The Southern African Customs Union in Transition

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Periodical article

Title:	The Southern African Customs Union in Transition
Author:	McCarthy, Colin
Year:	2003
Periodical:	African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society
Volume:	102
Issue:	409
Period:	October
Pages:	605-630
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Southern Africa
Subjects:	SACU Economics and Trade Inter-African Relations Development and Technology
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/3518516
Abstract:	The democratization of South Africa in 1994 had important implications for the region. One of these was a desire to renegotiate the SACU (Southern African Customs Union) Agreement, an exercise that took longer than originally anticipated but which produced an agreement that differs in fundamental respects from the agreement that has been arranging customs union management since 1969. The new chapter in the history of the world's oldest customs union will, on implementation, introduce a radically different revenue distribution formula, but most importantly, an institutional structure that provides for the democratic governance of the customs union through a number of supranational bodies that will take decisions on the basis of consensus. The big issue will remain whether the new agreement can reconcile the divergent economic development needs of South Africa, with its much larger and more industrialized economy, and those of the four smaller, less developed customs union partners. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]