5 - Peace enforcement through sub-regional organisations: the Southern African Development Community and Operation Boleas in Lesotho

Summary

Barely one month after Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia claimed SADC auspices for their controversial intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Botswana launched a peace enforcement operation into Lesotho. The intervention, codenamed Operation Boleas, was led by South Africa and executed by only two SADC members. However, South Africa and Botswana insisted that they were acting on behalf of SADC. This chapter analyses why South Africa chose to launch Operation Boleas within the SADC framework. It begins by briefly sketching the historical background of the intervention and then argues that neither respect for international law nor a desire for burden-sharing can explain South Africa's choice of the SADC framework. By contrast, the legitimacy-centred theory of the role of international organisations in peace enforcement operations developed in chapter 2 finds considerable support. South Africa had substantial concerns about Operation Boleas's international legitimacy, which operating within the SADC framework helped address. The importance South Africa attached to this legitimacy can be gauged by the considerable costs it incurred to secure the SADC mandate.

Operation Boleas marks SADC's coming of age in the domain of regional peace and security. South Africa and Botswana had hitherto staunchly and publicly sought to deny SADC auspices to the Zimbabwe-led intervention in the DRC. Now, however, they too wished to benefit from the international legitimacy those auspices could bestow on an intervention and recognised that SADC's legitimising potential depended on its presenting a united front to the rest of the international community.