Gender Mainstreaming is imperative in contemporary development planning. It is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality especially in institutions of higher education. Universities are crucial centres for change and gender mainstreaming their curriculum, enrolments, and general operation is crucial as it will enable them to fulfil this mandate. Enhancing quality education by women and men, and removing gender stereotyping in the curriculum, career choices and the professions is the sine qua non for sustainable development. In this respect, obstacles to women's participation in higher education need to be minimised or eradicated completely. Therefore, recruitment, enrolments, promotions and organisational structures need to be gender mainstreamed. This research involved extensive documentary reviews. Interviews with key selected stakeholders, representative of students, academic and administrative staff and top-decision makers and implementers were also conducted. The paper suggests that the application of a gender mainstreaming strategy is possible, though complex. The case study institution analysed shows some progress but there are still many challenges relating to structural issues, sustainability, policy formulation, the commitment of actors involved, and the whole aspect of attitudinal change both at individual level and collectively for the university.

The predecessor of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC), established in 1980 in Lusaka, Zambia. In 1992, Heads of Government of the region agreed to transform SADCC into SADC, whose focus is on integration of economic development. SADC members are Angola, Botswana, DR Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The targets and timeframes for the integration milestones are as follows: Free Trade Area, Customs (CU), Common Market, Monetary Union and Single Currency. A Customs Union is where a group of countries that have established a free trade area agree on common external tariffs and a common external trade policy. The first major challenge of the proposed transition from the SADC Free Trade Area to a SADC CU is the establishment of a single Common External Tariff (CET), which is a complex process to negotiate. Within SADC there are currently 11 individual tariff policies that will need to converge into a single and uniform tariff regime. Addressing the conflicts that may arise from attempting to service obligations from membership in multiple regional and international bodies, such as customs unions and common markets is difficult and the development of policies and strategies that are targeted at supporting vulnerable groups, rural and urban poor, small businesses, informal operators and women within SADC is insurmountable. For the SADC to succeed, the creation of SADC Customs Union (CU) will be obligatory. The goal of this paper is to analyze various economic and political-economy-related issues associated with the process of creating an SADC CU whose thrust is liberalization of intra-union trade that creates incentives for all parties to reduce their remaining tariffs.