What Role for the EU in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) : Advocate, Cajoler, or Bully?

Marking its 100-year anniversary this year, the SACU is the oldest surviving customs union today. This paper lays out the history of the SACU and its governance structures, details of the new agreement, the EU's economic activities in the southern African region, and current issues facing the SACU. Since no major articles have been written on the role of the EU in the renegotiation of the SACU and my own research is in the beginning stages, I cannot yet fully answer posed in the paper's title. To answer the question, much more research needs to occur both with EU officials and with officials of the SACU member states and the SACU itself. However, my preliminary findings suggest that the EU, through its negotiations for Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with southern African states has created fissures in the SACU that could eventually be a significant contributing factor to breaking apart the customs union