FOR HOW LONG WILL THE EAC INTEGRATION REMAIN A MIRAGE?

By Jerry Okungu
Nairobi, Kenya
April 10, 2012

When Presidents Daniel Arap Moi, Benjamin Mkapa and Yoweri Museveni finally committed their signatures to a new East African Community charter in 2000 at a colourful ceremony in Arusha, Tanzania, East Africans became a very hopeful lot. They remembered with nostalgia the common services they used to share when they were one community before independence and a few years after. More importantly they longed for the days when they would use one currency known as the East African shilling to travel across borders without any worry. In those days the borders were open 24/7 and there were no border police, customs or immigration officials to demand travel documents from East Africans.

At the Arusha signing ceremony, our leaders committed themselves to full economic and political integration by 2015. They would realize the Customs Union in 2005, the Common Market in 2010, Monetary Union in 2012 and the complete political union in 2015

Sometime in 2004 when Moi had retired and Ben Mkapa was about to leave the scene, there was a summit meeting in Nairobi that resolved to fast track the political integration. The thinking at that time was that the more the process dragged on, the more it would be difficult to move forward as fatigue and loss of enthusiasm would set in. For this reason, the summit set up a task force that was chaired by Kenya’s then Attorney General to go round the region, collect views from opinion leaders, businessmen and professionals on the best way to fast-track the political integration. I was one of those professionals who was consulted.

Wako’s committee produced its report that was discussed by the summit that resulted in creating the post of Deputy Secretary General in charge of political integration. The office became operational in 2005.

The same year that the office of political integration was created, the EAC realized its first objective- the Customs Union.
However, despite again attaining a second pillar – that is the Common Market protocols being signed, East Africans today are still far from integrating just as they were in 2000. Why do I say this?

Since the commencement of the Customs Union that was supposed to ease trade among the member states, there is nothing to show that anything has changed one bit. I may have not travelled to all border points between member states but if my observations at the Namanga border post are anything to go by then we have not moved one bit. Traffic congestion at the border and mundane border officials are still asking the same useless questions they asked two decades ago.

Kenyans crossing the border into Tanzania are still regarded as foreigners to be suspected. The Tanzanian authorities still relish in apprehending Kenyan businessmen for all manner of excuses and deporting them if necessary, never mind that borders were supposed to be opened and free movement of people, goods and services should have been effected on July 1 2010.

As we ready ourselves for the common currency this coming July, East Africans are becoming more and more apprehensive if indeed the long awaited East African currency will be a reality. With some member states violating signed protocols with wanton impunity, how will they cede their most guarded sovereignty by foregoing their local currencies? Will there be concurrence on what images to appear on the regional currency?

The other day South Sudan and Sudan applied for membership of the Community. Whereas Sudan was disqualified on a technicality, South Sudan got the nod from the five member states. And with a new conflict looming between South and North Sudan, will the EAC be sucked into the conflict? If indeed the South North Sudan conflict goes on as Kenya joins the AMISOM to fight Al Shabaabs in Mogadishu, will all these costly ventures interfere with the EAC integration time table?
However, the biggest threat to our regional integration is our fear and suspicion of one another. Since 1977, the elite in our region have never embraced one another. The 1977 breakup of the EAC gave birth to a fierce nationalism that to this day has never left us.

Whenever we have a meeting of national representatives, we spend a lot of time and energy trying to score points defending our turf on none issues at the expense of major issues facing the community. For example; can anyone explain to me why since the Customs Union protocols were ratified in 2004, we still find it difficult to implement it eight years later?

Can someone tell East Africans why since July 2010 when the Common Market protocols became effective, we still arrest nationals of member states for being in our territory illegally?

Why is Tanzania still insisting on work permits for Kenyans working in companies that are cross-listed in Tanzania? Why can’t we be honest and say we are not interested in regional integration and opt for good neighbourliness and become good trading partners without cracking our heads on issues that we may never realize in our lifetime?

Perhaps Beatrice Kiraso the EAC Deputy Secretary General in charge of Political Integration knows something we do not know.
jerryokungu@gmail.com

RAILA MURDER ALLEGATIONS MUST BE THOROUGHLY PROBED

By Jerry Okungu
Nairobi, Kenya
April 10, 2012

If there was one thing that Jakoyo Midiwo achieved last Saturday with his pronouncement about the possible murder of Raila Odinga, he brought the entire nation to a standstill. The entire nation was stunned. Mourners too that had gathered at Dr. AL Gondi’s funeral looked bewildered. In fact their faces told it all.

They were not sure whether to mourn Gondi or absorb the new threat to Raila Odinga’s life. Either way; whatever it is that made Jakoyo drop this bombshell at the funeral; it surely produced the desired results. He hit the entire nation with what would have been compared to a 15 kilogram bomb hurled at the crowd by an Al Shabbab suicide bomber.

If indeed there is fire underneath the smoke that Jakoyo unleashed at Leah Gondi’s funeral, the police must wear their masks and dig deep under the smoke to put out the fire because if they don’t, that fire, lit by careless arsonists may consume us all including the arsonists.

