ‘spatial chaos’ destroying the Eurocentric picture without establishing any ‘coherent alternative’. . . . An alternative planetary imaginary was precisely what the Cold War ultimately provided – a decentered global space, crossed by multiple boundaries of ‘containment’ – although, given its logics of planetary destruction, the coherence of this picture was dubious at best. (Buck-Morss 2000: 32–35, my italics)

111

111

111

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

11

Act Two

The SADC Sovereign simulations

11

11

111

111

111

111

Misconceptions are still rife among the people of southern Africa, even by senior government officials about the intention and purpose of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). On the one hand, says the community’s former executive secretary, Dr Simba Makoni, ordinary people think the grouping is meant for permanent secretaries, ministers and presidents. And on the other hand, officials perceive it as an organisation to seek donor aid. (Matshaba 1994: 2) In broad terms the theoretical basis of regional integration in the subregion, represented by the SADCC and the Preferential Trade Area (PTA), results from the search for practical solutions of the subregion’s political, economic and social problems, all of which are closely linked with the historical roots of the development of imperialism in Southern Africa. (Ndlela 1987: 37) To think against is to follow unexpected changes of direction and not exclude them from what is finally produced. It is to allow chance connections, surprising lines of association to disrupt the more disciplined aspects of a totalising theoretical elaboration. . . . To think against is to analyse the level of a surface, not to get closer to or further from the truth or objective reality but to reveal other surfaces and points of contact. (Barker 1998: 120)

Locating the SADC In an introduction to a recent abridgement of Capital, David McLellan portrays Marx’s unfinished work as ‘a world classic’: For a book which has a reputation for length and difficulty, Capital is an unlikely best seller. But best seller it is: translated (in its massive entirety) into more than fifty languages, it has proved one of the most widely quoted books of the last hundred years – a world classic indeed. . . . Marx is concerned to evaluate the importance to the modern world of the rise of capitalism and its concomitant industrial revolution. This

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

50

The SADC: sovereign simulations is a dramatic story – the dramatic story of modern times – and the power and influence of Capital can only be understood if it is seen as, in part, a tragic drama of world proportions. (1995: xiii)

Marx himself, in an 1873 Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital, foresaw an impending crisis of capitalism that would be characterised by: ‘the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action’ (1995: 12). Whilst for Marx, capitalism was a global project, for him the key dramatic stage (where he saw its dialectic unfolding) was Europe. We know now that whilst Europe has not been short of drama, developments elsewhere have disrupted notions of where the centre stage lay. First the striking expansion in America after the Civil War ended in 1865 paving the way for the capitalist American hegemony whose global entanglements have been prominent in Act One. Second, imperialism and the partitions and appropriations of Asia and Africa were setting the stage for the long twentieth century sagas of colonisation, national liberation struggle, revolution, decolonisation and ‘post-coloniality’. At the margins then of Marx’s drama other transformations were motion. Here those ‘margins’ move centre stage. Most general histories of nineteenth century diplomacy and imperialism give some place to the outcome of a conference of European powers opened in Berlin in November 1885. The goal of the Berlin West Africa Conference was to regulate European imperial competition for territory, people, and resources in Africa. However, as Crowe noted in a classic study: The importance of the conference as a landmark in international law, has in fact been exaggerated for when its regulations are studied it can be seen that they all failed of their purpose. Free trade was to be established in the basin and mouths of the Congo; there was to be free navigation of the Congo and the Niger. Actually highly monopolistic systems of trade were set up in both these regions. The centre of Africa was to be internationalized. It became Belgian. Lofty ideals and philanthropic intentions were loudly enunciated by delegates of every country to the conference. Only the vaguest and most unsatisfactory resolutions were passed whilst the basin of the Congo . . . became subsequently, as everyone knows, the scene of some of the worst brutalities in colonial history. (1942: 5) Indeed, by 1885 the so-called ‘scramble for Africa’ was already under way. Fortified by the ‘rights’ and norms conferred by the conference, the European powers set out to partition (among themselves) what remained ‘unexploited’ of the riches and peoples of the African continent. When 109 years later, in 1994 – foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) met in Berlin and signed the ‘Berlin Declaration’ on European – Southern

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 51 1

African cooperation, the historical resonance of 1885 cannot have been lost on a number of the African delegates. Not least because the SADC was born2 (in part) out of a struggle against white minority regimes in Southern Africa. These regimes had evolved out of the very imperial logics (of appropriation, division, and exclusion) codified back at Berlin in 1885–1886. Furthermore, there are those who are quick to point to certain continuities in the power relationships between Europe and Africa. Indeed for some commentators, the foundation of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC, the forerunner of the SADC) at the start of the 1980s lay in assertive European diplomacy. For example, Amin et al. (1987: 6) claimed that the SADCC: was not solely an initiative of the frontline states [a grouping of Southern African states in alliance against the white minority regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa]. On the contrary, there was strong encouragement from Western countries who wished to draw the region closer to the West, and, by creating a diversion from unlimited confrontation with South Africa, to prevent the frontline states from giving support to the ANC [African National Congress] and SWAPO [South West African Peoples’ Organisation]. (1987: 6) Beyond these debates about the geopolitics of its origins, since the SADCC was founded in 1980–81 a substantial critical literature3 has documented the evolution of an organisation which (nominally) brought together Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, ‘out of a common awareness of common interests’ (President Masire of Botswana’s address to the 1992 SADCC summit; cited by Mandaza and Tostensen 1994: 72). In addition to those who have accused it of the ‘original sin’ of neo-colonial lineage, critics have not been slow to draw attention to the failures of the SADCC particularly in its declared terms – to pursue the objectives of: (a) Reduction of economic dependence, particularly, but not only on the Republic of South Africa; (b) The forging of links to create a genuine and equitable regional integration; (c) The mobilisation of resources to promote the implementation of national, interstate and regional policies; (d) Concerted action to secure international co-operation within the framework of a strategy for economic liberation. (memorandum of understanding, signed in Harare 20 July 1981 by the Heads of Government of the member states of the SADCC; reprinted in Mandaza and Tostensen 1994: 142–148)

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

52

The SADC: sovereign simulations

In 1992 the SADCC renamed itself a ‘Development Community’ (hence SADC) and drew up a formal treaty which replaced the original memorandum of understanding that had regulated the SADCC. South Africa joined the new SADC in August 1994, just three months after the electoral victory of the ANC. However, the conclusion of a considerable weight of journalistic4 and academic5 commentary is that the old SADCC had never been able to fulfil its stated aims of reducing dependence and that the new SADC will not deliver much ‘development’ or ‘integration’. Most sharply, when the SADC invited member states to submit suggestions for an official logo, a satirical commentary in Zimbabwe’s weekly Financial Gazette (1994) suggested (with due reference to the organisation’s dependency on Western aid for project finance) that the SADC could be best symbolised by: ‘. . . a begging bowl. [For] What has SADC achieved apart from mugging gullible Scandinavian countries? SADC members are today more dependent upon South Africa than they were in the early 1980s.’ This, and the fact that calls were made for the electrified border fences between South Africa and some of its erstwhile SADC partners to be reinforced,6 the continued flow of low-tech and some high-tech weapons across the region,7 plus the way that the possibility of integration presupposes formal state sovereignty (somewhat tentative and contested by armed insurgencies in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and, until the early 1990s, in Mozambique) produces a certain scepticism regarding the SADC’s claims of achievements and prospects. Against these contexts, here in Act Two, I aim to develop an understanding of the SADC in its role as a diplomatic entity – and as operating within the same logics of power as the post-colonial African state more widely.8 These include a struggle for reproduction or legitimation, given a particular flavour in Africa by a nexus of colonial legacies and the pursuit of aid, investment, and enrichment in the context of an overall peripherality in the world economy and an ascendant neo-liberalism. In taking account of all this, I aim to be neither dismissive of the SADC’s achievements nor to accept the SADC’s claims uncritically. I will however explore the production of those (mis)conceptions about the SADC that its former Executive Secretary (cited at the head of this Act) diagnoses. Misconception is semantically close to the misunderstanding (méconnu) and misrecognition or failure to recognise (méconnaissance), analysed by Althusser and Lacan.9 For them, knowledge (connaissance), ideology and méconnaissance are inextricably bound up with each other. They argue that identities (self-identity or subjecthood and collective identities) are created in language and discourse (which includes routine actions and procedure). Such discourse constructs a symbolic order in which the subject (individual or collective) is seen and known (misrecognised) and ‘understands’ (misrecognises) themselves. It is therefore to the performance and reproduction, or if you prefer, to the staging of the SADC, that my analysis turns. This is not a straightforward task, since it requires examination of creative processes and

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 53 inevitably therefore of contradictions. The contradictory discourses at work also make it impossible to locate a single and coherent SADC and what is offered here is a creative interpretation. At the outset it must be noted that the trajectory of the SADCC/SADC should certainly also be read against the records of other regionalintegration schemes in post-colonial Africa – perhaps most notably the failed East African Community10 and against the sense of a number of much wider global transformations as discussed in Act One. In particular, the SADC is part of an uneven and tentative global tendency towards the formation of regional blocs or communities. These are seen (at least in the SADC secretariat) both as in a kind of ‘imagined relationship to’ and as a ‘set of models’ for the SADC (interview, SADC secretariat employee, 27 February 1996, Gaborone). Therefore, although awareness of this global backdrop and of existing literatures on the SADCC/SADC informs the account here, the narrative mostly takes the form of a study and analysis of the cultures of diplomacy that the organisation operates within. Such an approach is developed as a way of extending the forms of critical thinking about states and regional integration sketched out in Act One. It is achieved through drawing on SADC documentation and media coverage, and through utilising notes made during the course of discussions with SADC staff and/or those working closely with the SADC as part of their professional responsibilities.11 These approaches help to explain how apparent weaknesses, even ‘failures’, can be understood as success in certain (other) terms (see Ferguson 1990). In examining the SADCC/SADC, I will therefore seek to understand how internal disputes and failure to achieve stated goals may also be (for some) a success. In this way, some more general reflections concerning the wider discourses of regionalism (introduced in Act One) will be developed.

A luta continua? Power, states, diplomacy and the performative structure of the SADC And what have kings that privates have not too Save ceremony, save general ceremony? (Shakespeare, Henry V,

IV.

i. 258–259)

To the degree that a performance highlights the common official values of the society in which it occurs, we may look upon it, in the manner of Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown, as a ceremony – as an expressive rejuvenation and reaffirmation of the moral values of the community. Furthermore, in so far as the expressive bias of performances comes to be accepted as reality, then that which is accepted at the moment as reality will have some of the characteristics of a celebration. To stay in one’s room away from the

1

1

1

11

54

The SADC: sovereign simulations place where the party is given, or away from where the practitioner attends his [sic] client, is to stay away from where reality is being performed. (Goffman 1971: 45)

We should begin with some backdrop, some setting of scenes. Figure 5 indicates the formal structures of the SADC’s procedures and authority, as represented in an official SADC diary. The diary is a symbol and artefact of the quotidian, produced and distributed in the manner of corporate diaries sent to valued customers at the end of the calendar year. The figure inside the SADC diary is also a self-representation, a graphic portraiture of the representative configuration that is the SADC. It appeals to a thing external to itself (the SADC) through the convention of a diagram. Its reality is given further credibility by citing the sovereign states which are also represented as solid things, external to the diary and clearly taken to be constitutive of the SADC. But none of these are self-contained realities. We should rather see the diary, the SADC and the states as systems of constitutive representations, citing and reinforcing each other. Let us leave this aside for a moment and take the figure at something like its face value. For even represented schematically in this way, SADC is revealed as quite a complex arrangement whose operation is difficult to grasp at a glance. However, a useful starting point in understanding how it articulates and functions is the SADC secretariat – which happens to lie just off centre in Summit of heads of state or government

Member states

Tribunal

11 National contact points

Standing committee of officials

Council of ministers

Sectoral committees of ministers

Secretariat

Sector coordinating units or commissions

11

11

Sectoral contact points

Figure 5 The formal structures of the SADC. Adapted from the SADC diary 1996.

11

11

11

The SADC: sovereign simulations 55 the diagram, in alliance with the council of ministers and the summit of heads of state or government. Located in the ‘government enclave’ (of ministries, embassies, the state bank, etc.) in Gaborone, Botswana, the four-storey SADC secretariat building is of dark mirror glass.12 In front of the entrance to this diplomatic and organisational node13 are the flags of member states and the SADC flag (strikingly similar to that of the EU).14 Inside, the secretariat presents itself as, in the words of one of its employees, both a ‘think tank’ and ‘a central nervous system’ for the SADC (interview, SADC secretariat employee, 4 March 1996, Gaborone). Indeed, the original memorandum of understanding establishing the SADCC specified that the secretariat should fulfil the roles (under the direction of an Executive Secretary, ‘appointed by the Summit on the recommendation of the Council’) of: (a) General servicing of and liaison with SADCC institutions. (b) Coordination of the execution of the tasks of SADCC. (c) Custodianship of SADC property. (SADCC 1981a: 3)

111

But it is a relatively small entity. Today the secretariat has fewer than thirty technical staff (all men, recruited from member states, with the addition of a couple of people seconded from Europe). It also employs a small number of (mostly women) secretarial and support staff who are recruited locally.15 One of the results of this relatively small size is that the secretariat staff are now considerably overstretched: ‘A typical day is a terrible day’, according to one employee who went on to explain that because: ‘SADC is understaffed . . . we are constantly jumping from pillar to post . . . unable to meet externally imposed deadlines’ (interview, SADC secretariat employee, 4 March 1996, Gaborone). So although one of its remits is the proposal of longer term plans, the structure of work at the secretariat tends to have ‘a hectic ad hoc nature’ (interview, SADC secretariat employee, 13 March 1996, Gaborone). However, the secretariat by no means defines the SADC. In the words of a secretariat employee: ‘SADC is a complex economic development organisation . . . decentralised . . . sector-based . . . whose main thrust is infrastructural development’ (interview, 4 March 1996, Gaborone). Statements by member-state politicians reinforce the point about the decentralised (and relatively ad hoc) nature of the SADCC/SADC. As the then Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere explained in 1985, the SADCC:

111

does not consist of a Headquarters and Secretariat which initiates and organises everything, with member countries trying to direct and keep budgetary control through periodic Ministerial and Summit meetings. Instead, all members are actively concerned in the initiation and

111

111

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

56

The SADC: sovereign simulations implementation of all SADCC projects, with each having the responsibility for coordinating and promoting a particular sector. This structure enables the Secretariat to remain small and effective, while monitoring and coordinating the work of the coordinators. Even more important, this structure enhances the active involvement of all member states in both the work and benefits of cooperation. (cited in Mandaza and Tostensen 1994: 70)

Very often, however, such ‘active involvement’ has been conspicuously absent. Although review and restructuring are now envisaged, through the 1990s, the basic formal structures of the organisation remained more or less as they were defined in the memorandum of understanding signed by member heads of state back in 1981. Reproducing the sense of this founding moment, a summit of heads of state or government is the supreme body responsible for ‘overall policy direction and control of the functions of SADC’ and meets at least annually. In addition to this summit, meetings of a council of ministers (generally planning or finance ministers) approves the working programme for the SADC, assisted by various standing committees. The core business of the SADC lies in the putting together of bids for development programmes and in soliciting finance for these. In practice, all SADC-mediated development programmes function on the basis of external aid, and the putting together of bids for aid is managed by sector-coordinating units (each member state has at least one of these).16 Significantly only two sectors enjoy the status of regional commission, with staff recruited at a regional level and funded by all member states.17 In all of the other cases, sectoral coordination staff are also civil servants in their respective governments, and SADC affairs are generally just one (frequently not very prominent) element of their responsibilities. In the context of the structure sketched above, SADC projects begin as proposals from member-state ministries, and after passing through the SADC coordination apparatus they are placed before the annual consultative conference (at which aid from donors is solicited). Once the project has found a donor it ceases to be an SADC project and reverts back to the member state(s) whose ministries proposed it. All negotiations and contracts are between the ministries in the member countries and the donor agency or country. Hence: There are no ‘SADCC’ projects per se. SADCC cannot negotiate any credit agreements on behalf of its member states. Consequently, all projects, even though developed within the framework of SADCC, are subject to negotiations between the country in which the project is located and external donors. In the end each project belongs to the member state in which it is situated. In effect, the funds channelled to SADCC end up in the budgets of the member states to finance

11

11

11

The SADC: sovereign simulations 57 projects which, even though presented as ‘regional’ in character, are under national control. This procedure has in many cases resulted in a choice of projects which are high on the specific national agendas but which are given a regional ‘halo’ to secure funding through SADC. Since all member governments can propose potential projects to the technical coordinating units in the country responsible for a specific sector, all can expect to receive some benefit at one time or another which makes them unlikely to object to any specific project located in another member state. (Niemann 1991: 294–295) Although the level of SADC bids for aid and development funding exceeds the amount pledged by donors, the finance concerned (amounting in 1995, for example, to over US $4,000 million) is not an insignificant amount, particularly in the context of the relative smallness of the economies of 110

100

111

111

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0 A Bo ng ts ola w Le ana so M tho a M la M au wi oz r i am tiu b s N iqu am e T i S an bia ou za th ni a Sw Afr az ica ila Za nd Zi mb m ba ia bw e

111

80

GNP (US $ billions)

111

90

Figure 6 The relative size of the SADC economies. Adapted from the IBRD (1996).

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

58 The SADC: sovereign simulations most SADC members (see Figure 6 for a comparative presentation of the size of member-state economies). Although no doubt some of this money would have been granted in the absence of the SADC, there is little doubt that the SADC has provided a means to channel, mobilise, and maximise aid flows.

Holding together: consensus, performance and channels of circumvention the informal structure serves the very significant role of providing a channel of circumvention of the formally prescribed rules and methods of procedure. No organization feels that it can afford to publicize those methods (by which certain problems are solved, it is important to note) which are antithetical to the officially sanctioned and, in this case, strongly sanctioned methods dear to the traditions of the group. (Page 1946: 90)

The SADC’s acknowledged successes are in some of the domains of sectoral coordination18 perhaps most notably ‘food security’ in the 1980s (see Thompson 1986a, 1986b), in mobilising aid and, not least, in holding together against the contexts of a history of regional uneven development, political fracture and ideological diversity. In addition to an already fractious late colonial history (of which more will be said in later sections), the region suffered the divide-and-rule strategies of South African economic power juxtaposed with destabilisation in the 1980s.19 Furthermore, Southern Africa in the 1980s was also characterised by a diversity of internal and international ideological orientations. These ranged from the avowed Marxism–Leninism in Angola and Mozambique (and at one time a similar claim, though never formally constituted, in Zimbabwe), through the electoral democracy in Botswana (albeit in a state under the hegemonic control of landed and mining interests), to the veteran one-party ‘African socialisms’ in Tanzania and Zambia, the conservative monarchy in Swaziland, and the protofascist state led by Hastings Banda in Malawi. Against these contexts, the SADC’s holding together has been maintained by much formalised political ‘performance’. For example, in the earliest days the slogan ‘a luta continua’ (the struggle continues), adopted from the self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist ruling parties in Angola and Mozambique, was often in evidence. Even a minister from the Malawian government – notorious for its blend of conservatism and despotism and for its uniquely open and subordinate relationship with Pretoria – could refer to ‘continuing struggle’. Recall the quotation (which I shall recite again here from Act One) of the Malawian Minister of Finance: There are countless pot-holes on the road to economic liberation and what SADCC has managed to achieve so far is only a very short

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 59 distance on the long road to economic independence. But united as we are, and with the support received from many governments and organisations, we are confident that we will, with good intentions win the battle. As our brothers and sisters in the People’s Republic of Mozambique say, ‘A Luta Continua!’ – Let us fight on! (L. Chakakala Chaziya, Malawian Minister of Finance, cited in SADCC, 1981b: 7) Key features of SADCC/SADC practice have all been articulated around the unwritten but overdetermining rules of diplomatic etiquette, especially what the SADC Treaty now codifies as ‘consensus’. Within this interlocking set of norms, a number of components may be disaggregated. First, no substantial critique of other member states is expected. As Weisfelder noted: ‘SADCC deliberations have a consensus building function not easily comprehensible to those accustomed to decisive confrontations among sharply defined alternatives’ (1991: 7). This goes hand-inhand with minimal granting of powers to institutional structures (most notably the secretariat) to produce an atmosphere of ritualised diplomatic politeness and protocol. This has been most evident at the annual summits of heads of state or government of member countries, formally responsible for overall policy and direction. Until 1992, these (and the entire SADCC structure) operated solely on the basis of custom codified in the original memorandum of understanding in which the SADCC’s institutions were established in 1981 (SADCC 198la). In other words, they had no formal legal existence other than as a de facto extension of member states. It may be the case, as Lipson argued, that: ‘Informality [in international agreements] is best understood as a device for minimizing the impediments to cooperation, at both the domestic and international levels’ (1991: 500). But it also profoundly shapes the modes, formats, and limits to such cooperation. In the case of the SADCC, the decentralised and ad hoc structure which evolved from the original memorandum of understanding has provided the basis around which the performative structure could operate. In turn, however, this structure constituted a significant source of internal tensions following the formal transformation of the SADCC into the SADC. An interviewee in the SADC secretariat could describe how: ‘[ministers and heads of] member states have not really appreciated in full what they have [now] signed up to’ (interview, SADC secretariat employee, 13 March 1996, Gaborone). More particularly, at the annual summits, heads of states or governments who, according to the 1992 SADC Treaty,20 are responsible for the overall policy, direction, and control of SADC: ‘Heads of State never really engage each other’ (interview, SADC secretariat employee, 13 March 1996, Gaborone). Such meetings remain high in formal content and protocol – speeches and dinners, interspersed with photo opportunities. As an observant journalist was led to comment of the 1993 summit:

1

1

1

11

11

60 The SADC: sovereign simulations Last time they met in Gaborone it was to convert the Southern African Development Coordination Conference to Southern African Development Community. Last week in Mbabane they met to confer the chairmanship of the community on Sir Ketumile Masire. But what a farce it turned out to be. It was as if the august gathering had been drugged. I saw at least five eminent members asleep, their heads thrown recklessly far back as if they wanted to break their necks. One could not resist a cynic’s observation that if these people’s servants were so tormented with drink from their sinecures, it is only fair to retrench them. What message did these sleeping servants carry home to their paymasters? Was the dreary litany of self-praise itself [so] soporific that none of the members cared to convey it to anyone. (Financial Gazette 1993) Meetings of the council of ministers21 tend to be considerably more animated. Although the council’s decisions are formally taken by ‘consensus’, arriving at such a condition involves a variety of conflicts and stresses. A secretariat employee described the reception of proposals formulated in the secretariat at council of ministers meetings as: a disincentive to do anything [which might be even mildly controversial] . . . your skin will be quite safe if you do not propose changes [to established ways of doing things] . . . even if you are acting in good faith’ (interview, SADC secretariat employee, 13 March 1996, Gaborone). He noted how his initial assumptions that ministers and/or sectoralcooperation staff might have had prior consultations, or even worked out positions on issues to be discussed at council meetings, were rapidly challenged: one assumes that member states have had thorough consultations – but this is not necessarily true. [Only] when you produce an instrument to operationalise [a proviso already formally accepted by heads of state] then eyes open . . . [and] the atmosphere can become very negative. . . . People in sectoral cooperation whom you have earlier communicated with [and apparently had supported an initiative] put on a different hat and [now] agree with their ministers [who oppose it]. (Interview, SADC secretariat employee, 13 March 1996, Gaborone)

11

11

Indeed, the retiring SADC Executive Secretary declared in an interview in 1994 that: ‘lack of continuous involvement in SADC . . . [meant] that government officials thought about the movement only when they were en route to its meetings and forgot about it when they returned to their countries’ (cited by Matshaba 1994: 2).

11

11

The SADC: sovereign simulations 61 This structural contradiction (or ‘bottleneck’ as some interviewees characterise it) runs through the core of the SADC and has become more acute in the mid-1990s as the community adopted new formal roles and a key new member.

