If there is any thing that the East African Community (EAC) leaders unanimously agree on at least rhetorically, it is that the community is good for their people and that it is their job to pursue its interests.

In fact speaking at the 5th Plenary Session of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) in Kigali on March 6, President Paul Kagame requested the MPs to step up their oversight role to ensure full integration.

Kagame told them, “We therefore count on you, in the oversight role of our regional legislature to help ensure we maintain momentum and stay on course [to fully integrate].

And, of course, it would be great if EALA doubled its oversight function to facilitate deeper economic integration, and even political federation.

Analytically however, there is evidence to suggest that the virus that led the first community to disintegrate in 1977 not only still afflicts the body, but also EALA, because it is powerless to hold heads of state accountable.

This means that unless EAC leaders act with foresight, EALA cannot be relied upon to sanitise the operations of the “community.”

First, we could say the current EAC is having a second chance at life. It was born in 1967 as a grouping of three countries: Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania and “killed” a decade later in 1977.
While reasons for the disintegration are varied, three stand out prominently.

The first is the ideological differences between Tanzania (which practised “African socialism” under President Julius Nyerere) and Kenya (which embraced capitalism after Independence); the second is unequal development that caused tensions especially between Kenya and Tanzania, and finally General Iddi Amin’s coup in Uganda in 1971 lead to strained relations with Tanzania.

At the time, while Nyerere rejected Amin’s rule; Uganda accused Tanzania of hosting its dissidents and the total sum of all this is that the community couldn’t function as meetings couldn’t be attended under these circumstances.

Considering that the EAC was almost entirely dependent on the goodwill of the president of each member state, their differences inevitably led to its collapse.

And, we could say that today, with the exception of the demise of ideology, the body still suffers from the same ills that killed it in 1977.

For instance, while it hasn’t (yet) led to its demise, the effect of President Nkurunziza’s third term has brought the same bad feelings as the military coup that brought Uganda’s Amin to power in 1971.

While Nyerere’s rejection of the coup and offering exile to Ugandans, including ousted president Milton Obote brought his country into direct confrontation with Uganda — sparking boycotts of the community’s meetings — Nkurunziza’s third term has also strained relations between his country and Rwanda, which is seeing boycotts of meetings, including EALA sessions, which five Burundian MPs recently did.

Although things aren’t as bad as they were in 1977, as the Community’s Secretary-General Liberat Mfukenko said on a visit to Rwanda in February 2017, boycotting meetings is affecting the community’s operations.

And as I have argued before, while differences in economic policies between member states has derailed the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe, the failure of Amina Mohammad’s — Kenya’s foreign minister — bid for the African Uinion Commission chair is in part blamed on members like Burundi who declined to vote for her.

Considering that the EAC, as it were, remains a top-down driven “community” with limited or no role for ordinary citizens, it is unlikely to change, unless leaders see light and change.

Part of the problem is that even EALA lacks teeth to act since most of its members serve at the pleasure of their national leaders and have no constituency outside their national legislatures.

To move things along, reforms are needed not only to ensure that the regional assembly is directly elected by the people but to also give the secretariat some executive powers to act on certain issues without waiting for heads of state.

Christopher Kayumba, PhD. Senior Lecturer, School of Journalism and Communication, UR; Lead consultant, MGC Consult International Ltd. E-mail: [email protected]; twitter account: @Ckayumba Website:www.mgcconsult.com