The overwhelmingly dominant regional power of southern Africa, South Africa, attempts to contain the political, economic, and military interdependence of neighboring states, irrespective of ideological preference. The Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) founded in 1980, is the response of the other states in the region to South Africa’s ambitions to maintain regional hegemony. Its nine member state are Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and an independent Namibia is expected to join. The specific objectives of SADCC, as stated in the 1980 Lusaka Declaration, are the reduction of economic dependence in general (not only on South Africa); the forging of links to create a genuinely meaningful and equitable system of regional integration; the mobilization of resources to support national, interstate, and regional policies; and concerted action to secure international cooperation for the purpose of economic liberation.

A week before the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington, a group of American and Soviet scholars met in Moscow to explore how a new spirit of cooperation could be applied in Africa. The challenge was to find ways of transforming the well-established pattern of hostile competition between the two countries in that area of the world into one of collaboration for the mutual benefit of both countries and Africa. The results of the Moscow workshop are highly promising.