Author: Richard Gibb.

Regional integration is a fashionable, but far from novel phenomenon, in southern Africa. This paper compares regional integration during the apartheid period with that which has occurred subsequently. South Africa's regional strategy has consistently been the single most important factor affecting the nature, character and evolution of regional integration. It was only after South Africa's successful all-race election in April 1994 could southern African regionalism move away from the politics of separation to integration. Since 1994, all the regional institutions in southern Africa have changed their institutional structures and integrative ambitions in order to respond to changed national, international and regional environments. There is no doubt that the policy environment affecting regional integration in post-apartheid southern Africa has changed beyond all recognition when compared to the late-apartheid period. However, a central contention of this paper is that many of the key challenges facing southern African regionalism remain fundamentally the same as in the apartheid period; intra-regional trade remains imbalanced and limited, regional inequalities continue to be intense and the institutional structure of regional integration is complex, confusing and contradictory.