DIRCO Annual Report

To facilitate regional trade, the virtual SADC Extraordinary Council of Ministers’ Meeting, held on 23 June 2020, approved the SADC Guidelines on Harmonisation and Facilitation of Cross Border Transport Operations across the Region during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, South Africa participated in a virtual Extraordinary Meeting of the Tripartite Council of Ministers, which took place on 29 July 2020. The extraordinary virtual meeting considered and approved the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)-East Africa Community (EAC)-SADC Tripartite Trade and Transport Facilitation Guidelines for the Movement of Persons, Goods and Services across the three regions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The guidelines would help the region to curb the spread of COVID-19. It is estimated that 60% of trucks crisscrossing the region are South African, which implies that South Africa stands to socially and economically benefit from the successful implementation of the guidelines.

Model Regulations, (vi) Road Transport Transgression Model Law and Model Regulations and (vii) Transport of Dangerous Goods Model Law. However, South Africa registered her reservations on all these legal instruments. The reservations were informed by the fact that negotiations on the draft legal instruments had not been concluded and as such, the draft legal instruments were not ready for legal scrubbing. South Africa also stated that there were a number of technical issues in the draft legal instruments, which should be referred for further negotiations at a technical level before the draft legal instruments could be legally scrubbed. South Africa further argued that the legal instruments should be subjected to properly mandated member states/partners for negotiations in order to reach a consensus. South Africa’s reservations were rebutted by the Secretariat, which stated that the legal agreements were properly negotiated and workshops were held in various regional economic communities (RECs) and at national level with member states. According to the Secretariat, the legal instruments were considered and adopted by the Tripartite Ministerial Committee on Infrastructure on 30 October 2019, which South Africa did not attend. In the end, South Africa reiterated that her reservations stood and should be reflected in the report. South Africa emphasised that it would find it difficult to implement the legal instruments in their current format, due to the fact that the outstanding substantive matters were so fundamental to the transportation system and the integrity of the road infrastructure. As part of efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic, the President convened a virtual meeting of the heads of state and government of neighbouring countries plus Angola. The meeting shared experiences on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and agreed on a number of steps to be taken in mitigating the effects, as well as the spread, of the pandemic. These include, among others, the development of post-COVID-19 economic recovery strategies and the establishment of a common portal for information-sharing on the pandemic by states. Missions also fulfilled their COVID-19-related reporting obligations since the advent of the pandemic. This enabled South Africa to benchmark its response to the pandemic against other countries and also assisted the President in his role as the Chairperson of the African Union (AU). The 40th Ordinary SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government approved the SADC Vision 2050 and the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RSIDP) 2020 – 2030,

South Africa participated in the Tripartite Sectoral Ministerial Committee on Legal Affairs, which was held virtually on 18 September 2020, to legally scrub the following seven legal instruments: (i) Vehicle Load Management Agreement (ii) Multilateral Cross-Border Transport Agreement (iii) Vehicle Load Management Model Law and Model Regulations, (iv) Cross Border Road Transport Model Law and Model Regulations, (v) Road Traffic Model Law and

Department of International Relations and Cooperation

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