Eastern Africans may still romanticise old chieftains

In July, when South Sudan becomes formally independent, Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame told us all recently that its desire to join the East African Community (EAC) will be looked upon favourably.

So Eastern Africa gained a new nation, and the EAC will gain a new member.

Looking to the years to come, the EAC could find that half of its members are breakaway rebellious nations.

For if you look at Africa, East Africa is the most notorious for secession.

Somalia has so far broken up into Puntland and Somaliland. Though they are not internationally recognised, that has not stopped them from getting on with their lives.

The chaotic war-torn southern Somalia, could either break up into smaller states, or settle into one.

In the long-term, a Bismarck-like figure might arise and unite all the Somalias into one, but that is a long way off in the horizon.

A little further up, Eritrea fought a bitter war of independence against Ethiopia for nearly 30 years, until 1991 when Addis Ababa spat it out into freedom.

Into the African heartland, until about five years ago the break up of the Democratic Republic of Congo into a Kiswahili-speaking East, and the French-speaking West was dangerously close.

It was saved, among other things, by the election of 2006. However, the elections scheduled for this year could precipitate the kind of crisis elections tend to in Africa these days, Ivory Coast being the best latest example.

In Uganda, unless there is a new nation and democracy-building project, it is difficult to see how, especially, the south and north would remain part of the country, if it is not reconstructed, should a political crisis strike.

Question then, is why the Eastern Africa coast is more actively secessionist than the north, west, or indeed south ones?

It cannot be colonialism, because they have the same colonial experience.

One possible reason is location—and how that affected the slave trade. Eastern Africa was located close to the Middle East, so the region was easy pickings for Arab slave traders.

However, Arab slave traders, though as vicious as the western slave traders, were mostly retail traffickers and, within the context of the slave business, were not visionaries.

They used most of the African slaves as domestic labour (castrating them to ensure they don’t lay hands on their women), and bit roles in their armies.

The huge industrial-scale market for slaves was in the Americas, and west and southern Africa were closer than East Africa.

It was not pennywise for a slave trader to increase his costs (and reduce his profit margins) by coming all the way to East Africa and then transporting his captives all the way to America.

So we were saved by geography. Our region didn’t see too much of the disruptions of the slave trade, and our chieftains and kingdoms were not discredited by failing to protect their citizens; or conspiring to sell them into bondage.

It is, therefore, possible that most Eastern Africans carry a gene, and in the deep recesses of their hearts are inclined to romanticise our old chieftains and kingdoms.

Therefore scratch their skins, and beneath you will find a secessionist yearning to return to them.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]