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An essay is presented on the Southern African Development Community's (SADC) Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation (SIPO) II. It offers a history of SIPO II achievements including the SADC Mutual Defence Pact, a mediation unit, and SADC Standby Force (SSF). The author says that SIPO II might have been created due to the pressure that the civil and community society have put to SADC officials from the incompetent implementation on SIPO I.

The article analyzes several assumptions made in the early 1990s about the potential influence and power of South Africa and its subsequent ability to maintain a peacemaking role in Africa. Former President Thabo Mbeki has adopted an emerging middle power role for the South African government and considered foreign policy strategies as an exercise of soft power. It determines several factors that have a potential of influencing the international orientation of a new administration.