Kampala — IN the last few weeks, Migingo Island, a one-acre rock sticking out of Lake Victoria, that serves as a landing site for Kenyan and Ugandan fishermen, has taken on added importance.
For casual onlookers, the spurt over the island, which looks like a cut out of a Kampala slum, is baffling. The Kenyan media choose to play this as an attack on their country's sovereignity, an attempt to deprive Kenya of its fishing rights.
Understandably, the fishing tribes of Kenya's Nyanza province have been sucked into the melee. It does not help that Kenyan politics is in a delicate state, with the dysfunctional nature of the coalition government coming into full view.
The coalition government was cobbled together as a compromise after the badly flawed 2007 elections.
The tribal/nationalistic element is a cover for commercial interests buffeted by the international global crisis.
It is not true that if it turned out that the island is in Uganda, Kenyans will be deprived of their fishing rights. Migingo is two hours by boat from the Kenyan shores as opposed to six hours from the Ugandan shore and as a consequence, all fish caught around Migingo are sold in Kenya.
However, last year, world fish prices plummeted, and fish processors in the region are suffering lower margins. As a result, the processors are wary of fish prices. The Ugandan fisheries authorities have been levying the Ugandan fishermen less than their Kenyan counterparts. This has had the effect of lowering the unamused Kenyan fishermen's margins when they sell their catch to the processors.
A few disgruntled fishermen will not make MPs rise in their defence, but the discomfort of some major fish processors is another matter all together. Evidence of this is the deafening silence from our own MPs, which is in sharp contrast to their Kenyan counterparts.
At the beginning of society's evolution were the hunter gatherers, small bands of people in constant motion, living off the bounty of the land and lugging around narrow family and clan loyalties. Populations were small and bountiful lands were guarded jealously, with bloody clashes the main avenue of conflict resolution.
Violence as a means of settling disputes faded as populations grew and the agrarian revolution set in. Interdependence between communities became critical because larger communities could not provide for all the needs of their people. Enter trade. Trade cemented interdependence and reduced the incentive for violent conflict resolution.
The initial movement towards globalisation, at the beginning of the last century, was nipped in the bud by the two world wars, stalling human advancement in many fields.
With the demise of the Soviet Union, globalisation has regained steam and borders are falling, facilitating trade and banishing the spectre of war in the advanced economies.
Chest-thumping and beating of war drums has been left to our pre-agrarian revolution societies.
If ever there was a case for fast-tracking of the East African Customs Union, Migingo has given us that reason.
By easing trade, the EAC will increase interdependence of the region's countries beyond sentimentalism.
The middle class - the children born of better trading relations, are the ultimate guarantors of regional peace and stability.
In his seminal book, "The Lexus and the Olive tree," Thomas Friedman pointed out that no two nations with a fastfood McDonald's outlet have ever gone to war - with the exception of the former Yugoslavia.
A McDonald's outlet is an indication that a country's middle class have achieved a sufficient critical mass to put a lid on our primordial instincts of violence and lawlessness.
In our case, maybe a Nakumatt or Uchumi outlet or a KCB branch might serve as a useful indicator.
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Although I strongly favor regional economic and political integration, it is important to recognize that Thomas Friedman's statement about McDonald's and war is completely false. Both Israel and Lebanon have McDonald's and they went to war in 2006. Both Russia and Georgia have McDonald's and they went to war in 2008. Both Tamil and Sinhalese regions of Sri Lanka have McDonald's and they have been in a civil war for 25 years, which is just ending this week. Both Russia and Ukraine have McDonald's and they are heading toward war very quickly.
Blanket statements about middle class life ending nationalist, tribalist and sectarian conflict are not supported by any serious analysis of history. Friedman is a propagandist for neoliberal free markets, not a serious student of history. For neoliberals, history doesn't exist before the fall of the USSR, and their failure at understanding or predicting the economic crisis and the current drives toward world war is an indictment of all their fluffy talk that capitalism inherently brings peace.
The realities are quite different. Each of humanity's multiplicity of peoples seems to have generational existential crises, whether international or civil wars and revolutions every 70 to 80 years or so.
In fact, once one appreciates this fact, one can look back through the history of a nation and see that there is a pattern. Southern/Bantu Uganda clearly had its crisis era from the mid-1960's to the mid-1980's. subtracting 80 years, and we can also see that the period of approximately 1880 to approx. 1900 was the period of most intense conflict.
Northern Uganda/Nilotic is clearly on an offset timeline. The recent Acholi civil war was clearly an existential crisis for the North, but has been merely the frustrating backdrop for post-Crisis recovery in the South. The fact that Southern Sudan/Nilotic also had its massive war with Northern Sudan in approximately the same period is a testament to the irrelevance of the colonial borders, and the persistence of generational patterns.
It may turn out to be the case that the conflict in Kenya between the Western and Central Nilotic and Bantu people also demonstrates that they are on the same generational timeline as the Nilotic peoples in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan.
In any event, eventually the crisis era comes to an end and there is a new set of borders, and new political states may come into existence. Sometimes the struggle during the crisis can be to transcend tribe or nation, and rather to intensify the distinctions along another dimension, maybe religious sectarian or economic structure. Post crisis, a new cycle begins, and there can be new moves towards integration based on the new configuration of people's, power and interests.
The generation born after the Crisis, during the 15-20 year post-Crisis Recovery Era, in the Awakening era start making themselves heard. They usually criticize their parents for hypocrisy, etc. Their parents may have wanted integration whereas they want separatism or vice versa depending upon the country and the recent history. The youth often want more personal freedom, more sexual freedom, more decentralization. This type of an Awakening Era is the era that currently is on display in Southern Uganda and in Addis Ababa. The tone in Southern Uganda and Ethiopia today resembles in many respects what went on in North America, Western Europe, Japan and China during the 1960's and 1970's.