East Africa

Break-up of a community

Andrew Lycett

Charles Njonjo, the Kenyan Attorney-General, was once in trouble with his people for saying that he would not travel in an East African Airways plane piloted by an African unless he had first checked up on the man's flying record.

East African Airways is a para-statal company operating under the auspices of the East African Community. Given the bickering of recent months between the member countries —Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania—it is a matter of speculation whether Mr Njonjo will have any East African Airways to fly on at all. He may find himself hopping on to DETA, the Mozambican airline which has recently extended its service from Lourenco Marques, through Beira and Dar es Salaam, to Nairobi, For as the countries of old British East Africa appear to loose their ties, a new potential federation or common. market is growing up to their south..

Comprising Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique, its links are political, economic and psychological. White Rhodesians can no longer enjoy the comforting feeling that somewhere to the north lies a group of benevolent ex-British states, managed by a few thousand influential expatriates'and testifying to the lasting benefits of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. Rhodesians are more conscious of the three independent black African countries which, in spite of different traditions and languages, give succour and political muscle to Zimbabwean guerrillas..

Mr Njonjo, not a man to mince his words, recently told Kenya's cowed Parliament. "We should break up the (East African) Community because it is no longer living up to the objectives for which it was created."

What he says is worth noting, as he is the man who will probably lead the Kenyan team of three Ministers to the forthcoming conference to review the 1967 treaty which brought the Community into being.

It was deemed sensible at that time to capitalise on the administrative infrastructure laid by the British. Railways, harbours, airways, posts, telegraphs, even the framework of the law and regional development, could be run more efficiently and cost-conscipusly at a Community level. Due acknowledgementwas made of the need to decentralise the authorities running the various para-statal organisations, and their headquarters were redistributed around the capitals of Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam. A Community Authority comprising the leaders of the countries was set up to take the final decisions on matters thrashed out at lower levels, but this body has not met now since the overthrow of the Ugandan government in 1971.

It was around this time that things began to go obviously wrong. Amin of Uganda resented Nyerere of Tanzania giving deposed ex-President Obote refuge in Dar es Salaam. He travelled to Israel and Britain to gain support for his plan to drive a corridor through Tanzania and establish a port for his landlocked country at Tanga, on the Indian Ocean. Although rebuffed on this score, he felt vindicated in September 1972 when a coup launched against him from Tanzania by Obote's supporters was aborted.

Since those days Russia has armed Uganda extensively, while china has continued to supply Tanzania with weapons and training. Kenya has tended to keep her feet firmly in the Western camp, so that East Africa now looks like a three-way super-power carve-up.

Reality, however, is more complicated. One of the current truisms of African affairs (particularly OAU affairs, as the Kampala conference demonstrated) is the Afro-Arab divide. Amin's other main source of support recently has been Libya, who has flown military supplies across the desert to Uganda. Kenya, on the other 'hand, still finds her forces drawn up against Somalia, the newest member of the Arab League, in her Northern Frontier District. It was the Nairobi Sunday Nation which first published American satellite photographs of Russian military installations in Berbera, Somalia, together with suitable editorial crowing about their potential threat to the peace of the area.

Uganda therefore has Arab backing (too much for some African countries), while Kenya is ranged against another Arab country. Kenya, in fact, is isolating herself from countries both to the north and the south. While Haile Selassie was on the throne, President Kenyatta had an ally in his struggle against Somalia. A defence treaty between Kenya and Ethiopia was signed in 1963. An all-weather road was planned between Nairobi and Addis Ababa so that Kenyatta, who does not like flying, could drive north to stay with the Emperor for important OAU meetings. But now, since the coup in Ethiopia, the countries' domestic policies are too far apart. Kenya is out in the cold in foreign affairs, though undoubtedly still a power to be reckoned with in the region.

The same can be said for the country's President at home. Earlier this year, popular reaction to the murder of the politician J. M. Kariuki threatened to expose corruption at the top of society. It might have gone on to change the political orientation of the country and bring it closer to the Tanzanian model denounced but secretly revered by young Kenyans. But by the beginning of last month, as one observer said, "Our Prague spring was over." With remarkable stamina for an eighty-five-year-old, Kenyatta had jumped back in the ring, re-established the ascendancy of his party, KANU, sacked a couple of vociferous Ministers, dismissed a Select Committee charged to look into corruption, and avoided carrying out any of the recommendations of the Select Committee into Kariuki's death. Parliament, which ,two months earlier nThp,.ai, opeu b4. or August 30, 1975 had seemed a responsible body capable of effecting important and radical changes in Kenya, was reduced to a very subservient role.

Kenya will continue in these ostrich-like habits at home and abroad until Kenyatta dies and the forces which threatened to surface earlier this year are allowed to have their head.

