A recent visit to Arusha city on the slopes of Mount Meru in Northern Tanzania brought back fond memories of the many East African Cooperation (EAC) Heads of State’s summit meetings I attended and covered for Nation Media Group (NMG) in the 1990s.
The meetings were held in the bustling city to revive the East African Community that had collapsed in mid 1970s after the Heads of State fell out after General Idi Amin Dada led a military coup against President Milton Obote, who was very close to Kenya and Tanzania’s founder Presidents, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere.
My five-hour dawn road trip in September, 2022, was in a shuttle mini bus and was a big contrast to the executive ride in the official NMG saloon which one of our photographers and driver used to go and capture the historic event.
Arusha has a population of over 400,000 people and had grown over the years and was no longer the one-street town it was in the 1990s when the three EAC member-state’s heads of states used to meet to discuss, debate and agree on how best to revive the regional body that was formed in mid 1960s, soon after the three former British colonies gained independence.
The idea to revive the EAC was the brainchild of Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi, Tanzania’s Benjamin Mkapa and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.
Founding fathers
I noticed many changes in Arusha since my visits 20 years ago; they brought back fond memories. The most significant was that the EAC member-states had grown from three to seven with the recent admission of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the economic block. Others are Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan.
Out of the seven EAC Presidents, only Museveni is still clinging on to power after Moi and Mkapa retired after serving their constitutional maximum term limits. Museveni orchestrated the removal of the term limit and has been in office for over 36 years and has seen EAC rise from infancy to be what it is today and having attended most of the 19 Ordinary Summits to date.
Current Presidents of EAC member states are: Evariste Ndayishimiye (Burundi); Felix Tshikedi (DRC); Dr William Ruto (Kenya); Paul Kagame (Rwanda); Salva Kiir Mayardit (South Sudan); and Samia Suluhu Hassan (Tanzania). The first Secretary General of the revived EAC was a Kenyan, Francis Muthaura while the current one, Peter Mathuki, is also a Kenyan.
On arrival at the EAC headquarters, what stood out at the iconic headquarters on the suburb of Arusha city, was the main walkway once I was cleared past the security and reception desk, was the naming of the left walkway as “Moi Way” and the one to the right as “Mwinyi Way” in respect and honour of the two founder members.
Once inside the multi-storied building, the photos of the seven EAC Presidents were prominently displayed with captions of their names and countries. By then, the photo of Uhuru Kenyatta was being replaced by his successor, Ruto, who had served as his Deputy President for a decade.
Another landmark are the two VIP (Very Important Persons) visitors’ rooms, from the main gate which were named after First Ladies of the founders of the Kenyan and Tanzania nations after independence. They were Mama Ngina Kenyatta and Mama Maria Nyerere, respectively. There was also the commemorative plaque by Presidents Moi, Mkapa and Museveni in 1994.
Revival of EAC by Moi, Mkapa and Museveni
Earlier before visiting the headquarters I had taken a morning walk around the four-star hotel I had checked in the first night and bumped into a group of men sited under a mango tree and sipping fresh brewed coffee, catching up on the news and preparing to go to work and/or open their business premises.
The jovial group were glad to welcome me to join them and have a cup of what they called “kahawa thungu (bitter coffee), as the chief chef went about doubling as the waiter.
On hearing that I was a Kenyan and a tourist, they welcomed me and made inquiries about my experience as a journalist and how we covered the hotly-contested the General elections, especially the presidential one, which had pitted former Deputy President against former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
But they did not seem to be as free as they were talking about the toxic politics and Kenyan elections as they were about the elevation of their former Vice-President Suluhu to replace President John Pombe Magufuli, last year, who was said to be a victim of the Corona-19 pandemic.
I got the impression that it was a done deal: the ruling party, Chama Cha Mageuzi (CCM) top brass made the decision and the electorate had no option but to accept and move on with her new administration.
CCM has ruled Tanzania since independence in December 1961 from Britain having been a former German colony until the end of the First World War in 1918.
Abortive coup in Zanzibar
In 1964, Tanganyika merged with Zanzibar Island, a popular tourist and spice island, after an abortive coup by Field Marshal Okelo who had travelled with his mercenaries from Uganda, to form the United Republic of Tanzania.
So as I enjoyed the kahawa thungu at the roadside and saw the luxurious long-distance buses plying the Arusha, Moshi, Dodoma, Mwanza, Tanga and Dar es Salaam routes zoom by, it reminded me of the days of the East African Community in the heydays when it had a joint railways, harbours and airlines to boost trade between the sister states, tourism and transport.
Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers served in the East African Railways and Harbours and enjoyed the benefit of complimentary tickets for them and their immediate family to travel to and from any of the three East African countries towns along the Mombasa-Nairobi-Kisumu line and also the Kampala-Soroti line and the Dar-Arusha line, among others. Two of my uncles Jotham Orlale and Frank Oti Odhiambo, later worked for East African Airways and its successor, Kenya Airways, for many years.
My recent Arusha and Moshi trip had also coincided with the much-publicized Royal Tour, Tanzania’s official tourism campaign of the East African country to woo foreigners from the continent and abroad to travel and enjoy the tourism facilities. The Royal Tour tourism campaign was launched during a trip that the Tanzania President Samia Suluhu took to the US in-mid 2022. And for an entire week, President Suluhu became the ultimate guide, relating stories of the hidden gems of Tanzania, along with its rich history, culture, environment, food and music.