A change of scale and mission: SADCC into SADC It may be true that backstage activity often takes the form of a council of war; but when two teams meet on the field of interaction it seems that they generally do not meet for peace or for war. They meet under a temporary truce, a working consensus, in order to get their business done. (Goffman 1969: 173, italics mine)

11

111

111

111

111

According to the text of the declaration by the SADC heads of state at their 1992 summit, something called ‘effective and self-sustaining regional development requires political comment and effective institutions and mechanisms to mobilise the region’s own resources’ (SADC 1993: 4). The formal establishment of the SADC (and the treaty that codifies its powers) are represented in the text of the declaration as embodiments of this commitment. The declaration also makes reference to the transformed regional situation; to the end of South African-directed regional destabilisation that had characterised the 1980s; to Namibian independence; and to the transition in South Africa. Although the transformation in South Africa and the requirement to reinvent the SADCC as something new were closely tied, inside the secretariat a wish to see the SADCC move beyond its initially limited remit through a certain formalisation of SADCC powers and functions had been evident for some time. Indeed, by 1985, after just the first five years of the SADCC, there was ‘a feeling in the [still then very small: less than five technical staff] secretariat that the prior coordination strategy was limited without [at the least further] sector policy analysis’ (interview, SADC secretariat employee, 4 March 1996, Gaborone). Thus, a formal review initiated by the secretariat considered a set of ‘political, procedural or organisational [contradictions/issues], whose effect has been to inhibit the efficient implementation of the Lusaka Programme of Action’ (SADCC 1985a: 25). The conclusions noted – as reported to the SADCC council of ministers – in characteristically diplomatic speech: The review confirmed the continuing relevance and validity of the organisation’s structures, procedures and institutions to regional needs. However, the review also identified some weaknesses, especially in the staffing of the sector coordinating units; and a lack of clarity on the responsibilities and functions of these units. (SADCC 1985b: no pagination)

62

The SADC: sovereign simulations

1

In fact, a substantial formal restructuring of the SADCC was delayed until Namibian and South African membership. And many of the contradictions identified in the mid-l980s remained unresolved. Moreover, when it did materialise, the formal transformation from SADCC to SADC and the addition of South Africa (with the apartheid regime civil service partly intact) served to reinforce tensions, whereby disparity between ‘declared’ and performative SADC practice was expressed in new modes. The next few pages will negotiate these; drawing upon a mixture of journalism, interviews and theories of agency. This is developed through a series of vignettes.22

1

‘A daunting task for ourselves’

1

For us it is an enigma how it [the SADC trade protocol] can be ratified at this stage . . . to ratify now is to ratify a blank cheque . . . this protocol was done for purposes of marketing [the SADC], which undermined credibility. You [directed at interviewer] can’t believe in it. (Interview, South African civil servant, 12 March 1998, Pretoria)

11

11

11

11

One of the proclaimed achievements of the transformation from SADCC to SADC is that the institution has written into its own treaty the possibility of legally binding protocols that once: ‘approved by the Summit on the recommendation of the Council . . . shall thereafter become an integral part of this treaty’ (SADC 1993: 19). However the processes of protocol negotiation have been slow, albeit, in part, because the secretariat initiated a process of consultation/workshops to broaden the initial drafting processes. Achievements in the relatively non-controversial domains of shared water resources and control of narcotic trafficking have occurred against the backdrop of drawn-out and contentious negotiations concerning proposals (emanating from the secretariat) on regulating the movement of migrants, on trade and security. The first of these is widely dismissed in the media and diplomatic-state apparatus of member states as a virtual non-starter (unless in some watered-down form) and the security/military cooperation theme is seen as something that is beyond SADC remit (Cilliers 1995). A ‘Political, Defence and Security Department’ (to be presided over by Robert Mugabe) was in fact approved at the 1996 SADC summit, but the department stands aside from the secretariat.23 The key trade protocol has been hostage to many interests and unresolved questions, including South Africa’s relations with the EU (Bhatia 1995; Campbell and Scerri 1995; Holland 1995a, 1995b), other extra-regional partners and the negotiations for the future of SACU (to be detailed below). A draft trade protocol was signed (with only Angola opting out) in August 1996, specifying the creation of a ‘free trade area’ by 2005. The protocol was described24 by

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 63 the Zimbabwean Industry and Commerce Minister as ‘a major achievement for Southern Africa’ and as ‘an exciting breakthrough’ by South Africa’s Trade and Industry Minister. The Botswanan President, Ketumile Masire, was more precise when he declared that: ‘By signing these protocols, we have not only demonstrated our unwavering commitment to regional integration, but we have also set a daunting task for ourselves.’ Certainly the diversity of formal state-diplomatic apparatuses and the varied social interests in and across them will make implementation of the ‘free trade’ proposal difficult. These positions and interests must perforce remain largely outside our scope here, although a few observations are in order. In the first place, unease regarding SADC trade negotiations is felt particularly in Zimbabwe, the largest economy and military power in SADCC prior to South African accession: it was also that Zimbabwe’s own transition to what was termed ‘majority rule’ in 1980 which made possible a sub-continental economic-political bloc against apartheid. As Joseph Hanlon stated in the mid-1980s: Zimbabwe is key to any regional economic grouping. Sitting aside all the main roads and railways, it is the heart of the region; during the sanctions and border closures of the UDI period [1965–1980], it was the missing link which prevented the other majority ruled states from cooperating with each other. (1986: 17) In the 1990s, a series of trade disputes between South Africa and Zimbabwe enhanced the perception in the latter that the ‘mercantilist’ policies of the new South Africa pose a new kind of threat to the Zimbabwean business and diplomatic interests (for contemporary commentaries, see Polhmus 1992; Gqumbule 1996; Hartrack 1996; Iheduru 1996; Peta 1996). As the final section of Act Two will denote, over a decade of IMF-World Bank directed structural adjustment has increased the sense of local vulnerability and disadvantage in states like Zimbabwe with respect to South African (and other foreign) capital. For these reasons, a certain ambivalence regarding SADC is evident too in Zambia, which has long been scripted (by its political elite) as the historic vanguard of liberation in Southern Africa. In this context, there is an intensely felt sense (in Zambian diplomatic circles) that Zambia has not received due recognition and recompense for its long-term practical support for Southern African liberation. Some similar sentiments have become evident in Tanzania, which sought to reinforce relationships with Kenya and Uganda in the late 1990s. Earlier in the decade, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe had also suggested that these states could become SADC members – and as will be detailed below, the extension of the SADC to include Kenya and Uganda briefly became official SADC policy in the mid-1990s. To the extent to which it could have reinstated Zimbabwe’s relative centrality;

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

64

The SADC: sovereign simulations

this would act as a (small) counter to the South African relative (economic) dominance of SADC. At the same time, however, South African civil servants proposed that Zaire join SADC. As was noted in media coverage, at the 1995 heads of state SADC summit, held in Johannesburg: Although SADC executive secretary Kaire Mbuende publicly admitted that with twelve members, SADC ‘was a complete number’, closedsession discussions in Johannesburg uncovered a sharp divergence of viewpoints over the Republic of South Africa’s insistence that Zaire should be admitted as a member too. In fact, observers point out, Pretoria wants to diversify its energy supplies and also wants the Southern African Development Community to base its planning on South Africa’s project for a major electricity grid which included Zaire. The South African state-owned utility Eskom is highly interested in Zaire’s hydroelectric resources. Angola and Mozambique’s delegates at the Johannesburg summit did not see things that way at all and strongly opposed any idea of Zaire being admitted. (The Indian Ocean Newsletter 1995: 7) All this occurred despite the fact that earlier in the same year, the SADC Council of Ministers had formally accepted a proposal from the secretariat concerning ‘Guidelines, Criteria and Procedure for the Admission of New Members’ (detailed in SADC 1995: 19–22) which specified that: applicants must fulfil all of the following criteria: (a) Geographical proximity of the applicant to the SADC region. (b) Commonality of political, economic, social and cultural systems of the applicant with the systems of the SADC region. (c) Feasibility of cost effective and efficient coordination of the applicant’s economic, social and cultural activities under the SADC framework of cooperation. (d) Absence of a record of engagement in subversive and destabilisation activities, and territorial ambitions against any SADC, or any of its member states. (e) Must be a democracy, observing the principles of human rights and the rule of law. (f) Must share SADC’s ideals and aspirations. Whilst the notion of ‘democracy’ that is being invoked seems flexible enough to include rather anti-democratic Swaziland, its meaning would have been stretched indeed if Mobutu’s Zaire was also described as ‘democratic’. ‘Democracy’ is famously a free floating signifier, appropriated, for example, by Stalinist regimes, such as the late German Democratic Republic and People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. However, the authoritarian

The SADC: sovereign simulations 65

11

order in Zaire under Mobutu had other symbolic claims, notably to ‘indigenous’ and ‘post-colonial’ authority/identity. The crisis and fall of Mobutisme was in part a contestation of such claims, in the aftermath of violent (indeed genocidal) conflict in Rwanda, as well as partly a post-Cold War phenomenon (insofar as the origins of the Mobutu regime were firmly rooted in Western intervention, justified at the time in the name of containing communism). Richard Gott recalls Congo (renamed Zaire under Mobutu) in African and global context in the early 1960s:

11

The prolonged Congo crisis from 1960 to 1963, has been all but forgotten. Yet in the early 1960s it occupied the same role on the world stage as the events in former Yugoslavia have done in the 1990s – with the added piquancy of Cold War tensions. Congolese independence (from Belgium) had been rather suddenly granted, in June 1960, to a left-wing Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba – with rather less preparation than had been accorded to Kwame Nkrumah when he had received the independence of Ghana, some three years earlier. . . . The Congo’s experience of freedom from colonial rule was rather more fraught than Ghana’s. Independence day was followed almost immediately by dramatic developments: an army mutiny, the secession of the richest province, organized by Moise Tshombe; the military intervention of the Belgians who had only just left; and the arrival – at Lumumba’s request – of United Nations troops. When Lumumba also asked for Soviet military assistance, he was promptly deposed by his president, Joseph Kasavubu, who was supported in this by the commander in chief, Joseph Mobutu [aided by the CIA and other allied intelligence agencies]. The Congo drama also led to the assassination of prime minister Lumumba (killed on the orders of Tshombe) and to the death (in a plane crash) of Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN Secretary General. It was no small crisis. . . . It became a test case for the continent. Was about-to-be-independent Africa to be really independent, or would it fall back into the hands of ‘imperialists’? (Gott 1996: 10–11)

11

111

111

111

111

Closer to the moment, Immanuel Wallerstein wrote that: The Congo crisis is a turning point of some importance, the nature of which it is well to underline, for it transformed the political life of the African continent. In the first place, the successful sweep of African liberation down the continent was halted, although this was not immediately seen in 1960, the so-called ‘Year of Africa’. Some eighteen states gained their independence then (as did several more in the next few years). But, essentially as a consequence of Congolese developments, a hard core

1

66

The SADC: sovereign simulations of resistance to African advances was consolidated. It comprised Portuguese Africa, Rhodesia, and South Africa, and was far stronger after 1960 than before. (1967: 43)

This resistant core endured long enough to set the agenda in Southern Africa for the last quarter of the twentieth century and to cast shadows over Southern African regional relations of the twenty-first century.

1

1

‘We do not consider it far away from the SADC’ – What about the admission of the former Zaire? – [Both diplomats look across to the wall map of Southern Africa above the desk] Energy, that is a big prize . . . that democracy thing, reinforcing democracy, sending a signal. . . . It would have been better to put substance into SADC, but no one could say no [to the admission of the Democratic Republic of the Congo]. (Interview, South African Diplomats, Pretoria, 16 February 1998)

11

11

11

11

In 1997, most foreign support for it, then Mobutu’s regime itself, disintegrated. It was replaced by a government headed by the veteran guerrilla leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila. One of the first statements of renovation and difference was the renaming of the country as the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kabila’s insurgency in Eastern Congo had operated under the name of the Alliance de forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo-Zaïre). At the first summit meeting of the SADC following this, the former Zaire was admitted as one of two new members (the other being the Seychelles). As noted above, over the previous couple of years, there had been considerable discussion and press coverage relating to the prospects for Kenyan and Ugandan membership, or at least some kind of formalised relationship between the SADC and a revived East African community (Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda). At a joint EAC–SADC press conference (held after a June 1997 meeting at the SADC secretariat), Kaire Mbuende (SADC’s Executive Secretary) had announced a ‘formal invitation’ to Kenya and Uganda to join.25 At this time, few outside limited circles in South Africa (and as will be detailed in a moment, Namibia) envisaged the former Zaire joining. Just a few weeks earlier, SADC’s chief information officer had told a visiting journalist that: ‘As you are aware, SADC is going through a transformation and we need to consolidate ourselves. It would not be wise to open up to more members at this stage.’ Events ran ahead of agreed policy – in particular when contradictory agendas and visions of the SADC are being articulated by different formations ‘within’ it. Four months later, at the 1997 SADC summit in Blantyre, Malawi, Mbuende anticipated Congo’s accession, allowing that it: ‘Shares

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 67 borders with Zambia, Tanzania and Angola and we do not consider it far way from the SADC’. He was not so sure about another potential applicant, noting in the same reference to geography that: ‘Seychelles appears next to India, but they have applied’. When, later in the summit meeting, both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Seychelles were admitted by the action of the heads of state/government present an alliance of interests and protocol came into play. Congo’s admission was in the name of the SADC’s strategy for reinforcing ‘democratic stability’ (favoured language in South African diplomatic circles, though outside the political lexicon in some SADC members, notably Swaziland). But there were other factors and prizes. Southern Congo’s hydroelectric resources already fed SADC power grids as part of a long standing memorandum of understanding. Longerterm prospects for the diversion of water for irrigation from the Congo river southwards to Namibia meant that Windhoek’s functionaries (and head of state) were in favour. According to press reports, Namibian President Sam Nujoma had ‘spearheaded’ the campaign to admit Congo. The political economy of water had circulated in Namibia’s relationship to the SADC since admission in 1990. Territorial disputes with Botswana (related to access to water) and accusations that SADC resources had been used to construct boreholes on the Namibian estates of SADC Executive Secretary formed part of this ‘circulation’. The Congo river offered new departures. The other key aspect of alliance for the admission of the former Zaire was Angola, whose troops had helped defeat Mobutu’s already disintegrating army and Mozambique (whose Frelimo government support the old MPLA allies in Luanda). The regime (and with it the Congolese state that it is held to represent) is thereby recognised and made more real, despite its novelty and precarious hold on power. For the MPLA, this further isolates the insurgent UNITA who continue to contest Angolan sovereignty. Zimbabwe also supported Congolese membership, in part to shift the balance of the community northward, as detailed above. Despite reservations voiced by South African functionaries involved in SADC affairs,26 President Mandela’s political commitment to support the new regime in Kinshasa and recovering some of the ‘lost ground’ when he called for a negotiated agreement just as Kabila was about to achieve a military victory, plus a complex of South African commercial interests (mineral extraction, plus hydroelectricity as mentioned above), were decisive. In the event, the formal approval of Congo’s membership, by the ‘executive actions’ of the assembled heads of state/government, disregarded the previously agreed procedure of reviewing new applications. Furthermore, once Congo had been so admitted no delegation was able to raise (the widely shared) objections to the admission of the Seychelles. The order of business at the Summit considered the application from the Seychelles immediately after the ‘agreement’ to admit Congo. Only Mauritius offered

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

68

The SADC: sovereign simulations

strong support, but the application was approved without discussion or review. For to do so, in the words of a delegate: ‘would have thrown the Congolese admission into some question’ (interview, South African diplomat, 17 February 1998). The subsequent course of the SADC’s new members is beyond the scope of this book. SADC members (and other African states) continue to be involved in the Congo. The shift and aftermath of the turmoil (if that is an appropriate word for a political violence which includes the Rwandan genocide of 1994) in ‘Great Lakes’ region (eastern Zaire, Burundi, Rwanda and neighbouring states on the littoral of Lakes Victoria and Tanganikya) both fed into the end of the Mobutu regime, Congo’s admission to the SADC and ongoing intervention therein of troops from other African states. Angolan (MPLA and UNITA), Ugandan, Rwandese government, exiled Rwandese militias (interahamwe and impuzamugambi), Zimbabwean, Namibian, Chadian armed forces, troops of Laurent Désiré Kabila’s regime and fractions of the former Zairian armed forces, formed a complex of powers every bit as intricate as those in the Balkans or parts of Central Asia.27 Writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, Mwayila Tshiyembe thus delineates: a heterogeneous community . . . [formed in] October–November 1997 against the regime of Marshal Mobutu, on the one hand, going from Uganda to Angola passing through Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Burundi, with the indirect consent of Eriteria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Keyna, and on the other hand [comprised of] the Angolan expedition against president Lissuba, in Congo-Brazaville. (1999: 22, my translation) What sovereign economy is operating (t)here? As McGreal notes: For a start, some [Zimbabwean] military and political leaders are raking in small fortunes, particularly through the army’s foray into the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is no mere looting spree. The Zimbabwe defence force has taken a business-like approach, creating joint-venture and front companies to cream off some of Congo’s richest mines. Among the top brass, the army chief, General Vitalis Zvinavashe, is a major stakeholder in a company called Operation Sovereign Legitimacy which has lucrative mining contracts in Congo through a partnership with a firm that was owned by Congo’s late president, Laurent Kabila. (2001: 3) In terms of the SADC as an imagined regional community, it must suffice to note that the involvement in Congo is productive of a de facto unity notably at key moments. The 1998 SADC summit held in Grand Baie, Mauritius,

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 69 saw one such of these, when Ugandan and Rwandese delegations showed up but were refused entry (at the insistence of the representatives of Congo). Since representatives of Congo invoked sovereignty (protesting that armed forces from these states were acting to violate Congolese sovereignty) they could not be overruled. Sovereignty-recognition offers the façade of unity, and unity (‘consensus’) with respect to ‘sovereignty’ produces that which it ‘respects’. In a moment I will reflect further on these and other aspects of regional community in Southern Africa exemplified in the relations between the SADC and other Southern African regional communities amidst procedures of sovereignty-recognition. Prior to this some further remarks on the articulation of regional political economies will pave the way. As Figure 6 indicated, South Africa’s economy is much vaster and more complex than is that of the rest of the SADC combined. But it has a large trade surplus with all other SADC members, and is also relatively less dependent on aid-funded development schemes. Moreover, an important part of South Africa’s agenda for the SADC is as an arena for South African capital to exploit resources and markets. Not only is this often perceived as a potential threat (of which more will be said below) in many neighbouring states, it is also substantially different from the established trajectory of the organisation as a vehicle for soliciting aid moneys, performative diplomacy, and (at least rhetorically) building collective self-reliance in the face of dependency on the apartheid state. All this became particularly evident at the 1996 annual consultative conference. In a sense, such conferences are the most important event in the SADC’s calendar of activities – insomuch as they are where aid is solicited for SADC-mediated development projects. Hosted each year by a different member state, the 1996 conference was not only the first to be held in South Africa, but was also the first one that the South Africans had been involved with. Things did not go altogether smoothly, however. As the South African news agency SAPA reported: Johannesburg, 2nd February: South Africa has been accused of ignoring its partners in the Southern African Development Community and denying them adequate contact with President Nelson Mandela. Cabinet ministers and officials in SADC, a 12-country body promoting economic integration and cooperation, on Friday [2 February] said not one South African cabinet minister had bothered to attend the final session of its trade and investment consultative conference on Friday. Mandela, who opened the conference on Thursday, was whisked away by his security aides before he could be thanked for his speech, said SADC chairman and Botswanan Vice-President Festus Mogae. ‘They have ignored us’ Mogae told journalists after the conference. SADC Secretary-General Kaire Mbuende said the South African’s behaviour was unique in the conference’s history. ‘Normally ministers

1

70

The SADC: sovereign simulations of the host government are always at the conference’, he said. In his closing speech to the conference, Mogae said: ‘Our South African colleagues denied us adequate contact with their president’. ‘He was not allowed by South African security to stay long enough to listen to thanks to his speech’. . . . Mogae said South Africa would not be reprimanded for its behaviour but rather ‘encouraged to address the legitimate needs of colleagues to the north.’ (SAPA news agency, Johannesburg, in English 1713 GMT 2 February, Summary of World Broadcasts AL/2527, 1996)

1

1

11

11

11

11

This was not the only problem: a ‘development diary’ (dedicated to events and gossip pertaining to the Reconstruction and Development Programme)28 published in the South African weekly Mail and Guardian under the title ‘True story’ noted how: South Africa managed to get itself in a pickle at its first hosting of the annual consultative conference of the Southern African Development Community in January. Drafters of the Finance and Investment sector report (which South Africa is in charge of) borrowed heavily from Economist Intelligence Unit reports on the performance of neighboring countries – including reaching the conclusion that the Zimbabwean economy is mismanaged. Furious Zimbabwean officials demanded that the document be withdrawn. A new report, in photocopy-and-staple form, appeared on the tables the following day. Just to be sure no one had missed the point, the Zimbabweans issued a two-page press statement – on how well their economy is managed. (1996: 8) In both cases the difficulties are partly reducible to the new member not observing the customary (unwritten) diplomatic culture of the SADC. Alluding to this, a South African civil servant who was involved in the conference felt that for the SADC: real issues are not of content; but of procedure . . . matters they criticised were not the substantive ones . . . [for example] nothing was said about the lack of [prior] documentation [a secretariat responsibility]. (Interview, South African diplomat, 20 March 1996, Pretoria) This is one of the ways that: the capacity problem in the secretariat is immediately reflected . . . there is no [written] protocol on basic simple procedures, for example,

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 71 requiring confirmation of faxes . . . no workable basic mechanisms of coordination. (Interview, South African civil servant, 29 March 1996, Pretoria) To South African diplomatic eyes, it was such lack of preparation and prior coordination (including an unwillingness or inability to prepare agendas for meetings) which generated many of these problems. For example, since the SADC secretariat is responsible for proofreading and duplication and printing of reports written by sector-coordinating units: the secretariat should have picked up on the fact that the Finance sector report could cause offence . . . they only asked for it at the last minute anyway . . . the same with President Mandela . . . they [the secretariat] failed to invite [‘book’] him in advance . . . They just assumed that he would have time to come along. (Interview, South African civil servant, 29 March 1996, Pretoria) Furthermore: the job of ministers is not to sit around listening to long speeches . . . they should be there . . . with a prepared agenda . . . [and] only to make decisions. (Interview, South African civil servant, 29 March 1996, Pretoria) Procedure becomes content. In the context of rather different expectations and agendas, South African disregard for procedure has been a basis of many of the complaints from other SADC members.

The functions of summits and conferences At the root of the spectacle lies that oldest of all social divisions of labour, the specialization of power. The specialized role played by the spectacle is that of spokesman for all other activities, a sort of diplomatic representative of hierarchical society at its own court, and the source of the only discourse that society allows itself to hear. (Debord 1994: 18–19)29 Forget the Glorious Twelfth [the start of Grouse hunting season in Scotland]. Forget Ladies Day at Ascot [a day of high fashion at a Horse Race Meeting near London]. For the dedicated band of politicians, bankers, diplomats, assorted spin-doctors and flunkies who make up the world’s élite band of summiteers, today is the start of the season. . . . The size of the motorcade matters, and each country wants to see its national flag fluttering. . . . Hunting

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

72

The SADC: sovereign simulations and dancing are no longer part of the summit agenda, but feasting is still a big part of the package. (Elliot 1998: 24) In the end, it may well be that all these gastronomic diversions are nothing less than a way of practicing politics and diplomacy differently. (Costantinou 1996: 141) There was tight security in Blantyre yesterday as two security helicopters provided air surveillance to motorcades ferrying Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of states or their representatives from Chileka Airport into the city. One of the helicopters sent hundreds of people who lined along the Zalewa road to cheer the visitors on a stampede when it swooped down to the ground. Unconfirmed reports said the helicopters were foreign. Everything was engulfed in a swirl of dust at the Zalewa junction when the maroon coloured chopper descended on hundreds of school children who were waving the colourful flags of SADC member states. Undeterred, the enthusiastic pupils, who for the first time since the May 1994 elections lined along the roads, waved on and sang joyfully. . . . However, the two choppers mesmerised the crowds each time they flew by following the convoys from the airport to Mount Soche Hotel, where most presidents are staying for the two-day meet. (Tayanjah-Phiri, 1997: 1, 27)

In respect of the complaints noted in the preceding section, it is helpful to remember that, amongst their other functions, diplomatic summits exist to be seen. They may be said to belong to the category of ‘spectacles’ described by Debord and other analysts of media(ted) society. True, the majority of academic and journalistic treatments of such events might involve regarding the real business (of negotiation) as being done behind closed doors. And we can immediately recognise that such closed-doors negotiation or mediation is a key function of summitry, something it shares with the wider practice of diplomacy to which it (at least in part) belongs as a social practice (see Der Derian 1987; Costantinou 1996). But to regard such closed discussions as the only real aspect of summitry is mistaken. Summits also exist to demonstrate the authority, and therefore something of the power, of the head of the state and of his or her agents – as the ultimate mediators of the ‘national’ in a forum of mutual recognition (by other such representatives). Reinforced by the spread of various national, and sometimes transnational, media, this is now more or less universally the case throughout the world.30 In part because minds have been focused on so many other tasks (including greater and graver spectacles), in the role of managing the relatively minor spectacles that are SADC consultative conferences, South Africa has not been playing by the accustomed rules. For example, delegations arriving at Johannesburg International Airport for the 1996 annual

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 73 consultative conference later complained that national anthems were not played on arrival. In this respect another South African diplomat explained that: ‘we can’t close the airport just for them – what does it matter anyway?’ (interview, 29 March 1996, Pretoria). However, to the extent to which the construction of sovereignty through performance is seen as an important and necessary way to confirm the powers and importance of states plus their agents and representatives (and all that goes with this, such as access to aid and possibilities for making money), we should see events such as the complaints over the failure to play national anthems as more than the petty arrogance of diplomats. For beyond the mutual recognition that they confer, such spectacles, and the meetings that follow, are received internationally, and their performance serves too as an intervention into networks of global power. For the original members of the SADCC, the organisation served as a means to plug into those networks; in substantial part (though not exclusively) through the solicitation of aid. One diplomatic interviewee stressed that: ‘We might interpret the history of SADCC as a kind of cargo cult’ (South African diplomat, 23 February 1996, Johannesburg). In view, however, of South African membership and of the avowed shift from Development Coordination Conference to Development Community, the nature and meaning of performance is being readjusted within the context of changing ‘geopolitical’ and ‘geoeconomic’ power relations. In this context, South Africa’s relative disregard for accustomed procedures has much to do with its differential position in relation to global power, and hence a different understanding of the performance of sovereignty. This is a reflection of the way that the histories of uneven development in Southern Africa (reinforced and mediated through colonial and apartheid divisions) have left South Africa with by far the largest economy and with a broader and relatively less marginal articulation with global economic flows. Furthermore, it is important to recall that the mid-twentieth-century colonial economy of Southern Africa was (in certain respects) more functionally integrated than it has been in more recent times. More significantly, however, its operation and slow disintegration, including the establishment and then breakup of the Central African Federation (1953–1963), left bitter legacies and bolstered disparities. Amongst these were a reinforcement of the relative underdevelopment of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi), to the benefit of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and an enhancement of white Southern Rhodesian political confidence (see Bowman 1968, 1971; Vail 1975). On the legacy of resentments generated by the Federation (which was, of course, swiftly followed by the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence), a Zimbabwean diplomat recounted the anecdote about a Zambian politician visiting Harare, and who, when shown around the parliament building, said: ‘it’s our parliament! We built it! [i.e. resource transfers from Zambia paid for

74

The SADC: sovereign simulations

1

the construction]. “Such mentalities”, he said, “still play a very important role in shaping contemporary regional sensibilities” ’ (interview, Zimbabwean diplomat, 11 March 1996, Gaborone). Such notions of difference, readings of history and anticipations of redemption are not easily contained with the SADC. Indeed their terms of circulation and reception are themselves expressions of them. In particular, intricate ideological legacies and logics of colonialism and apartheid are deeply inscribed and active in Southern Africa. In the rest of Act Two, I reflect further on the operation of these before bringing this series of vignettes to bear on the wider question of retheorising regional integration.

1

Post-colonial ambivalences?