But with Uganda in the Arab camp and Kenya isolated in its troubles, President Nyer ere was confirmed in his policy of co-operation with those black African countries trying to bring about a new balance of forces in Southern Africa. Nowadays meetings at the Kenyatta Conference Centre in Nairobi tend to be esoteric gatherings like that of the fiercely anti-Communist International Council of Christian Churches. But in Dar es Salaam and Lusaka history is regularly in the making. And if one wants a base from which to watch events unfold in Africa for the next few years, Lourenco Marques would be a very pleasant town.

For Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique have been reordering their political and economic structures to cope with affairs of the mid-'seventies. In the process they are looking increasingly similar. In all three countries the party is supreme, even over Parliament. In Tanzania this has been the case for a long time. The Arusha Declaration of 1967 was passed not by Parliament but by the National Executive Committee of TANU. In Zambia the ascendancy of UNIP is relatively recent, though closely guarded. A friend travelling from Lusaka to Lourenco Marques for Mozambican independence celebrations as the guest of the Foreign Minister was thrown off the plane, which was carrying the Minister and a large UNIP delegation, because his passage had not been authorised by the party which owned the aircraft. In Mozambique itself Frelimo promises to be the vanguard of the people in the classical Marxist manner.

From this similarity of political set-up is beginning to grow a like-minded economic policy, with strong emphasis on the value of trained cadres preaching collective doctrine in the rural areas. Zambia, with her concentration of copper mining towns, is only a partial exception to this rule.

But her dependence on copper increases her need for the good offices of Tanzania and Mozambique to help her ship this basic commodity. abroad. Hence communications between these three countries are improving. Heavy trucks carry copper down the new American-built highway from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam, and bring back oil on their return runs. Next year the Chinese-built Tazara railway along the same route will take over much of this traffic. It will also open up the South of Tanzania to tourists and enable the mineral wealth of this region to be profitably developed. The ZTRS trucks that formerly plied the Lusaka-Dar route will then travel the new road being built, from the Zambian copper belt through to the Mozambican port of Beira.

At the moment most of the traffic from Zambia to Mozambique goes through Malawi to Nacala. But none of the countries surrounding Malawi feels well disposed to helping Dr Hastings Banda who has always made his support for the continued white domination of Southern Africa quite clear. The opening up of the route from Zambia to Beira will assist Frelimo in its aim to develop the Zambezi valley where new industry will be powered by cheap electricity from the Cabora Bassa Dam. It will also keep the port of Beira running if the Mozambican border with Rhodesia has to be closed. Zambia will benefit from having an increased choice of outlets to the sea. The third side of the triangle from Mozambique to Tanzania will be bridged by road and rail, though these plans are still on the drawing board at present.

At the Mozambican independence celebrations at the end of June, the one other delegation afforded the same welcome as the Zambians was the MPLA, the Marxist movement from Angola. When Angola gains its independence towards the end of the year it will Join the club established by Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique. With Botswana as an honorary member, these five countries will be in a strong position to confront the white regimes of the South, if the talks about Rhodesia, which they all genuinely hope will succeed, do in fact break down.

Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique will have a freshness of approach not enjoyed by the old East African Community. This is their psychological weapon at home and abroad. It is one of Samora Machel's greatest joys in Mozambique that the Portuguese left him so little. He has inherited a bankrupt country, but at least he will be able to set it on its feet as he thinks fit. He will not be tied to the remains of a working, reasonably efficient but ultimately inimical and dated western capitalist political and economic system, as were his friends in East Africa.

Meanwhile from the Community come continued reports of petty recriminations between member states. Fifty-six Tanzanians were dismissed from an East African Railways workshop in Nairobi, so seventy-four Kenyans working in the same corporation were sent home from Tanzania. In May two Kenyans returning from an East African Community meeting in Arusha were searched at the airport and their official documents gone through. In August some Tanzanian Community officials were told that they were illegal immigrants in Kenya . They were held at gunpoint until they were allowed to return home. In July 300 Tanzanians working on the railways in Kenya were told they would not be paid that month because Dar es Salaam owed the Nairobi headquarters of East African Railways over Elm. Transfer of funds remains the Community's biggest headache. Earlier this year Kenya stopped running passenger trains because she could not afford to buy new rolling stock from the Crown Agents in London. Again she blamed Tanzania for failing to pay her contributions to the Railways. In May she even accused her of pinching Kenyan goods wagons and completely cut rail links between the two countries for a while.

The breakdown of the East African :Community and the emergence of a like-minded political and economic group of countries to the South should not be .seen as yet another example of the instability of the African continent. The security of the Indian Ocean, that well-known centre of British interest, is affected. The balance of power in Southern Africa is considerably altered. For some Africans are working their purpose out.