#HistoryKeThread: The Fall Of The EAC In 1977 
"The East African Community is as dead as a dodo", Kenya's Minister for Power and Communications, Isaac Omolo Okero, informed Parliament.
This was in June of 1977.
At the time, relations between Community member-states, viz. Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya were - thanks to mistrust and bitter differences in economic and socio-political ideology - at their lowest.
"Orphaned" by the differences existing among member states, and amid an acrimonious scramble for its assets by those countries, the EAC was no more.
But to understand how the EAC found itself in this situation, it would help to go back much further in time.
At the end of World War 1, the Germans lost the territory of Tanganyika to Great Britain. The latter retained administrative dominion over other geographical entities, namely Zanzibar, the East Africa Protectorate (i.e. Kenya) and Uganda.
In order to effectively administer over this vast area, the British rationalised some institutions with the aim of establishing administrative mandate across the said territories. For example, the East Africa Court of Appeal became the apex court over all of East Africa.
As time went by, more and more institutions dealing with public service of one kind or another were set up. These were put under the direct supervision of a body called the East African Governors Conference.
The Conference met regularly, co-chaired by Governors accredited to the territories of East Africa by Britain.
Then there was another war – World War II.
After the war, the cash-strapped colonial government undertook regional rationalisation of the many public corporations and entities again. Examples of institutions included The East Africa Railways and Harbours Corporation...
.... (later, EA Harbours, headquartered in Dar es Salaam, was hived off). Court of Appeal for East Africa, the East African Development Bank, East Africa Posts and Telecommunications, Trypanosomiasis Research Organisation, among others.
All institutions so created were managed under a Secretariat called the East Africa High Commission. The Commission was again overseen jointly by the three Governors of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika.
In 1948, the East Africa Legislative Assembly (EALA), which exists to this day, was established. It comprised of 32 members then. The work of the Assembly was to debate and approve the High Commission’s annual budget.
Meanwhile, as the 1960s approached, agitation for independence of East African nations increased.
Citing the historic ties that existed among East African communities, Tanganyika’s leader Julius Nyerere in 1960 called for an East African federation. To demonstrate his seriousness, he offered to delay...
..... his country’s independence so Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika could attain independence simultaneously.
Uganda did not see things in the way Nyerere did. To many of them, independence would be an opportunity for them to reaffirm the sovereignty of their Buganda monarchy.
Just before Kenya gained independence in 1963, Mzee Kenyatta invited Mwalimu Nyerere and Uganda’s leader, Milton Obote, to Nairobi for talks on the proposed East Africa Federation.
Many scholars believe Kenya’s leader Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was not quite supportive of a federation, but was feigning support for it as a way of testing London’s resolve to grant Kenya independence.
Nonetheless, a statement released after talks by the leaders read (partly) as follows:
“We, the leaders of the people and governments of East Africa, assembled in Nairobi on June 5, 1963, pledge ourselves to the political federation of East Africa……we believe that East African Federation can be a practical step towards the goal of Panafrican unity….”
The leaders also set a target of end of December 1963 as the date by when they would put in place the necessary legal infrastructure for the establishment of a political federation. Indeed, a Committee was formed to prepare the proposed Federation’s draft Constitution.
However, by early 1964, negotiations over the Constitution collapsed. The blame was laid on matters that many considered trivial. For example, Tanzania and Kenya disagreed on the powers and structure of the proposed EA Central Bank.
Kenya was also seen as a partner that disproportionately had industrial advantage over the other two countries. It is noteworthy that by 1964 the country accounted for 70% of the value of goods manufactured in East Africa.
When in 1965 President Jomo Kenyatta declined to sign the Mbale Agreement, an affirmative action move intended to protect industries of the other two weaker economies, Tanzania immediately imposed tariffs on some Kenyan goods.
Confusion reigned.
In a bid to forestall the region’s disintegration, a Commission was formed in 1965 to look into the grievances of Uganda and Tanzania. The Commission was chaired by former Danish Finance Minister Kjeld Phillip.
In Arusha in June of 1967, the Phillip Commission’s recommendations were adopted. They inter alia proposed the establishment of an economic community – the East Africa Community. There was no reference made to a political federation.
The East Africa Development Bank, the Commission further proposed, would offer compensation to Uganda and Tanzania for keeping their markets open to Kenyan goods. Moreover, all public services that existed e.g. EA Airways, EA Railways and Harbours, etc would be placed...
... under the management of the EAC Secretariat.
In 1971, just when the nascent EAC was riding on the wave of this new-found rapprochement, there was a coup in Uganda.
The military in Uganda under General Idi Amin took over the reins in Kampala. Senior officials who served in the Ugandan government, including Obote himself, were granted safe asylum by Nyerere.
Inevitably, relations between Kampala and Dar es Salaam soured. Amin accused Nyerere of harbouring Uganda’s enemies. On his part, Nyerere vowed that he would never sit on the same table with Amin.
This new hostility created a challenge.
The three East African presidents, who were jointly the highest decision-making body (East African Authority they called it), did not meet at all as EAC leaders...
....between 1971 – which is when Amin became military ruler of Uganda - and 1977, in effect turning the Community to a rudder-less ship in the high seas.
Relations between capitalist Kenya and socialist Tanzania also turned cold in 1974 when Dar not only nationalized some of the EAC’s assets, but also unilaterally imposed tariffs on Kenyan goods. Nyerere also ordered the closure of the border with Kenya.
It remained closed – at least officially - for nearly a decade.
It was during this time that Nyerere is reported to have accused Kenya of being a “man-eat-man society”. Kenya’s Attorney-General at the time, Charles Njonjo, shot back, terming Tanzania a “man-eat-nothing society”.
In October of 1978, which was just weeks after Amin and Nyerere had attended Mzee Kenyatta’s funeral in Nairobi, the Ugandan strongman ordered his troops to invade Tanzania’s Kagera border region.
Amin hoped to teach Ugandan rebels holed up in Tanzania a lesson. But the Tanzanian army responded strongly to the invasion. By April of 1979, Tanzanian troops had overran Uganda, toppling Amin in the process.
By around this time, the EAC was akin to an unkempt palace looted and left derelict by its former owners. Not even mediation efforts by William Demas, a Trinidadian former Secretary General of the Caribbean Community – CARICOM – could secure any hopes of a revival.
The last nail on the coffin was when Kenya impounded assets of the East African Airways and created its own national airline, Kenya Airways.
In conclusion, it is worth pointing out that a number of countries in the region actually applied to join the EAC. These were Zambia, Ethiopia, Burundi and Somalia.
Things were so bad in the Community that Nyerere, Kenyatta and Obote/Amin never found occasion to review and endorse applications by the said countries.
Looking back in time, do you think history will repeat itself on the EAC?
Image credits: Daily Nation, UK National Archives.
