MAHIGA: HERE COMES SADC WITHOUT FRONTIERS

Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation Minister,
Ambassador Augustine Mahiga.

The Southern African Development Community is working on the region’s new passports acceptable across the SADC bloc, aiming to rekindle its economy through improved movement of its people.

If all it comes to pass, the SADC nations would wield the most powerful passports in the continent followed by the East African passport. A 2017 Index by the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows the powerful passport measured in terms of the number of countries one can travel to visa-free as Seychelles (126), Mauritius (118), South Africa (90) and Tanzania at 12 places with access to 62 destinations without a visa.

African Union (AU) Heads of State launched the continentwide passport in July, last year, just four months after the EAC released its e-passport in Arusha. The EAC and AU passports come into operation on January 2017 and 2018 respectively.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Ambassador Augustine Mahiga, told the ‘Daily News’ exclusively the new passports would transform the economies among the member states.

Tanzania is a member of both EAC and SADC. Other SADC members are: Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

“These passports will be a better catalyst of ending challenges arising from movement of people,” the minister said. He said it will also create a borderless region and continent. “It will significantly boost regional trade,” he stressed.

The new development comes when world nations are battling against illegal immigrants, some frustrating even documented immigrants. According to a SADC website, one of the main objectives of the regional trading bloc is the promotion of policies that aim to eliminate obstacles to the free movement of persons in the region.

A draft Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons within SADC was introduced in 1996, but only to be replaced by a more restrictive Protocol on the Facilitation of Movement of Persons in 1997.

Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and East Africa Cooperation, Ambassador Ramadhani Mwinyi, told the ‘Daily News’ in Dodoma that SADC member states were “formalising the process and will soon have a single passport.”

“They are working to ensure that an individual only uses one passport as an international travel document across the globe.” He said the current work between member states was to integrate systems to ensure an East African national who is also a member of SADC carries only one travel document.

“It will also spell an end to immigration challenges facing neighbouring countries,” he added. Just recently, the Mozambican government announced a crackdown on all illegal immigrants, under which nearly 4,000 Tanzanians living and working in the southern country were expelled.

President John Magufuli distanced himself from the Mozambican move Sunday, saying during an official tour of Mtwara that his government wouldn’t assist any such deportees who might have unlawfully entered Mozambique.

Daily News