To analyze this story, let us start with the messenger of this bad news. Jakoyo Midiwo is no ordinary man. He is not insane, deranged nor does he court any signs of mental disorder. He is not some chang’aa drinking villager or some mad man at the marketplace prone to gatecrashing at village funerals and making outrageous statements in front of mourners. He is a respected member of parliament for Gem Constituency, a Chief Whip in Kenya’s parliament and a first cousin to Prime Minister Raila Odinga. In a nutshell, he is too responsible to utter carelessly matters as grave as the assassination of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya.

During his speech at the funeral, Jakoyo mentioned two crucial things: One, he chose to go public at that funeral because had he tried to confide in the intended target, he would have been dismissed casually. However, he conceded that he had discussed the matter with a cabinet minister and a permanent secretary known to be close the Prime Minister.
He also said he was ready to swear by the bible and stand by his story. He was confirming that he had credible evidence to prove those allegations.

With those two compelling statements, Midiwo threw the ball in the Police Commissioner’s court. The Commissioner must investigate the authenticity of the allegations and if found credible, charge the planners together with the assassins with attempted murder in a court of law. However, should the claims be proved false, Jakoyo and his informers must equally face the law.

A possible assassination of a prominent political figure like Raila Odinga must shock and get all Kenyans who still harbor the theory of a united country really worried and depressed. Even if it is a rumour, it will trigger memories of Kenya’s dark past in the last 49 years beginning with Pio Gama Pinto’s assassination at his doorsteps in 1965.

It will remind us of the demise of Argwings Kodhek on Kodhek Road in Hurlingham in what appeared like a road accident in January 1969,Tom Mboya’s assassination in broad daylight on Saturday July 5 1969 on Government Road in Nairobi just six months following Kodhek’s demise, the brutal murder of JM Kariuki whose mutilated body was discovered in Ngong Hills on March 5 1975 and another brutal murder of then foreign minister Robert Ouko in Got Alila near his Koru home in early 1990.

If we look at these killings, each one of them had a political theory attached to it; something that folklore has never forgotten even if historians may never have documented them.

Pio Gama Pinto died because he was believed to be Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s foremost strategist and socialist ideologue. His elimination was believed to rob Jaramogi of a valuable ally in the post-independence struggle within the ruling party KANU. When Pinto was gunned down at his home just two years after independence, cracks had started to emerge in KANU between the socialists and capitalists. Jaramogi and Pinto preferred the former while Kenyatta and Mboya favoured the latter.

Four years later, Mboya had to die in the same manner Pinto did despite the fact that he had led the onslaught against Jaramogi before and after leaving KANU to form KPU.

It is instructive to note that Mboya, the only remaining prominent Luo in the Kenyatta cabinet was gunned down just six months before the 1969 elections which had been postponed from May 1968 to December 1969 for no apparent reason. He died because he was the most credible challenger to Kenyatta were the elections to be held in a fair, transparent and democratic manner. Planners of his death feared that should Kenyatta pass away suddenly, Tom Mboya would be unstoppable considering his unparalleled political campaign skills and popularity among Kenyans.

The murder of JM Kariuki debunked the myth that Kenyatta’s regime was merely targeting non- Kikuyus. JM’s death brought the reality home that the regime Kenyatta led had taken a life of its own. This new class of Kenyans did not differentiate between their own and others as long as one interfered with their new found wealth and power.

Kariuki had to die due to two things; he had become too popular with all Kenyans- being the only Kikuyu MP who travelled to Rusinga Island to bury Tom Mboya. More importantly he had become too vocal about the gap between the rich and the poor- often referring to Kenya as a nation of 11 millionaires against 11 million beggars. If Kariuki had challenged Kenyatta in the 1974 general elections, he would have won the elections by a landslide. He therefore had to die.

Perhaps the most perplexing murder was that of John Robert Ouko who at the time of his death was Kenya’s foremost foreign minister. He died just weeks after defending Kenya’s human rights records at Stockholm and Oslo in what many Kenyan exiles in the Scandinavia thought were blatant untruths about the true picture of the regime in Nairobi.

After his murder in Got Alila near his Koru home, theories abound about his closeness with Western powers that thought he would make a better president. It is these rumours that persisted so many years after his death.
Again, just like Pinto, Mboya and JM Kariuki before him, Kenyans believed state operatives had a hand in his inhumane murder.

Back to Midiwo’s allegations; who is bound to benefit from Raila Odinga’s death? Obviously what comes to mind are his foremost political opponents whether he dies a natural death or gets eliminated through an assassin’s bullet.

Just like Mboya and JM Kariuki before him, he is currently the man to beat at the next elections if opinion polls are anything to go by. Secondly, the mere fact that almost all political heavy weights , the so called G7 have ganged up to stop his presidency is proof enough that he is the single most popular politician today. Therefore any misfortune or hand of God getting him out of the way will be a relief to his opponents despite the fact that they will shed a few crocodile tears soon after his death.

