Friday, December 12, 2008

Libeneke la aluta kontinyuuaaaa...
Official Position
By Phillip Higenyi Kakuru, Kampala
kadidi,
the article that appeared on your blog titled " kenyans ought to respect Tanzanians" has gotten me thinking about what Tanzanians want in as far as the EA federation is concerned.
The officialposition given by the government says that Tanzanian needs timewhereas the sentiments i read in most of the comments on fromTanzanians is that they don't want the federation, which practicallymeans that the official position of the government of Tanzania is ahoodwink probably meant to waste other countries time.
For how is any sensible goverment going to drag its unwilling citizens into something as sensitive as a federation? My personal opinion is let us Ugandans and Kenyans, Burundi and Rwanda go on while we waitfor Tanzania to think about about it.
The best argument i have ever read about advantages of the EA federation was given by my President Yoweri Museveni when he defended regional intergration as opposed to continental intergration. below are the excerpts
Africa is both the cradle of Man (human kind) and the cradle ofcivilization. Archeology is continuing to confirm that for fivemillion years or more all human beings were Africans and were livingonly in Africa.
According to John Reader's book- "The Biography ofAfrica", it is only since 100,000 years ago that groups of humanbeings started leaving Africa to populate other continents.
For instance, between pages 99 and 102 of this book: he writes as follows:"Several strands of evidence – fossil- genetic and. linguistic - pointpersuasively to the conclusion that every person alive today isdescended from a population of anatomically modern humans that existedonly in Africa until about 10~OOO years ago".
Therefore, when you see Europeans, Asians, Arabs, and such groups, you should know that all those are former Africans. They lost their melanin on account of living in areas with little sunshine. Melanin is for filtering out the harmful sun rays. It is the melanin that gives us our black colour.
Secondly, Africa was the cradle of human civilization. The Egyptian civilization was an African civilization. It started about 3500-3200BC following the fusion of smaller states in both Upper Egypt, aroundAbgdos as well as on the Delta around Memphis (close to present-dayCairo).
This African civilization thrived for about 2000 years untilabout 1025 BC that Egypt started being invaded by outsiders: Seapeoples from the Aegean Sea, the Libyans, the Persians, the Assyrians,the Greeks and, finally, in 30BC, the Romans.Although the Egyptian civilization declined because of the invasionand, of course, some internal weaknesses, its influence endured andwas copied by others - the Greeks, the Romans, the Babylonians, etc.
The Great Pyramids, built 5000 years ago, are the only Wonders of the ancient World still standing. This is not to talk of the literature,the art, the hieroglyphics, the State system, the mythology, thereligion, the Calendar system, weights and measures as well as quite alot of the Science.
However, the emigrants out of Africa multiplied more than thein-Africa population. According to John Reader's book, "The AfricanBiography" on page 254, 100,000 years ago the African population was 1million inhabitants. That is when a few hundred persons left for Asia and Europe.
By AD 200, the African population was 20 million.By 1500 AD, the African population was about 47 million. Yet, theout-of-Africa population had grown to 300 million.
Why did the population in Africa grow slowly? It was because of the tropical diseases and the vectors that spread them: mosquitoes, tsetse flies,etc.Even by 1900, the in-Africa population was 133 Million while that outof Africa was 1,517 Million.
The slow growth of the population of Africa had a negative impact on the evolution of durable centralizedstates. The small kingdoms, chiefdoms or segmentary societies of Africa were all conquered by 1900 except for Ethiopia.
TheColonization was the culmination of the protracted attrition againstAfrica by the foreigners. It had started with the looting ofresources, slave trade. and, eventually, colonization. We were colonized because we were organized in small tribal, clan orsegmentary units.The argument that we were colonized because of lagging behind in technology is not entirely correct.
China and Japan were backward technologically when they confronted the European colonizers.Nevertheless, they managed to preserve their independence theirtechnological backwardness notwithstanding. Therefore, in my opinion,their sub-optimal political organization was the main source of theweakness that caused the ignominious, eventual subjugation of our people.
