True friends know each other’s crooked ways

The reason why these arrests, killings, and transgressions are felt so deeply is that East Africans only do business together.

Otherwise, they don’t play enough, or at all, with each other.

There is therefore no feel-good factor that enables these injuries to be put in a brotherly and sisterly context.

That was not the case with EAC 1, the one that died and was buried in 1977.

The big thing those days used to be the Gossage Cup, which was contested between Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika (then) and Zanzibar.

It was sponsored by soap manufacturer William Gossage, hence the name.

Played between 1926 and 1966 (my uncle was a goalkeeper for Uganda in its later years), it was an incredible tournament, and some of the accounts I found on the Internet make for some truly hilarious reading.

In the 1951 final between Kenya and Tanzania, which Tanzania won 1-2, Kenya’s striker Omari Okumu claimed that the ball turned into a snake every time he made to kick it, and he got scared. In Kenya, there was general agreement that Tanzania had won through witchcraft.

Suffice it to say Uganda ruled the Gossage, winning 22 times.

Kenya took the title 12 times, and Tanganyika took it four times.

But Kenya and Uganda squabbled with and cheated each other so many times during the Gossage, I think I finally figured why there is comparatively less hostility between some establishment groups in Kenya and Uganda, than between Tanzania and Kenya.

There were so many dirty tricks between Kenya and Uganda in the early years, it seems we eventually became immunised against each other’s crooked ways.

That is what the modern EAC needs.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: cobbo@nation.co.ke.