Tony Reeler is a psychologist in Zimbabwe with more than 40 years’ clinical experience, including 30 years of working with the victims of organised violence and torture. He writes in his personal capacity. One of the implicit reasons for setting up the Southern African Development Community (SADC) must have been the understanding that the carve-up of the region fractured cultures and communities in a wholly arbitrary fashion, and the countries formed out of this carve-up had so much in common that this needed to be recognised. The deep links between the countries of the SADC region were fostered even more by the bitter struggle against colonial and settler domination, only ending in 1994 with the final independence of South Africa.