FOUNDERS’ LEGACY

Description

This book emerged from a simple but persistent question: why do the ideas of a small cohort of twentieth-century African statesmen continue to matter to a region confronting entirely different problems such as climate volatility, digital disruption, youth unemployment on a demographic scale unimaginable in 1980? The temptation in much contemporary scholarship is either to lionize the founders of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) as flawless visionaries or to dismiss their relevance as a closed chapter of Cold War-era anti-colonial politics. Both postures are inadequate. This monograph attempts a third path: a critical, historically grounded, but ultimately constructive engagement with the founders’ ideas, examining what in their thought was contingent on circumstance and what speaks to enduring structural features of regional life in Southern Africa. This book is dedicated to scholars, policymakers, students, and all readers committed to understanding Southern Africa’s political and economic evolution and to imagining a more integrated, sovereign, and resilient regional future.