How ideological differences, personal rows brought down EAC

Forty six years ago, the East African Community (EAC) collapsed.
The immediate cause of the collapse was what was viewed back then as the greed and arrogance of the Kenya government.

Kenya had for quite a while been demanding for more seats than Uganda and Tanzania in decision-making organs of the community.

It also wanted control of the management of the resources of the regional grouping because its annual contributions to the budget of the community was much bigger than the contributions of the partner states.

The June 10, 1977, meeting of the budget committee of the community was meant to approve budget estimates for the financial year 1977/1978, but the meeting aborted because Uganda and Tanzania did not acquiesce to Kenya’s demands for more power and authority over the control of the resources.

Paralysis
As a result, the beginning of the next financial year meant that there was no operating budget and no money to spend. All operations of the community ground to a halt.

Kenya, which was the headquarters of most of the big communally-owned operations such as the East African Railways and Harbours, East African Airways, East African Posts and Telecommunications, East African Road Services, suspended their operations.

Tanzania and Kenya retaliated by taking over whatever properties that were in their own jurisdiction.

On July 29, 1977, the process of collapse ended rendering more than 10,000 Ugandans, who had until then been employed by the Community, jobless.

About 150 Ugandans who had been living and working in Tanzania announced that they were not willing to return to Uganda. Tanzania quickly moved to offer them resident status, much to the chagrin of then president Idi Amin.

Always coming
Whereas many people were quick to blame the collapse of the Community on the actions of then Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta, the collapse had always been coming because of major ideological differences between the two biggest actors, Kenya and Tanzania, and hostilities between different countries and their leaders.

Uganda vs Kenya
There had always been tensions between Uganda and Kenya, but those tensions reached boiling point on February 14, 1976, when president Amin, while presiding over the opening of the Lotuturu Self-help Mobilisation Scheme in Kitgum, announced that he wanted all the districts of Kenya that had been taken away from Uganda and handed to Kenya by the colonial administrators returned to Uganda.

The districts included those lying in the stretch from Busia in western Kenya up to Naivasha. He claimed that the areas were very fertile and the producers of almost all the wealth that Kenya boasts of.

Amin went on to dispatch Lt Col John Baptist Egesa, then an Air Force engineer based at Entebbe Airbase, to survey the area.

“My mission is to see where the boundary used to stop. I travelled and returned to confirm that as of 1925 the boundary was at Gilgil and that the information could be verified from records in the Ministry of Lands,” Col Egesa recalls.

Amin’s statements provoked an angry reaction from Kenyatta and his government. Whereas he did not close the common border between the two countries, Kenyatta heavily deployed at the border, organised rallies in diverse parts of Kenya where Amin was denounced and Kenyatta threatened to bar goods destined for Ugandan from using the port of Mombasa.

The Kenyan air space was also no longer available for use by Ugandans.
“There was so much tension that we could no longer fly over the Kenyan airspace. If you wanted to fly to say Ethiopia, you had to fly through Sudan. Mark you, we were also not on good terms with Tanzania,” Col Egesa says.

Amin was forced to back down, but Kenya did not do so. The government of Kenya always denied having supported the Israeli’s prior to the raid on Entebbe.

The New York Times’ edition of July 5, 1976, reported that Kenyan vice president Daniel arap Moi had denied, while speaking in Mauritius, that the government of Kenya had cooperated with the Israelis.

He was quoted saying the government of Kenya “did not collaborate with the Israelis”, adding that “Kenya has not and will not be used as a place of aggression for neighbouring states”.

It, however, emerged that Kenya had allowed Israel planes to land and refuel at Jomo Kenyatta Airbase prior to and after the raid.

Mr Henry Kyemba, who was once a minister under Amin, believes that the former president had always felt a need for revenge.

“There was a country seeing a field marshal and conqueror of the British Empire being humiliated! It was a humiliation that Amin found hard to deal with,” he says.

Tanzania vs Kenya
The tensions between Tanzania and Kenya were of an ideological nature. Tanzania was more of a Socialist state while Kenya was highly capitalistic. That was always going to be a major obstacle to any possibility of economic integration.

Tensions that had initially been hidden came to the fore in the months running up to the collapse of the Community when Tanzania criticised Kenya’s capitalistic tendencies, describing it as a “man-eateth man” mentality.

Former Kenyan Attorney General Charles Mugane Njonjo shot back, saying there was nothing Kenya would gain from the “man-eateth dog” mentality of the Tanzanians.

Uganda vs Tanzania
The biggest wrangle was, however, between Uganda and Tanzania and between presidents Amin and Julius Nyerere.

Amin had been angered by the September 17, 1972, invasion of Uganda by about 1,300 Ugandan exiles loyal to deposed president Milton Obote.

Amin always felt that the invaders, who entered Uganda from the south before suffering a heavy defeat at the hands of the Ugandan Army, had invaded with the support of then Tanzanian president Nyerere. That set the two men onto a collision path.

Amin kept demanding that Tanzania should not be home to the exiled Obote and all those forces that were known to be fighting to topple his government. Nyerere did not acquiesce to those demands. He instead boycotted all functions involving Uganda and Amin.

Nyerere did not attend the OAU summit that was held in Kampala. Amin was incensed.

Against such a background of state and personal disagreements, a collapse such as what occurred was always inevitable.