Imperialists and European colonial powers blamed for having balkanized African population for their own selfish economic interests

News Analysis By Leo Odera Omolo In Kampala.

Delegates attending this year’s East African Community Media Summit, which was held in the Ugandan capital, Kampala at the weekend, were treated to a special lecturer, which the majority would like to forget as fast as possible and not to hear again.

While making his presentation, the veteran Tanzanian controversial journalist. Mr Generali Ulimwengu, hit at the imperialists and colonial powers who converged in Berlin in 1884-85 and resolved to partition the African continent to suit their own commercial and economic interests.

Mr. Generali Ulimwengu presented his paper soon after the opening remarks By the EAC’s Secretary General, Ambassador Juma Mwapachu. His paper was on “One people, One destiny; The role of the media in uniting the people of East Africa”.

In his key note address, the First Deputy Prime Minister of Uganda, Eriya Kategaya, who is also his country’s Minster for East African Community Affairs, said the 3rd East Africa media Summit follows the inaugural meeting, which was held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi in 2007 and the second one held in Dar Es Salaam in2008.

The Minister noted the importance these media summits have had on advancing the visibility of the EAC and better regional understanding of the regional issues. The good attendance of this year’s Media Summit, further confirm the media interests in the affairs of the EAC and determination to sustain the commitment to advance the cause of regional integration and development.

The Minister said the 3rd EAC media summit was taking place at a significant moment in the establishment of the common market next year, and reflect a high state of maturity attained by the EAC. Moreover, from January 2010,the customs union will be completely customs and duty free.

Kategaya said the EAC today embraces a larger, and robust market of a combined population of 125 million people, land area of 1.8 million square kilometers, and a combined GDP of USD 70 billion, according to the World Bank statistics of 2008. This endowment in land size, which has huge potential for agricultural development, in a big size population and growing opportunity is destined to become an envious economic hub in Africa.

The media summit is taking place at a time when the EAC is about to mark ten years since its establishment following the signing of the Treaty for the establishment of the EAC on November 30th 1999.

With the theme “EAC’s Ten Years of Progress;The Media as Partner in Promoting Integration”, the Summit is timely, the Minister observed adding, “It is my sincere hope that the challenges of consolidating the achievement made and the aspiration of deeper integration will occupy the center stage at the summit.”

Mr Kategaya said that following the exercise of groupings, he views the people on fast tracking the political federation that was conducted in 2007, and a consensus emerging to accelerate deeper integration through the stages at a common market by 2010, to be followed by Monetary Union {One Currency} by 2012.

This consensus, Mr.Kategaya said, has become the strategies driver for the EAC’s pragmatic activities. This is a significant progress of the common market protocol, which should be signed by the EAC Heads of State in November this year.

Perhaps apparently agitated by the theme of this year’s media summit, Mr, Generali Ulimwengu ,who is the owner of several media houses in Tanzania and a very controversial journalist, stunned the delegates when he re-visited the century old colonial history in Africa. He remarked, “Geographers, and cartographers-who met in wintry Berlin in 1884-85 and huddled over maps and sketches of the portion of Arica over which they haggled like vendors at a wholesale fish stall, in effect sealed the fate of our continent in ways that even they themselves could not have envisaged”.

He argued, while their protracted negotiations over who should have what piece of the African “cake”, each representing the economic and strategic appetites of his country, they brought together peoples and ethnic groups that had never had much to do with each other. They also drove wedges across peoples and groups that had considered themselves as belonging together for centuries.

He said as he presented his paper, ”We are not one people, at lest not yet. We are still Burundians, Kenyans,Rwandese, Tanzanians and Ugandans, desperate,often competing economic pursuits”.

Mr Generali Ulimwengu said, not necessarily surprising, seeing as our very identities were fashioned by people they were lumping together, in hugger-mugger fashion into entities they demarcated as their properties.

In this particular case of East Africa. It thus came to pass that on the one hand the Wasukuma found themselves lumped together with Wagoni, the Kambas with the Kipsigis and the Baganda with the Acholis. But on the other hand, the Luo, the Maasai, the Makonde, the Kuria, the Wadigo, the Banyarwanda, the Abaluhyia etc, found themselves in two, three four and even five different territories, eventually giving rise to the interesting phenomenon of the Aworis in both Kenya and Uganda.

The Awori’s issue is a study case, Moody Awori has represented rural Funyula constituency in Kenya Parliament for close to twenty years. He rose to become the second most powerful man on the land when he was made the Vice President, whereas his cousin in Uganda even challenged President Yoweri Museveni in the last presidential election and wanted to become the President of Uganda.

“Of course, this curving and parceling up our people was not done at the behest of some lofty altruistic instinct on the part of some philanthropic do-gooder in Europe, though at the time of the Wilhelmastrasse conference, it was convenient to marry off the “3 Cs- Commerce, Christianity and Civilization.

“The fact of the matter”, said Mr. Generali Ulimwengu, “is that we were divided for the construction of the Lunatic Express from Mombasa to Uganda, which it is also useful to understand that in the case of British East Africa-Kenya and Uganda- the real impetus for the construction of the Lunatic Express railway line from Mombasa to Uganda may have come, not from a desire to safeguard Kenya or Uganda, rather out of Whitehall’s to safe guard the Nile, strengthen Britain’s sovereignty over Egypt, to protect the Suez passage, overriding imperative to the jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown, the Indian Raj in the face of stiff competition from France, Germany Belgium and other imperialists powers”.

Generali Ulimwengu went on to say, “Sidekick or not, at independence the three East African countries were firmly under British colonial rule, whose appetite for continued possession had fueled the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya,with all the attendant that we are all familiar with”.

“We take cognizance of the fact that we were brought together in order to serve British strategic and economic interests. There is no doubt that the formation of the defunct East African High Commission in 1948 was part of this logical inter-territorial coordination mechanism for a more efficient exploitation of the resources of our countries in the service of British imperialism”, he ended.

Ends

leooderaomolo@yahoo,com

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From: Leo Odera Omolo
Date: Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 8:30 PM
Subject: Britain and other colonial powers blamed for African disunity at the EAC Media summit