Responding to the Cabo Delgado Insurgency in Mozambique: SADC as an Effective Security Actor?

Over the last two decades, the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) has sustained its role in regional security management, with significant experience from diplomatic and military interventions in Lesotho, Eswatini, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Existing studies highlight institutional incapacity and member states' lack of political will as major challenges undermining SADC's effectiveness as a security actor, but often overlooks the correlation between these challenges and the preferences of states as independent and supporting agents of security management. This research article, therefore, aims to analyse the question of SADC's (in)effectiveness vis-à-vis Mozambique and South Africa’s agency by asking why SADC delayed in responding to the Cabo Delgado insurgency. It argues that SADC's delay owes to two major interconnected factors: (i)the limits of its security architecture which the Mozambican government exploited, and (ii)South Africa's reluctance to foster a regional military response agenda. Based on the theoretical proposition that regional powers' leadership and custodial roles are pivotal to the effectiveness of regional organisations, this article concludes that independently, SADC does not have the requisite capacity to militarily respond to intrastate conflicts and that its response efforts would often need to be supported by a non-reluctant South Africa. The article relies on extensive qualitative data from elite and expert interviews, SADC's treaties and communiqués, and reports analysed using triangulation and process-tracing methods.