Executive secretary of the South African Development Community (SADC) Tomaz Salomao indicated over the weekend the Southern African countries that were members of both SADC and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) would soon need to choose to which of the two organisations they want to belong.

According to world Trade Organisation rules, no country can belong to more than one customs union – both SADC and Comesa intend creating customs unions. A further complication is that there is already an existing customs union, the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu), within SADC. South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland are members of Sacu.

Salamao said that the president of Botswana Festus Mogae had told him that the main impediment to speeding up regional integration in Southern Africa was the issue of dual affiliation, especially the fact that local politicians did not openly talk about the implications of this.

Eight of the SADC members also belong to Comesa – Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mauritius, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Swaziland.

While SADC intends introducing a free trade area next year, a customs union in 2010 and a common market in 2015, the Comesa customs union is due to come into effect next year.