Peacebuilding and the new regionalism in southern Africa

This paper investigates the complexities of establishing sustainable peaceb uilding strategies in southern Africa within 'new' security/'new' regionali sm contexts. Building peace requires initiatives based upon longer-term dev elopmental, political, economic and social objectives. If peacebuilding is to fulfil its potential for the advancement of 'human' security in Southern Africa, these criteria will best be met through regional solutions. Yet, t he new regionalism is multi-dimensional and the various regionalist forces are not necessarily compatible. Although national governments have made som e efforts toward the development of a regional security complex, strong sta tist and realist tendencies persist at official levels and regionalist pres sures within civil societies as well as by external actors tend to be mixed and often contradictory. Apart from a widespread recognition in South Afri ca of the need to give a bottom-up perspective on the question 'who is secu rity all about?', there has been a growing recognition throughout the regio n as a whole of the desirability of a regional dimension to the security re ferent.(1)