Further on SADC unities' referenda

 The referenda can be conducted simultaneously or at different times in all SADC countries. However, the best results are likely to accrue from simultaneous referenda because such referenda eliminate neighbour contamination bias.

Unity of SADC countries is assumed to be in stages, herein referred to as unity levels (UL). Unity Level1 (UL1) proceeds from the current state of country sovereignty to the first composite sovereignty, where some countries will have united with others. Unity Level2 (UL2) involves the unity of composite, as opposed to initial, sovereignties. As Unity levels are progressively traversed, the nature of the SADC organisation itself will gradually approach a Union State. How long a stage or level lasts will be determined by the SADC organisation prevailing at the time. 

This write-up concerns itself only with Unity level1 (UL1). 

A SADC member country (SMC) may unite only with a SMC with which it shares a common border. A sea border is considered a common border, while a lake border is considered common only to those SADC member countries that border said lake. Therefore Madagascar shares a common border with Angola, Comoros, DRC, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, and Tanzania; but not with Malawi.

The purpose of each country’s referendum is to assign a unity priority weight (UPW) to the said country’s side of each of its common borders. The greater the weight, the more desirable the country’s population considers UNITY with the concerned neighbour. 

In each country, each border is identified by the name of the country on the other side of the said border. Therefore country A refers to the common border between itself and country B as Border B and country B refers to the same border as Border A. The referendum billet in each country will list the common borders in alphabetical order. For example, the referendum billet in Botswana will list the common borders as follows: Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Disputed borders, such as between Botswana and Zambia are not worth wasting SADC’s time on.

As another example, Republic of South Africa’s (RSA) referendum billet will list its thirteen (13) common borders as follows: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, DRC, Eswathini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.   

Each RSA voter will assign his/her unity order of preference to each of these common borders. At the end of the counting process, RSA will have something like this: Largest percentage assigns highest priority to unity with country Large1; second largest percentage assigns highest priority to unity with country Large2; third largest percentage assigns highest priority to unity with country Large3 et cetera…

As you can see, the results of referendum in RSA’s neighbouring country, large1, may not necessarily favour unity with RSA, in which case RSA will have to go looking for an available neighbour lower down its pecking order! It is complicated, and that is why the results of the referenda will best be fed into a computer/AI to wipe away the offending relics of imperialism – SADC’s internal boundaries! That said, I am unable to see how the AI will solve the RSA-Lesotho debacle, unless the populations of either country assign the highest priority to each other. The reason is simple – Lesotho’s referendum billet will list only ONE common boundary, that of RSA. 


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