{UAH} Uhuru’s railway could give birth to very ‘strange’ things in East Africa - Opinion - nation.co.ke
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Uhuru's railway could give birth to very 'strange' things in East Africa - Opinion
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Tomorrow, President Kenyatta will commission the Sh1.2 trillion 1,250-km Mombasa - Malaba railway line.
In the next few years, the railway line will snake into Uganda, and then into Rwanda, and possibly South Sudan eventually, as part of the new infrastructure geopolitics of East Africa.
This is a big deal. As Don Pablo wrote in his blog Panoramicdon, the railway "will transform life in Kenya and beyond".
He noted, among other things, that the line could reduce transport costs by 60 per cent; create 60 jobs for every kilometre of track laid; and that up to 30,000 jobs could come out of the Mombasa-Nairobi phase.
He then remarked, in embarrassment: "That it has taken us more than a century to add to what the British built is a shameful day for another day. Now is the time to rejoice…"
Some things, though, don't change. The British, like Kenya's present leaders, saw the railway primarily as an economic vehicle. Yet, that isn't the legacy of the railway.
Instead, it gave birth to something the British never intended — radical African nationalism.
While the railway run between Mombasa and Kampala, it would never have been built if there was no shipping.
The railway was, thus, the first infrastructure of globalisation in the region. It gave rise to a whole new set of questions and experiences. Indian coolies were brought to build it, and that spurred internationalism — indigenous East African became aware there were other races that were part of the labouring classes.
They asked questions like, "where were the goods being carried from East Africa by the railway and loaded on ships going?" And "where are the goods that come off the ships and are transported by the railway inland coming from, and who makes them?"
The Kenya-Uganda Railway became the cheapest and most efficient of transport for adventurous Ugandans, many of who ended up in Mombasa. It is no accident that people like Uganda's former President Milton Obote cut their political teeth in Mombasa.
It enabled the transportation of large numbers of East Africans to fight on the British side in World War II. Without it, many East Africans would not have been recruited into the war. The story of how the war was a defining experience in the nationalist struggle has been over-told.
Most critically, as Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni put it in a famous and controversial essay on the liberation war in Mozambique, "Fanon's Theory on Violence: Its Verification in Liberated Mozambique", the Africans got to kill themzungu overlords, and that helped them "lose their fear of the white man".
For those East Africans who did not go to the war, the railway brought it to them by way of Italian prisoners of war. The people understood what it meant.
So while the railway carried goods and people, its most potent cargo was ideas. East Africans became aware of a world bigger than their region. To understand why the first large group of radical Ugandan youth studied in India, one needs to appreciate the effect of having Indian coolies working on the Kenya-Uganda Railway had.
On Uganda's Independence Day on October 9, 1962, all the flags of the countries that sent representatives to the ceremony were hoisted in Kampala. A wiry young man climbed a flagpole and pulled down the flag of Portugal (to protest its occupation of Mozambique and Angola), then climbed up another and brought down the Israeli one. He was promptly arrested.
That young man was Kirunda Kivejinja, one of the radical youth who had just returned home after studying in India. Later, he and his India-educated buddies continued causing trouble, eventually fleeing into exile and joining Museveni's bush war. He returned and was minister for many years. They were products of the railway.
The railway, meanwhile, carried many Kenyans, taking them to work in the Madhvani sugar plantations in Kakira, eastern Uganda, and to Pakwach where the railway ends.
Today, thanks to those Kenyans, Kakira is easily the most East African small town in the region. And I suspect Gor Mahia FC could well be the most popular football club in Pakwach.
Kigali will not know what has hit it when the railway eventually gets there.
cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com & twitter: @cobbo3
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/2090670/-/6wmp2hz/-/index.html
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