{UAH} Good job our leaders are squabbling like boys... - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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Good job our leaders are squabbling like boys... - Comment
Things had been bubbling beneath the surface, but broke out after Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete suggested publicly Kigali should hold talks with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), who are based in eastern DR Congo.
Kikwete also proposed that Uganda talk to its Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, who are also holed up in the DRC.
Kigali considers the FDLR irredeemably toxic, in part because it is the rump of the groups that carried out the 1994 genocide in which nearly one million people were slaughtered.
Already a tall man, President Paul Kagame quickly hit the roof and said some very strong words about Kikwete.
Uganda was less vexed about Kikwete's proposal in part because, for all the many things that are wrong about President Yoweri Museveni's leadership, his government generally maintains a pagan and cynical pragmatism about such things.
When the lights are out and no one is looking, they will talk to anybody.
However, East African affairs took a boyish turn from there.
In late June, Museveni called an "infrastructure summit" in Entebbe. He invited Kagame and Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta. It seems Kikwete and Burundi's Pierre Nkurunziza, a close ally of Dar es Salaam, didn't get any letters.
Talk of an "East African Three" started to do the rounds.
Then, on August 7, Kenyatta hosted a Great Lakes summit in Nairobi. Kikwete and Nkurunziza didn't show up. Last week, Kenya commissioned a new berth at Mombasa port, a key regional infrastructure project. Kikwete and Nkurunziza were a no show again. Museveni and Kagame were there.
The Tanzanians said Kikwete wasn't invited. Kenyan officials said he was.
A war broke out on the blogs, with Tanzanians accusing "The Three" of the same narrow-mindedness and "greed" that broke up the first East African Community in 1977.
Yet I sense a lot of good will come of the quarrel. To begin with, hinterland nations like Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, DR Congo have generally been badly served by both Mombasa and Dar.
While Tanzania has lately been high-handed in its treatment of Kenyan trucks entering the country, Kenya also sometimes does Uganda bad.
At the height of the elections early in the year, it blocked Uganda sugar from entering Kenya, with officials alleging it was going to be used to bribe voters!
This spat between "The Three" and "The Two" will hopefully make Kenya mollycoddle Uganda and Rwanda more; and Tanzania will pamper Burundi to keep it in its corner of this feud.
With its permissive ways, Uganda will be sending subtle signals to Tanzania that it remains open to be courted by Dar too. So Tanzania could offer Uganda dinner and flowers.
After many years of prevarication, Tanzania may eventually be forced to move quickly on building berths 13 and 14 at Dar port. And that mega port at Bagamoyo? This competition to show who can deliver on infrastructure could also force Tanzania to get serious on it.
This kind of malicious competition is exactly what the doctor ordered for East Africa. We were in danger of getting too comfortable with each other and descending into a common pool of mediocrity.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com. Twitter: @cobbo3
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