Dr Azaveli Feza Lwatama
By Dr Azaveli Lwaitama
Posted Wednesday, October 9 2013 at 00:00
Posted Wednesday, October 9 2013 at 00:00
In Summary
The current efforts at regional integration are
building on the outcomes of these earlier forms of non-state regulated
forms of integration as well as the state-led measures tracing
themselves to the establishment of the often culturally illogical
colonial territorial states dating from 1884/1885, when, first, German
East Africa was formed.
Last week I travelled by car from Bukoba to
Bujumbura in Burundi to attend a conference organised by the Burundi
chapter of a regional civil society think tank called Vision East Africa
Forum.
The conference on the state of art in the East
African integration process was opened by Burundi’s minister for East
African Regional Cooperation, Ms Leontine Nzeyimana, who took her
university undergraduate studies in Tanzania at Tumaini University
College in Iringa.
The conference discussed a paper prepared by Dr
Enos Bukuku, a Tanzanian economist, who is the Deputy Secretary General
of the East African Secretariat responsible for Planning and
Infrastructure. On the whole, Dr Bukuku convincingly argued that “from
the date of signing of the Treaty for the Establishment of the East
African Community on November 30, 1999 (which came into force on July 7,
2000), the EAC has achieved commendable progress albeit with some
complaints on the speed of implementation.”
I spent an hour at the Kabanga-Kobero border
crossing between Tanzania and Burundi and the same at Rusumo border
crossing between Rwanda and Tanzania. At both borders, one witnessed
citizens of Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda, crossing in each direction of
the relevant border oblivious to some of the recent less savvy aspects
of the relations between Tanzania and its northwestern neighbours.
Citizens of Burundi and Rwanda crossing into
Tanzania were often ordinary women walking on foot across the border
seeking to purchase foodstuffs such as rice.
At Rusumo, I had a pleasant encounter with a
Tanzanian young man escorting a Rwandese girlfriend back to Rwanda after
a short visit by the shy and soft spoken peasant girl, with the young
Tanzanian man declaring that he intended to marry his Rwanda suitor in
two years.
The two dreamers seemed to be least discouraged in
their vision of a love-infested future by the war of words being thrown
around by territorial nationalist war drums beaters on both sides of
the gigantic Rusumo bridge overlooking the Kagera River falls.
The people who have lived near these border posts
that divide these otherwise brotherly and sisterly peoples seemed to be a
product of an East African integration process that has been unfolding
since the days of their ancestors.
For centuries before the advent of colonial rule
in 1884/1885, the people around the Great Lakes Region engaged in barter
trade with each other, crossing rivers, lakes and valleys. By and by,
the people of East Africa, from the Congo River to the Indian Ocean,
from the north of Lake Nyasa to the north of Lake Victoria, formed a
community of peoples who practised free movement of people and
livestock. These were the earlier, largely non-state regulated, forms of
EAC political and economic regional integration.
The current efforts at regional integration are
building on the outcomes of these earlier forms of non-state regulated
forms of integration as well as the state-led measures tracing
themselves to the establishment of the often culturally illogical
colonial territorial states dating from 1884/1885, when, first, German
East Africa was formed.
This brought together what is today Tanzania
Mainland, Rwanda and Burundi into one sovereign state, albeit a
colonized one. These centuries’ old relations of the peoples of
Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda cannot be wished away by a narrow
territorial nationalist war mongering doing the bidding of divisive
imperialist forces.
As the EAC Deputy Secretary General Bukuku
observed, “it is without doubt that the framers of the (1999 EAC) Treaty
were very wise.” Operating principles such as taking decisions by
consensus while permitting, through the principle of ‘variable geometry’
‘the cooperation by the willing’ (COW) on matters around which
consensus by all cannot be secured.
SOURCE: THE CITIZEN
SOURCE: THE CITIZEN