A documentary was also released which highlighted Tanzania’s major tourists attractions which are Mt Kilimanjaro, Kilimanjaro National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Serengeti and Mkomazi Nature Reserves, Manyara and Arusha — the gems of the northern tourist circuit, Indian Ocean beaches, and the cultural and historical heritage found in Bagamoyo and Zanzibar.
Dark colonial history
I later detoured and visited Arusha Museum, which is located near EAC headquarters, where I walked through the giant East African state’s history starting with its pre-colonial era when the Omani Arabs ruled Zanzibar and the coastal strip; they were followed by the Portuguese explores, the German colonisers and last were the British after the First World War, when the League of Nations (precursor of United Nations) ordered Germany to give up all her colonies as a punishment for starting the First World War.
It reminded me of the colonial history of Africa where some European monarchs met in Berlin, Germany, in the 1800s and decided to partition Africa into their colonies: these were the British, the Germans, Portuguese, Italians, French and the Dutch.
Later, the colonial powers went further to ‘exchange’ some parts of their colonies: a classic example was Britain and Germany who swooped Mt Kilimanjaro to be in Tangayika, as it was then called, and in its place the Germans gave up part one of their settlements at Witu in Lamu district (County) to the British in order for the two powers to have Mt Kilimanjaro and Kenya in their respective colonies.
A similar ‘deal’ was brokered between the Sultan of Zanzibar, Jamshid bin Abdhalla Al Said, and the founding Presidents of Kenya and of Tanzania. It saw the powerful Sultan give up the 10Km. strip along the Indian Ocean from Dar es Salaam all the way north to Kenya’s border with Somalia at Lamu Island, near Kismayu.
I saw a colonial map that showed the British and German protectorate in the 1980s; Germans had Tangayika while the British had Kenya and Uganda colonies whose boundary was near Naivasha in present day Rift Valley Region. In the 190s, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin made a veiled threat that he would ‘repossess Uganda’s land’ from Naivasha to Kampala; but he was dared to try by Kenyatta and his henchmen and he backed down.
A similar threat was made by President Museveni’s son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is the head of Uganda Defence Forces (UDF) through a controversial Tweet claiming that he “could take over Nairobi in two weeks.” But he too backed down after Kenyans on Tweeter turned against him and dared him to try.
Museveni Jr’s viral Tweet
But another explosive border dispute between Kenya and Uganda has not been resolved over the controversial Migingo Island on the border of the two states Lake Victoria. Until 200 General Elections, Kenyans, especially the residents of Nyanza region, had always known Migingo to be in Kenya. But after the post-election violence where claims were made that President Kibaki made ‘a deal” with his Ugandan counterpart to give him the strategic island in order to get his support. The truth has yet to be revealed but Ugandan security forces have been flying their flag on the island and harassing Kenya fishermen and traders.
According to President Museveni: “The Island is in Kenya, but the water surrounding it is in Uganda!” Another hot potato that EAC will have to deal with at one time in future is the Elemi Triangle at the border of Kenya and South Sudan which was apparently a deal between President Moi and South Sudan People’s Liberation Movement leader, Colonel John Garang, to have it administered by the Kenyan government during the height of the civil war with the Khartoum Government.
Since then, The Sudan has split and South Sudan hived from it with Garang as its first President, but the issue has been left in the cold room. According to United Nation’s official map, the triangle is part of South Sudan but was being administered by the Kenyan government.
Kenyan government also has a border dispute with neighbouring Somalia since 2014 over a region said to be rich in oil and gas reserves between the two states. Somalia government had sued its Kenyan counterpart at the United Nations’ top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which ruled in their favour. But President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed not to recognize the ruling. Matters have since gone mute.
From the Arusha Museum, I hired a motor bike to visit and tour Nelson Mandela Institute of Science and Technology (NMIST), some 10 Km on the highway towards Moshi, on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, the highest in Africa and the second highest in the world.
Nelson Mandela’s friend
While there, I learned that the over 50 acre farm had been set aside by founding President Nyerere in honour of his South African friend while he was in detention for 27 years to be used as a home. But later, the facility was upgraded and has been built up in honour and memory of the South African freedom fighter and the first African President of the South African nation.
Nyerere had supported the liberation struggle by allowing African National Congress (ANC) and its para-military, UMkonto we Sizwe (UK) (spear of the nation), founded by Mandela in the 1960s, to use part of its country as a training ground for the thousands of freedom fighters. Tanzania was one of the members of the African Front Line States that successfully fought the apartheid government in South Africa.
Over 500 African students have since its opening over a decade ago been admitted every year in the spirit of pan-Africanism and also as part of the South African Development Corporation (SADC) long term goal to unite its people.
After the trip to NMIST, which is across the road from a huge Tanzanian military installation, I returned to my hotel and was humbled as I saw a wall mural of photo of the African founder heads of states and other liberation leaders who had fallen by the way side.
As I concluded my Tz visit, I saw a brighter future for Africa as had been envisioned by the likes of Nyerere, Kenyatta, Obote, Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Selassie, Samora Machel, among others when they formed the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in the 1960s, which has since been renamed as African Unity (AU) with its headquarters in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
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