In 2011 the heads of state of the Southern African Development Com-munity (SADC) disbanded the SADC Tribunal after the regional court held that the Zimbabwean government's land seizures violated the rule of law. The disbandment reflects SADC's hierarchy of values, in terms of which the organization's formal commitment to human rights and a regional legal order is subordinate to the political imperatives of regime solidarity and respect for sovereignty. The Tribunal saga demonstrates that the jurisdiction of regional courts derives not simply from their official mandates but from an interplay between domestic and regional law and politics.

This article presents a synopsis of Community of insecurity: SADC's struggle for peace and security in southern Africa, published by Ashgate in 2012. It focuses on SADC's efforts to establish a common security regime; conflict and peacemaking in southern Africa between 1992 and 2011; and the prospects of SADC becoming a security community. It summarises the reasons for SADC's difficulties in the sphere of regional security and politics, namely the weakness of member states, their unwillingness to surrender sovereignty to communal mechanisms, and the absence of common values among them. The main conclusion is that these problems lie primarily at the national level and cannot be solved at the regional level. SADC is a forum of states and it cannot do anything that these states will not permit it to do.

The problem of political instability is neglected in the literature on security communities. In this article I argue that domestic stability, defined as the absence of large-scale violence in a country, is a necessary condition of these communities. Domestic violence precludes the existence of security communities because it renders people and states insecure; it creates the risk of cross-border destabilization and violence; and it generates uncertainty and tension among states, inhibiting trust and a sense of collective identity. I conclude that the benchmark of a security community—dependable expectations of peaceful change—should apply as much within states as between them. This is consistent with the work of Karl Deutsch, whose pioneering concept of a security community is widely understood to mean the absence of interstate war. Deutsch, in fact, was equally concerned with large-scale internal violence.

During the presidency of Nelson Mandela from 1994 to 1999, foreign diplomats noted wryly and South African commentators complained loudly that Pretoria did not have a coherent foreign policy. There were several reasons for the ad hoc and often haphazard approach. The new government was inexperienced and preoccupied with the domestic imperatives of national reconciliation and the transformation of state departments; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alfred Nzo, was sorely lacking in dynamism and vision; and the apartheid-era officials who still dominated the Department of Foreign Affairs were dazzled by the light of democracy and an open world with high expectations of South Africa. Moreover, these officials repudiated the need for a comprehensive and systematic foreign policy. At a conference in Johannesburg in 1998 I heard one of them insist that whereas defence policy was like an ocean liner that should not change direction quickly and frequently, foreign policy was like a windsurfer that should be able to turn on its axis as the wind changed! A number of analysts believe that foreign policy under President Mbeki continues to lack coherence. Paul-Henri Bischoff characterizes the policy as ambiguous, 1 and Paul Williams describes it as an 'eclectic synthesis of neorealist and neo-liberal principles'. 2 Jack Spence suggests that the government's inclination to solve problems as they arise, rather than be guided by critical and principled perspectives, derives from the nature of international affairs: critics who look for coherence and consistency in a well-structured foreign policy underestimate contingent and unforeseen factors and the developments and forces that lie outside the control of even the most skilful bureaucracy and political class. 3 Spence quotes James Mayall as saying that 'most countries make * This article is based on a paper presented at a Chatham House panel discussion on 10 Nov. 2004. 1 Paul-Henri Bischoff, 'External and domestic sources of foreign policy ambiguity: South African foreign policy and the projection of pluralist middle power',