The colonization of Africa by foreigners was a Vote of noConfidence in the traditional, tribal, clan and segmentary systems.Africans were, however, lucky. In spite of the slave trade, in spiteof the colonization, unlike the Red Indians, the Incas or the Aztecs,we survived extermination. In time, our elders (Kenyatta, Nkrumah,Nyerere, Sekou TouFe, Namdi Azikiwe, and others) regrouped andlaunched the anti-colonial movement.
Along with the anti-Colonial movements in Asia, supported by theSocialist Countries, the African Peoples, eventually, triumphed - weregained our Sovereignty. The first independent African Country wasGhana in 1957. The Imperialists had also rendered us a service withtheir intraimperialists mega conflicts of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.
The imperialist-on-imperialist conflicts (so-called World wars -meaning intra-imperialist wars) weakened them. This hemorrhage among the imperialist countries contributed to our victory.What is amazing is that 50 years after Ghana's independence and withthe independence of all the African Countries, the causes of theAfrican tragedy that engulfed our Continent since the collapse of theEgyptian Civilization 3000 years ago and the eventual Colonization ofthe whole continent by 1935, have not been addressed.
The major cause of the eventual collapse of all the Africancivilization was political balkanization on too small a scale toguarantee the survival and the sovereignty of the African people.
Who is the guarantor of the freedom and survival of the Black race aswell as other African Peoples? The Western system is underwritten bythe United States of America. It is the USA and the USSR that savedEurope from fascism.
The USA shielded Europe when they were in thecontradiction with Communism. Who is our guarantor? Can Ugandaguarantee the survival and sovereignty of African countries? Can SouthAfrica do it? Can these countries stimulate growth and transformationof our economies and societies? Huge China and India have had to work closely with the big Westerneconomies to achieve the transformation they have.
How can ourindividual countries achieve the transformation they need? How canour individual countries achieve this socio-economic transformation?Fifty years since independence, none of the African Countries achievedthe transformation from the Third World to the First World like theAsian economies have done.
This is regardless of whether these AfricanCountries have been peaceful or violent, multi-party or dictatorship,free market or controlled economy. Only South Africa, currently, has a GDP of US$ 220 billion.This half a Century stagnation is because almost all the Africancountries lack the strategic stimuli that normally cause sustainedgrowth and transformation in economies and society.
Some of these strategic stimuli are: a big market that consumes what entrepreneurs'produce as is the case in China and India: an attractive investmentdestination by the very fact of big population size; rationalized andintegrated resources (natural and infrastructural) unlike many of the African Countries that are land-locked (Chad, Mali, Uganda, Rwanda,Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Lesotho and Zambia in Africa) or do not have adequate access to the hinterland on top of divided rivers, lakes, mountain ranges, etc; we do not negotiate together when it comes to trade matters with outsiders; and, as already pointed out,the inability to guarantee our independence in decision-making becausewe are not strong enough by ourselves individually, we are notorganized collectively to do so or we do not have one of our own as aguarantor for our freedom.
We were able to fight the White racists and the Portuguese Colonialists with the support of the Russian andChinese Communists. Did any serious African leader imagine that theantagonism between West and East was a permanent phenomenon?
In factcertain hegemonistic interests in the World are always working to achieve a Condominium arrangement with other emerging powers.In any case, why should a people like the Africans, so well endowedhistorically, culturally and natural resources-wise, pin their hopeson outsiders?
Why do the Africans get mesmerized by the strength of others but are always reluctant to build their own power? Are presentgenerations of African leaders going to repeat the mistakes of thepostindependence leaders as well as those of the African chiefs whose myopia, greed and rivalry so enfeebled Africa that it was colonized byoutsiders?
It was on account of the points raised above that the PanAfricanleaders: Nkrumah, Nasser, Nyerere, Kenyatta started talking aboutAfrican integration.
By the time of the Organization of the AfricanUnion (OAU) in 1963, there were three positions among the Africanleaders;- the ones who wanted to form an all African Government led by Nkrumah;- the one who wanted to form regional federations like Nyerere and- the so-called conservatives that wanted to maintain the status quo i.e. maintain the present weaknesses of a politically, strategically balkanized continent.
By now the mistakes of the so-called Conservatives are clear. Africa to-day has been left behind by the Asian countries that are not as endowed as Africa in terms of natural resources.
