Why East African Federation should be part of agenda as campaigns peak

By George Marenya

It is the season of political campaigns and naturally, this comes with promises and bandying around of policies.

As Ashis Nanda had said, politics is at its base played on moral issues and therefore, politicians strive to put across their candidacy as a moral choice.

In Kenya, issues like youth employment, peaceful coexistence, better standards of living, improvement of infrastructure and the like always come up.

Yet a project with so much promise nationally, regionally and internationally is rarely mentioned in political podiums – the East African Federation.

Uganda is our biggest trading partner. Kenyan students swell the populations of Ugandan universities. Kenyan entrepreneurs are to be found doing thriving business in the East Africa capitals.

In Rwanda and South Sudan, Kenyan companies are taking the lead in foreign direct investment. Equity Bank was a pioneer in this field.

With the recent win of the Global Entrepreneur Award by Equity Bank Chief Executive James Mwangi, he has become more famous than politicians would ever dream to be. This sets a trend where brands and business become sources of identity and pride rather than where one comes from.

If we were to put more emphasis on the federation project, we would achieve two fundamental advantages. First, to paraphrase former American President Calvin Coolidge, we would ensure that “Kenyans’ business is business”.

We would tap onto ready sources of revenue. It is easier to export to our neighbors than to far-flung and hard to penetrate markets in Europe and America.

Landlocked Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi not to mention the Democratic Republic of Congo should send more tourists to see the Kenyan coast with just a little more aggressive marketing.

Second, a political federation would offer us the cure of the big republic as postulated by James Madison, the father of the American constitution.  In Federalist No10, he wrote that the bet remedy to the threat of faction would be found in a bigger republic than a smaller one.

He described faction as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority of or a minority of the whole who are united and actuated by some common impulse, of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”.

Since Madison was writing in a largely homogenous community, we can safely assume that our equivalent to his factions are ethnic groups.

 

He reasoned there are only two remedies to the threat of faction. Either you remove its causes or control its effects.

Removing its causes would be impracticable since you would have to destroy liberty or give the same passions, opinions or interest to every citizen, the very antithesis of liberal democracy.

To put it directly, the Baganda of Uganda, Kikuyu of Kenya, the Chaga of Tanzania the Hutu of Rwanda and Burundi would have to find a better platform to sell their ideas rather than numbers alone. I use these merely as examples. Their sheer number shall have been effectively diluted within the more than one hundred and twenty million East Africans.

In this way any group within the federation even if it may constitute a local majority “must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression”

If any other people anywhere in the world have to contend with politicians that are as annoying as our brand, than they are most to be pitied.

Currently the catchword is no community can rise to power without collaborating with a host of others.

No one says how these communities will gain. No one bothers to point out that communities who have had power suffer even more if not equally as those who have been subjected to active discrimination.

So the remedy is to make east Africans the “community” and thereafter parade before them issues that you want to shape their lives.

This way, alliances will not be a nauseating as “G” this and that but it will about common currency, visa cum work permit free residency across East Africa. It will be about exporting excess labour, exchange of skills and competencies, cross-border collaboration in building infrastructure, preserving Lake Victoria jointly. Yes it will be about the big picture. In the era of globalisation, I am ashamed I have to preach this.

The writer is an editor with the Community Eye