1

11

11

The irony of their own attendance at Monday’s Southern African Development Community summit could not have been lost on Constand Viljoen and Pik Botha. A succession of regional leaders made sure they had no chance. Both men sat attentively in the large but select World Trade Centre audience when three presidents, including Nelson Mandela, made reference to apartheid South Africa’s destabilisation of the region. From the stage, nine more leaders . . . most of whose countries had felt the effects of a decade and a half or more of South African overt and covert military aggression – peered down on Viljoen, who headed the South African Defence Force during the roughest of that time, and Botha, who as long-serving Minister of Foreign Affairs must have had an input in a campaign estimated to have cost a million lives and more than a hundred billion rand. . . . But in a sense, this year’s summit was the final farewell to that period. . . . South Africa – not only hosted the summit this year, but also played a leading role. (Brummer 1995: 4) It is useless, in any case, to seek a more substantial truth behind the phantasm . . . it is useless to contain it within stable figures and to construct solid cores of convergence. . . . They [phantasms] should consequently be freed from the restrictions we impose upon them, freed from the dilemmas of truth and falsehood and of being and nonbeing (the essential difference between simulacrum and copy carried to its logical conclusion); they must be allowed to conduct their dance, to act out their mime, as ‘extrabeings’. (Foucault 2000b: 346–347) Southern African countries all agree that prosperity lies in a regional free trade zone, but the problems of the past are haunting them as they try to achieve it. (Loxton 1997: 19, italics mine)

11

11

In Loxton’s terms (writing in a provincial British newspaper about business opportunities in Southern Africa), ghosts are active, a haunting is taking place. Are these the spirits of the dead? Of unburied traumas? Of these Southern Africa has plenty. I am reminded too of the millenarian and redemptive movements that arose in Southern Africa at the threshold

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 75 of the region’s violent encounter with colonial modernity when spirits were seen to rise up to align themselves with the living. In the twentieth century, the anti-colonial movements, particularly the struggles to reclaim land were conducted – amongst other things – in the name of and via the agency of spirits.31 Spirits and ghosts rather complicate – as Derrida reminds us – conventional Western philosophical notions: ‘between the real and the unreal, the actual and the inactual, the living and the non-living, being and non-being (“to be or not to be”, in the conventional reading), in the opposition between what is present and what is not, for example in the form of objectivity’ (1994: 11). Derrida thus proposes an investigation of ‘the virtual space of spectrality’, a ‘hauntology’. Drawing from Marx who was fond of conjuring Geist (spirit) and Gespenst (spectre) and from Shakespeare ( Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, Timon of Athens) whom Marx so loved, we are also advised that: Even though Marx more often quotes Timon of Athens, the [Communist] Manifesto seems to evoke or convoke, right from the start, the first coming of the silent ghost, the apparition of the spirit that does not answer [in Hamlet], on those ramparts of Elsinore which is then old Europe. For if this first theatrical apparition already marked a repetition, it implicated political power in the folds of this iteration (‘In the same figure, like the King that’s dead’, says Barnardo as soon as he thinks he recognises the ‘Thing’ in his irrespressible desire for identification). From what could be called the other time, from the other scene, from the eve of the play, the witnesses of history fear and hope for a return, then ‘again’ and ‘again’, a coming and going. (Marcellus: ‘What, ha’s this thing appear’d againe tonight?’ Then: Enter the Ghost, Exit the Ghost, Enter the Ghost, as before). A question of repetition: a specter is always a revenant. One cannot control its comings and goings because it begins by coming back. (Derrida 1994: 10–11) There is (t)here through Derrida, a wider sense of the political ‘present’ than most conventional analyses.32 And in politics and amidst circles of money and power, a whole series of phantoms are present as dialogues between seen and unseen forces. From his work in South Africa, for example, Adam Ashforth notes how: as in other places where ‘In God we Trust’ every position of power resonates in unseen worlds. On the one hand these are worlds of money; social life and the fortunes of statehood are buffeted by complex monetary manoeuvres. The unseen forces of global financial centres, the action-at-a-distance of the economic and of political economy, all this casts its phantom presence across the globe. (1996: 1191)

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

76 The SADC: sovereign simulations There are however, other unseen powers that are less often spoken of, but no less evident: ‘. . . that behind appearances lies a deeper hidden, more important reality: the originary force of power’ (1220). The account will return to all of this in Act Three. But first back to Loxton’s reportage in The Birmingham Post that has an outworn spectre in mind, whose logic is not easy to excise: the apartheid legacy. The accounts and analyses in earlier sections here have charted some of the tensions and contradictions arising from the admission of South Africa to the SADC, and the transformation in role and formal raison d’être – from ‘anti-apartheid’ Development Coordination Conference to ‘postapartheid’ Development Community. In this context, it must be understood that South Africa’s contemporary role in the SADC embodies a broad and complex ambivalence, related to the transformation from declared enmity to new alliance. On the one hand, many other SADC members feel a degree of continued and perhaps sharpened threat from the south, given South Africa’s economic weight in the region, its much higher profile status in the wider world, and the fact that the SADCC was constituted against the apartheid in Pretoria. On the other hand, South African membership is seen as offering further opportunity for accumulation, status, and ‘development’. As a South African diplomat working on relations with the SADC explained, reiterating a familiar trope: There is a sense in which SADC is joining South Africa, not that South Africa is joining SADC. (Interview, 7 March 1996, Gaborone) Another South African working in the same capacity felt that: South Africa enters [SADC and the region] as a bearer of hope, but [there is also] . . . a fear of domination. This ambivalence resonates with the colonial relationship. (Interview, South African diplomat, 20 March 1996, Pretoria) As has been widely noted and debated33 – the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised is never a simple matter of domination (however central and brutal that may be), but of hegemony. This requires the construction and unfolding of affiliations, alliances, complicities and resistances. The political identity of the coloniser and that of the colonised are therefore locked into an unequal, but mutual relationship. Something of this particular colonial legacy has been carried over to haunt the SADC since South African adhesion. It may mean that, at certain moments within a historical–geographical conjuncture, the dominated see and experience the dominant as a source of power, patronage, and advancement. At other

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 77 moments, the dominated seek to develop an individual, or sometimes collective, resistance. This may take the form of cultural assertion, physical violence, or a variety of hidden resistances, protests, and acts of sabotage and subversion. Whether these have been seen as ‘weapons of the weak’ as Scott (1986) describes them, or as a form of what Bhabha (1994) called ‘sly civility’, a complex war of manoeuvre ensues. The SADC’s functioning as documented here registers an embodiment of such forces and manoeuvres – in all cases refracted and amplified by inherited structural inequalities and the complex ambivalences of the colonial legacy. These are compounded by the fact that SADC members are also entangled in other (frequently contradictory) regional communities,34 most notably the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). The former has waned in recent years and will not be considered in the main text here.35 However, SACU predates the COMESA and the SADC by the best part of a century. SACU is a revenue-sharing agreement between South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia.36 Its origins are in treaties negotiated and imposed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Britain’s FCO then considered that Bechuanaland (Botswana), Basutoland (Lesotho) and Swaziland would in due course be incorporated into South Africa, all under British imperial hegemony. In the first place, this means that SACU embodies a complex, but nevertheless profound and enduring dependency relation between South Africa and its near neighbours – although the shifting terms of this dependency have been expressed in periodic renegotiations of the treaty, notably in 1969, 1976 and again since 1994. SACU can therefore be traced to the 1889 Customs Union Convention signed by the British Colony of the Cape of Good Hope and the Orange Free State Boer Republic (see Maasdorp 1989). In 1893, British Bechuanaland and Basutoland – both ‘overruled’ by the British High Commissioner – joined the 1889 Customs Union Convention, albeit with significantly diminished rights (see Ettinger 1974). Although a second customs convention was negotiated in 1898, the Anglo-Boer37 war and British conquests further north resulted in British colonial rule throughout the present day South Africa, Bechuanaland, Basutoland, Swaziland and the Rhodesias (Zambia and Zimbabwe). This made a customs union possible and in 1903 a convention was signed between the Cape, Natal, Orange River Colony, Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia. Again, Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland were admitted as parties with limited rights. The formation of the Union of South Africa just seven years later resulted in the termination of all previous customs union arrangements. However, because the Union excluded the three High Commission Territories, a new customs union agreement was negotiated in June 1910. Each of these texts, including the agreement of 1910 cites other texts and authorities (representations); states, agreements, treaties of law. . . . There is no end to this chain of

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

78

The SADC: sovereign simulations

signification-representation. Moreover, the SACU endures, reinscribing and reworking the ‘original’ acts of colonial agreement. Let us consider those acts further. Key among them was the fact that the white minority of Southern Rhodesia had voted against joining the South African Union in a referendum held in 1923. According to the principal study of what Roger Hyam termed The Failure of South African Expansion, the aftermath of the 1923 referendum: was a settlement of outstanding historical significance for the whole future of southern Africa. It closed an era of imperial policy in Africa since 1852: it was the last of a series of enactments placing Africans under white settler rule outside the circle of direct imperial protection. . . . It was the last issue upon which the British government supported South African territorial aggrandisement. The settlement cast doubt on the whole future of the High Commission Territories. Bechunaland, it had been said, should go into the Union [of South Africa] when Rhodesia went. . . . The point was well put in a Dominions Office memorandum of July 1932: ‘The chief ground for assuming that transfer to the Union was the inevitable destiny of the Protectorate has disappeared with the decision of Southern Rhodesia not to enter the Union’. Rhodesia chose to remain outside: with aspirations of becoming the nucleus of a larger state, embracing Northern Rhodesia and at least a part of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and counterbalancing the Union. (Hyam 1972: 70–71) Southern Rhodesia was outside both South Africa and the SACU. Yet whilst South African territorial expansion had reached a limit on the Limpopo river, the other British colonial territories bordering South Africa were still bound to Pretoria through the Customs Union, with residual visions both in South Africa and at the FCO that eventually they might yet be incorporated into the South African jurisdiction. And in the schemes in Salisbury (Harare) and at the FCO for a Rhodesian sub-imperial administration of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the path was laid for the Central African Federation and the ensuing sub-complex of colonial relations of hegemony–dominance–subservience and their contemporary manifestations.

Shifting imaginaries: from colonial incorporation to development What does it mean to say that development started to function as a discourse, that is, it created a space in which only certain things could be said and even imagined? (Escobar 1995: 39)

11

11

11

The SADC: sovereign simulations 79 Development occupies the centre of an incredibly powerful semantic constellation . . . at the same time, very few words are as feeble, as fragile and as incapable of giving substance and meaning to thought and behaviour. (Esteva 1992: 8)

The 1910 Customs Union Agreement was the direct forerunner to the present-day SACU. The UK and South Africa negotiated and signed the Customs Union envisaging the eventual incorporation of the High Commission Territories into South Africa. The fact that the Territories did not then have ‘national’ customs administrations was, as a consequence, interpreted to be of little consequence. Furthermore the capacity to govern ‘national’ economies was not an issue. In other words the High Commision’s regime of governance/administration did not have these visions and projects within its problematic. Moreover, even as the discourse of development solidified, the subjects (‘natives’) of the Territories were outside its horizon. For these marginal colonial spaces and peoples ‘improvement-trusteeship’ and civilisation’ were the dominant rhetorical motifs of administration. This was a colonial world that, for all its tangled composition, was:

111

111

111

11 111

conduced to imaginative simplification, to the objectification of stark, irreducible constrasts . . . perceived and re-presented, from within, in highly dualist, oppositional terms; terms that solidified the singularity of, and distance between, ruler and ruled, white and black, modernity and tradition, law and custom, European and non-European, capitalism and its antithesis, and so on. The objectification of this order of differences was intrinsic to the gesture of colonization itself. (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997: 25) Meanwhile, whilst colonial power produced a series of reserves, regulations and restrictions to the movement of colonial subjects, the 1910 Agreement provided for the free movement of manufactured products, plus a common external tariff and a revenue-sharing formula. Revenue was to be divided among the four signatories in proportion to the level of their external trade between the years 1907 and 1910 (see Cattaneo 1990). The agreement resulted in South Africa receiving 98.7 per cent of the joint revenue, whilst the High Commission Territories received collectively 1.3 per cent: Bechuanaland, 0.27 per cent; Basutoland, 0.88 per cent; Swaziland, 0.15 per cent. Although the 1910 Agreement (whose signatories were colonial agents acting in ‘Trusteeship’ for non-European populations) lasted for almost 60 years, the transformation of sovereigntypower in post-colonial Southern Africa put the agreement under strain. The other parties became independent sovereignties between the mid– late 1960s (Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland) and 1990 (Namibia), at a

1

80

The SADC: sovereign simulations

historical conjuncture when the field of development had taken shape. Participation in development became another sign of statehood. Working in one of the SACU signatories, James Ferguson thus notes: the development apparatus . . . is not a machine for eliminating poverty that is incidentally involved with the state bureaucracy, it is a machine for reinforcing and expanding the exercise of bureaucratic state power, which incidentally takes ‘poverty’ as its point of entry. (1990: 225)

1

1

11

11

11

11

In terms of the SACU, the fact that the revenue-sharing formula remained static and unaffected by shifting levels of imports and exports now became problematic within the recast horizons of post-colonial sovereignties (Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia) promising development. However from Pretoria, the revenue-sharing formula was regarded (like the wider set of structural dominations of which it was a part) as permanent. Like a number of other peripheral states (notably in Latin America) in the mid-1920s, the South African regime framed an attempt to promote local industrial capital through the adoption of an import substitution programme. This resulted in high protective tariff barriers being imposed around the SACU. For the High Commission Territories, this produced a greater relative dependency on South Africa. First, protective tariff barriers promoted ‘trade diversion’ reinforcing the distinct advantage of South African capitalism as the Territories were forced to purchase relatively high-cost (and relatively low quality) South African produce. Second, the overall level of customs revenue as a portion of quantifiable economic activity (GDP for example) began to fall. Together, these reinforced the relative impoverishment of the Territories. Compounding this, South Africa’s (unilateral) decision to follow a policy of import substitution highlighted the fact that the Territories had no local fiscal discretion and no influence over the direction of South Africa’s fiscal policy changes affecting them. From the 1930s onwards, British pressure to renegotiate the revenuesharing formula and the 1910 Agreement intensified. Furthermore, it became apparent that following the victory of the National Party in 1948, the fading prospects for the incorporation of the Territories into South Africa were sealed. The complex of Afrikaner and British territories and jurisdictions in colonial Southern Africa south of the Limpopo became four sovereignties. Apartheid rendered South African sovereignty particularly fractured, although these fractures, the worlds of citizens and subjects represented a variant on a widespread colonial theme. In terms of the SACU, negotiations for a new agreement, although started in 1963, were delayed pending the independence of Botswana and Lesotho in 1966 and Swaziland in 1968. Negotiations were then resumed and an agreement

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 81 was signed on 11 December 1969, establishing SACU in its contemporary format. Although the 1969 Agreement has been amended on various occasions, it remains largely intact and forms the basis of the current renegotiations. The key parameters of these are rooted in the aftermath of the South African War (1899–1902) when the ‘Boer Republics’ (Transvaal and the Orange Free State) and British colonial territories with substantial settler populations (the Cape and Natal) were combined into a Union of South Africa. It was then envisaged that the Union would expand in due course to include Southern Rhodesia and other British colonial territories of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland. But from the early 1920s, particularly after the Southern Rhodesian referendum in 1923, such incorporation looked increasingly unrealisable. William Martin thus charts how: The configuration of southern Africa as a common peripheral zone dominated by Great Britain was shattered by developments that followed upon an early post-World War I crisis in South Africa. First, world prices fell for all of South Africa’s primary products, including even real gold prices. Second, a subsequent offensive by employers triggered open warfare by white and black workers against capital and the state. Most notable here were the 1920 black mine workers’ strike and the 1922 Rand Revolt. The economic and political crisis undercut the long-standing belief that wealth and well-being would continuously flow forth from a willing acceptance of the promotion of primary production for the world market. . . . From this tumultuous conjuncture emerged the Pact government (1924–1931). Exhibiting a high degree of autonomy from Britain and mining capital, the Pact government sought to transform the set of state policies that had underwritten the country’s position in the modern world-economy. Foremost were actions designed to carry forward the new policy of the promotion of industrial production. In short order new state initiatives led to tariff walls against manufactured goods, the end of Imperial Preference, the establishment of an independent Department of Foreign Affairs, and state promotion and ownership of key industries such as the continent’s first integrated iron and steel plant. (1990: 117) The creation of a protected South African market for local manufactures and the establishment of local sectoral links between agriculture, industry and mining further paved the way for the post-1948 apartheid regime. It also meant a retreat from the visions of a wider economic and political union in Southern Africa within British imperial space: By the early 1930s it was evident to all of South Africa’s neighbours that the vision of the free flow of factors of production across southern

1

1

1

11

11

82

The SADC: sovereign simulations Africa was in serious jeopardy. The reason was not difficult to discern: Following the South African government’s inauguration of industrialisation policies in 1924, what had been known as British South Africa steadily dissolved into a series of separate, and increasingly acrimonious territories. (ibid. 1990: 129)

Only the British territories with limited settler populations (and the South African administration in Namibia) were still seen by Pretoria as potential spaces for expansion of and incorporation into the state-Union of South Africa. Although formal incorporation did not materialise (with the exception of the contested case of Namibia), the Customs Union remained as a tangible manifestation of dreams of incorporation. Throughout the twentieth century therefore SACU members had a common external tariff, free trade, an integrated colonial infrastructure and, for the most part, a common currency. In turn, all this meant that the 1910 Customs Union differed from later Third World customs union ‘models’ where ‘integration’ is discursively linked with development. The economic development of the Territories was accorded minimal priority. As McCarthy (1992: 167) notes, the 1910 agreement was ‘essentially a revenue sharing device’. He explains how any analysis of the SACU must bear in mind that the Union was an arrangement to distribute revenue among territories whose colonial ‘integration’ was a fait accompli. The 1969 Agreement (now under renegotiation) has been subject to several minor amendments since its inception, most notably in 1976 with the introduction of a stabilisation factor into the revenue-sharing formula. However, since the 1980s, all parties have become – for different reasons – increasingly dissatisfied with the operating procedures, implementation and impacts of the Agreement. Although several attempts were made in the latter part of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s to renegotiate the Agreement, differences over recognition of the sovereignty of South Africa’s so-called ‘independent’ homelands and regional policies (in particular the havoc generated by South African destabilisation) resulted in a broad preservation of the status quo. It is notable, however, that unlike the 1910 Agreement – which felt no need to emphasise either economic development or integration (Walters 1989) – the 1969 Agreement set out clearly the Union’s claim that it would promote economic development throughout all member states on the basis of what it called ‘equitable benefits’:

11

11

to ensure the continued economic development of the customs union area as a whole, and to ensure in particular that these arrangements encourage the development of the less advanced members of the customs union and the diversification of their economies, and afford

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 83 all parties equitable benefits arising from trade among themselves and with other countries. (Republic of South Africa 1969: 2) For the SACU, this re-inscription, and the accompanying shifting formats of power and hegemonic discourse in the region (away from ‘trusteeship’ towards ‘development’), took shape in a number of novel provisions. The most important of these relate to an adjusted revenue-sharing formula to apportion the Common Revenue Pool, intra-regional trade and infant-industry protection. These provisions have since become the principal sources of discontent and form the key issues in the current renegotiations. The revenue-sharing formula is the single most important source of dissatisfaction. The technicalities and operational equation of the revenuesharing agreement have been analysed in detail elsewhere (Walters 1989; Maasdorp and Whiteside 1993) – and will only be dealt with briefly here. At the most basic level, the SACU Agreement provides for the pooling of customs, excise, import surcharges and sales duties between the five member countries. The South African Reserve Bank manages this socalled Common Revenue Pool and, in the first instance, divides the Pool according to annual imports, production and consumption of dutiable goods. Various ‘compensation’ and ‘stabilising’ factors are then added, guaranteeing that the other signatories receive between 17 and 23 per cent of the value of their imports, durable goods and duties paid and thereby represents a shift towards readdressing their structural marginalisation (see Figure 7). Viewed from beyond South Africa, the revenue-sharing formula offers a trade-off between relative fiscal autonomy and an income to state coffers. In this respect it represents the relative ascendancy of a rentier strata (particularly in Lesotho and Swaziland) and cements their (sometimes uneasy) relationship to the dominant strata in South Africa. The category of a rentier state is more properly applied to countries reliant on mineral exports from which the elite derive a flow of capital (a rent). Certainly there are aspects of this form of rentier in Southern Africa, the role of the diamond industry in funding the Botswanan state, Copper in Zambia and of gems, tantalite and other rare minerals in Zaire/Congo. In characterising SACU-membership as a form of rentier endowment or as what Luciani (1990) termed ‘allocation states’, the analytical category is being stretched. However even if it not oil, there is a substance in common with the ‘classic’ rentier states of the Arabian Peninsula, where: The state or the government, being the principal rentier in the economy, plays the crucial role of the prime mover of the economic activity. Rent that is held in the hands of the government has to be

84

The SADC: sovereign simulations

1

redistributed among the population. Special social and economic interests are organised in such a manner as to capture a good slice of government rent. . . . Different layers of beneficiaries of government rent are thus created, giving rise, in their turn, to new layers of beneficiaries. The whole economy is arranged as a hierarchy of layers of rentiers with the state or government at the top of the pyramid, acting as the ultimate support of all other rentiers in the economy. (Beblawi 1990: 89)

1

Perhaps the most significant factor here is the substantial contribution to state revenue provided by the SACU Revenue Pool. In 1992, for example, SACU receipts accounted for between 11 (Swaziland) and 20 per cent (Lesotho) of GDP. But they comprised 22 per cent (Swaziland) and 47 per cent (Lesotho) of state revenues. Other related benefits include free access to supplies from South Africa and access to foreign exchange and a convertible currency (all high on the agendas of the holders of state power – and associated elites) along with the prospects for accumulation, enrichment and speculation offered by the relatively sophisticated South African financial infrastructure, which in turn is plugged into global circuits.38

1

11

11

11

80

Payments (%)

11

100

60 South Africa 40

20 BLNS 0 6 19

9/

70 7 19

4/

75 7 19

9/

80 8 19

4/

85 8 19

9/

90 9 19

2/

93

Figure 7 SACU Common Revenue Pool data. Adapted from Sidaway and Gibb (1998). BLNS refers to Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 85 Article 4 of the 1969 Agreement stipulates that, with limited exceptions, the customs tariff, excise and duties in force in South Africa ‘shall be applied to goods imported into the common customs area’ (Republic of South Africa 1969: 6). Thus, the other signatories are legally obliged to apply a common external tariff determined unilaterally by South Africa. Although Article 5 stipulates that South Africa must consult before duty changes, consultation does not imply consent. Article 5 stipulates that: ‘the Government of South Africa shall give the other contracting parties adequate opportunity for consultations before imposing, amending or abrogating any customs duty’ (italics added) (Republic of South Africa 1969: 6). In practice, the South African Board of Tariffs and Trade has adopted tariffs and duties unilaterally (see Mayer and Zarenda 1994). Whilst the 1969 Agreement does make provision for ‘infant-industry’ protection (Article 6), the protection of industries of ‘major importance’ (Article 7) and the right to impose tariffs ‘for economic, social and other reasons’ (Article 11) any action has to be agreed by South Africa and is likely to be of limited use as South Africa can still deny market access to the products of such industries. Although SACU therefore allows for some protection for industrial production, in the three decades since renegotiations in 1969 this has not been applied.39 In addition to these impacts of the SACU on the other signatories (which, it should be recalled, are compensated for by the revenue-sharing formula) there is one other major impact; the effect of a two-year time lag in payments from the Common Revenue Pool. In practice, this gives South Africa an interest-free loan and, as a result of high inflation (averaging 15 per cent in the 1980s), loss of interest and exchange rate depreciation, significantly undermines the enhancement/stabilisation factor. None of this has been enough to produce the unravelling of SACU. But – together with the wider shift accompanying Namibian independence (see Simon 1991) and the South African transition – it has been enough to produce a certain pressure from within the other members for a further renegotiation of SACU’s terms. The negotiations for a reconstituted SACU began in November 1994. A Customs Union Task Team, comprised of officials from all five signatories, was established and mandated to negotiate on behalf of the ministers of SACU. Not unsurprisingly, the principal difficulty concerns renegotiating the revenue-sharing formula. At the outset, the South African Department of Finance has called for a ‘clean formula’, with any additional payments destined for the other countries coming from the South African budget as regional aid. In other words, the other states would receive only their portion of the Revenue Pool with no enhancement factor. Pretoria has argued that an industrial development strategy should replace the revenue contributed under the enhancement/stabilisation agreements. However, the proposal for a development fund threatens the interests of those dominant rentier-elite fractions who have long accommodated

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

86

The SADC: sovereign simulations

themselves to SACU, whilst simultaneously being read as a strategy likely to reinforce the competitive edge of South African capital. It is therefore being resisted. In the mid-1990s, a member of the South African negotiation team therefore complained that: They [the other SACU members], have the world of time . . . they are dragging their feet because the old formula is advantageous to them’ (interview, South African civil servant, 1 April 1996, Pretoria). There is more common ground on the question of institutionalising and democratising SACU. At present, SACU is administered on an informal and ad hoc basis with no permanent secretariat or officials. The other members now complain that they have no power or even influence in the formulation of policies regulating industrial and trade issues. Whilst the conversion of SACU into a formal organisation with some form of permanent secretariat has been supported by all five member states, the contentious issue here rests with the level of autonomy and formal powers to be granted to such authority (as well as its location). In this context, the other countries are demanding an arrangement under which all SACU governments have an equal say in a governing body (see Leistner 1995). It will be some time before the shape of the arrangements between SACU, SADC and external blocs such as the EU 40 are worked out (and no such ‘resolution’ will ever be total or able to contain all the historically derived disputes). But until the SACU renegotiation is settled, implementation of the SADC trade protocol will be impeded.* This account has emphasised that ‘regional integration’ in Southern Africa contains and expresses certain contradictions, vulnerabilities and ‘hauntings’. In turn, these are elements of the wider regional conjuncture that have been well documented by historians – a legacy of profoundly uneven development and the drawn-out and violent struggle for decolonisation in Southern Africa. To these should be added the (congenitally partial and incomplete) nature of the South African transition and a regional and global political economy in which conspicuous consumption, corruption and a certain (neo-liberal) version of ‘development’ are hegemonic.41 Furthermore, in Southern Africa the discourse and practice of integration are (as elsewhere) largely a product of certain factions of the state-elites. This shapes its parameters and much of its substantive content. I have noted already how discourses of integration presuppose sovereignty. Although taken for granted or naturalised in many accounts, the claim by states that they possess something called sovereignty must be continuously reinforced by a set of actions. Actions as diverse as the policing of borders, participation in international forums, recognition, ‘development’ and education all play their role in this social activity. Amongst other things, * Footnote inserted at proof stage: Consensus on the basic principles underlying SACU institutional reform and revenue-sharing was finally reached in September 2000. At the same time, the SADC trade protocol came formally into force. However implementation remains uneven and very slow.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The SADC: sovereign simulations 87 the reviews of the SADC and SACU further indicate the modes whereby formal commitment to, and participation in, ‘integration’ might be read as a part of the set of processes by which sovereignty is confirmed. Recognition of this enables a richer understanding of SADC in particular. Specifically, the way that diplomatic activity (the perfomativity witnessed earlier) aids in the reproduction (or if you prefer, the ‘legitimation’) of the state is striking. The state is made (more) meaningful. Act Three returns to these issues. I have also noted that it is possible to discern a history (or genealogy) of the different formats that integration has taken. The account of the SACU – one of the longest established regional trade formations in the world – indicates how its rhetoric and claim of development evolved from an imperial discourse of trusteeship. A significant feature of this is that the discourse of development – as articulated by SACU after 1969 – proclaims its difference from colonial discourse (i.e. SACU prior to the independence of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland) whilst structurally reproducing many of the relations derived from colonialism. Revealed quite starkly here in the analysis of the SACU, such a strategy has been a much wider feature of discourses of development introduced in Act One. In this respect, I join those, such as Crush (1995), Tapscott (1995) and Worby (2000), who argue that historicising ‘development’ in Southern Africa can cast its claims, ideological occlusions and amnesias into a critical relief. At the least, such a history can remind those who would narrate the story of Southern African integration that it still tends to have a plot from which the mass of the people are excluded.42 Although this remains the case, a form of regional (re)integration is simultaneously taking place in an evident economic sense – even if this is selective and uneven and led by (predominantly) South African capital. In fact it has even been argued that delay in strengthening the institutional framework of the SADC is an active South African tactic: ‘The vacuum in terms of regional institutions has shaped the forms of present integration by accelerating the progress of economic relations and by allowing the leader to delay taking on some of its responsibilities’ (Coussy 1996: 28). As the preceding discussions have suggested, it is a good deal more complex than this. But Coussy touches on an important point, insofar as differences between member states and difficulties in moving forward in the ratification and implementation of protocols are being further reinforced by the ‘mercantalist’ foreign policy praxis of the ‘new’ South Africa. In an analysis in which the author questions those mainstream accounts that ‘euphorically predict a rapid regional renewal based on South African leadership’, Iheduru suggests instead that: a ‘demand-driven’ neo-realist foreign policy and diplomacy is emerging in South Africa. . . . In other words, what the apartheid regime could

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

88

The SADC: sovereign simulations not achieve politically is now increasingly being accomplished through the structural power of South African capital. (1996: 4)

Another deep-seated colonial format is evident. It is worth recalling (as Martin 1990 documented) that the historical form of the Southern African economy – in particular the power exercised from the Johannesburgfocused minerals–energy complex – emerged in part out of the determination of the South African state elite in the 1920s and 1930s to pursue a strategy of regional hegemony in tandem with protective barriers. The failure of South African plans of formal expansion northwards and westwards did not mean that South African trade and commercial expansion and with it the northward march of South African economic and political power was halted. By the 1940s, for the South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts: The more obvious [territorial] objectives – Rhodesia, the South-West [Namibia], the High Commission territories – were not abandoned, but the famous exponent of holistic philosophy seemed prepared patiently to abide the day of their realisation. He was quick to see that the possibilities of informal expansion in the north held out better prospects of returns, without the recriminations which formal extension of boundaries might engender; and by the 1960s his Nationalist opponents would have agreed with him. (Hyam 1972: 184) The eclipse of formal colonialism in Southern Africa leaves only shadows (or spectres) of these moments. Yet today, in the former ‘frontline states’ the perception of economic vulnerability and attendant tensions has been compounded by International Monetary Fund (IMF)-directed and World Bank-supervised structural adjustment. ‘Adjustment’ has opened them to foreign capital to an extent not seen since well before Independence (see Sidaway and Power 1995, 1998; Mistry 1996; Weeks 1996). Whilst this has facilitated new patterns of wealth and conspicuous consumption (amongst elite fractions), the relative, but apparently permanent, subaltern status of the former frontline states vis-à-vis South African and global capital is reinforced. With this comes a complex – but widespread – sense of loss. On the one hand this is a sense of dependency–vulnerability. But there is something more; a feeling of ‘sinking’ and disconnection for the majority. The national-development trajectory announced and celebrated in the lead-up to and aftermath of Independence is no longer credible. James Ferguson’s (1999) account of Expectations of Modernity in Zambia captures this collective subjectivity in its most excessive form. Ferguson offers a study of life in the towns of the Zambian Copperbelt since Independence.

