Existing imbalances are mammoth, but it is encouraging to note that so is the determination of trade and industry minister, Dorcas Makgato-Malesu, to make the case for Botswana which, alongside Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia, has provided a massive consumer market for goods produced in South Africa. We say more power to her elbow because hers is the refreshing approach of someone who is on the ball in a country that has been happy to play second-fiddle inspite of its relative competencies. But it will be a daunting task because the imbalances in SACU are entrenched and go far.
The organisation was formed in 1910, the year that saw the birth of the Union of South Africa and a more emphatic relegation of Africans to second-class citizenship in southern Africa. Hence domination of the region was an integral part of the philosophy that informed South Africa's relations with its feeble neighbours. Since then, the region has provided a duty and quota free market for goods manufactured in South Africa, a situation that has persisted beyond the dawn of independence at the expense of industrial development in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and subsequently Namibia.Over the years, the disproportion became self-fulfilling as the force, though a heresy, of apartheid fed on its own momentum to attract investment from so-called liberal-democratic nations of the West with similar notions of white supremacy.