Sam Ongeri is not running for president. He is therefore not a direct beneficiary of Raila’s death. If indeed he has anything to do with this heinious plan, it can only be on behalf of someone else? Does he have a motive, an axe to grind with the Prime Minister? I have no clue!
jerryokungu@gmail.com

WHAT KIBAKI'S SNUB MEANS FOR OLD EUROPE

By MICHAEL HOLMAN
Posted Saturday,
April 7 2012 at 19:21

There is bad news for those aggrieved European diplomats whose complaints about being
denied access to President Kibaki made headlines last weekend.

Goaded by the diplomats grumbles, angered by the arrogance that lay just below the surface,
and astonished by the apparent ignorance of the shift in international relations with Africa,
State House let rip: The world has changed, and so have our priorities , the diplomats were in effect told. The countries you represent are rapidly declining in importance. So stop trying to jump the queue.

The President s diary is full. Period.

Diplomatic snub

It was a two-fingered diplomatic snub that doubtless sent the ambassadors into a flurry of
activity, composing dispatches trying to play down such a frank dismissal. Yet the message at
the heart of the State House response could not be ignored. The Kenyan worm has turned
at last.

For years the Kenya Government did the bidding of the bwanas in Britain and bosses in
Washington.

Whether boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics or being soft on apartheid, whether making
deals that turned Mombasa into a US navy facility, or allowing north-east Kenya to become a
vast training ground for British troops, State House could be counted on to meekly roll over
and comply with West desires.

Those days have gone. And in making it clear that Europe no longer counts in the way it once
did, I suspect that State House is reflecting a widely held view.

Ever since Kenya became independent, a steady stream of emissaries from Europe has beaten
a path to the State House door, confident that it will open in automatic welcome.
I say emissaries , but only for lack of a collective noun to describe this gaggle of political
has-beens and want-to-bes, junior ministers and smooth opportunists, and assorted influencepeddlers and sales people, all still shaped by the colonial past, all with one assumption in common: that a meeting with the native in charge was no more than their rightful due.

That access has ended and they are the casualties of a new dispensation. Whatever the failures
and shortcomings of President Kibaki, he has identified the international political reality that
followed in the wake of the economic changes taking place throughout the continent.

From Johannesburg to Juba, from Lagos to Lusaka, something dramatic is afoot. Fuelled by
new oil finds, funded by cheap loans from China, and by returning capital from the diaspora,
Africa s landscape is being transformed. But it is more than new shopping malls and office blocks, paved roads and new ports, skyscrapers and airport terminals.

Governance is improving

Governance is improving. The military stay in the barracks or are shunned when they
venture out and human rights are higher on the agenda. And arguably most important of all for a region that seemed to have lost confidence, there is a surge of creativity: novelists and artists, film-makers and musicians, all are part of the African dawn.

The new Africa is looking for new friends. And this involves finding new partners, forging
new relationships, seeking fresh starts. I don t just mean deals with China, or India, Russia or
Brazil. The courtship embraces Turkey and Singapore, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia and Japan.

The consequences of this have yet to dawn on the indignant European ambassadors in
Nairobi, for they are stuck in the past, trapped in old habits. And the old ties that used to bind are withering on the vine. Business leaders who once made their career in Africa now regard Lagos or Luanda as hardship posts, to be endured not enjoyed.

Academics who once spent their professional lives researching the continent and working in
its universities now struggle to find funds for African studies.

Fewer journalists are now on the continent, and rewritten news agency accounts have taken
the place of dispatches from the front line, while former colonial civil servants have taken
their knowledge to the grave.

And diplomats who once saw Africa as a posting that would benefit their ambitions and
further their careers, have long seen the region as out of the mainstream of world affairs.
This is not to suggest that there was a golden era of western engagement.

The more one learns about the colonial period the greater the scepticism about its benefits; but at least there was reasonably informed knowledge about the continent, its risks and its opportunities.

But as Africa entered the economic and political crisis that reached its nadir in the 1980s, the
Western business community effectively began to withdraw. The region was in effect left in
the hands of the IMF and the World Bank, who all too often administered medicine that was
too strong for a weak patient.

Africa s recovery from this grim period amounts to the most exciting change since the end of
colonial rule, with implications for Europe that could hardly be more profound.

Some 50 years ago, the late Harold MacMillan, the British prime minister, warned white
South African parliamentarians sitting in Cape Town that apartheid South Africa would
sooner or later feel the impact of a wind of change that was blowing through the continent.

Today, Europe s leaders are missing the chance to initiate debate about the significance of
events which, in their own way, are part of a different but equally powerful wind of change,
felt from Cape to Cairo.Alas, this all seems to be lost on Europe s diplomats in Nairobi. They stand on their dignity,behind the times and out of touch, and missing opportunities instead of leading the way.

President Kibaki has issued far more than a snub. It is a wake-up call to the West. Africa is
on the move. Will Europe respond or will it be left behind?

Michael Holman, Financial Times Africa editor from 1984 to 2002, contributed this column
while travelling in East Africa. He is the author of an acclaimed trilogy of novels set in
Kibera satirising diplomats, aid workers and foreign journalists. The latest in the series,
Dizzy Worms, is now out on paperback