11

11

The SADC: sovereign simulations 89 Zambia’s trajectory (and the Copperbelt therein) can be read (as Angola will be in other terms in Act Three) as symptomatic of an experience of modernity formed in today’s ‘globalising’ economy. For all the forms of new connection and diverse rumours and narratives of ‘integration’ and so on, for many people and places in the contemporary world, the experience is of disconnection and marginality. In presenting the trajectory of Zambia as disconnection, Ferguson does not simply mean a ‘falling’ or ‘dropping’ out of the world economy, for he is mindful of ‘new transnational forms of governmentality’ (NGOs and IMF for example) that have entered Zambia. Instead, he describes a process of ‘sliding’, of ‘abjection’ or being ‘thrown down’. Ferguson compares the Zambia of the early 1960s, on the threshold of post-colonial modernity with Zambia today:

11

111

For many Zambians . . . recent history has been experienced not – as the modernization plot led one to expect – as a process of moving forward or joining up with the world but as a process that has pushed them out of the place in the world they once occupied. The only term I have found to capture this sense of humiliating expulsion is abjection . . . Abjection refers to a process of being thrown aside, expelled or discarded. But its literal meaning also implies not just being thrown out as being thrown down – thus explulsion but also debasement and humiliation. . . . With much talk today of globalization, of new forms of worldwide interconnection, and of yet another ‘emerging’ ‘new world society’, it is useful to consider briefly where Zambia fits in all of this. . . . When the Copperbelt mineworkers expressed their sense of abjection from an imagined world ‘out there’ then, they were not simply lamenting a lack of connection but articulating a specific sense of disconnection, just as they inevitably described their material poverty not simply as lack but as a loss. (Ferguson 1999: 236)

111

What then of Southern African development? And the ‘Community’? It may be tempting in such contexts to describe the SADC as of relative insignificance. But I judge that such a conclusion would be to misread the SADC’s role (for many members) as an apparatus for plugging into and mediating flows of aid capital and for confirming sovereignty in a forum of mutual recognition. Act Three further considers the significance of the SADC’s sovereignty-confirming/conferring role in comparative terms, relating back to how this reformulates understandings of statehood and sovereignty.

111

111

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

The chosen point of departure, in everyday representation: there are works of art, we have them in front of us in representation (Vorstellung). But how are they to be recognized? This is not an abstract and juridical question. At each step, at each example, in the absence of enormous theoretical, juridical, political, etc. protocols, there is a trembling of the limit between the ‘there is’ and the ‘there is not’ ‘work of art’, between a ‘thing’ and a ‘work’ in general. . . . Let’s leave it. What does ‘leave’ [laisser] mean ((laisser) voir [allow to see (or be seen)], (laisser) faire [allow to do (or be done)], voir faire, faire voir, faire faire [cause (something) to be done], leave as a remainder, leave in one’s will), what does ‘leave do?’ etc. (Derrida 1987: 28–29)

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

11

Act Three

Pushing the boundaries/ sovereignty deferred

11

11

111

111

111

111

The object of the critic, then, is to seek not the unity of the work, but the multiplicity and diversity of its possible meanings, its incompleteness, the omissions which it displays but cannot describe, and above all its contradictions. In its absences, and in the collisions between its divergent meanings, the text implicitly criticizes its own ideology; it contains within itself the critique of its own values, in the sense that it is available for a new process of production of meaning by the reader, and in this process it can provide a real knowledge of the limits of ideological representation. (Belsey 1980: 109) analysis of politics in Africa opens the door to a wider reflection on the nature of politics. Yes, banal Africa – exoticism be damned! – leads us to some general questions of methodology. If the majority of phenomena which it has allowed us to see and which taken together serve to typify it, are also found under other skies without none the less being seen as distinctive characteristics of systems of power in Asia, America or Europe, it is perhaps more a matter of degree or proportion. In many respects Africa is a mirror. However distorting it may be, it reflects our own political image and has a lot to teach us about the springs of our western modernity’ (Bayart 1993: 269–270) we are all living on boundaries – vague, indistinct, shifting – between visible and invisible worlds. This might be called a social fact, perhaps the social fact for it goes to the heart of the nature of social being. (Ashforth 1996: 1190) The state needs to be analyzed as . . . a structural effect. That is to say, it should be examined not as an actual structure, but as the powerful metaphysical effect of practices that make such structures appear to exist. (Mitchell 1991: 94) The crisis in Africa is thus also a crisis of representation, of how to represent the fundamental means of sovereignty. (Doty 1996: 148)

1

94

Pushing the boundaries

In an account of creative expression in Arab society, Halim Barakat recalls his novel on the theme of the Arab defeat (in war with Israel) of 5 June 1967: the major protagonist complains about an odd relationship we [Arabs] have with words: ‘We invent them, but in the long run they gain control over us and recreate us as they wish. . . . We become soldiers whose leaders are words’. (Barakat 1993: 206)

1

1

11

11

11

11

The ‘we’ however need not and should not be restricted here to the case of Arab culture. Act Three will reflect in a more sustained way on the production of political ontologies (categorisations such as state, society, community and so on) in discourse. It begins with a return to SADC, but this permits a much broader reflection, first in Africa then beyond. Act Two has indicated some of the ways in which the SADC and SACU are, to a considerable extent, an enterprise of state elites (albeit often with contradictory agendas). This aspect of the SADC has been noted before. For Niemann the SADC is, therefore, in large part reducible to the strategies of what he terms a ‘state class’. He identifies this class as the elite fraction who dominate the state apparatus in most SADC members and who are sometimes in tension or struggle with relatively underdeveloped industrial–commercial bourgeoisie factions: In this light, the SADCC becomes not so much a tool to reverse past dependencies and existing regional ties but a means to achieve external funding for a shopping list of development projects which are basically national in scope. . . . A weak regional organization which acts as a channel for foreign resources without any power to allocate these resources serves the interests of the state class rather well. (Niemann 1991: 297) In a parallel fashion, Tlou describes how the: ‘SADCC’s loose form of cooperation serves to strengthen the state instead of weakening it’ (1991: 56–57). These accounts document some of the ways in which an understanding of the SADC requires moving beyond the terms of its own rhetoric and claims. A similar ambition has informed my account here. At first sight it may also seem to reinforce the realist notion (described in Act One) of regional communities being primarily an expression of sovereign-state interests. However, the evidence in the analysis here also demands and opens the way to an interrogation of the meanings of sovereignty in Southern Africa. In most accounts of integration sovereignty is treated as a foundational, essential, concept. In this view it is sovereignty that is an obstacle to regional integration, and the process of integration requires that sovereignty

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Pushing the boundaries 95 be ‘given up’ or ‘pooled’. Such a view is the one most often articulated by those who write or speak about sovereignty and one of its putative opposites: ‘integration’. In doing so, the authors of such conceptualisations of regional integration presuppose, construct, and rely for their claims and operation on a fixed ahistorical and ageographical concept of sovereignty. In the spirit explored in Act One, we can, however, transcend such formulations. A particularly suggestive way of doing so is through recourse to post-structuralist theorisations such as that of Weber, who argues that sovereignty should be unpacked and retheorised as operating within the logics of simulation. She notes how: In an order of simulation, what a state must do in order to be sovereign is control the simulation of its ‘source’ of sovereign authority and simulate a boundary which marks the range of its legitimate powers and competencies. (Weber 1995: 129) As an example, she cites the way that diplomatic cultures claim to be the sovereign voice of states: Implicit in the notion that diplomats offer justifications to interpretive communities is the assumption that the state for whom the diplomat speaks is also already fully constituted as a sovereign identity. (ibid.: 5) In the closing words of The Order of Things [Les Mots et les choses], Michel Foucault envisages that the problems considered by the sciences of ‘man’ and therefore the modern episteme, might yet fade as quickly as they had formed at the end of the eighteenth century. The new understanding of the human subject that came into view in late eighteenth-century Europe with the developments of linguistics, natural history and political economy: was not the liberation of an old anxiety, the transition into luminous consciousness of an age-old concern, the entry into objectivity of something that had long remained trapped within beliefs and philosophies: it was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. If those arrangements were to disappear as they had appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility – without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises – were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea. (Foucault 1970: 387)

96

Pushing the boundaries

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

Figure 8 Pacific by Yukinori Yanagi. An exhibit at the Tate Modern, London. Reproduced with permission.

We might return to the edge of the sea and play with Foucault’s metaphor in respect of the artwork depicted in Figure 8. Yukinori Yanagi’s Pacific consists (at first glance) of the flags of what, in the terms of the imaginations discussed in Act Two, we have learnt to call the ‘Pacific Basin’ or ‘Asia-Pacific’. These flags are instantly recognisable as familiar signs (or simulations if you prefer) of statehood. On closer observation Yanagi’s flags turn out to be made not from fabric or paint, but to consist of masses of coloured grains of sand in perspex boxes. They are, in other words, effects of carefully crafted combinations of sands. In turn, mirroring the flows that sovereigns must seek to capture, regulate and contain, Yanagi has established colonies of ants amidst the sands, linking the boxes with perspex tubes which allowed the ants to make their homes and to shift grains of sand within and between the containers. The perfection of the sovereign flags is disrupted. Framed on the gallery wall, these Pacific sovereignties are shown to be effects of perspective and their transient motif is foregrounded. Such an act of foregrounding has been pursued here. Let us push it a little further. Returning to Southern Africa and to the case of the SADC, some of whose members (most notably Angola and Mozambique) have recently not been in basic administrative control of all their ‘national’ territory, the way that diplomatic activity frames the reproduction or

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Pushing the boundaries 97 legitimisation of the state is quite striking. Act One described an example of this, noting how that whilst attending a SADC summit, Angolan ministers are uncontested embodiments of the Angolan government’s sovereignty. Act Two added other domains of analysis specifying how technologies of sovereignty are expressed through ‘development’. But within the geopolitical space called Angola, government forces, the insurgent movements of UNITA and FLEC,1 foreign oil companies, mercenaries, and, at various times, Cuban, South African and United Nations peacekeeping troops have all invoked such sovereign authority undermining – or rather fracturing – the capacity for a coherent national project of development. In these fractures there is a reminder of the capillary nature of state-power (and resistances to it). The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapus´cin´ski as witness to Angola’s war therefore describes movement across the space of Angola as a series of encounters with checkpoints and their authority: ‘On important routes where major checkpoints are found, the road is blocked by colorful barriers that can be seen from a distance. But since materials are scarce and improvisation is the rule, others do the best they can. . . . You have to learn to live with the checkpoints and to respect their customs, if you want to travel without hindrance and reach your destination alive. . . . Every encounter with a checkpoint consists of: (a) the explanatory section, (b) bargaining, (c) friendly conversation. You have to drive up to the checkpoint slowly and stop at a decent remove. Any violent braking or squealing of tires constitutes a bad opening; the sentries don’t appreciate such stunts. . . . We stop and wait. There is no one in sight. But the sentries are there. Concealed in the bushes or in a roadside hut, but they are watching us intently. We’re exposed to their gaze and, God forbid, to their fire. At such a moment you can’t show either nervousness or haste, because both will end badly. So we act normal, correct, relaxed: We just wait. Nor will it help to go to the other extreme and mask fear with an artificial casualness, or joke around, show off, or display an exaggerated self-confidence. The sentries might infer that we are treating them lightly and results could be catastrophic. Nor do they like it when travelers put their hands in their pockets, look around, lie down in the shade of nearby trees, or – this is generally considered a crime – themselves set about removing the obstacles from the road . . . people from the checkpoint begin as a rule by saying that they don’t want us to go on and order us to turn back. This is understandable. True, the authority of Luanda is great – but then, doesn’t the checkpoint also constitute authority? And the essence of authority is that it must manifest its power. (Kapus´cin´ski 1988: 45–50)

1

98

Pushing the boundaries

There are parallels with other situations of armed conflict, such as ‘civil war’ in Lebanon. Where, according to Kadir: ‘It is not anarchy that prevails in Lebanon, for there is no absence of authority, but rather a multiplicity of absolute authorities’ (1984: 237). These cases may be read as sympotomatic of the powers of modern statehoods: vision, the power over life and death, authority and regulation. But there is another sense of Angola as a symptom, an indication, diagnostic or manifestation of sovereignty. Thus Salman Rushdie comments on Kapus´cin´ski’s writings in the following terms:

1

1

What kinds of life should we call ‘ordinary’, here in the late twentieth century? What is ‘normal’ in these abnormal days? For many of us, any definition of the quotidian world would still include notions of peace and stability. We would still, perhaps, wish to picture everyday life as rhythmic, based on settled and repeating social patterns. Ryszard Kapus´cin´ski’s work seems to be based on his knowledge that such conventional descriptions of actuality are now so limited in application that they have become, in a way, fictions. (1993: 203)

11

11

11

11

In the first place, nearly forty years of war – Portuguese imperialism, decolonisation, Cold War and South African interventions link the Angolan situation to the West. This is not to say that the latter is thoroughly normal or ordinary by world standards. But the operation of powers (t)here represent certain norms of modernity-statehood, they are not outside, but within these logics and their representative systems. Recognition of this problematises those accounts that emphasise the abnormality or exceptionalism of African statehoods (or of ‘Southern’/Third World/‘Peripheral’ statehood more widely). For rather in the ways that ‘realism’ and functionalism’ came – in the 1960s and 1970s – to frame the majority of accounts of regional communities, so in the 1980s, a discourse of ‘quasistates’ and ‘weak states’ has become the dominant reading of states in Africa.2 And as with realism and functionalism such accounts can be persuasive, but their persuasive rhetoric occludes certain assumptions about objectivity, presence, hierarchy and order. In particular, the notion of failed or weak quasi-states reproduces (and constructs) an ideal type (the Western state) which becomes the ideal type against which others (the rest) are weighed and found wanting. The Western state, scripted as ‘strong’, ‘successful’, ‘real’ is opposed to the ‘weak’ Southern state. In this, the Western state is the taken for granted model, the norm. The Western state is identical with itself, a replica of nothing other than its own model statehood. The Southern state by contrast is compared with the supposed reference point of a Western prototype, albeit as an imperfect (‘weak’) replication of that prototype.

11

11

11

Pushing the boundaries 99 Consider again the vectors of conflict in Zaire/Congo. The trajectory of Zaire has become a favoured topic for diagnoses of African statehood as weak, collapsed, parasitic and so on. However – as Act Two detailed, to the extent that this is so, it is a product not of a lack of Western intervention/presence, but of an excess of a particular form of it – first Belgian colonialism, then Cold War geopolitics and extractive-minerals technology, not to mention Swiss bank accounts.3 This mixture of seen (for example, military, gems, alcohol, weapons, banknotes, documents, flags) and unseen (electronic capital transfers, debts and surpluses in foreign bank accounts, acts of sorcery and activities of spirits) powers enfolds and produces the Zaire/Congo state, or rather the crisis of this state, its representative failures and excesses. Such a richer understanding of territory, violence and power in Zaire/Congo emerges in Filip De Boeck’s (1998) anthropological work in southwestern Zaire (proximate to the Angolan border). In ways that echo Baudrillard’s work about the ‘hyperreality’ of contemporary Western capitalism (in which the old binaries or forms of association between market-state, reality-simulation, production-consumption have become hopelessly mixed up), De Boeck narrates:

111

111

111

111

the circulation of cultural meanings, commodities, money and identities in an increasingly diffuse time-space, in which the standard dichotomies between rural and urban worlds, lived world and system, traditional and modern, or precapitalist and capitalist realities have lost much of their explanatory strength. (1998: 778) Meanwhile however the conventional story of weak/collapsed states reproduces a deep-rooted narrative of the non-West (and Africa in particular) as outside the mainstream of history. Hegel for example, the great theorist of raison d’etat sees that reason as unfolding in Europe. Hegel sees Africa as a different type of society whose lack of civilisational–state–historical spirit renders it outside the mainstream of history (see Power 1998). If we reflect on such oppositions, we see too another continuity, insofar as the agency and presence of the West (at one time in the mode of the ‘civilising mission’) can transform Southern states. Western statehood thus knows itself as real and later as ‘developed’. What is obscured is the process whereby the West is complicit in the production of what are scripted as weak states. Mahmood Mamdani thus points out the consequences of working within such binaries: Of the bipolarity, the lead term – ‘modern’, ‘industrial’, ‘capitalist’, or ‘development’ was accorded both analytical value and universal status. The other was residual. Making little sense without its lead

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

100 Pushing the boundaries twin, it had no independent conceptual existence. The tendency was to understand these experiences as a series of approximations . . . [as] understudies that fell short of the real performance. . . . Whereas the lead term had analytical content, the residual term lacked both an original history and an authentic future. (1996: 9–10, my italics) Mamdani reads a double manoeuvre and loss, for whilst this: tends to caricature the experience summed up as the residual term, it also mythologizes the experience that is the lead term. If the former is rendered ahistorical, the latter is ascribed a suprahistorical trajectory of development, a necessary path whose main line of development is unaffected by struggles along the way. There is a sense in which both are robbed of history. (1996: 10) Working in similar terms, Roxanne Doty has provided perhaps the most thoughtful reflection on this in contemporary political science treatments of African statehood. According to Doty such conceptions: draw upon a whole array of hierarchical oppositions, the most notable being positive sovereignty/negative sovereignty. In an important respect the distinctions entailed in this opposition complicate and enrich our understanding of sovereignty. Sovereignty is not a unitary category with the same basis at all times and in all situations. Rather the norms by which states are constituted as sovereign are subject to change. Still one should question what is entailed in making the distinction between positive and negative sovereignty. This is important because it is not just two different but equally valid bases of sovereign statehood at issue here. Rather it is a question of different kinds of sovereign subjects that constitute international society, and there is a strong implicit suggestion of differential moral value attached to different kinds of subjects. The two different bases of sovereignty apply to different kinds of international identities and are indeed implicated in the very construction of those identities. When they are placed in historical context, the positive sovereignty/negative sovereignty opposition and the other oppositions that support it bear remarkable resemblances to earlier differentiations that prepared the way for various imperial practices. (1996: 149–150)

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Pushing the boundaries 101 Moreover: They thus disallow the possibility that rather than being independent and autonomous entities, these oppositions are mutually constitutive of each other. Their production as separate and unconnected realms requires constant work of differentiation and naturalization. (ibid.: 162) In these senses the SADC should not be seen as some ‘exotic’ African anomaly, but rather as revealing in a particularly stark form how institutions and discourses of integration tend to operate and how they relate to the inscription of state powers. In the introduction I noted how a number of accounts have seen the (re)emergence of regionalism as some kind of response to globalisation. It is certainly necessary to see it as locked into the contradictory logics of the ‘global’. But we need to move beyond this important point. Although taken for granted or naturalised in many accounts, the claim by states that they possess something called sovereignty must be continuously reinforced by a set of actions. Acts as diverse as the policing of borders, participation in international forums, recognition, ‘development’, and education all play their role in this social activity.4 As Biersteker and Weber remind us: The modern state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the production of a normative conception that links authority, territory, population (society, nation), and recognition in a unique way and in a particular place (the state). Attempting to realize this ideal entails a great deal of hard work on the part of statespersons, diplomats, and intellectuals: to establish and police practices consistent with the ideal, its components and links between them; to delegitimate and quash challenges or threats; and to paper over persistent anomalies. . . . The ideal of state sovereignty is a product of the actions of powerful agents and the resistances to those actions by those located at the margins of power. (1996: 3) The experience of the SADC indicates that a formal commitment to and participation in ‘integration’ should also be read as a part of this set of processes by which sovereignty is confirmed – albeit with its own ‘resistances at the margins’. Acknowledgement and recognition of this fact is not to negate the good intentions and accomplishments of many who work for the SADC’s formal aims, nor is it to forget the real (and frequently heroic) struggles in which the condition of sovereign independence has been achieved for Southern African states against a deeply entrenched and determined white colonial ‘settler’ power. Nor is this the only story.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

102 Pushing the boundaries For, as we have traced in Act Two, the SADC is subject to contradictory interpretations. However, we can best make sense of these through grasping the way that the Community has operated as one of an array of means of confirmation or construction of sovereign power (an effect of power which in turn articulates with and merges into other economic, social, and cultural expressions of power). Although the historically recent experiences of colonialism and apartheid and the contemporary reality of relative marginality in the world system have given all this a certain Southern African specificity, in respect of the SADC’s (sovereignty) confirming and conferring role, we can learn from Southern African experience when we start to think critically about other imagined regional communities. In this sense too the wider study and theorisation of regional integration escapes its orthodox past and links with other critical work in political geography and international relations, in which we seek to understand the social constructions of sovereignty.5 Certainly, once simple notions that governance and its (sometimes) ugly partner of sovereignty are invariably, eternally, or consistently tied to states which in turn are in (straightforward) tension with global connections or regional communities are rejected, we open the ways to some more fertile theorisations and alternative understandings. This must work across and – as has been noted – problematise conventional designations of ‘developed’, ‘developing’, ‘North’ and ‘South’. I will close here with two brief conclusions. First, in the spirit of openings and alternatives, this book has sought to explore how regional communities (and therefore state-diplomacy) operate in and take their forms in a system of representation. This system is part of a wider episteme that began to form around four hundred years ago, crystallised in the late eighteenth century and appears to have reached its culmination in the twentieth century. Such an unfolding was not a natural or uncontested process. Colonialism was a key part of this unfolding. Later, in the context a new array of global power, colonial ideology was transposed into visions of ‘Development’. In terms of states however, it has produced a universal (though uneven in form) landscape of sovereignties. A productive way of conceptualising these is to think of a ‘sovereigntyscape’6 analogous to perspectival images (landscape, painting, photography and later cinema). Such a technology of representation is obligated to have (it both produces and requires) a seeing subject. That subject is reproduced by his or her relationship to the image and the image can only assume meaning via viewing subjects. Moreover all this operates within a practical notion of ‘perspective’ (subject and object, transparent representation and so on) which, though historically specific, becomes taken for granted as quotidian reality. Tim Luke thus comments: The sovereign agencies of the state – king, republican assembly, or bureaucracy – stand apart in those linear spaces as an author, who

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Pushing the boundaries 103 adopts and exercises a ‘fixed point of view’ in its narratives of discipline and domination. Within such typographic fields, the state can be seen as a scribe or draftsman, scrolling power across its subjects as objects through discourses of visually-anchored classification. (1991: 13) Stephen Heath explains that the system of representation based on codes of perspective (known also as Quattrocento) was introduced in the early years of the fifteenth century in what we now call Italy (above all developing in Florence): What is fundamental is the idea of the spectator at a window, an ‘aperta finestra’ that gives a view on the world – framed, centered, harmonious (the ‘istoria’) . . . the Quattrocento system provides a practical representation of the world which in time appears so natural as to offer its real representation, the immediate translation of reality in itself. The conception of the Quattrocentro system is that of a scenographic space, space set out as spectacle for the eye of a spectator. Eye and knowledge come together, subject, object and distance of the steady observation that allows the one to master the other: the scene with the sense of geometry and optics. . . . The public has come to believe that geometrical perspective, so long as it does not involve unfamiliar points of view is true. (Heath 1976: 76–77) Yet if the state operates within an analogous operation of subject–object, it is in its performance (of the diplomatic mode for example) more like cinematic space than that of the photograph, landscape or painting. ‘The [cinematic] camera’, according to Benjamin, ‘introduces us to unconscious optics as does pyschoanalysis to unconscious impulses’ (1968: 237). As this famous essay by Walter Benjamin (originally published 1936) on ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ describes, cinema consists of an advance in technologies of representation. Although it offered some new ways of seeing, movies (‘moving pictures’) must operate broadly within the same epistemology as photography and perspectival painting. Perhaps the main point of departure is that cinema (rather like theatre) cannot fully efface the signs of its production (in the way that a painting or photograph more often can). Instead it must contain them through certain conventions (exit stage right, enter stage left, the rectangular framing of the horizon, panning the camera in ways that simulate the rotation of a head and so on). Consider Heath’s analysis of this in cinema: Classical cinema does not efface the signs of production, it contains them. . . . It is that process that is the action of the film for the spectator

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

104 Pushing the boundaries – what counts is as much the representation as the represented, is as much the production as the product. Nor is there anything surprising in this: film is not a static and isolated object but a series of relations with the spectator it imagines, plays and sets as subject in its movement. (1976: 97) The state is similarly a process of representation in motion, containing certain signs of its simulated or produced identity, but in this processes rendering itself a credible, meaningful narrative for its subjects. In order to understand this process of representation in motion, theoreticans of cinema have developed the concept of suture. Although suture has been most systematically theorised in relation to cinema, the initial formulation comes from Jacques-Alain Miller, an associate of Lacan. Suture thus names the relation of the subject to chains of its discourse, its standing in for discourse, its taking the place of discourse. For cinematic studies, suture describes the syntax of film, the sewing-together of images and movement into a continuous sequence of meanings. The narrative proceeds and acts upon the spectator only through the revelation (the unfolding and constant imitation) of something that has not yet been revealed in full. In other words, it relies upon the inscription of lack. Again in Heath’s terms: the work of classical [cinematic and sovereign] continuity is not to hide or ignore off-screen space [‘outside’] but, on the contrary, to contain it, to regularise its fluctuations in a constant movement of reappropriation. It is this movement that defines the rules of continuity and the fiction of space [‘inside’] they serve to construct, the whole functioning according to a kind of metonymic lock in which off-screen space becomes on-screen space and is replaced in turn by the space it holds off, each joining over the next. The join is conventional and ruthlessly selective (it generally leaves out of account, for example, the space that might be supposed to be masked at the top and bottom of the frame, concentrating much more on the space at the sides of the frame or on that ‘in front’, ‘behind the camera’, as in variations of field/reverse field), and demands that the off-screen space recaptured must be ‘called for’ must be ‘logically consequential’, must arrive as ‘answer’, ‘fulfillment of promise’ or whatever (and not as difference or contradiction) – must be narrativised. (1976: 91–92) This is never-ending, since the viewing subject’s ‘constructionreconstruction has always to be renewed’ (ibid.: 99). In other words, what appears as cinema is the effect of this incessant renewal, of the ceaseless

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Pushing the boundaries 105 discursive movements that produce the subjectivity of the spectator. For our purpose here – that of an alternative understanding of sovereign imaginaries, there is a commonality and complementarity with those theorisations of the state and ideology (notably Althusser’s writings) that build on Lacan. What is common here is that neither the state apparatus nor the film’s signifying systems can be considered apart from the human subjects constructed by signifying systems (be they of cinema or state apparatus). Amongst the most influential texts exploring such insights for film theory has been Christian Metz’s (1977) The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Revisiting The Imaginary Signifier, Linda Williams notes that: Previous film theory had not been able to explain adequately the specificity of the film medium without going overboard in its claims to ‘capture’ or reproduce reality. What Metz’s Lacanian-inflected theory offered was a new definition of the ephemeral but powerful pleasures of a medium. For example, in his definition of cinema’s ‘imaginary signifier’, the cinematic image is defined paradoxically as both more real and less real – more real in its unprecedented ‘perceptual wealth’, less real in the fact that what we perceive is never really present with us as we gaze upon it – hence the very term ‘imaginary signifier’. (1992: 18) More of Lacan and psychoanalytic theory in a moment. Here we shall note that through such critical reframes, other visions and perspectives are possible on sovereignty–statehood. In its examination of regional communities (and diplomatic manœuvre therein), this book has ‘focused’ in a critical light on specialised apparatus and sites where states are produced (represented–simulated–preformed–imagined). In particular, it has presented the ‘drawn-out’ ways in which the production of states takes place in regional communities operating as fora of mutual recognition. In this context of recognition, there is scope to bring to bear further insights from psychoanalytical work. On one level, psychoanalysis has already long been present in the form of its influences on the forms of semiotics and Marxism (notably again that of Althusser) applied here and in Acts One and Two. But here I will apply two classic papers of the psychoanalytic cannon. These suggest further lines of analysis of diplomatic fora and statehoods. First, we might explore the thought that what is seen in a diplomatic forum or rather what is shown by the state (or statesperson) is an act, classically analysed by Joan Riviere (1929) as a Masquerade. Riviere understands the contradictory behaviour of a woman patient who reacts to patriarchal structures to play male and female roles (in professional and ‘personal’ life) as enactment of masquerade. The subject performs

