Social and cultural integration

The RISDP describes social and cultural integration within what it terms the “social and human development cluster”. This covers areas of human resources development, health, employment and labour, culture, information, and sport. Priority is accorded to social and human development in view of its crucial role both as a factor and as a broad measure of de-velopment. It is therefore important for the subregion to ensure the availability of educated, skilled, healthy, productive human resources required for promoting investment, efficiency and competitiveness of the subregion in the global economy as well as improving the quality of lives of the subregion’s population. This area also has an important role to play in consoli-dating the historical, social and cultural ties and affinities of the peoples of the subregion.

Interestingly, a number of aspects that typically signify social and cultural integration, such as migration, entertainment, humanitarian support and cultural exchanges through tourism, are not mentioned as among SADC’s strategic interest areas for sociocultural integration and development. Those listed in the RISDP (human resources development, health, employ-ment and labour, and culture and information and sport) have all been considered in detail in earlier chapters, with the exception of culture, information and sport. Thus in this section we consider some of the areas mentioned in the RISDP and others not mentioned there but which provide insights into social and cultural integration outcomes. The ensuing subsec-tions are dedicated to these various considerasubsec-tions in turn.

2.9.1 Greater labour mobility

Ideally, labour mobility should be measured as eligible persons that acquire permission to enter the border of a given country to seek or take up some form of formal, gainful employ-ment within a given reference time period. But because migration data come mostly from destination countries, the quality of migration data tends to be poor, depending on how well the destination countries survey migrants within their borders (World Bank, 2011).

Systematic recording of migrants is challenging, particularly for countries with weak statisti-cal capacity and for those affected by civil disorder and natural disasters. Moreover, ensuring the comparability of migration data is a long-standing challenge, in part because destination countries classify migrants using various criteria.

In this report, freer movement of people or measures of migration are used as proxies for labour mobility. To gauge the level of “permanent human mobility” we use the measurement

“international migrant stock”, which counts the total number of people (including refugees) born in a country other than that in which they currently live. We also use the number of

refugees to comment about the levels of humanitarian support and receptiveness to foreign-ers among SADC countries.

In terms of the stock of international migrants in each country, a very diverse picture is seen across the SADC subregion (Table 2.11). Countries have variously reduced or in-creased the total of international migrants within their borders, based on a mix of domestic policy shifts and changes in security and human-rights records elsewhere in the subregion, particularly in neighbouring countries. Thus, the declines and increases do not necessar-ily reflect declining or increasing levels of tolerance for foreigners in the host countries, though this could be a possible source of the observed migration. However, an equally likely reason could be that security in the home-countries of the migrants is changing, and the migrants are moving in response to these new security or insecurity situations.

Table 2.11: Migration: International migrant stock (number), 1990-2010¹⁷

1990 1995

DRC 754,194 1,918,948 154% 616,430 -67% 480,105 -22% 444,672 -7% 14%

Swaziland 71,394 35,151 -51% 36,771 5% 38,574 5% 40,418 5% 16%

Zimbabwe 627,098 432,504 -31% 411,410 -5% 391,345 -5% 372,258 -5% 14%

Lesotho 8,240 6,116 -26% 6,167 1% 6,247 1% 6,328 1% 7%

Zambia 279,969 270,957 -3% 357,469 32% 287,337 20% 233,140 -18% -2%

Madagascar 46,125 43,875 -5% 41,735 -5% 39,699 -5% 37,762 -5% -5%

Tanzania 575,957 1,134,389 97% 900,065 -21% 797,701 -11% 659,202 -17% 12%

Namibia 112,096 118,262 5% 124,767 5% 131,630 5% 138,870 5% 5%

South Africa 1,224,368 1,097,790 -10% 1,022,376 -7% 1,248,732 22% 1,862,889 49% 13%

Angola 33,517 37,502 12% 46,108 23% 56,055 21% 65,387 9% 16%

Seychelles 3,721 4,275 15% 6,574 54% 8,441 28% 10,838 28% 31%

Mozambique 121,912 245,741 101% 366,480 49% 406,075 11% 450,020 11% 43%

Mauritius 8,736 18,419 110% 38,833 111% 40,824 5% 42,917 5% 58

Botswana 27,510 39,039 42% 55,937 43% 80,148 43% 114,838 43% 43%

Source: constructed from World Bank WDI data

A look at the patterns of refugee settlement across the SADC States offers more insight about subregional mobility (Figure 2.16). From the figure, the majority of countries maintained the 1990 refugee populations, although there were marginal increases or declines by the close of the period in 2010. Only Mozambique and, to some extent, South Africa significantly increased the number of refugees. For Mozambique, the index (not shown in the graph) was 1,970 in 2011, implying a 1,870 per cent increase in its refugee population between 2000 17 These were the latest statistics available at the time of preparing this report.

and 2010. It appears that initially Zimbabwe also experienced a significant increase in refu-gees from 2000 until 2004-2005 when serious political tensions emerged and started to take hold in the country. Countries such as Zambia, Tanzania and Namibia steadily reduced the number of refugees within their borders.

Figure 2.16: Refugee population index [2000 = 100] by country of asylum, 2000-2010

No time-series statistics available for DRC, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius and Mozambique Seychelles: no record of refugees

The value in parenthesis is the absolute or total number of refugees at the close of the period in 2009 Sources: UNHCR Statistics 2010

2.9.2 Cultural exchange

Domestic and international tourism tend to act as vehicles for cultural exchange as tour-ists interact between themselves and the local communities and thus exchange personal experiences and values. In this context, levels of inbound tourism act as a proxy measure-ment for the subregion’s record of cultural exchange (Figure 2.17)¹⁸. By virtue of its land size, tourism endowments, economic advancement relative to the rest of the subregion and other factors, South Africa dominated the international inbound tourism record in the subregion. Inbound tourism grew in all economies in SADC during the reference pe-riod, except in DRC where recorded inbound tourism was very low and static. Zimbabwe 18 At the time of preparing this report, 2011 data on this variable was not yet updated in the WDI.

also did not record any significant change between the interval average of 2000-2004 and 2005-2010, suggesting that the effect of domestic political instability, among other things, perhaps limited the progress in terms of attracting tourists.

The SADC subregion’s record for social and cultural integration suggests that there is a sig-nificant gap for fostering specific achievements at the subregional level. Most of the subre-gional arrangements are either not yet in effect or have been rather ineffective. Countries that have made notable strides appear to have done so largely from local or home-grown initiatives at the national level. The subregional level has yet to figure out what could be of-fered as strategies and policies for mutually beneficial, coordinated and harmonised social integration, with opportunities for all populations of all countries.

Figure 2.17: International tourists: Inbound (average number in each interval)

* Data for the 2001-2005 interval not available

Source: constructed from Country Data Tables (Annex 1)