A Federation for Southern Africa?
Abstract This paper evaluates whether uniting the states of Southern Africa into a federal union would better protect individuals’ freedom of action and private property - the core purpose of government - than the prevailing system of separate sovereign nation-states. Martin van Staden argues that true federalism, unlike mere sovereignty or unitary centralisation, diffuses power by creating multiple constitutionally entrenched centres of authority that check and balance one another, spreading risk and making total elite capture far more difficult. Separate sovereign states do not constrain one another’s abuses; each remains a centralised point of failure for its subjects. In contrast, federal unification brings more people under a single constitutional framework of internal checks, advancing genuine decentralisation. Southern Africa’s history - including South Africa’s federalist tradition, the failed Central African Federation,…