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

106 Pushing the boundaries femininity. For Riviere, there is no straightforward pregiven category of female subjectivity. In the best known lines of this influential work, Riviere argues that her patient is divided because: ‘there is no absolute femininity beneath the veil, only a set of ontologically tenuous codes that normatively induct the female subject into the social practice of “being” woman through mimesis and parroting’ (1929: 313). Neither is there an absolute state, or rather the masque of state is of signifiers and acts that fill in the void of an originally missing representation. Riviere anticipates (or rather is reiterated) in Lacan who extends this line of analysis to the absence of sexual relationships. For my purposes here, the most suggestive reading of Lacan is that by Slavoj Zizˇek: Lacan’s thesis that ‘there is no sexual relationship’ means precisely that the structure of the ‘real’ sexual act . . . is already inherently phantasmic – the ‘real’ body of the other serves only as support for phantasmic projections. (1994: 1–2) If therefore, the state is consummated only in its relationship with the symbolic order of recognition by other states (or community), that act is a similar embodiment of fantasy. Recalling the way that Derrida (introduced here in Act Two) has bought ‘specters’ into political-theoretical analysis, Zizˇek continues with: this elusive pseudo-reality that subverts the classic ontological oppositions of reality and illusion . . . in the fact that there is no reality without the spectre, that the circle of reality can only ever be closed by means of an uncanny spectral supplement. Why, then is there no reality without the spectre? Lacan provides a precise answer to this question: (what we experience as) reality is not the ‘thing itself’, it is always-already symbolized, constituted, structured by symbolic mechanisms – and the problem resides in the fact that symbolization ultimately always fails, that it never succeeds in fully ‘covering’ the real, that it always involves some unsettled, unredeemed symbolic debt’. (ibid.) For Zizˇek, this gap is the space opened up for performance as ‘the attempt to conjure the real’, and thereby to entrap other subjects into symbolic obligations. In this way, the illusions of reality (read statehood) are confirmed through shared conventions. For states that performance includes the spaces of community, diplomacy and inter-state negotiations as part of a will to be (desire to be) complete. Lacan utilises the moment of a child’s recognition of their image in a mirror (the famous mirror stage) to explore the way that the developing subject recognises itself as divided.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Pushing the boundaries 107 The child sees itself reflected, its subjectivity (selfhood) obviously rendered as real in the reflection. But at the same time, that subject recognises a certain limit insofar as that image may also become a mere object for others. For Lacan: ‘You never look at me from this place I see you’ (1977: 103). The result is a struggle to recreate a sense of unity, a unified subject sought by all kinds of ruses, masquerades, manipulations, delusions, but always elusively just beyond reach. Like that of the individual therefore, the real ‘sovereign subject’ of state is thereby defined simultaneously by reflections and codes over which it has no real control as well as seeking to manipulate and regulate them. As they seek to square (and seal) the circle of recognition, sovereigns, subjects and communities become surfaces of reflection and vision – seeing and seen. Reading Lacan, Catherine Ingraham notes how: The mirror is both a narcissistic apparatus for capturing the self and, simultaneously, an apparatus for the inversion and distancing of the self through reflective imaging. As a psychoanalytic metaphor, the mirror functions as an emblem of the simultaneous formation and alienation of identity. As a spatial apparatus, the mirror institutes the problem of space, and its resultant subject/object confusions . . . the shifting spatial and supplemental relationships. (1995: 154) Such confusions and relationships are the substance – the matériel – of statehood. These matériaux are productive, through them the state se matérialiser (makes itself), always a moment away from an action of mater (to dominate). Therefore the state, like the subject, is not an essence or a content, but a discontinuity in the apparent continuity of world, language and relations. The state is also fantastic – an object of fetish and fantasy. But no less real for that: Psychoanalysis deconstructs the positivist dichotomy in which fantasy is seen as an inconsequential addendum to ‘reality’. It reveals the supposedly marginal operations of fantasy to be constitutive of our identity, and to be at the centre of all our perceptions, beliefs and actions. There is no possible state of unambiguous and self-possessed lucidity in which the external world is seen for, and known as, simply what it is. . . . Psychoanalysis, then contradicts the popular belief that fantasies are nothing but wishful scenarios in which a simple subject gains a simple object denied to it in ‘real life’. Fantasy is a complex articulation of both the subject and its unconscious desire in a shifting field of wishes and defences. (Burgin 1992: 87)

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

108 Pushing the boundaries Finally and more specific to the lessons of our investigation here of the SADC, there is a poise to be struck here between the (im)possibility of transcending approaches derived from Western thought and categorisations and the need for a (mis)recognition of the specificity of African politics.7 Thus Mahmood Mamdani is wary of: ‘The swing from the exotic to the banal (“Yes, banal Africa – exoticism be damned!”) is from one extreme to another, from seeing the flow of events in Africa as exceptional to the general form of world history’ (1996: 294). On an analytical plane we are to some extent trapped – as Derrida diagnoses – in European sciences which happen to work within the system of knowledge and representation that have been examined here. Inside therefore: ‘Western thought, the thought whose destiny is to extend its domains while the boundaries of the West are drawn back’ (Derrida 1978: 282). Derrida considers ethnology as a symptomatic of human sciences framed by recent decolonisation, but inevitably retaining ‘the premises of ethnocentrism’: Consequently, whether he [sic] wants to or not – and this does not depend on a decision on his part – the ethnologist accepts into his discourse the premises of ethnocentrism at the very moment when he denounces them. This necessity is irreducible; it is not a historical contingency. We ought to consider all its implications very carefully. But if no one can escape this necessity, and if no one is therefore responsible for giving in to it, however little he may do so, this does not mean that all the ways of giving in to it are of equal pertinence. The quality and fecundity of a discourse are perhaps measured by the critical rigour with which this relation to the history of metaphysics and to inherited concepts is thought. Here it is a question both of a critical relation to the language of the social sciences and a critical responsibility of the discourse itself. It is a question of explicitly and systematically posing the problem of the status of a discourse which borrows from a heritage the resources necessary for the deconstruction of that heritage itself. A problem of economy and strategy. (Derrida 1978: 282) Where then does this ‘lead’ (or perhaps ‘leave’) the issue of theorising regional communities? The introduction explained how no single theorisation provides sufficient account of all regional communities. Moreover, the anti-essentialist stance of this account of regional communities has repeatedly stressed the discursive constitution – the ‘imagination’ and production of regional communities. In this light, it is not simply the case that states are fading in relative importance, nor of new levels or networks of governance. Neither the state, nor the community, the regional level,

Pushing the boundaries 109

11

the network or other ‘constituent’ elements that go into the making of them, for example society, class or ethnicity are a priori. This is not to deny that these are useful categories of analysis or in a sense real. Writing about ‘the dialectics of modernity’ on the colonial frontier of South Africa, Jean and John Comaroff describe the power to categorise that is mediated through (and at the same time productive of) the colonial state and its subjects. In colonial discourse, these subjects are envisaged as lacking characteristics that the colonial state can deliver unto them. Thereby:

11

Here in short was a world of virtual realities, a world in which things existed primarily by recognition of their nonbeing. To those who lived within that world, however, its realities were far from virtual. Indeed, they were made real enough to become the basis of self-constructed, assertive identity, a charter for a different history, another form of sovereignty. (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997: 395)

11

111

Related categorisations and abstractions have formed domains of analysis and meaning here. But throughout, the reality has not been understood as ‘given’ in the categories, but as rendered in discourse. One of the most suggestive explorations of this is produced by Herbert Gottweis who explores the current proliferation of theories, in particular accounts of the mode and scale of ‘governance’ held to be characteristic of one of the longest established and ‘deepest’ of regional communities: ‘the political space of EC governance . . . can be better described in terms of a field of political intertextuality rather than in the decisive language of “the state” versus the “supranational” ’ (Gottweis 1999: 61). Moreover, the actors, agents and structures depend upon discursive conditions that make them substantial and possible:

111

111

111

instead of seeking to identify the ‘true nature’ of actors and structures and their interactions in politics, we should rather conceptualise actors and structures as effects of discursive practices. As a result, we should focus on how these effects are produced, rather than assuming their existence. . . . Following this constructivist perspective, governance can be conceptualised as an ‘empty space’ until demarcated and partitioned in boundary-drawing struggles which, for example, determine who has the right to participate in a policy-making process and who does not. . . . There ‘is’ no such thing as ‘society’ or ‘politics’, or ‘the European Community’ which constitutes a totality and as such is linked together or ‘sutured’, to form a unity of some kind and capable of ‘interactions’, such as between the ‘European Community’ and a ‘member state’. Rather, social, economic, and political ‘reality’ are constructions made possible through spoken or written practices. . . .

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

110 Pushing the boundaries From this standpoint, EC governance can be thought of as a contested process of introducing organisation and order into an unstable discursive environment. Regimes of governance are locations where people, individuals, nature and artefacts are transformed into objects of interventions and become ‘governable’. (ibid.: 62–63, my italics) Though always tentative, never final, such practices and the selection of ‘economy’ and ‘strategy’ bought to bear in understanding them are also (and, dare I say, in essence) unresolved ethical and political questions.

11

Epilogue

11

11

111

111

111

111

Why could Javanese patriots declare an independent Republic of all of Indonesia in 1945, whereas their Vietnamese counterparts settled for just Vietnam?. . . The Vietnamese and the Javanese had formed the cornerstones in the French and the Dutch colonial projects, but in 1945 only the space created by the Dutch served as a valid framework for the emergence of an independent nation. Rather than seeing an Indochinese Republic on the map today, we have grown accustomed to the thin, S-like Vietnam. Its reality seems self-evident and ‘natural’, whereas the idea of an Indochinese nation seems somehow artificial and unreal. (Goscha 1996: 93) the choice of a word is first an ensemble – a structural ensemble, of course – of exclusions. To know why one says ‘structure’ is to know why one no longer wishes to say eidos, ‘essence’, form, Gestalt, ‘ensemble’, ‘composition’, ‘complex’, ‘construction’, ‘correlation’, ‘totality’, ‘Idea’, ‘organism’, ‘state’, ‘system’, etc. One must understand not only why each of these words showed itself to be insufficient but also why the notion of structure continues to borrow some implicit signification from them and to be inhabited by them. (Derrida 1978: 301 n. 2)

The manuscript (or exclusions) of Imagined Regional Communities bearing an account of the entangled (un)reality of other national–sovereign and transnational imaginaries was prepared in the English Midlands, whilst I was based at the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences of the University of Birmingham. Imagined Regional Communities owes much to discussions over the past few years with colleagues and postgraduate students there. At Birmingham, I have been fortunate to be amongst peers who value both theoretical critique and digress and the displacement of ‘field-work’ with its attendant and productive disorientations. With electromagnetic and printed versions of the ‘finished’1 manuscript safely deposited at the London offices of Routledge (so that it could enter into

1

1

1

11

112 Epilogue ‘production’ as it is called), I moved to the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore.2 Whilst the proofs of the book were typeset in England, I was faced with describing ‘Europe’ and other projects of integration in Africa and the Americas to curious Singaporean undergraduates. In class we often resorted to contrasts and comparisons with the more familiar modernities and sovereignty-projects of what they too have learned to call Southeast Asia. Although tainted by crisis since 1997, the longer-term and tangible success of selected ‘Asian’ modernities (epitomised by Singapore, but emulated and imitated throughout the region and beyond) appears to mark the region as distinctive. Yet beneath the veneers, Yao Souchou characterises virtually all Southeast Asian modernities, including Singapore, as operating within an ideological model of permanent crisis. According to Souchou, in Southeast Asia: While the terrifying scenario of [potential] societal chaos may belong to the common social imaginary, it is also repeatedly featured in the official pronouncements of the state. Ideologically, the preservation of ‘societal peace’ has been singularly emphasized by the state as the primary political objective for providing conditions for the achievement of individual happiness and national prosperity. And the state’s magic in the delivery of personal and national happiness cannot be realized without a significant degree of fantasy. . . . The ‘reality’ of national crisis in Southeast Asia is a classic example of what Zizˇek has called ‘the fetishistic supplement’ of the real. . . . The specteral supplement of ‘the real’ is crucial in understanding the other side of the dialectics of state power in Southeast Asia: its vulnerability and perceived danger of collapse. (Souchou 2001: 11–12)

11

11

11

In other words, these modernities are distinctive not so much for their ‘Asian values’, cultural–capital networks, or ‘miracles’ of economic development, but for the mode and depth of their articulations of a fantasy/ nightmare of collapse and overcoming, something which lends them urgency and vision and which repeatedly blurs the apparent distinctions between the (historical) real and (ideological) illusion. This spectre of past, present and potential chaos lurks just behind the ideological scenes and has animated Southeast Asian sovereignties and regionalism. But other apparitions still resonate. The largest sovereign-power in what had then only recently been named as Southeast Asia was also the site of the 1955 Bandung conference. Inside what is now a dusty Museum Konperensi (Conference Museum) in this former colonial garrison town and administrative centre, an emerging Third World and Afro-Asian solidarity was proclaimed and a new project of post-colonial sovereignty enacted. At

11

11

11

Epilogue

113

Bandung, Sukarno, Nasser, Chou En-Lai, Ho Chi Minh and leaders of national liberation movements from across Asia and Africa assembled. A former colonial space became a site of insurgent Third World liberation, for the conference took place in what was once a meeting hall for colonial Dutch associations. Bandung resonated across the world, and a promising Third Worldist Afro-Asian imaginary was articulated, demanding a space for African, Asian and Caribbean liberation-independence in a time of lingering colonialism and hastening Cold War.3 In an account of post-colonial writings and politics, David Scott thus writes of the: historical form of the nation-statehood problematic that emerged as an ideological and political project with the nationalist movements for political independence across South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and for which the great conference at Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955, is iconic. Scott goes on to note that ‘Bandung’ became part of an era characterised by:

111 the anti-imperialist critique of political, economic, and cultural dependence on the West, and . . . the articulation of the demand for self-reliant self determination and nonaligned Third World solidarity. (Scott 1999: 221)

111

This ‘Bandung age’ with its heroism, achievements, tragedies and illusions may now be fading. As Act One began to rehearse and as the subsequent detours, digressions and tangents of Imagined Regional Communities have narrated, radical currents and claims endure and continue to circulate. But today, transformed relations of exchange and representation have also come into (or reframed) the picture, under the names of ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘globalisation’. Many observers detect a wavering or dislodging of sovereignty in their wake. According therefore to Scott:

111

The point is that in a quite remarkable sea change the Bandung era has passed. The 1980s witnessed its collapse. The Bandung experiments have collapsed, partly under internal pressures and partly under the weight of World Bank ‘structural adjustment’ programs, but all within a new alignment of global forces that have removed them from the field of possible contemporary options. And now, collapsed too are those regimes that gave these experiments political cover throughout the antagonistic years of the cold war. However, our postcolonial present is altered not only by the fact of the collapse of the noncapitalist

111

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

114 Epilogue experiments in the Third World or of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but also by the fact of a resurgent liberalism that has stepped onto the stage to claim for itself a victory, to claim in fact that it constitutes our only possible future. (1999: 144–145) What remains in the aftermaths of sovereignty? Are today’s regional communities any more or less tangible than the political projects of postcolonial sovereign statehood (and what later became South–South solidarity) formulated in the Bandung era? Let us reiterate the problematic that has occupied Imagined Regional Communities. The point has not been the reality or otherwise of sovereignties and regional communities and their claims, however rewarding, interesting and diverting this question may be. The point is by what procedures, on whose stages and by what calculations are they rendered real (credible) or unreal (incredible)? And what are the consequences of including/excluding particular objectifications, conjurings and imaginaries from the accounts? James D. Sidaway Singapore, August 2001

11

Notes

11

11

111

111

111

111

Preface and acknowledgements 1

In this respect, I have found recent work by Nigel Thrift (2000a, 2000b) to be richly suggestive. Among Thrift’s inspirations are a vintage set of texts (from the Soviet Union of the 1920s; the last creative moment in Soviet Marxism before Stalin wiped out heterodoxy) attributed to Mikhail Bakhtin, Pavel Medvedov and Nikolaevich Voloshinove. These Marxist notions of language are very different to what has often passed under the name of Marxism, notably visions of ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ that prevailed in Stalinism and exerted a wider straight-jacket for a long time. As Raymond Williams notes: A tragic element in this history is that such theories had been profoundly opposed in the 1920s in Leningrad, where the beginnings of a school of Marxist linguistics, of a significant kind, has in fact emerged. It is best represented in the work of Volosˆinov, whose Marxism and the Philosophy of Language appeared, in two editions, in 1929 and 1930. . . . Sometime in the 1930s Volosˆinov disappeared. Nearly half a century was then lost, in real terms, in the development of this exceptionally important realignment of the argument. (1977: 35) Once Stalinism had ‘liquidated’ these debates from the USSR, a number of Soviet exiles and Czech intellectuals continued the critical tradition in Prague. I have approached all these via the accessible collection edited by Pam Morris (1998). Keith Moxey’s (1994) use of these and other (including ‘Prague School’) theorists to develop art critique has also been useful. Blau’s (1992), Constantinidi’s (1993) and Melrose’s (1994) accounts of the modes of interchange between radical theatre/drama and political and theoretical writings of Marx, Foucault, Derrida and others have also been a source of inspiration. For recent considerations of performance in writing geography, see Thrift and Dewsbury (2000) and subsequent papers.

Act One: Introducing the plot and cast 1 For example, historians reviewing the founding moments of the ECSC and the EEC have argued that these communities should be understood primarily as instruments for realising national (state) interests (Milward 1984, 1992; Milward and Sorensen 1993). More widely however, realist visions of International Relations may be read in part as Cold War formalisations of rules and approaches to diplomacy that operated in nineteenth century Europe (Guzzini 1998).

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

116 Notes 2 Given the magnitude and excess associated with it, I mostly avoid this term. However it cannot be banished entirely and I read it here as a geographical imagination that stresses connection and movement on a world scale. This meaning of ‘global’ has more or less displaced prior meanings of the term as a complete assembly of objects. 3 Cooper had previously written a longer essay on ‘The post-modern state and the world order’ which was published by the British ‘think-tank’ Demos. For a laudatory review of this, see the Economist, whose anonymous reviewer entitles his article about Cooper’s pamphlet (under the rubric of ‘foreign policy’) ‘Not quite a new world order, more a three-way split’ (The Economist 1997). 4 Van der Pijl focuses on what he terms the Rhodes-Milner group (individuals and alliances around Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner, respectively financier/ imperialist and British High Commissioner during the South African (‘Boer’) wars). 5 Imagined Regional Communities by no means exhausts these. A fuller treatment would require consideration of debates about ‘culture’ as a mode of constructing difference/identity of regional communities. For a survey of such debates with reference to integration in Europe and Pacific Asia, see Wesley (1997). 6 The introductory chapters to Gibb and Michalak (1994), Fawcett and Hurrell (1995) and Mansfield and Milner (1997) may usefully be consulted for guides. Two undergraduate geography texts have good sections on regionalism which touch on some of the theoretical literatures, see the chapter by Brook (1995) and associated readings in a text produced for an Open University course, and at a more basic level, Chapter 11 in Knox and Agnew (1998). A more detailed survey may be found in the recently published four volume set on International Economic Integration edited by Jovanovic (1998) which runs to 2,966 pages! 7 For general critical understandings of development as discourse, I have been informed by Sachs (1992), Slater (1993), Crush (1995), Escobar (1995) Rahnema and Bawtree (1997), and Rist (1997). 8 In addition, to the material on the discourse of development cited above, there is an excellent account of the emergence of the Third World in Open University, Third World Studies Course Team (1983) whose account stands well almost two decades on. Though events have overtaken it, Chaliand (1977) provides a compelling narrative of Third Worldism in revolutionary guise. On cartels, South–South links and so on, I am guided by the account in Edwards (1985). 9 Although the geopolitical designations of ‘South-East Asia’ and the ‘Middle East’ may appear common-sense and deeply-rooted, they are recent inventions. On the former, Benedict Anderson notes that: As a meaningful imaginary, it has had very short life, shorter than my own. Not surprisingly, its naming came from outside, and even today very few among the almost 500 million should inhabiting its roughly 1,750,000 square miles of land (to say nothing of water), ever think of themselves as ‘Southeast Asians’. The older Chinese concept nan-yang referred vaguely to a ‘southern’ region to be reached by sea. Its later Japanese derivation, nampó, stretched out broadly and elastically into what the Americans would call the Southwest Pacific. Southeast Asia, as such, emerged as a significant political term only in the summer of 1943 with the creation of Louis Mountbatten’s SouthEast Asia Command, an offshoot of the more traditional India Command. But this command was based in Kandy, and its territorial responsibilities included both Ceylon and the Raj’s Northeast Frontier (neither in ‘Southeast Asia’ today) and excluded the Netherlands Indies (till July 1945), as well as the Philippines. Yet the naming was clearly a response to the fact that for the first time in history a single power – that of Hirohito’s armies –

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Notes 117 effectively controlled the entire stretch between British Burma and the Hispano-American Philippines. (1998: 3) The term ‘Middle East’ has a similar vintage. As I have noted elsewhere: though it may be traced back as a label used by the British India Office since the middle of the 19th century . . . it entered popular discourse more recently via the writings of the American geopolitician Alfred Mahan; who in his 1902 geopolitical text on seapower, scripted the region around the Gulf as neither ‘Near East’ nor ‘Far East’. (Sidaway 1994: 357) Blake and Drysdale describe how the term became much more familiar in the United States and Western Europe during the Second World War: ‘when both the British and the Allied headquarters in Cairo – known as HQ Middle East – covered large parts of northern and eastern Africa as well as Iran, Turkey, and all the Arab states east of the Suez canal (1985: 11). Today, although few see themselves foremost as Southeast Asians or of the Middle East, the terms do circulate in the designated regions (as well of course much more widely) and in Asia have entered state discourse as in the ASEAN. ‘Latin America’ as a designation has a longer vintage and has entered discourse and patterns of self-identification there. However as a coherent object of study, it has been shaped by the US geopolitical imagination, particularly since 1945 (see Berger 1995). 10 It is notable that the term ‘European’ seems to have been first most commonly used as a designation of white settlers or administrators in the colonial empires. Whilst not identical with the post-1945 (or indeed earlier) notions of European identity and citizenship as an expression of continental unity, these have been indelibly marked by the prior colonial renditions of ‘European’. 11 Both superpowers claimed to be anti-imperialist, asserting their difference from the old European powers, whilst accusing each other of practising imperialism. It is not difficult to deconstruct such discourses, indicating that both Soviet and American rhetorics were based on dubious assertions and debatable claims. Nevertheless at certain rhetorical and material levels superpower antipathy towards the old European imperialisms was a decisive feature of world politics after 1945. 12 For other readings of the Cold War see Buck-Morss (2000). See too the short but suggestive essay by Tyler May (1989) and Stephanson (1997) for another rich essay that resists the tendency to reduce the story of Cold War to a single narrative. As he notes: Typically, moreover, the obvious end is retrospectively inscribed in the beginning and in the whole nature of the period so as to allow its history to be rewritten as an ‘explanation’ of the obvious. Meanwhile other possible periodizations are barred or simply subsumed, periodizations, say, in terms of ‘decolonization,’ the economic rise of Japan and Germany’ or ‘the universalization of the European model of the nation-state’. . . . Yet the picture to be completed always seems to expand and indeed always will. There is no final or pristine cold war in the archives, or anywhere else for that matter, waiting to be discovered or uncovered. (Stephanson 1997: 62–63)

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

118 Notes 13 The terms ‘liberal’ and liberal ‘technology of government’ (Foucault 2000a: 74) have a complex genealogy whose full ambiguity is intentionally invoked here. ‘Liberal’ here signifies economic liberalism around a more or less Keynesian frame (and therefore not quite equivalent with more recent neo-liberalism), but which could frequently be highly interventionist and illiberal both in consequence and policy. On visions and genealogies of liberal politics see Rose (1999). 14 I draw a vision of this space from the detailed analysis by Arrighi (1994), whose historical sociology will be cited in the main text. Gilpin (1987) is also useful, although his ‘structural realism’ seeks to retain the security of ‘national/state’ categories. 15 For a short rendition of ‘orthodox’ versus ‘revisionist’ histories of Cold War, see Chapter 4 in Crockatt (1995). This may usefully be compared with Chapter 2 in Halliday (1986). 16 See Brown (1950) for an account from the moment when all this was in formation, published more or less at the nadir of US hegemony, but at a time when the Cold War was looming large and the limits to that hegemony were starkly clear. See Grimwade (1996) for the subsequent evolution of theoretical and policy issues governing trade and the GATT up to the creation of the WTO. 17 For a comprehensive history of United States policy toward European integration, see Lundestad’s ‘Empire’ by Integration (1988). 18 On the Nazi discourse of panregions, see O’Loughlin and van der Wusten (1990). 19 On this, see too Elizabeth Burns’ (1972) classic study of convention in theatre and everyday life and Erving Goffman (1959) on the presentation of the self in everyday life. The banal domestic/suburban spaces produced as the ‘backdrop’ to the Atlantic–American Fordism whose emergence was described earlier, also had a new theatrical quality. The suburb became a metaphor for a way of life. According to Lynn Spiegel: ‘mass-produced suburbs were modelled on notions of everyday life as a form of theatre, a stage on which to play out a set of bourgeois social conventions’ (1997: 219). 20 And not just (inter)national relations. Michael Herzfeld explains how: ‘All other bureaucratic classifications are ultimately calibrated to the state’s ability to distinguish between insiders and outsiders. Thus . . . one can see in bureaucratic encounters a ritualistic enactment of the fundamental principles upon which the very apparatus of state rests’ (1992: 109). 21 Richard Higgott notes how: The study of Asian regionalism is extremely fashionable nowadays. In addition to the vast and growing body of monograph literature on Asia Pacific regionalism of both a scholarly and a policy oriented nature, the pages of the specialist regional journals and specialist journals of international economics and international political economy abound with analyses of regional economic growth at all levels in the region. (1997: 165) With this in mind, I will make no attempt to summarise the literatures here, save noting that I have found Beeson and Jayasuriya (1998) and Terada (1998) to be useful starting points. Higgott and Stubbs (1995) and Moon (1999) are also stimulating primers on the different conceptions of East Asian/Asia-Pacific regionalism and what is at stake in the articulation and circulation of these differences. Although focused on the Japanese role in ‘Asia-Pacific’ integration, Pekka Korhonen’s (1994, 1998) books are not only highly original works in themselves, but also serve as guides to further reading.

