Business Daily (Nairobi)
John Gachiri
9 July 2009
opinion
A recent trip to Tanzania revealed that the road to an East African Federation is still far from complete. Myths and mistrust make it a bumpy one and an unpleasant history among the members has made it bumpier.
"Is it true that gunshots are like ring tones in Nairobi," a lady asked me as we were having lunch.
There has certainly been a rise in violent crime but the picture of Nairobi that our neighbours to the south paint is one of an African Baghdad, but without the scorching heat.
A Ugandan colleague was puzzled by the lack of podium finishes at last year's Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
"With so many guns you (Kenyans) should be winning gold at rifle and pistol shooting events."
As policymakers draft papers on whose cooking fat should be taxed more or whose sugar is sweeter they may find that culture not economics may be the highest huddle to jump.
Kenyans have traditionally prided themselves as a hardworking and entrepreneurial people, while they look at their neighbours as people to whom words like deadline and performance targets ring no bell.
A popular rumour is that rain is an acceptable excuse to miss work in Uganda.
But there is no love lost across the border Ugandans and Tanzanians perceive Kenyans as economic cannibals and thugs in everything but name.
Exporting armed bank robberies and pyramid schemes only adds fuel to the fire. Development Entrepreneurship for Community Initiative (Deci) conned thousands of Kenyans millions.
After its collapse, the pyramid scheme found a fattened pig ready for the slaughter in Tanzania where top officials were arrested and charged with operating a pyramid scheme last month.
Mwanza's mayor, while welcoming a Nairobi delegation, said that he had heard that after sunset, Nairobians pair up to fend off potential muggers who have made the city their supermarket and its residents the goods on offer.
Unifying chordThese stereotypes date back to the seventies where misplaced nationalism reached boiling point."
Different ideologies by our founding fathers immediately after independence shaped how we think and act.
Jomo Kenyatta was a firm capitalist and his message to Kenyans was to go and enter into business especially into areas that were the exclusive turf of Europeans prior to independence such as banking and insurance.
Julius Nyerere took the alternative route of African socialism or Ujamaa. The Arusha Declaration of 1967 sowed the seeds of his vision.
Uganda is more complicated as political instability gave it no direction and under the despotic Idi Amin the country was brought to its knees.
Like a bad marriage everyone called it quits in 1977. But winds of change blew over a new chapter in the history of the union.
Ujamaa collapsed in Tanzania and civilian rule was restored in Uganda. Globalisation forced trade to be negotiated in blocks as opposed to individual countries cutting their own deals.
Inevitably, the road to reunification begun but the myths and stereotypes that have stained the union have not been cleaned.
Thirty years later, lies have drowned reality.
But going forward, accepting and appreciating differences will kill the stereotypes.
While in Mwanza our hosts were impressed by the speed and number of Tanzanian artistes we were churning out. In music we have found a unifying chord.
The traffic of Tanzanian, Ugandan and Kenyan musicians who transverse the three countries every weekend show that the young and young at heart are defying the old norms of "these people and those people."
Tanzanian words like washikaji (fans) and Ugandan sebo (boss) are peppering Kenyan conversation. The Mwanza trip showed us just how much we are alike.
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