The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is an organization of long-standing. Created in 1979-80 as a 'development coordinating conference' (SADCC) of regional states actively opposed to apartheid and minority-rule, SADC became a 'development community' in 1994, welcoming a majority-ruled South Africa into the fold (du Pisani, 2001). Devoted to regional economic integration, for twenty years SADC has been taking deliberate policy, program, legal and institutional steps to create a functional framework for sustainable and equitable wealth creation. Importantly, the initial regional protocol – i.e. the established code of procedure or behaviour for any group or organization – concerned shared watercourses. The symbolic value of this protocol was clear: for the region to recover from a century of colonial misrule and maldevelopment symbolized by cycles of violence, destruction and disorganization it would have to overcome the artificial divisions contrived and codified at the Berlin Conference in 1884.