11

Notes 119 22 On the Australian version of this reinscription, and Canberra’s role in promoting APEC, see Bell (1997). 23 ASEAN has a fascinating history. Beginning as a late 1960s Cold War scheme to associate the often divided anti-communist states of Southeast Asia, ASEAN has slowly developed a wider economic function. ASEAN’s founding moment was also in the context of British military withdrawal. Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs describe how: The unspoken objective was to gain strength through solidarity ahead of the power vacuum that would come with an impending British and later a possible US withdrawal. Indonesia wanted to reassure Malaysia and Singapore that, with the end of the Sukarno era, its intentions were peaceful and that it had abandoned Sukarno’s aggressive policies. (2000: 369)

11

11

111

24

25 26

111

111

111

27

28

Lee Kaun Yew’s memoirs also contain a rendition of the role of golf courses and after dinner singing sessions in the working relations of ASEAN ministers and officials. The key site of diplomacy is the green or the night-club. Although for a long time and with some justification mostly described as a Cold War project, ASEAN’s celebrated diplomatic style relying on ‘consensus’ needs to be analysed in its local cultural specificity. Thambipillai and Saravanamuttu (1985) and Alagappa (1998) are primers on this. An enormous and rich literature on ‘the ASEAN way’ (for recent examples see Ahmad and Ghoshal 1999, Hacke 1999 and Acharya 2001) betrays the relative lack of work from cultural–linguistic, anthropological and historical perspectives. The Malay linguistic complex which encompasses not only Malaysia but much of Indonesia, ‘Chinese’ networks and notions of a greater Thai space are all potential avenues for critical work. For a study which both demonstrates this and specifies the differences between contemporary Japanese discourse about Asia-Pacific cooperation and imperial Japanese geopolitics, see Koschmann (1997). For an analysis of the latter, see Takeuchi (2000) whose work is briefly cited in the main text. For details of current membership and past trajectory see Act Two. Two of the best known accounts of discourses of modernity are Berman (1982) and Habermas (1987). Both are also marked by drawing mostly upon ‘First World’ experiences and a fuller account would want to acknowledge the diversity of expressions of modernity (within which some might accommodate postmodernity). Miller (1994), Escobar (1995) and Rist (1997) may be consulted on how modernity has been incorporated into discourses of development. In addition to Tim Luke’s always stimulating writings (which are cited in the main text), this section owes a good deal to the interpretations of Derrida (1986, 1988), Mitchell (1991), Dillon and Everard (1992), Constantinou (1996) and Bartelson (1998). Jon Halliday introduces Hoxha’s selected memoirs noting that: ‘Nothing like this flood of memory, suspicion, invective and self-righteousness has ever been published by the head of a Communist (or indeed any) regime’ (1986: 1). Of course, Hoxha is alert to the ritual and theatre of communist diplomacy. Halliday notes: what gives Hoxha’s memoirs a considerable edge over many others, even those of Khruschev, is that he combines intelligence and powers of observation with brutal frankness as well as self-serving bombast and evasion. He really does spill the beans. And he thinks. Isolated in his tiny corner of

1

1

120 Notes the Balkans for twenty-five years, he had to think, to interpret signals, and to decode the acts, messages and evasions of friend and foe. . . . Hoxha is alert to every nuance of protocol, every staged welcome and farewell, every ritualistic formulation. . . . Here again, Hoxha represents a paradox. On the one hand he is keenly alert to the role of ritual in the Communist world. He knows that ritual is the only method which Communist countries have to demonstrate support for their policies. He knows the truth, yet still applies blatant double standards. While denouncing the Chinese and North Koreans for bringing out the people ‘like a mob of sheep which gambolled and bleated’ for Tito in 1977, he can register his own delight at the Chinese trundling out 3,000 people with banners and gongs to greet an Albanian delegation. (1986: 8)

1

29 FLEC comprises three main factions seeking the secession of Cabinda province. 30 ‘Performance’ invokes a visible stage, a theatre and an act, with backdrops, roles, plots and casts. The term also invokes a sense of language (‘performative utterances’ in Austin’s, 1970, terms) playing a role of establishing truths and categorisations, rather than being a straightforward, unproblematic designation of the real. Austin is careful to explore the operation of such performative utterances in particular circumstances and through rituals.

11

Act Two: The SADC: sovereign simulations

11

11

11

1 Regarding the substance of the declaration, a journalist writing in the South African newspaper Business Day noted that: ‘The declaration itself provided little of immediate significance stating that the EU and SADC “solemnly reaffirm their determination to reinforce their relationship and establish a comprehensive dialogue”. The declaration continued for 10 pages with underlinings, recommitments, bearing-in-minds, offers of shared experience and other diplospeak’ (Cohen 1994: 14). 2 There is some debate concerning the origins of the organisation, specifically on the relative extent of the roles played by political figures from the region compared with diplomatic and nongovernment organisation (NGO) employees from Europe – notably from the European Union and the Scandinavian countries. For a survey of these arguments and their consequences, see Tsie (1994). On the role of the ‘frontline states’ – an anti-apartheid grouping of Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe – from its beginning in the mid-1960s as consultations between Nyerere and Kaunda, to an alliance in the 1980s, see Thompson (1985) and Khadiagala (1994). 3 The best overall guide to the literature is the comprehensive annotated bibliography of Pennetta and Di Statsi (1995). Amidst many rather banal accounts of aspects of SADCC/SADC, a few do stand out for theoretical and empirical contents: Anglin (1983), Lee (1989), C.B. Thompson (1986a, 1986b), L. Thompson (1991) and Tsie (1996). Although quite brief, Weisfelder’s (1989, 1991) accounts are sharper than most and have proven suggestive for the analysis here. Two quasi-official but useful accounts, published by the SADC secretariat, are those of Chipeta and Davies (1993) and Mandaza and Tostensen (1994). For an attempt to think about the SADCC through the rather dreary prisms of integration theory (functionalism, neo-functionalism, etc.), see Abegunrin (1990). The authors of two doctoral theses drawing on the first decade of the SADCC also seek to preface their accounts with summaries of integration theory (Niemann 1991; Tlou 1991). Niemann goes on to ground his account in Marxist

Notes 121

11 4 5

6

11 7

11 8

111

9 10

111

111

111

11

state theory, and Tlou in a comparative study of Pan-Africanist discourses. Both will be drawn upon selectively here and in Act Three. See, for example, Africa Confidential (1995) and Dludlu (1995) for two examples. Mfune (1993) provides a brief survey of evaluations. Maasdorp (1993) is particularly critical, and as the results of a survey of business attitudes towards integration indicate, his scepticism concerning the SADC is shared by a fair proportion of capitalist enterprises in member states (Maasdorp and Whiteside 1993). See Leistner (1992) for another critical discussion document on regional institutions (commissioned by South African business). South Africa had an electrified fence (constructed in the 1980s) along its border with Mozambique, and has contemplated a similar barrier along the Zimbabwean border. For example, in what a journalist called a ‘bizarre arms race’ (Rakabane 1997: 25), Botswana (which houses the SADC secretariat) purchased thirty-six Scorpion tanks (at undisclosed cost) and twelve fighter bombers (costing US$49 million) in the late 1990s. As was specified in subsequent media accounts, the militarisation is closely related to a growing dispute between Botswana and Namibia over water resources ( Jenvey 1997; Rake 1997). In this respect Bayart’s (1993) work is highly instructive. Although he recognises how the African state is embedded in the global polity, he encourages us to see it in longue durée (resting on African as well as colonial roots) with due respect for its cultural specificity and not as some deviation from a (Western) norm of power and sovereignty (see Mbembe 1992). For a valuable review, contextualisation, and critique of Bayart’s achievement, see Clapham (1994) and Mamdani (1996). Existing work, in which diplomatic and security cultures in peripheral states are considered, has proven suggestive (for example, Calvert 1988; Ayoob 1991). Work on mediation in Southern Africa (Chan and Jabri 1993) and on Zimbabwean and Zambian diplomatic culture (Chan 1992a, l992b, 1994) has also been helpful. I draw here on the collections of essays in Althusser (1971) and Lacan (1977). The East African Community (1967–1977) is covered in many accounts and postmortems, of which Ravenhill’s (1979, 1980) are some of the most comprehensive. Although it is now dated, DeLancey’s (1981) account is still a useful guide to the literature on subcontinental regionalism in Africa. For more recent accounts, see Saasa (1991) and Oyejide and Raheem (1994). For reflections on the first decade of the Economic Community of West African States, see Okolo (1985). In his doctoral thesis, Tlou (1991) also seeks to locate the SADC in comparative Pan-Africanist terms. Two periods (February–April 1996 and February 1998) of intensive research in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Gaborone generated dozens of interviews with diplomats and functionaries working ‘inside’ or with the SADC. Approaches to interview style and method were informed by Miles (1970), Cook and Crang (1994), Obeng (1997) and Shore (1997). There is no scope here for detailed reflection. Please allow me, however, two brief citations that capture something of the process: The book is a reconstruction of a set of encounters that occurred while doing fieldwork. At that time, of course, things were anything but neat and coherent. At this time I have made them seem that way so as to salvage some meaning from that period for myself and for others. This book is a studied condensation of a swirl of people, places and feelings. It could have been half as long, or ten times as long. Some informants with whom I worked are not mentioned, some are collapsed into the figures presented

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

122 Notes here, and others are left out altogether. Anyone who has had such a set of progressively coherent encounters while in the field, and was fully conscious of it at the time, would not have the kind of experience which I have reconstructed here. (Rabinow 1977: 6) In the spirit of affectionate irreverence toward qualitative research, I consider writing as a method of inquiry, a way of finding out about yourself and your topic. Although we usually think about writing as a mode of ‘telling’ about the social world, writing is not just a mopping-up activity at the end of a research project. Writing is also a way of ‘knowing’ – a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. Form and content are inseparable. (Richardson 1998: 345) 12 The building, which was in part financed by Scandinavian aid, was donated to the SADC by the Botswanan government. 13 For reflections on such diplomatic and organisational nodes see Jennifer Hyndman (2000). Working partly with anthropological approaches, Hyndman maps networks of transnational diplomatic/humanitarian power, from refugee camps in the Horn of Africa to NGO and intergovernmental nodes in Geneva. 14 The flag has a blue field and a green centre with the lettering ‘SADC’ in gold. SADC documentation (SADC 1995: 31) notes how blue: ‘depicts an optimistic colour which also symbolises the sky and the oceans which provide water for our common survival’. Green ‘is generally associated with the rich flora and fauna prevalent in our sub-continent’. Gold ‘highlights the mineral wealth which SADC is associated with’. The Council considered three flag designs (submitted by the secretariat) and selected the blue, green, and gold one on grounds of its ability to project ‘a cultural symbolism which its owners can readily identify with’. Perhaps revealing the overall political conjuncture in contemporary Southern Africa, designs featuring red ‘[which] symbolises the struggle for political liberation’ were rejected. For some sharp readings of this conjuncture, see Saul (1993) and Bond and Mayekiso (1996). For some thoughts on the SADC within it, see Kibble et al. (1995), Tsie (1996) and Weeks (1996). 15 This particular gendered division of labour is, of course, not something confined to the SADC. It is notable, however, that despite the signature of a ‘declaration on gender equality’ at the 1997 Summit, the SADC does not, in the main (and certainly not at the secretariat) register much impact of ‘women in development/gender and development’ ideas. For evidence of sexism, and of male power taking the form of sexual harassment of women staff employed at the secretariat, leading to a commission of inquiry and disciplinary action, see the Botswana Gazette (1994). 16 The distribution of sectoral coordination in mid-1997 was as follows: Botswana – agriculture and natural-resources research and training plus livestock production and animal disease control; Mozambique – culture and information; Zambia – employment and labour plus mining; Angola – energy; Lesotho – environment and land management plus tourism; South Africa – finance and investment; Zimbabwe – food, agriculture and natural resources; Swaziland – humanresources development; Tanzania – industry and trade; Malawi – inland fisheries, forestry and wildlife; Namibia – marine fisheries and resources. Mauritius joined the SADC in 1995 and was allocated tourism early in 1997. In turn Lesotho, which had previously been responsible for this sector, was allocated a new sector – water. As will be detailed in the main text, the former Zaire (as the Democratic

Notes 123

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

17 18 19 20

Republic of Congo) and the Seychelles were admitted at the 1998 Blantyre summit. These are the Southern African Centre for Cooperation in Agricultural Research (SACCAR) in Botswana, and the Southern African Transport and Communications Commission (SATCC) in Mozambique. For a primer on the operation of the project-coordination approach in industry and trade, see Weggoro (1995). On the making and impacts of ‘destabilisation’, see Davis and O’Meara (1985) and Hanlon (1986). Article 10 of the Declaration Treaty and Protocol of the SADC explains that: 1. The Summit shall consist of the Heads of State or Government of all Member States, and shall be the supreme policy-making Institution of SADC. 2. The Summit shall be responsible for the overall policy direction and control of the functions of SADC. 3. The Summit shall adopt legal instruments for the implementation of the provisions of this Treaty 8. . . . the decisions of the Summit shall be by consensus and shall be binding. (1993: no pagination)

21 In the terms of the 1992 Treaty, the council of ministers is responsible for the oversight of: ‘the functioning and development of SADC’ and ‘the implementation of the policies of SADCC and the proper execution of its programmes’ (SADC 1993: no pagination). 22 The term vignette invokes a reproduction, an impression and a sketch. But it also signifies ‘a short descriptive or evocative episode in a play, etc.’ (OED, second edition 1989: 625). Unless indicated otherwise, the sources for these are interviews/discussions conducted during research visits to Southern Africa. 23 An initial meeting of the Department – attended by regional heads of state and the SADC Executive Secretary – took place in Luanda in October 1996. It was hoped that Jonas Savimbi would attend and the Angolan ‘peace process’ move forward. Savimbi did not show up. (See: Summary of World Broadcasts AL/2733 A/1 3 October 1996.) See Cilliers (1995) for an account of debates in South Africa and SADC following the dissolution of the Front-line states. The article includes a brief, but informative account of the Inter-State Defence and Security Committee, first established in 1983 as an informal structure within the Frontline states, but which has survived the latter and later included Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland. Specific instances of coordinated diplomatic action between South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe (following the ‘royal coup’ in Lesotho in August 1994 and during Renamo’s threatened withdrawal from the Mozambican elections in October 1995) indicate a working – if not always smooth – capacity for ‘crisis’ mediation. Subsequently military intervention and ‘mediation’ in Lesotho (September 1998–May 1999) and in the former Zaire have been scripted as SADC actions (though they involve only troops from Angola, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe) and a ‘Politics, Defence and Security Organ’ constituted to parallel the other diplomatic apparatus (summits and so on) of the SADC. 24 This and the following two quotations are taken from the text of a report by the South African news agency SAPA. Summary of World Broadcasts AL/2701 A/2 27 August 1996. 25 This and subsequent citations on pages 66 and 67 are drawn from interviews

124 Notes

1 26

27 28

1

1

29 30

11

11

11

11

31 32

with, and memos and communications made available to me by, diplomatic informants in Pretoria, 16 February 1998. The South African Foreign Minister supported Congolese admission, but other South African ministries, notably Finance, were opposed. The decisive position of President Mandela ensured that other reservations within the South African state apparatus would be put aside. For a review, see Emizet (2000). The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was the ANC’s progressive–populist campaign platform for the 1994 elections. It was first set out as a 150-page document which sought to translate traditions of grass-roots struggles into social policy and programmes. After the elections, it was subsequently adopted (albeit with a certain level of rhetorical and sometimes cynical endorsement) by the Government of National Unity. For more information on the trajectory of the RDP to early 1996, see Bond and Mayekiso (1996). Most of the RDP was subsequently ditched. See Act Two, note 41. Debord’s La Société du spectacle was republished in English translation in 1994; it is from this translation that the citation is taken – the original was published in 1967. Anderson (1991: 140), who (as detailed in Act One) interpreted nationalism as an act of ‘imagined community’ closely linked to the rise of ‘print-capitalism’ in the last two centuries, also has the following to say concerning the role of other media: ‘as with increasing speed capitalism transformed the means of physical and intellectual communication, the [state] intelligentsias found ways to bypass print in propagating the imagined community, not merely to illiterate masses, but even to literate masses reading different languages’. For example, see Lan (1985) on guerrillas and spirit mediums in the Zimbabwean liberation war, and Comaroff (1985) and Peires (1989) on anticolonial uprisings and spirits in South Africa. Katherine Verdery’s wish to ‘animate’ the study of politics through examination of burial, relics, memory and re-burial in postsocialist Eastern and Central Europe offers similar inspiration here: instead of seeing nationalism, for instance, in the usual way – as a matter of territorial borders, state-making, ‘constructionism’, or resource competition – I see it as part of kinship, spirits, ancestor worship, and the circulation of cultural treasures. Rather than speak of legitimacy, I speak of reordering the meaningful universe. (1999: 26)

33 Classic accounts include those of Fanon (1952) and Memmi (1965). 34 For example, South Africa has made overtures towards the possibility of an Indian Ocean Community. For press coverage, see AFP (1995) and Bhatia (1995). A more detailed account of the history of the proposal and its prospects is given in Campbell and Scerri (1995). Although it does not cover the Indian Ocean ideas, Mwase (1995) provides a valuable overview of the array of Southern (and Eastern) African regional schemes and the relationships between them. For accounts of the relations between the EU, SADC and South Africa, see Holland (1995a, 1995b) and Kibble et al. (1995). 35 COMESA formally came into existence in December 1994. Following initiatives from the UN Economic Commission for Africa (Anglin 1983; Asanke 1991) COMESA began life as the Preferential Trade Area for Eastern and Southern Africa (PTA) in 1981. From the original eight states (Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mauritius, Somalia, Uganda and Zambia) that signed up to the

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Notes 125 preferential trade agreement in Lusaka in December 1981, all (except Somalia and Djibouti) have become members of COMESA, as well as Angola, Burundi, Egypt, Eritrea, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zaire and Zimbabwe – who had joined the PTA subsequent to its establishment. This grouping includes, as a report on integration in Southern Africa by the African Development Bank recognises, ‘countries with exceedingly diverse characteristics and economic interests: several are in a state of considerable internal turmoil’ (African Development Bank 1993: 9) For although SADC is massively heterogeneous in terms of economic and political conditions, most of its members are linked through a certain functional unity, derived from the (colonial) network of labour migration, trade and communications that was centred on the industrial, minerals-energy economy of South Africa. COMESA does not enjoy even this asymmetric and uneven set of linkages. The African Development Bank (1993) carefully suggests that the tighter and more limited structure and scope of SADC make it a stronger basis for future ‘integration’ than COMESA. Encouraged by this judgement, the SADC secretariat moved from a stated position in 1992 that: ‘the two Organisations had distinct objectives and mandates and they must, therefore, continue to exist as autonomous, but complementary entities’ (SADC 1992: 75), to a resolution, agreed at the 1994 Heads of State Summit, declaring that SADC members should withdraw from COMESA. After a delay of several years, a joint SADC– COMESA ministerial committee advocated (in August 1996) the continued separate existence of the two organisations. Yet by the start of 1997, only one formal withdrawal (by Mozambique) had taken place. As a SADC secretariat employee explained: ‘Formal withdrawals do not take place . . . Members let fees and participation etc. lapse. They don’t need to say ‘we are pulling out’ (interview, Gaborone, 6 March 1996). Indeed Zambia (where the COMESA secretariat is located) and Malawi (from where COMESA’s secretary-general originates (Ndori 1996)) have registered a commitment to COMESA, even if SADC’s former secretary-general complains of ‘two cancers . . . [of] bad blood between the two secretariats and inconsistencies implicit in states being members of both’ (Summary of World Broadcasts LW/0488 WA, 13 August 1996). The formal announcement of Mozambican departure was however followed by Lesotho. By announcing that they would not be paying any more COMESA membership dues these states formalised what had already been taking place. But in December 1997, the then COMESA secretary general Bingu Wa Mutharika launched a plea – invoking African unity – for them to reconsider: ‘On behalf of member states of COMESA, I earnestly appeal to both Mozambique and Lesotho, in the name of pan-Africanism and African unity. . . . It is really difficult to understand what prompted Mozambique and Lesotho to decide withdrawing [sic]’ (ibid.). It became less ‘difficult to understand’ the withdrawals a month later, when Mutharika was suspended for ‘misappropriation’ of COMESA funds. Although the departing members are not paying membership fees, they agreed to continue to implement the agreed tariff structures. COMESA endures, calling (without much success as it turned out) in 1998 for the abolition of all tariffs between members by the end of 2000. 36 The literature on SACU is enormous. As with SADCC/SADC, Pennata and di Statsi is a useful guide. Particularly useful accounts are Cobbe (1980), Maasdorp (1982), Guma (1987), Walters (1989), Kumar (1990) and Gibb (1997). I rely on these for the narrative in the main text. 37 In recognition that the protagonists and consequences were wider than a conflict between the British and the ‘Boers’ it is now more common to refer to these conflicts as the South African wars.

1

1

1

11

126 Notes 38 See Ellis (1996) for some reflections on corruption mediated through South Africa. 39 Early in the 1990s, it was revealed that a secret memorandum (see Maasdorp and Whiteside 1993) attached to the 1969 Agreement requires an ‘infant industry’ requiring protection to be able to supply at least 60 per cent of the demand requirements of the customs union before it is eligible for protection. As Mayer and Zarenda (1994) note, the memorandum represented a profound obstacle to new industrial development beyond South Africa. 40 A South African free-trade agreement with the EU was agreed in 1999 and began to enter in force from February 2000. Opt-outs by Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, disputes over the naming of liqueurs and delays in ratification have called into question the ‘legality’ of the pact. Moreover, wider questions of the regulation of regional trade with the European Union are the subject of ongoing WTO deliberations. 41 For further reflections on this in Southern Africa, see Saul (1993), Sidaway and Power (1995, 1997). This has continued to accelerate with the ANC government in South Africa more or less acceding to the dominant neo-liberal agenda, indicated in the sidelining of the populist Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and its replacement with a neo-liberal Growth, Employment and Reconstruction Plan, a self-imposed structural adjustment project . . . based on ‘maximum engagement’ with transnational and domestically-based capital as the corporate vehicles to promote growth. 42 In different circuits/spheres to diplomats, heads of state and functionaries, Southern Africa becomes a kind of lived-reality. Vale makes some suggestive comments on what he terms ‘regionalism from below’, noting how, for example: Well-organized social movements have recognized the power of regional links. When, for instance, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe savaged the common law rights of gays in that country, South Africa’s vociferous and confident gay community took to the streets. Their organized protests in Johannesburg during the SADC heads of government meeting almost entirely silenced Mugabe. (1996: 18) For Vale ‘A nascent regional civil society is developing a transnational momentum’ (ibid: 17) and:

11

11

11

By offering solutions to people on the ground, the myths which created the region’s current maps are being destroyed; new forms of regionalism are being probed; and the maps which have defined and dominated the lives of the region’s people are being challenged. (ibid.: 19) A fuller account of this would require a nuanced treatment of a variety of precolonial, colonial, anti- and post-colonial linkages and transformations. I shall offer some openings and reflections on this in Act Three. Act Three: Pushing the boundaries/sovereignty deferred 1

As mentioned in Act One, UNITA refers to the formerly South African and US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-backed União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola; and FLEC to the Frente de Libertacão do Enclave de Cabinda – a group of insurgent movements that operate in the oil-rich province of Cabinda.

11

Notes 127 2 3

11

11

111

111

111

111

4 5

6 7

Examples are Ayoob (1986) whose collection reviews the ‘Third World’ state more widely and Jackson (1990) on the African state. Corrupt webs envelope Western and African banks, European and American multinationals, Angolan and Congolese business and politics (Le Billion 2001). An aspect of what they amount to cropped up in the cases against JeanChristophe Mitterrand (one time head of his father’s ‘Africa Cell’ handling relations between the Elysée and francophone Africa from 1986 to 1992) and former French interior minister Charles Pasqua (and, as the newspapers put it, ‘dragging in’ Jacques Attali, another Mitterrand aide and the former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development). Accused of facilitating sales of Russian arms mortgaged against future Angolan oil revenues (extracted by US multinationals) this was: ‘Far from being simply another French corruption scandal, the real story is wide-reaching and involves oil companies, offshore financial centres, international banks and the highest-level French and Angolan officials’ (Henley 2000: 14). See Ferguson (1990: 251–277) and Worby (1998) for wider discussions of how this operates in Southern Africa with respect to ‘development’. In addition to Weber’s (1995) work, examples include Jackson (1990), Mitchell (1991), Walker (1993), Agnew (1994), Luke (1996); the essays edited by Walker and Mendlovitz (1990) and Biersteker and Weber (1996) (whose introduction includes a valuable review of recent theoretical works on the topic); as well as the project of a ‘critical geopolitics’ (Ó Tuathail 1996). I have adopted the term from Nairn (1997: 10). See too Ellis and ter Haar (1998).

Epilogue 1 2 3

‘Abandoned’ would be a more appropriate term than ‘finished’, for Imagined Regional Communities was completed only in a technical-legal sense. There are many departures left open. At this point, I would like to thank colleagues at the Department of Geography for making me so welcome and assisting my re-orientation to the challenges and stimulations of academic life at the National University of Singapore. It would be fruitful here to develop this further, perhaps with the help of Timothy Brennan, for whom: The oddity of the locution East/West is that it refers both to the Cold War and to an imperial divide of race and civilizational conquest. . . . An imaginative geography, in other words, governs the cultural differences related to civilizational contests and national or ethnic divisions (the East/West as Kipling understood it), as well as the world political contests of the Cold War, as perhaps Nikita Khrushchev or later Ronald Reagan rendered them. (2001: 39–40) But here in this footnote to a postscript, all that may be said is that Bandung was both a product of and a challenge to/disruption of these imaginaries.

