ARUSHA, TANZANIA - A university professor has warned leaders in the region, that unless the issue of land is addressed early, the planned Political Federation would not bear fruit in the coming years.
Speaking at a symposium organized by the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) to mark 10 years of the parliament’s existence, in Arusha, Makerere University Professor Mahmood Mamdani, said failure by participants and EAC leaders to adequately handle the different land tenure systems was a recipe for a likely failure or slowdown to the realization of a political federation and its people.
“You have not solved the land issue, you have shelved it,” he said.
The symposium was attended by former heads of state and founding presidents of the reborn EAC, Daniel Arap Moi, Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Uganda’s Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi.
Mamdani, who currently heads the department of social research, gave a comprehensive historical synopsis of what led to the collapse of the first EAC; which started in 1967 and collapsed in 1977.
He warned that member states would be frustrated and this could render the union futile if they did not address the issues that led to the collapse of the first EAC, the issues of ethnicity and tribalism, and the widening gaps between the poor and the rich.
He gave comparisons of different land tenure systems where member states have different systems which had affected tribal, ethnic and national interests.
He said the fundamental and underlying systems could be catalysts of future conflicts like those experienced in Nigeria, Kenya, and Darfur in Sudan.
The answer, he said lay in land reforms, strong political democracy, that would “counteract market fundamentalism, balance social inequality, social injustices, rule of law, and involvement of non-state actors and equitable distribution of resources.”
Mamdani also said member states needed to look at citizenship in the context of national standpoint and not from an ethnic and tribal position.
This, he said was a panacea to the likely effects of the future of the region’s socio-political and economic effects it would have if political federation succeeded.
He paid tribute to Tanzania’s founding President Julius Nyerere, who he said took over a colonial state and made a fundamental position that negated racial and tribal identities. “Nyerere created a single law that stated that every Tanzanian, is governed by the same law, where tribe and ethnic background are not an issue.
The three day symposium was also addressed by former presidents Moi and Mwinyi. Many speakers said the EAC had made great strides in economic integration.
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