Southern African Customs Union

Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa. The agreement of 1910 was made between the Union of South Africa and the territories of Basutoland, Swaziland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate, which are Lesotho, Eswatini and Botswana under their present names, independent in turn on 4 October 1966, 6 September 1968 and 30 September 1966. South West Africa was administered by South Africa and counted as a de facto member; Namibia acceded after independence in 1990. The 2002 text is signed in the name of the Kingdom of Swaziland, and the union now lists the member as Eswatini.

It depends which document is taken as the start. The union dates its formal establishment to July 1910, and the agreement behind that was signed at Potchefstroom on 29 June 1910. Its own history also traces the arrangement to a customs union convention concluded in 1889 between the Cape of Good Hope and the Orange Free State, and to British colonial administration in the 1880s.

All customs, excise and additional duties collected in the common customs area go into a common revenue pool. The cost of the Secretariat, the Tariff Board and the Tribunal is deducted first, and the remainder is split into three components under the 2002 agreement. The customs component follows each member's share of intra-union imports, the excise component follows each member's share of union gross domestic product, and a development component, funded from a fixed percentage of the excise component and set initially at 15%, is weighted towards the less developed members.

Article 6 of the 2002 agreement allows any state not named in the preamble to become a member on being admitted by the existing members and acceding to the text, and requires the admission to be approved by a unanimous decision of the Summit. Article 47 keeps the agreement open for accession on that condition. Leaving takes notice to the other members, and where consultation does not settle a date and conditions the agreement runs on for twelve months from the notice.

Not since 2004. Article 31 of the present agreement, read with Annex F, sets up a common negotiating mechanism: external trade policy is determined jointly, and no member may enter into a new preferential trade agreement with a third party, or amend an existing one, without the consent of the others. The 1969 agreement had allowed the opposite.

No, and the two lists differ. The customs union covers goods. The Common Monetary Area is a separate instrument, and the Central Bank of Lesotho describes the loti as pegged to the rand within it. Botswana announced its withdrawal from the predecessor Rand Monetary Area on 6 September 1974 and issued the pula on 23 August 1976, without leaving the customs union.