1

Bibliography

1

1

11

11

11

11

Abegunrin, O. (1990) Economic Dependence and Regional Cooperation in Southern Africa. SADCC and South Africa in Confrontation, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. Acharya, A. (2000) The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia, Singapore: Oxford University Press. Acharya, A. (2001) Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order, London and New York: Routledge. AFP (1995) ‘India backs ocean-rim trade bloc’, Star ( Johannesburg) 13 December: 8. Africa Confidential (1995) ‘Still the boss: regional cooperation, economic and military will continue to be dominated by South Africa’, Africa Confidential 36(17): 3–4. African Development Bank (1993) Economic Integration in Southern Africa, Volume 1, Abidjan: African Development Bank. Agnew, J. (1994) ‘The territorial trap: the geographical assumptions of international relations theory’, Review of International Political Economy 1: 53–80. Agnew, J. and Corbridge, S. (1994) Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy, London and New York: Routledge. Ahmad, Z.H. and Ghoshal, B. (1999) ‘The political future of Asean after the Asian crisis’, International Affairs (London) 75: 759–778. Alagappa, M. (1998) Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideological Influences, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Althusser, L. (1971) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, London: New Left Books. Althusser, L. (1984) Essays on Ideology, London: Verso. Amin, S., Chitala, D. and Mandaza, I. (eds) (1987) SADCC Prospects for Disengagement and Development in Southern Africa, New York: The United Nations University. London: Zed Press. Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edition, London: Verso. Anderson, B. (1998) Spectres of Comparison. Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World, London: Verso. Anderson, J. (1996) ‘The shifting stage of politics: new medieval and postmodern territorialities’, Environment and Planning D. Society and Space 14: 133–153. Anderson, J. and Goodman, J. (1995) ‘Regions, states and the European Union: modernist reaction or postmodern adaptation?’, Review of International Political Economy 2: 600–631. Anderson, K. and Blackhurst, R. (eds) (1993) Regional Integration and the Global Trading System, Hemel Hempstead, Herts: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 129 Anglin, D.G. (1983) ‘Economic liberation and regional cooperation in Southern Africa: SADCC and the PTA’, International Organization 37: 681–711. Apter, D. (1965) The Politics of Modernisation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Arendt, H. (1968) ‘Introduction, Walter Benjamin, 1892–1940’, in W. Benjamin (ed.) Illuminations, New York: Harcourt. Arouh, A. (2000) ‘Canon and heresy. Religion as a way of telling the story of economics’, in M. Psalidopoulos (ed.) The Canon in the History of Economics: Critical Essays, London and New York: Routledge. Arrighi, G. (1994) The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times, London and New York: Verso. Asanke, S.K.B. (1991) African Development: Adebano Adedeji’s Alternative Strategies, London: Hans Zell. Ashforth, A. (1996) ‘Of secrecy and the commonplace: witchcraft and power in Soweto’, Social Research 63: 1155–1234. Austin, J.C. (1970) Philosophical Papers, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Axline, W.A. (1977) ‘Underdevelopment, dependence and integration: the politics of regionalism in the Third World’, International Organization 10: 83–105. Axline, W.A. (ed.) (1994) The Political Economy of Regional Cooperation. Comparative Case Studies, London: Frances Pinter. Ayoob, M. (1986) Regional Security in the Third World: Case Studies from South East Asia and the Middle East, London and Sydney: Croom Helm. Ayoob, M. (1991) ‘The security problematic of the Third World’, World Politics 43: 257–283. Barakat, H. (1993) The Arab World: Society, Culture and State, Berkeley: University of California Press. Barker, P. (1998) Michael Foucault: An Introduction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Barnes, T.J. (1996) Logics of Dislocation: Models, Metaphors and Meanings of Economic Space, New York and London: The Guildford Press. Barry, A. (1993) ‘The European Community and European Government: harmonization, mobility and space’, Economy and Society 22: 314–326. Bartelson, J. (1998) ‘Second natures: is the state identical with itself?’, European Journal of International Relations 4(3): 295–326. Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text, New York: Hill and Wang. Baudrillard, J. (1983) Simulations, New York, Semiotext(e). Bayart, J.F. (1993) The State in Africa. The Politics of the Belly, Harlow, Essex: Longman. Beblawi, H. (1990) ‘The rentier state in the Arab world’, in G. Luciani (ed.) The Arab State, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Beeson, M. and Jayasuriya, K. (1998) ‘The political rationalities of regionalism: APEC and the EU in comparative perspective’, The Pacific Review 11(3): 311–336. Bell, R. (1997) ‘Anticipating the Pacific Century? Australian responses to realignments in the Asia-Pacific’, in M.T. Berger and D.A. Borer (eds) The Rise of East Asia: Critical Visions of the Pacific Century, London and New York: Routledge, 193–218. Belsey, C. (1980) Critical Practice, London: Methuen. Benjamin, W. (1968) Illuminations, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Berger, M.T. (1995) Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and US Hegemony in the Americas, 1898–1990, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Berman, M. (1982) All That is Solid Melts into Air, New York: Simon and Schuster. Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

130 Bibliography Bhatia, S. (1995) ‘Trade focus for Indian Ocean bloc’, Star ( Johannesburg) 19 July. Biersteker, T.J. and Weber, C. (eds) (1996) State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blacksell, M. (1977) Postwar Europe: A Political Geography, Folkestone: Dawson. Blake, G.H. and Drysdale, A. (1985) The Middle East and North Africa: A Political Geography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blau, H. (1992) To All Appearances: Ideology and Performance, London and New York: Routledge. Bloomfield, J. (1979) Passive Revolution: Politics and the Czechoslovak Working Class, 1945– 1948, London: Allison and Busby. Bloomstrom, M. and Hettne, B. (1984) Development Theory in Transition: The Dependency Debate and Beyond: Third World Responses, London: Zed. Bobrow, D.B. (1999) ‘Hegemony management: the US in the Asian Pacific’, The Pacific Review 12(2): 173–197. Bond, P. and Mayekiso, M. (l996) ‘Developing resistance, resisting “development”: reflections from the South African struggle’, in L. Pantitch (ed.) Socialist Register 1996, London: Merlin Press. Botswana Gazette (1994) ‘Mbuende receives report’, Botswana Gazette 11 March: 20. Bowman, L.C. (1968) ‘The subordinate state system of Southern Africa’, International Studies Quarterly 12: 231–261. Bowman, L.C. (1971) ‘Authoritarian politics in Rhodesia’, Ph.D. thesis, Waltham, MA, Department of Politics, Brandeis University. Brennan, T. (2001) ‘The cuts of language: The East/West of North/South’, Public Culture 13, 1: 39–63. Brook, C. (1995) ‘The drive to global regions?’, in J. Anderson, C. Brook and A. Cochrane (eds) A Global World?: Re-ordering Political Space, Oxford: The Open University and Oxford University Press. Brown, E. (1996) ‘Deconstructing development: alternative perspectives on the history of an idea’, Journal of Historical Geography 22(3): 333–339. Brown, W. (1950) The United States and the Restoration of World Trade, Washington DC: The Brookings Institution. Brummer, S. (1995) ‘From apartheid bully to co-operative neighbour’ Mail and Guardian 1–7 September: 4. Buck-Morss, S. (2000) Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Burgin, V. (1992) ‘Fantasy’, in F. Wright (ed.) Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell, 84–88. Burns, E. (1972) Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life, London: Longman. Burton, J. (1995) ‘Short paper on the renegotiation of SACU and the free trade area between RSA and the EU’, unpublished paper. Pretoria, South Africa: Overseas Development Agency. Business Day (1995) ‘South Africa drags feet on custom reform’, Business Day 14 June 1995: 3. Cable, V. and Henderson, D. (eds) (1994) Trade Blocs: The Future of Economic Regionalism, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Calvert, P. (1988) The Foreign Policies of New States, Hemel Hempstead, Herts: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 131 Calvocoressi, P., Wint, G. and Pritchard, J. (1989) The Penguin History of the Second World War, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Campbell, R.G. and Scerri, M. (1995) ‘The prospects for an Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) Economic Organisation’, The South African Journal of International Affairs 19: 11–37. Caporoso, I.A. (1996) ‘The European Union and forms of state: Westphalian, regulatory or postmodern’, Journal of Common Market Studies 34(1): 29–52. Carrier, J.G. (1997) (ed.) Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture, Oxford: Berg. Carrier, J. and Miller, D.G. (1998) (eds) Virtualism: New Political Economy, Oxford: Berg. Cattaneo, N. (1990) ‘Piece of paper or paper of peace: The Southern African Customs Union Agreement’, International Affairs Bulletin 11: 543–564. Chaliand, G. (1977) Revolution in the Third World: Myths and Prospects, Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester. Chan, S. (ed.) (1992a) Exporting Apartheid – Foreign Policies in Southern Africa 1978–1988, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Chan, S. (1992b) Kaunda and Southern Africa: Image and Reality, London: I.B. Tauris. Chan, S. (1994) ‘The diplomatic styles of Zambia and Zimbabwe’, in P.B. Rich (ed.) The Dynamics of Change in Southern Africa, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Chan, S. and Jabri, V. (1993) Mediation in Southern Africa, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Chazan, N., Mortimer, R., Ravenhill, J. and Rothchild, D. (1988) Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Chipeta, C. and Davies, R. (1993) Regional Relations and Cooperation Post-Apartheid: A Macro Framework Study Report SADC, Gaborone: SADC. Cilliers, J. (1995) ‘The evolving security architecture in Southern Africa’, African Security Review 4(5): 30–47. Clapham, C. (1994) ‘Review article: the longue durée of the African state’, African Affairs 93: 433–439. Cobbe, J.H. (1980) ‘Integration among unequals: the Southern African Customs Union and development’, World Development 8, 4: 329–336. Cohen, I. (1994) ‘New pact paves the way ahead with good intentions’, Business Day 9 September: 14–15. Cohn, N. (1975) Europe’s Inner Demons: An Inquiry Inspired by the Great Witch Hunt, New York: Basic Books. Comaroff, J. (1985) Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. (1997) Of Revelation and Revolution: Volume Two. The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Constantinidis, S.E. (1993) Theatre Under Deconstruction? A Question of Approach, New York: Garland. Constantinou, C.M. (1996) On the Way to Diplomacy, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Cook, I. and Crang, M. (1994) Doing Ethnographies Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography Series, London: Quantitative Methods Study Group of the Institute of British Geographers. Cook, I., Crouch, D., Naylor, S. and Ryan, J.R. (eds) (2000) Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns, Harlow: Prentice Hall.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

132 Bibliography Cooper, R. (1998) ‘Irony and foreign policy’, Prospect December: 58–60. Coussy, J. (1996) ‘Slow institutional progress and capitalist dynamics in Southern African integration interpretations and projects in South Africa and Zimbabwe’, Transformation. Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 29: 1–4. Cowen, M.P. and Shenton, R.W. (1996) Doctrines of Development, London and New York: Routledge. Crockatt, R. (1995) The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics 1941–1991, London and New York: Routledge. Crowe, S.E. (1952) The Berlin West Africa Conference 1884–1885, London: Longman. Crush, J. (1995a) ‘Introduction: Imagining development’, in Crush, J. (ed.) Power of Development, London and New York: Routledge. Crush, J. (1995b) Power of Development, London and New York: Routledge. Curry, R.L. (1991) ‘Regional economic cooperation in Southern Africa and Southeast Asia’, ASEAN Economic Bulletin 8(1): 15–28. Dabashi, H. (1993) Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, New York: New York University Press. Davies, R. (1994) ‘The South African Customs Union (SACU): background and possible negotiating issues facing a democratic government’, Working Paper, Centre for Southern African Studies, University of Western Cape, South Africa. Davies, R. and O’Meara, D. (1985) ‘Total strategy in Southern Africa: an analysis of South African regional policy since 1978’, Journal of Southern African Studies 11(2): 183–211. De Boeck, F. (1998) ‘Domesticating diamonds and dollars: identity, expenditure and sharing in South Western Zaire (1984–1997), Development and Change 29: 777–810. Debord, G. (1994) The Society of the Spectacle, New York: Zone Books. DeLancey, M.W. (1981) African International Relations: An Annotated Bibliography, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. De Melo, I. and Panagariya, A. (eds) (1994) New Dimensions in Regional Integration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Der Derian, I. (1987) On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Derrida, J. (1978) Writing and Difference, London and New York: Routledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (1982) Margins of Philosophy, Brighton: The Harvester Press. Derrida, J. (1986) ‘Declarations of independence’, New Political Science 15: 7–15. Derrida, J. (1987) The Truth in Painting, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. Derrida, J. (1988) Limited Inc, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Derrida, J. (1992) Given Time: I Counterfeit Money, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, London and New York: Routledge. de Vasconcelos, A. (1995) Sobre Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Público, 22 July: 9. Dillon, G.M. and Everard, J. (1992) ‘Stat(e)ing Australia: squid jigging and the masque of state’, Alternatives 17: 281–312. Dirlik, A. (1993) (ed.) What is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Rim Idea, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Dludlu, I. (1995) ‘Economic integration tops agenda’, Business Day 31 August.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 133 Dodds, K. and Atkinson, D. (eds) (2000) Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought, London and New York: Routledge. Doty, L. (1996) Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North–South Relations, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis. Dougherty, J.E. and Pfaltzgraff, R.L. (1981) Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey, second edition, New York: Harper Row. Economist (1996a) ‘Getting together’, Economist 29 June: 64–65. Economist (1996b) ‘Spoiling World Trade’, Economist 7 December: 17–18. Economist (1996c) ‘All free traders now?’, Economist 7 December: 25–27. Economist (1997) ‘Not quite a new world order, more a three-way split’, Economist 20 December: 51–55. Economist (2000) ‘A different new world order’, Economist 11 November: 141–146. Edwards, C. (1985) The Fragmented World: Competing Perspectives on Trade, Money and Crisis, London and New York: Methuen. El-Agraa, A.M. (1997) Economic Integration Worldwide, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Elam, K. (1980) The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, London and New York: Routledge. Elliot, L. (1998) ‘Eat, sleep and be photographed’, Guardian 21 February: 29. Ellis, S. (1996) ‘Africa and international corruption: the strange case of South Africa and Seychelles’, African Affairs 95: 165–196. Ellis, S. and ter Haar, G. (1998) ‘Religion and politics in sub-Saharan Africa’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 36(2): 175–201. Emizet, K.N.F. (2000) ‘The massacre of refugees in Congo: a case of UN peacekeeping failure and international law’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 38(2): 163–202. Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Esteva, G. (1992) ‘Development’, in W. Sachs (ed.) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed. Ettinger, S.J. (1974) ‘The economics of the customs union between Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and South Africa’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan. Europa World Press (1996) Africa South of the Sahara, London: Europa World Press. Fanon, F. (1952) Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks), Paris: Seuil (translated by C.L. Markmann in 1968), London: MacGibbon and Kee. Fawcett, L. and Hurrell, A. (1995) (eds) Regionalism in World Politics: Regional Organisations and International Order, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferguson, J. (1990) The Anti-Politics Machine. ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferguson, J. (1999) Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, Berkeley: University of California Press. Financial Gazette (1993) ‘Media circus with Muckraker’, Financial Gazette 16 September. Financial Gazette (1994) ‘Media circus with Muckraker’, Financial Gazette 3 February. Foucault, M. (1970) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1979a) The History of Sexuality: Volume One, New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1979b) ‘On governmentality’, Ideology and Consciousness 6: 5–22. Foucault, M. (1986) ‘The birth of biopolitics’, in P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

134 Bibliography Foucault, M. (2000a) Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth. Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1988 Volume One, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Foucault, M. (2000b) Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology. Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1988 Volume Two, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Garrett, G. and Tsebelis, G. (1996) ‘An institutional critique of intergovernmentalism’, International Organisation 50: 269–299. Gerth, H.H. and Mills, C.W. (ed.) (1946) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York: Oxford University Press. Ghoshal, H.D., Nayak, P.K., Sen, S. and Mansukhani, G.S. (2000) Unique Quintessence of International Relations, New Delhi: Unique Publishers. Gibb, R.A. (1993) ‘A common market for post-apartheid Southern Africa: prospects and problems’, Southern African Geographical Journal 75: 28–35. Gibb, R.A. (1997) ‘Regional Integration in Post-Apartheid Southern Africa: the case of renegotiating the Southern African Customs Union’, Journal of Southern African Studies. Gibb, R. and Michalak, W. (1994) (eds) Continental Trading Blocs: The Growth of Regionalism in the World Economy, Chichester: John Wiley. Gibb, R. and Michalak, W. (1996) ‘Regionalism in the world economy’, Area 28: 446–458. Gibson, M. (1994) ‘A centre of flux: Japan in the Australian business press’, Continuum: the Australian Journal of Media and Culture 8(2): 83–102. Gilpin, R. (1987) The Political Economy of International Relations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Goffman, E. (1969) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Goscha, C.E. (1996) ‘Annam and Vietnam in the New Indochinese Space, 1887– 1945’, in S. Tonnesson and H. Antlöv (eds) Asian Forms of the Nation, Richmond: Curzon Press. Gott, R. (1996) ‘Che Guevara and the Congo’, New Left Review 220: 3–35. Gottweis, H. (1999) ‘Regulating genetic engineering in the European Union: a poststructuralist perspective’, in B. Kohler-Koch and R. Eising (eds) The Transformation of Governance in the European Union, London and New York: Routledge. Gqumbule, D. (1996) ‘Row looms over SA’s regional trade surplus’, Star ( Johannesburg) 12 February. Grimwade, N. (1996) International Trade Policy: A Contemporary Analysis, London and New York: Routledge. Guma, X.P. (1987) ‘The revised Southern African Customs Union Agreement: an appraisal’, South African Journal of Economics 58(1): 63–73. Guzzini, S. (1998) Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy, London and New York: Routledge. Haacke, J. (1999) ‘The concept of flexible engagement and the practice the Asean way’, The Pacific Review 12: 581–611. Habermas, J. (1987) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, Cambridge: Polity Press. Halliday, F. (1986) The Making of the Second Cold War, London: Verso. Halliday, J. (ed.) (1986) The Artful Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha, London: Chatto and Windus. Hanlon, J. (1986) Beggar Your Neighbours: Apartheid Power in Southern Africa, London: Catholic Institue for International Relations and James Currey.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 135 Hartrack, M. (1996) ‘SA may ruin its markets’, Business Day ( Johannesburg), 16 February. Harvey, D. (1982) The Limits to Capital, Oxford: Blackwell. Heath, S. (1976) ‘Narrative space’, Screen 17(3): 68–112. Henley, D.E.F. (1995) ‘Ethnographic integration and exclusion in anticolonial nationalism, Indonesia and Indochina’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(2): 286–324. Henley, J. (2000) ‘Mitterand’s son to seek bail in arms case’, The Guardian 27 December: 14. Hertz, E. (1998) The Trading Crowd: An Ethnography of the Shanghai Stock Market, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herzfeld, M. (1992) The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Hettne, B. and Inotai, A. (1994) The New Regionalism: Implications for Global Development and International Security, UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki. Higgott, R. (1997) ‘De facto and de jure regionalism: the double discourse of regionalism in the Asia Pacific’, Global Society 11(2): 165–185. Higgott, R. and Stubbs, R. (1995) ‘Competing conceptions of economic regionalism: APEC versus EAEC in the Asia Pacific’, Review of International Political Economy 2(3): 516–535. Hirst, G. and Thompson, G. (1992) ‘The problem of “globalization”: international economic relations, national economic management and the formation of trading blocs’, Economy and Society 21: 357–396. Hoekman, B.M. and Kostecki, M.M. (1995) The Political Economy of the World Trading System. From GATT to WTO, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holland, M. (1995a) ‘South Africa, SADC, and the European Union: matching bilateral with regional policies’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 33(2): 263–283. Holland, M. (1995b) European Union Common Foreign Policy. From EPC to CFSP. Joint Action and South Africa, New York: St Martins Press. Hunt Page, C.H. (1946) ‘Bureaucracy’s other face’, Social Forces, 25: 89–94. Hurrell, A. (1995) ‘Regionalism in theoretical perspective’, in L. Fawcett and A. Hurrell (eds) Regionalism in World Politics: Regional Organisations and International Order, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hyam, R. (1972) The Failure of South African Expansion, 1908–1948, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hyndman, J. (2000) Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. IBRD (1996) World Development Report, Washington: IBRD. Iheduru, O.C. (1996) ‘Post-apartheid South Africa and its neighbours: a maritime transport perspective’, Journal of Modern African Studies 34: 1–26. Indian Ocean Newsletter (1995) ‘Southern Africa: sparks fly at summit’, The Indian Ocean Newsletter 683, September 1995. Ingraham, C. (1995) ‘The display of display: the new archive’, in L. Kurgan and X. Costa (eds) Us Trobeu Aquí: Arquitectura i Fluxos d’Informació/You are Here: Architecture and Information Flows, Barcelona: Consorci del Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Jackson, R. (1990) Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

136 Bibliography Jayasuriya, K. (1994) ‘Singapore: the politics of regional definition’, The Pacific Review 7: 411–420. Jenvey, A. (1997) ‘Water wars 2’, New African April: 16–17. Jovanovic, M.N. (1998) International Economic Integration: Critical Perspectives on the World Economy (Four volumes), London and New York: Routledge. Kadir, N. (1984) ‘In the maelstrom of confessionalism’, in J. Rothschild (ed.) Forbidden Agendas. Intolerance and Defiance in the Middle East, London: Al Saqi Books. Kaplan, E.A. (2000) Feminism and Film, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kapuscinaki, R. (1988) Another Day of Life, London: Picador. Kay, C. (1989) Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment, London and New York: Routledge. Khadiagala, G.M. (1994) Allies in Adversity. The Frontline States in Southern African Security 1975–1993, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Kibble, S., Goodinson, P. and Tsie, B. (1995) ‘The uneasy triangle – South Africa, Southern Africa and Europe in the Post-apartheid era’, International Relations 12(4): 141–161. Kitching, G. (1989) Development and Underdevelopment in Historical Perspective (second edition), Methuen: London. Knox, P. and Agnew, J. (1998) The Geography of the World Economy, New York: Arnold, London and Wiley. Korhonen, P. (1994) Japan and the Pacific Free Trade Area, London and New York: Routledge. Korhonen, P. (1998) Japan and Asia Pacific Integration, Pacific Romances 1968–1996, London and New York: Routledge. Koschmann, J.V. (1997) ‘Asianism’s Ambivalent Legacy’, in P.J. Katzenstein and T. Shiraishi (eds) Network Power: Japan and the New Asia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 83–110. Kubláková, V. and Cruickshank, A.A. (1989) Marxism and International Relations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kumar, U. (1990) ‘Southern African Customs Union and the BLS-countries (Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland)’, Journal of World Trade 24(3): 31–53. Lacan, J. (1977) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis, London: The Hogarth Press. Lan, D. (1985) Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe, London: James Currey. Le Billion, P. (2001) ‘Angola’s political economy of war: the role of oil and diamonds’, African Affairs 100: 55–80. Lee, M.C. (1989) SADCC: The Political Economy of Development in Southern Africa, Nashville, TN: Winston–Derek Publishers. Leistner, E. (1992) ‘South African Chamber of Business discussion document commissioned by the SACOB on South Africa’s options for future relations with Southern Africa and the European Community’, annex in The Future of Relations Between the EC and Southern Africa, Club de Bruxelles, 10 Rue du College Saint Michel, R-l 150, Bruxelles. Leistner, E. (1995) ‘Renegotiating the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU), Africa Institute Bulletin 35(2): 4–5. Leys, C. (1996) The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, London: James Currey. Life (1955) ‘Editorial. Whither this boom: it can be trusted if the free system is allowed to grow beyond US shores’, Life 19 September: 55–57.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 137 Lipson, C. (1991) ‘Why are some international agreements informal?’, International Organisation 45: 495–538. Lodge, D. (1992) The Art of Fiction, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Loxton, L. (1997) ‘Customs and practice blight African growth’, The Birmingham Post 28 June: 19. Luciani, G. (1990) ‘Allocation vs. production states: a theoretical framework’ in G. Luciani (ed.) The Arab State, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Luke, T. (1991) ‘Touring hyper-reality: critical theory confronts informational society’, in P. Wexler (ed.) Critical Theory Now, London, New York and Philadelphia: The Falmer Press: 1–26. Luke, T. (1993) ‘Discourses of disintegration, texts of transformation: re-reading realism in the New World Order’, Alternatives 18: 229–258. Luke, T. (1996) ‘Governmentality and contragovernmentality: rethinking sovereignty and territoriality after the Cold War’, Political Geography 15: 491–501. Lundestad, G. (1998) ‘Empire’ by Integration: The United States and European Integration, 1945–1997, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maasdorp, G. (1982) ‘The Southern African Customs Union: an assessment’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 1: 81–112. Maasdorp, G. (1989) ‘A century of customs unions in Southern Africa’, paper presented to the conference of the Economic Society of South Africa, Johannesburg, 6–7 September. Maasdorp, G. (1993) ‘The advantages and disadvantages of current regional institutions for integration’, in P.H. Baker, A. Boraine and W. Krafchik (eds) South Africa and the World Economy in the 1990s, Cape Town: David Phillip. Maasdorp, G. and Whiteside, A. (1993) Rethinking Economic Cooperation in Southern Africa. Trade and Investment, Johannesburg: Konrad-Adenauer Foundation. Mail and Guardian (1996) ‘Dev’s diary, true story’, Mail and Guardian Quarterly Supplement, 15 March–21 March: viii. Mamdani, M. (1996) Citizen and Subject. Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Kampala: Fountain Publishers. London: James Currey/Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mandaza, I. (1991) ‘Did Chogm undermine SADCC?’, Southern African Political and Economic Monthly 52: 3–9. Mandaza, I. and Tostensen, A. (1994) Southern Africa: In Search of a Common Future SADC, Gaborone: Private Bag 0095. Mansfield, E.D. and Milner, H.V. (eds) (1997) The Political Economy of Regionalism, New York: Columbia University Press. Marechera, D. (1978) The House of Hunger, London: Heinemann. Margo Commission (1987) ‘Report of the Commission Inquiry into the tax structure of the Republic of South Africa’, Pretoria, Government Printer. Martin, W.G. (1990) ‘Region formation under crisis conditions: South vs. Southern Africa in the interwar period’, Journal of Southern African Studies 16: 112–138. Marx, K. (1995) Capital: An Abridged Edition, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Matshaba, B. (1994) ‘Misconceptions still rife among people – Makoni’, Gaborone: Daily News 3 November: 2. Mayer, M. and Zarenda, H. (1994) ‘The Southern Africa Customs Union: A review of costs and benefits’, Development Bank of Southern Africa. Policy Working Paper, 19 Halfway House, South Africa: Development Bank of Southern Africa.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

138 Bibliography Mayne, R. (1983) Postwar: The Dawn of Today’s Europe, London: Thames and Hudson. Mbembe, A. (1992) ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’, Africa 62: 3–37. McCarthy, C.L. (1985) ‘Southern African Customs Union’, unpublished report prepared for the Central Economic Advisory Service, Pretoria, South Africa. McCarthy, C.L. (1992) ‘Revenue distribution and economic development in the Southern African Customs Union’, The South African Journal of Economics 62(3): 167–187. McGreal, C. (2001) ‘An army guarding power and profits’ The Guardian 29 May: 3. McLellan, D. (1995) ‘Introduction’, in K. Marx (1995) Capital: An Abridged Edition, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press: xiii–xxvii. McNulty, M. (1999) ‘The collapse of Zaire: implosion, revolution or external sabotage?’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 37(1): 53–82. Melrose, S. (1994) A Semiotics of the Dramatic Text, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Memmi, A. (1965) The Colonizer and the Colonized, New York: Orion. Metz, C. (1977) The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Meyns, P. (1995) ‘Time to decide: rethinking the institutional framework of regional co-operation in Southern Africa’, in H.J. Spanjer and P. Vale (eds) Bridges to the Future: Prospects for Peace and Security in Southern Africa, Westview Press: Boulder, CO, 33–60. Mfune, P. (1993) ‘The future of SADCC’, in R.A. Siddiqui (ed.) Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-continent in Transition, Aldershot, Hants: Avebury. Miles, E. (1970) ‘The logistics of interviewing in international organizations’, International Organization 24: 361–370. Miller, D. (1994) Modernity: An Ethnographic Approach. Dualism and Mass Consumption in Trinidad, Oxford: Berg. Milner, M. and Donny, C. (2000) ‘Small currencies vanishing as big bucks take over’, The Guardian January 12: 29. Milward, A.S. (1984) The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–51, London: Methuen. Milward, A.S. (1992) The European Rescue of the Nation-state, London and New York: Routledge. Milward, A.S. (1995) ‘Allegiance. The past and the future’, Journal of European Integration History: 17–19. Milward, A.S. and Sorensen, V. (1993) ‘Interdependence or integration? A national choice’, in A.S. Milward, F.M.B. Lynch, F. Romero, R. Ranieri and V. Sorensen (eds) The Frontier of National Sovereignty. History and Theory, 1945–1992, London and New York: Routledge, 1–32. Mistry, P.A. (1996) ‘Regional dimensions of structural adjustment in Southern Africa’, in J.J. Teunissen (ed.) Regionalism and the Global Economy: The Case of Africa, The Hague: Forum on Development, 165–289. Mitchell, T. (1991) ‘The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics’, American Political Science Review 85: 77–96. Mittelman, J.H. (1996) ‘Rethinking the “new regionalism” in the context of globalization’, Global Governance 2: 189–213. Montecinos, V. (1996) ‘Ceremonial regionalism, institutions and integration in the Americas’, Studies in Comparative International Development 31, 2: 110–123. Moon, C. (1999) ‘Political economy of East Asian development and Pacific economic cooperation’, The Pacific Review 12(2): 199–228.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 139 Morris, P. (ed.) (1998) The Bakhtin Reader: Selected writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov, London: Edward Arnold. Moxey, K. (1994) The Practice of Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics and Art History, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mwase, N. (1995) ‘Economic integration for development in Eastern and Southern Africa: assessment and prospects’, The Round Table 336: 477–493. Mytelka, L.K. (1973) ‘The salience of gains in Third World integrative systems’, World Politics 25: 236–250. Nairn, T. (1977) The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neonationalism, London: New Left Books. Nairn, T. (1997) Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited, London: Verso. Nairn, T. (1998) ‘Sovereignty scapes after the election’, New Left Review 224: 3–18. Ndela, D.B. (1987) ‘The manufacturing sector in the East and Southern African subregion, with emphasis on the SADCC’, in S. Amin, D. Chitala and I. Mandaza (eds) SADCC: Prospects for Disengagement and Development in Southern Africa, London: Zed Press/Tokyo: United Nations University. Ndori, V. (1996) ‘Another view: Malawi’s diplomatic quandary’, Daily Times (Blantyre) 2 May: 7. Neumann, I.B. (1989) Soviet Perceptions of the European Community, 1950–1998, Oslo: Norsk Utenrikspolitisk Institut. Neumann, I.B. (1994) ‘A region-building approach to Northern Europe’, Review of International Studies 20: 53–74. Niemann, M.E. (1991) ‘Regional integration in the periphery: the case of Southern Africa’, Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate School of International Studies, Boulder, CO: University of Denver. Nietzsche, F. (1994) On the Genealogy of Morality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Obeng, S.G. (1997) ‘Language and politics: indirectness in political discourse’, Discourse and Society 8(1): 49–83. Obuah, E. (2001) ‘Regionalisation in Africa: integration and disintegration’, by Bach, D.C. (ed.), The Journal of Modern African Studies 39(1): 168–171. Ohmae, K. (1985) Triad Power: The Coming Shape of Global Competition, New York: Free Press. Okolo, J.E. (1985) ‘Integrative and cooperative regionalism: the economic community of West African states’, International Organization 39: 121–153. O’Loughlin, J. and Anselin, L. (1996) ‘Geo-economic competition and trade bloc formation: United States, German and Japanese exports, 1968–1992’, Economic Geography 72(2): 131–160. O’Loughlin, J. and van der Wusten, H. (1990) ‘The political geography of panregions’, Geographical Review 80(1): 1–20. Open University, Third World Studies Course Team (1983) The Making of the Third World (Parts A–C), Milton Keynes: The Open University Press. Orwell, G. (1949) Nineteen Eighty-Four, London: Secker and Warburg. Ó Tuathail, G. (1996) Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space, London and New York: Routledge. Ó Tuathail, G., Dalby, S. and Routledge, P. (1998) (eds) The Geopolitics Reader, London and New York: Routledge. Oxford English Dictionary (1989) Oxford English Dictionary (second edition), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

