The nagging question of land reform has resurfaced, now at the SADC level, as stakeholders ponder how regional integration and development can be achieved.
“The land issue, as one example of the colonial legacy remains largely contentious and unresolved. The people have not yet been delivered to ‘Canaan’,” said Boichoko Ditlhake, Executive Director of SASC-Council of Non-Governmental Organizations.
“Poverty grows in the midst of unimaginable wealth in this region. Our region has fields, plains, valleys and mountains ÔÇô all that nature can provide. It has the ploughs, tractors, and the hoes ÔÇô all that the human mind can fashion. Most importantly the willing hands of millions ÔÇô all that the human spirit can muster ÔÇô to grow our orchard, our little oasis, into a vast and unending horizon of peace and prosperity,” Ditlhake said.
He was giving the opening remarks at the launch of the study titled, ‘The SADC We need: Towards Value-based Regional Integration and Development’ in Gaborone on Thursday.
Speaking at the same event, former President, Ketumile Masire, commended the study and advised that in critiquing SADC, one must appreciate the dreadful challenges that confronted the organisation’s founders.
“The ultimate objective was to enable SADC to effectively address the developmental needs of the region and to position the region to meet the challenges of the dynamic, ever changing and complex globalization process as well as to take advantage of the opportunities offered by globalization.”, Masire said.
The survey book launched reflects on the founding values and principles of SADC and how they are evolving, fading away and eroding.
“In its twenty-first year of existence, these inspirational and world class founding values have given us pause for thought and reflection,” said Ditlhake.
“If the circumstances and the realities which confront us today have changed and changed significantly, does it mean that our hopes, our aspirations and vision for the future have also by necessity changed and been altered?
“If this is the case, as it undoubtedly must be, what then has become of our shared and common values? What is their significance today? And what will their practical meaning and expression be tomorrow and to the next generation?”
“Is the barbarism of poverty and all its attendant beastliness about to overwhelm our collective sense of humanity, of self, of Ubuntu? Are our women and children to remain perpetual victims of patriarchal violence and abuse, often of most inhuman kind? Are our men to live the misery of migrant labour or the indignity of unemployment without hope? Are our languages and cultures going to be allowed to wither away with our elders, never to be heard and practiced again?
“Can all these and so many more ills continue before our eyes as our leaders, elected representatives and public officials speak with mouths full of food while our people are literally dying for crumbs?” Ditlhake asked.