The small Asian Countries like South Korea, Singapore and others that have transitioned from the Third World to the First World were, for Cold War purposes, linked to the USA market. The degree of access to the USA market could not be compared to the merely symbolic Lome arrangements between Africa and EU.
The conservatives, therefore, by working for the maintenance of thestatus quo were, in effect, working for the present state of perpetualweakness. Some of the countries in Africa that were being held up asmodels by the West have since collapsed. These include Uganda, IvoryCoast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo ORC, etc. In the case of Uganda,we have reconstructed her on the basis of new revolutionaryprinciples.
We hope to deepen and accelerate our achievements throughintegration in the East African region as well as the rest of Africa.Now that the position of the conservatives has been discredited, weremain with the two Pan-African positions: Continental Government nowor regional political federations where possible, in addition tocontinental economic integration as envisaged in the Abuja Treaty .
In Uganda, we are not in favour of forming a Continental Government now on account of a number of reasons. First, while economically I support integration with everybody,politically we should only integrate with people who are either similar or compatible with us.
The whole of Africa has got some obvious incompatibilities when it comes to political integration. InEast Africa we have, for long, talked about a political federation. It is part of our treaty Article 5(2).
In fact, recently, we have beentalking about fast-tracking that federating process in East Africa.Why do we think that East Africa is similar or compatible? It isbecause all the people of East Africa are Bantu, NiloHamitic, Hamitic,Nilotic or Sudanic.
Their languages and dialects fall into two broadcategories: the Nilo-Saharan group of languages and the Niger-Congogroup of languages.In fact East Africa and Congo is where these two groups met manythousands of years ago. Their languages are linked.
Above all, sinceabout 1200 years ago, the People of the East African coast distilled anon-tribal dialect out of the languages of the area - Swahili. Thisdialect is spoken, in different degrees, in the whole of East Africa(Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi), in the whole of EasternCongo, Northern Mozambique, some parts. of Northern Zambia andNorthern Malawi. This is a population of about 150 million people.
East Africa alone has got about 120 million people. These can andshould integrate, not only economically, but politically also. Otherareas of Africa that feel that they have got a comparative degree ofsimilarity or compatibility could also work for political integration.Insisting on political integration at the continental level will bringtogether incompatible linkages that may create tension rather than cohesion.
This will, especially, be so if you bring together groupswhich want to impose their identity on others. I cannot give up myidentity for anything. Even the European slave traders andcolonialists failed to destroy our heritage-languages and way of Ufe.In my language we say ''Ija tuturane niyo ija twangane" – "when you invite somebody different to stay too closely with you/ it tantamounts to invite him to hating each other".
In Uganda, we have a three language policy: Local dialects in their respective areas; Swahili for regional communication; and English for international linkages.Our wish is to continue enriching Swahili drawing from the hinterland dialects.
In decades and centuries to come, the tribal dialects may merge with a much richer Swahili. I do not want this to happen in Africa.Therefore, our recommendation is that we take a functions-based, rational approach.
We ask ourselves the question: "What function can most rationally be done at what level - village, district withinUganda, national, regional or continental?" There are definitelyfunctions that can best be done at the Continental level. I can thinkof the following:. the environment,. Trade negotiations,. Managing a Defence Pact, and later on. Managing and promoting African Common Market.
If the African Commission could concentrate on these four, instead of being everywhere and nowhere, we would start moving forward. We arewasting too much time pushing unresearched positions.Some people have been disparaging OAU. Actually, OAU achieved a lotcompared to the African Union. Precisely, because OAU was realisticand limited itself to what was feasible, i.e. co-ordinating support tothe anti Colonial Liberation Movements in Southern Africa, Sao Tomeand Guinea Bissau, we were able to liberate the whole of Africa inexactly 30 years (majority rule in South Africa in 1994).This was a remarkable achievement. Of Course, theCommunist Countries helped us in that.
The regional powers we buildwherever possible could replace the Communist Countries inunderwriting the freedom and continued forward march of Africa.I salute the enthusiasm of those who advocate for ContinentalGovernment now. I, however, do not want us to move from one mistake -balkanization - to another mistake of oversimplification of very complex situations.
Phillip Higenyi Kakuru
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