140 Bibliography Oyejide, A.A. and Raheem, M.I. (1994) ‘Long-term development in sub-Saharan Africa: would regional integration help?’, in G.A. Cornia and G.K. Helleiner (eds) From Adjustment to Development in Africa – Conflict, Controversy, Convergence, Consensus, New York: St Martins Press, 367–377. Page, C.H. (1946) ‘Bureaucracy’s other face’, Social Forces 25: 88–94. Patterson, L.A. (1997) ‘Agricultural policy reform in the European Community: a three-level game analysis’, International Organization 51: 135–165. Payne, A. and Gamble, A. (eds) (1996) Regionalism and World Order, Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan. Peires, J.B. (1989) The Dead will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle Killing Movement of 1856–7, London: James Currey. Pells, R. (1997) Not Like Us, New York: Basic Books. Pennetta, P. and Di Statsi, A. (1995) Le Organizzazioni Economiche Regionali Africane: commenti, documenti, bibliografia 1: Le organizzazioni dell’Africa Australe (SACU e SADC), Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche. Peta, B. (1996) ‘SA punitive duty on transit cargo illegal’, The Financial Gazette 14 March: 2. Phillips, R. (2000) ‘APEC at the Museum of Anthropology: the politics of site and the poetics of sight bite’, Ethnos 65(2): 172–194. Pieterse, J.N. and Parekh, B. (1995) ‘Shifting imaginaries: decolonization, internal decolonization, postcoloniality’, in J.N. Pieterse and B. Parekh (eds) The Decolonization of Imagination. Culture, Knowledge and Power, London: Zed, 1–19. Polhmus, J.H. (1992) ‘Zimbabwe’s response to change in South Africa’, in N. Etherington (ed.) Peace, Politics and Violence in the New South Africa, Hans Zell Publishers, London, 196–212. Pollack, M.A. (1997) ‘Delegation, agency and agenda setting in the European Community’, International Organization 51: 99–134. Poon, J.P.H., Thompson, E.R. and Kelly, P.F. (2000) ‘Myth of the triad: the geography of trade and investment blocs’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 25: 427–444. Power, M. (1998) ‘The dissemination of development’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 16: 577–598. Rabinow, P. (1977) Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Rahema, M. and Bawtree, V. (eds) (1997) The Post Development Reader, London: Zed Press. Rakabane, M. (1997) ‘Bizarre arms race’, New African January: 25. Rake, A. (1997) ‘Water wars 1’, New African April: 15. Ravenhill, J. (1979) ‘Regional integration and development in Africa: lessons from the East African Community’, The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 17: 227–246. Ravenhill, J. (1980) ‘The theory and practice of regional integration in East Africa’, in C.P. Potholm and R.A. Fredland (eds) Integration and Disintegration in East Africa, Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Republic of South Africa (1969) Customs Union Agreement, and Memorandum of Understanding, between the Governments of the Republic of South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, Pretoria: Republic of South Africa Treaty Series No. 8/1969. Richardson, L. (1998) ‘Writing a method of enquiry’, in N. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, London, New Delhi and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 345–371.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 141 Rist, G. (1997) The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, London and New York: Zed Books. Riviere, J. (1929) ‘Womanliness as masquerade’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 8: 303–313. Rodney, W. (1972) How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, London: Bogle L’Ouverture. Rogets International Thesaurus (1997) Rogets International Thesaurus (fourth edition), Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenberg, J. (1994) The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations, London: Verso. Rostow, W. (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rostow, W.W. (1990) ‘The coming age of regionalism’, Encounter 74(5): 3–7. Rushdie, S. (1991) Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ryall, D. (1997) ‘Feature review. Caught between two worlds: understanding South Africa’s foreign policy options’, Third World Quarterly 18: 397–402. Ryan, M. (1982) Marxism and Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Saasa, O.S. (1991) Joining the Future: Economics, Integration and Cooperation in Africa, Nairobi: African Centre for Technology Studies. Sachs, W. (1992) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Development as Power, London: Zed Press. Saul, J.S. (1993) Recolonization and Resistance in Southern Africa in the 1990s, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Schoff, J. (1991) ‘Trading blocs and the world trading system’, World Economy 14(1): 1–17. Scott, D. (1999) Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Scott, J.C. (1986) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sheldon, M. (1992) Orwell: The Authorized Biography, New York: Harper Perennial. Shiraishi, T. (1997) ‘Japan and Southeast Asia’, in P.J. Katzenstein and T. Shiraishi (ed.) Network Power: Japan and the New Asia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 169–194. Shore, C. (1997) ‘Metaphors of Europe: Integration and the Politics of Language’, in S. Nugent and C. Shore (eds) Anthropology and Cultural Studies, London and Chicago, IL: Pluto Press, 126–159. Sidaway, J.D. (1994) ‘Geopolitics, geography and “terrorism” in the Middle East’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 12: 357–372. Sidaway, J.D. (1998a) ‘What is in a Gulf? From the “arc of crisis” to the Gulf war’, in G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby (eds) Rethinking Geopolitics, London and New York: Routledge, 224–239. Sidaway, J.D. (1998b) ‘The (geo)politics of regional integration: the example of the Southern African Development Community’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 16: 549–576. Sidaway, J.D. and Gibb, R. (1998) ‘SADC, COMESA, SACU: Contradictory frameworks for “integration” in Southern Africa’, in D. Simon (ed.) South Africa in Southern Africa, London: James Currey.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

142 Bibliography Sidaway, J.D. and Power, M. (1995) ‘Sociospatial transformations in the ‘postsocialist’ periphery: the case of Maputo, Mozambique’, Environment and Planning A 27: 1463–1491. Sidaway, J.D. and Power, M. (1998) ‘Sex and violence on the wild frontiers: the aftermath of state socialism in the periphery’, in J. Pickles and A. Smith (eds) Theorizing Transition. The Political Economy of Transformation in Post-Communist Societies, London and New York: Routledge, 408–427. Simon, D. (1991) ‘Namibia in Southern Africa: the regional implications of independence’, Tijdschrift voor Ecomische en Sociale Geografie 82(5): 367–376. Simon, D. (ed.) (1998) Reconfiguring the Region: South Africa in Southern Africa, London: James Currey. Slater, D. (1993) ‘The geopolitical imagination and the enframing of development’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 18: 419–437. Sloan, J.W. (1971) ‘The strategy of developmental regionalism: benefits, distribution, obstacles and capabilities’, Journal of Common Market Studies 10: 138–162. Souchou, Y. (2001) ‘Introduction’, in Y. Souchou (ed.) House of Glass: Culture, Modernity, and the State in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1–23. Southern African Development Community (SADC) (1992) Note from the Secretariat, Gaborone: Private Bag 0095. SADC (1993) Declaration Treaty and Protocol of the SADC, Gaborone: Private Bag 0095. SADC (1995) Note from the Secretariat, Gaborone: Private Bag 0095. Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) (1981a) Memorandum of Understanding on the Institutions of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference, Gaborone: SADCC. SADCC (1981b) Southern African Development Co-ordination. From Dependence and Poverty toward Economic Liberation, Gaborone: SADCC. SADCC (1981c) Southern African Development Co-ordination – From Dependence and Poverty toward Economic Liberation, Gaborone: SADCC. SADCC (1985a) SADCC – Procedures, Organisation and Consultative Agreements. Note from the Secretariat, Gaborone: SADCC. SADCC (1985b) Report of the Council of Ministers Meeting Held in Lilongwe, Republic of Malawi, 31 January 1985, Gaborone: SADCC. Spiegel, L. (ed.) (1997) Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stephanson, A. (1997) ‘Fourteen notes on the very concept of the cold war’, in G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby (eds) Rethinking Geopolitics, London and New York: Routledge, 62–85. Sum, N.-L. (2000) ‘Globalization and the other(s): three new kinds of Orientalism and the political economy of trans border identity’, in C. Hay and D. Marsh (eds) Demystifying Globalization, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 105–126. Summary of World Broadcasts (various issues) Summary of World Broadcasts, Caversham: BBC Monitoring. Svetlicic, M. and Singer, H.W. (eds) (1996) The World Economy. Challenges of Globalization and Regionalization, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Swyngedouw, E.A. (1992) ‘The mammon quest: “glocalisation”, interspatial competition and the monetary order: the construction of new spatial scales’, in M. Dunford and G. Kafkalas (eds) Cities and Regions in the New Europe. The Global–Local Interplay and Spatial Development Strategies, London: Belhaven Press, 39–67. Szawlowski, R. (1976) The System of the International Organizations of the Communist Countries, Leyden: Sijthoff.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 143 Takeuchi, K. (2000) ‘Japanese geopolitics in the 1930s and 1940s’, in K. Dodds and D. Atkinson (eds) (2000) Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought, London and New York: Routledge. Talbott, S. (1992) ‘Beware of the three-way split’, Time 15 June: 39. Tapscott, C. (1995) ‘Changing discourses of development in South Africa’, in J. Crush (ed.) Power of Development, London and New York: Routledge. Taussig, M.L. (1997) The Magic of the State, London and New York: Routledge. Tayanjah-Phiri (1997) ‘Tight security, cheers in Blantyre’, The Nation (Blantyre) 8 September: 1 and 27. Terada, T. (1998) ‘The origins of Japan’s APEC policy: Foreign Ministers Takeo Miki’s Asia-Pacific policy and current implications’, The Pacific Review 11(3): 337–363. Thambipillai, P. and Saravanamuttu, J. (1985) ASEAN Negotiations, Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies. Thomas, R. (1995) South and Southern Africa: Restructuring Economic Co-operation Initiatives to Encourage Growth and Diversity, Development Bank of Southern Africa: Halfway House, South Africa. Thompson, C.B. (1985) Challenge to Imperialism. The Frontline States in the Liberation of Zimbabwe, Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Thompson, C.B. (1986a) ‘Regional economic policy under crisis conditions: the case of agriculture within SADCC’, Journal of Southern African Studies 13: 82–100. Thompson, C.B. (1986b) Harvests Under Fire. Regional Co-operation for Food Security in Southern Africa, London: Zed Press. Thompson, C.B. (1988) ‘Self-sufficiency and regional coordination: formulating new theories in Southern Africa’, paper presented to the Meeting of the African Studies Association, Chicago, October. Thompson, L. (1991) ‘SADCC: part of a whole or whole of a part?’, International Affairs Bulletin 15: 59–71. Thrift, N. (2000a) ‘Afterwords’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18(2): 213–255. Thrift, N. (2000b) ‘It’s the little things’, in K. Dodds and D. Atkinson (eds) Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought, London and New York: Routledge, 380–387. Thrift, N. and Dewsbury, J.-D. (2000) ‘Dead geographies – and how to make them live’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18: 411–432. Tighe, C. (1996) ‘Ryszard Kapuscinski and the Emperor’, The Modern Language Review 91(4): 922–938. Tlou, L. (1991) ‘Regional cooperation and development. The case of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference’, Ph.D. dissertation, Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. Tønnesson, S. and Antlöv, H. (1996) ‘Asia in theories of nationalism and national identity’, in S. Tønnesson, and H. Antlöv (eds) Asian Forms of the Nation, Richmond: Curzon Press, 1–39. Tshiyembe, M. (1999) ‘Africa: ambiciones rivales en los Grandos Lajos’, Le Monde Diplomatique, Edición Española, January: 22–23. Tsie, B. (1994) The Political Economy of Botswana in SADCC, Harare: SAPES Books. Tsie, B. (1996) ‘States and markets in the Southern African Development Community (SADC): beyond the neo-liberal paradigm’, Journal of Southern African Studies 22: 75–98.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

144 Bibliography Tyler May, E. (1989) ‘Cold War – Warm Hearth: politics and the family in postwar America’, in S. Fraser and G. Gerstle (eds) The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Union of International Organizations (1998) Yearbook of International Organizations (three volumes), Munich: K.G. Saur Verlag. Vail, L. (1975) ‘The making of an imperial slum: Nyasaland and its railways, 1895–1935’, Journal of African History 16: 89–112. Vale, P. (1996) Southern Africa: Exploring a Peace Dividends, London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. Van der Pijl, K. (1998) Transnational Classes and International Relations, London and New York: Routledge. Verdery, K. (1999) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change, New York: Columbia University Press. Viatsos, C.V. (1978) ‘Crisis in regional economic cooperation (integration) among developing countries: a survey’, World Development 6: 719–769. Viner, J. (1950) The Customs Union Issue, New York: Carnegie Endowment for World Peace. Walker, R.B.J. (1993) Inside/Outside. International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walker, R.B.J. and Mendlovitz, S.H. (eds) (1990) Contending Sovereignties: Redefining Political Community, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Wallerstein, I. (1967) Africa: The Politics of Unity, New York: Random House. Walters, J. (1989) ‘Re-negotiating dependency: the case of the Southern African Customs Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies 28(1): 30–52. Weber, C. (1995) Simulating Sovereignty. Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weeks, J. (1996) ‘Regional cooperation and Southern African development’, Journal of Southern African Studies 22: 99–117. Weggoro, N.C. (1995) Effects of Regional Economic Integration in Southern Africa and the Role of the Republic of South Africa: A Study of Project Coordination Approach in Industry and Trade in SADCC/SADC, Berlin: Verlag Koster. Weisfelder, R.F. (1989) ‘SADCC as a counter-dependency strategy: how much collective clout?’, in E.J. Keller and L.A. Picard (eds) South Africa in Southern Africa – Domestic Change and International Conflict, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 155–177. Weisfelder, R.F. (1991) ‘Collective foreign policy decision-making within SADCC: do regional objectives alter national policies?’, Africa Today 38: 5–17. Wesley, M. (1997) ‘The politics of exclusion: Australia, Turkey and definitions of regionalism’, The Pacific Review 10(4): 523–555. White, M. (1999) ‘Want to find out what’s really going on in British politics? Read a women’s magazine’, The Guardian Europe 2, 3 February: 2. Williams, L. (1992) ‘Film theory’, in E. Wright (ed.) Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell, 118–122. Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wise, M. (1994) ‘The European Community’, in R. Gibb and W.M. Michalak (eds) Continental Trading Blocs. The Growth of Regionalism in the World Economy, Chichester, Sussex: John Wiley, 75–10. Worby, E. (1998) ‘Tyranny, parody and ethnic polarity: ritual engagements with the state in northwestern Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies 24(3): 561–578.

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Bibliography 145 Worby, E. (2000) ‘Discipline without oppression: sequence, timing and marginality in Southern Rhodesia’s post-war development regime’, The Journal of African History 41: 101–126. World Trade Organisation (1995) Press Release 18 April 1995: No evidence of Polarisation of World Trade among Three ‘Blocs’ and no Clash Between World Trade Systems, Geneva: World Trade Organisation. Yew, L.K. (2000) From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1963–2000, Singapore: The Straits Times Press. Zizˇek, S. (1994) ‘Introduction’, in S. Zizˇek (ed.) Mapping Ideology, London and New York: Verso, 1–33.

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

11

Index

11

111

abjection 89 active involvement 56 Africa: imperialism 50; politics 93, 108; statehood 98–100; see also South Africa African National Congress (ANC) 52 aid 23, 56–8 ambivalence 74–8 American power 19–25 analogies 43 ANC see African National Congress Anderson, Benedict 10–11 Angola 40–1, 67, 97–8 annual consultative conference 1996 69–70, 72–3 anti-colonial movements 16, 75 anti-imperialism 18–19, 25 Antlöv, H. 10 apartheid 63, 74, 76, 80–1 APEC see Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Arab society 94 Arouh, A. 8 Arrighi, G. 24 ASEAN 31–2 Ashforth, Adam 75 Asia 26, 31, 33–5 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 31–2 Asiaweek magazine 32–3 authority 97–8

111

Bass, Alan 30 balance of power 45 Bandung era 112–14 Barakat, Halim 94

11

111

111

Benjamin, Walter 103 Berlin Declaration 50–1 Berlin West Africa Conference 50 Bhabha, H. 77 Biersteker, T.J. 101 Blacksell, Mark 38 blocs: regional 13, 28 Bloomfield, J. 23 Bobrow, Davis 32 Buck-Morss, S. 19–20, 40 Capital 49–50 capitalism 26–7, 50 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique 12–13, 15 Central African Federation 73 Ceremonial Regionalism 41 checkpoints 97 cinema 103–5 CMEA see Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Cold War 9, 24, 31, 40, 65, 99 colonialism 10, 18–19, 74–9, 102, 109; see also imperialism Comaroff, John and Jean 109 COMESA see Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa commodities 20 Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) 77 Common Revenue Pool 83–4 communism 20, 24, 27 communities 37–8 conceptualisations 5 conferences 71–4 Congo crisis 65; see also Zaire

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

148 Index consensus 59–60 containment 24–6 contemporary regional communities 17–18 Cooper, Robert 9–11 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) 24, 27, 38–9 Coussy, J. 87 Crowe, S.E. 50 culture 3, 5, 13, 42 currencies 28, 37, 82, 84 Customs Union: 1889 Convention 77; 1910 Agreement 79–80, 82; 1969 Agreement 81–2; Task Team 85 De Boeck, Filip 99 Debord, G. 70 decentralised structure 55, 59 democracy 64, 67 dependency 18, 52, 69, 77, 80 Derrida, J. 30, 75, 106, 108 development 12, 17–18, 102; SADC 76, 78–89; uneven 58, 73, 86 diplomacy 53–8, 70, 72, 95–6 Dirlik, Arif 34 disconnection 89 discourse 42–3, 109 domination 76–7 Doty, Roxanne 100 East African Community (EAC) 53 EC see European Community economics 7–8 Economist magazine 16, 28–30 economy 3, 5, 13, 42 EEC see European Economic Community Encounter journal 12 enmity 6 epilogue 111–14 episteme 43, 95, 102 ethnology 108 EU see European Union Europe 11, 21–2, 36 European Community (EC) 109–10 European Economic Community (EEC) 26–8 European Union (EU) 5, 15, 18, 26–8 expansion 78, 81–2, 88

failures 51–3 fantasy 106–7 FCO see Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ferguson, James 80, 88–9 Financial Gazette 52 Flying Geese metaphor 33–4 Fordism 20, 23 foregrounding 96 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) 9–10, 77–8 formal structures 54–5 Foucault, Michel 42–4, 95–6 France 22 free trade 7, 19–20, 28, 31; Southern Africa 63, 82 functionalist theories 8 funding bids 56–7 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 16, 26–7 ghosts 74–5 global free trade 7, 19–20, 28, 31 globalisation 9, 12, 101 Gott, Richard 65 Gottweis, Herbert 109–10 governance 102, 109–10 Hanlon, Joseph 63 Harvey, David 22 Heath, Stephen 103–4 Hertz, Ellen 6 High Commission Territories 77, 79–80 Hoxha, Enver 39 Hurrell, Andrew 11 Hyam, Roger 78 hydroelectric resources 67 identity 10–11, 42, 43 ideological diversity 58 Iheduru, O.C. 87 imperialism 45, 50–1; see also colonialism import substitution programmes 80 independence 87–9 industries 85 informality 59, 86 Ingraham, Catherine 107 integration 33, 86–7, 94–5

11

11

Index 149 integration theories 9, 14 international organisations 13 international relations 9 internationalism 22 Iron Curtain 22, 24, 40 Japan 19, 26, 33 Kabila, Laurent-Désiré 66–8 Kadir, N. 98 Kapus´cin´ski, Ryszard 97–8 Kenya 63, 66 Korhonen, Pekka 32, 34–5

11

111

111

111

111

modernity 89, 109 Monroe Doctrine 1823 19 Montecinos, V. 41 Mozambique 67 Mugabe, Robert 63 multilateralism 22, 26

Lacan, J. 52, 104–7 Latin America 41 Lebanon 98 Lesotho 84 liberation 19, 58, 65 Loxton, L. 74, 76 Luciani, G. 83 Luke, Tim 41, 102 McCarthy, C.L. 82 McGreal, C. 68 McLellan, David 49 Mahan, Alfred T. 19 Mail and Guardian 70 Mamdani, Mahmood 99–100, 108 Mandela, Nelson 67, 69, 71 markets 7 Martin, William 81 Marx, Karl 49–50, 75 masquerades 105–6 Mayne, Richard 38 media 11 member states 41–2 mercantilist policies 63, 87 Mercosur 16, 32 metaphors 28–37, 76, 86 Metz, Christian 105 Mexico 20 military alliances 23–4 Millier, Jacques-Alain 104 Milward, A.S. 8 mineral exports 83 misconceptions 52 Mobutu regime 64–7 modern states 44, 98–100

NAFTA see North American Free Trade Area Nairn, Tom 9 nations 11, 13 negotiations 72 neo-functionalism 8–9 Neumann, Iver 11 New Deal 20, 26 new members 64, 66–8 Niemann, M.E. 94 North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) 16, 32 Nyerere, Julius 55 Ohmae, Ken 12 Orwell, George 5–7, 28 Pacific Age 31, 34 Parekh, Bhikhu 16–17 partitions 50 passive revolutions 23–4 Peace (Treaty) of Westphalia 44 Pells, Richard 21 Peoples’ Democracies 39–40 performances 72–3, 106 perspectives 102–3 Phillips, Ruth 31 Pieterse, Jan Nederveen 16–17 police practices 86, 97, 101 policy 7 political differences 58 political science 8–9 politics 5, 13 populist ideas 17 Portuguese-speaking community 13, 15 post-colonial Africa 52–3 post-colonial projects 15–17 postmodernism 10 power relations 51–2, 73, 102 presence 38 procedures 69–71, 73 Prospect magazine 9

1

1

1

11

11

11

11

150 Index protocols 62 psychoanalysis 105–7 quasi-states 98 racism 19, 35 realist approaches 9 realities 54, 106–7 recognition 105–6, 108 regional agreements 16 regional communities 12–13; contemporary 17–18; economic 15–16; theories 7–9, 108 regionalism 12, 30, 41, 101 rentier states 83, 86 representations 42–4, 102–3 resemblances 42–3 resistance 77, 101 revenue-sharing formula 79–80, 83, 85 Riviere, Joan 105–6 Rosenberg, Justin 45 Rostow, Walter 12, 17 Rushdie, Salman 98 Rwanda 65, 68 Ryan, Michael 39 SACU see Southern African Customs Union SADC see Southern African Development Community SADCC see Southern African Development Coordination Conference Santos, Eduardo dos 40 Scott, David 113 Scott, J.C. 77 secretariat 54–5, 60, 71 security issues 62 Seychelles 66–7 Sheldon, Michael 6 Shore, Chris 36 signatures 37–8, 40–1 simulation 95 Singapore 112 Smuts, Jan 88 socialist communities 24, 39–40 society 3 Sorenson, V. 8 South, the 16–18

South Africa: conferences 69–70, 72–3; dependency 77; economy 69; expansion 88; SACU 79–80; SADC 52, 61–3, 76; tariffs 85 South African Reserve Bank 83 South African War 81 South-East Asia 19, 34, 112 Southern African Customs Union (SACU) 77–87; administration 86; Common Revenue Pool 83–4 Southern African Development Community (SADC) 40–1, 49–89; conferences 71–4; development 78–89; establishment 61–71; failures 51–3; formal structures 54–5; metaphors 35–6; new members 64–8; performance 58–61; post-colonial legacies 74–8; procedures 69–71, 73; relative size of economies 57; sovereignty 94, 96–7, 101 Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC): objectives 51–2; roles of the secretariat 55; transformation 61–71 Southern states 98–100 sovereign-state interests 9, 94 sovereignty 20, 39–41, 44–5, 93–110; reality 106–7; representations 102–4; Southern Africa 79–80, 82, 86–7, 89; statehood 98–100; Zaire 68–9 Soviet bloc 22–4, 27 space of flows 23–4, 26–7, 39–40 spectacles 72–3 spectators 104–5 splits 28 stabilisation factors 83, 85–6 staff 55–6 Stalinism 24, 39, 40 state class 94 states 4–13, 41–2, 44; modernity 98–9; reality 104–7 structural adjustment 88 struggles 58 subjectivity 107 Sum, Ngai-Ling 34 summits 56, 59, 68, 71–4 superpowers 6, 18 suture 104 Swaziland 84

11

11

11

111

111

111

111

Index 151 tariffs 80, 85 tensions 59, 60, 62 theories 7–9, 14, 108 Third World 16–18 Time magazine 28 Tlou, L. 94 Tønnesson, S. 10 trade issues 19, 62, 79, 86 transnational imagined communities 12 transnational investment 20–1 treaties 37–8 tri-partite splits 28 trusteeship 79, 83 Tshiyembe, Mwayila 68 Uganda 63, 66 uneven development 58, 73, 86 Unique Quintessence of International Relations 4, 44–5 United Nations 41–2 unity 69 USA see America USSR see Soviet bloc

values 10 Van der Pijl, Kees 7, 12, 20–1 Wallerstein, Immanuel 65–6 water resources 67 weak states 98–9 weapons of the weak 77 Weber, C. 95, 101 Weisfelder, R.F. 59 western influences: development 18; intervention 99; statehood 98–9 Westphalia 44–5 white minorities 51, 78, 101 Williams, Linda 105 Williams, Raymond 5 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 16, 30 Yearbook of International Organizations 13 Zaire 64–9, 99 Zambia 63, 88–9 Zimbabwe 63, 67–8, 70 Zizˇ ek, Slavoj 106