Burundi now exposes broke EAC as being toothless too

 

By Charles Onyango-Obbo

In Summary

• Perhaps the EAC could be rationalised into an organisation that focuses only on economic, labour and security issues, and drop everything else. That would allow for it to have also a smaller, less expensive bureaucracy in Arusha.

The latest report about the financial health of the East African Community is not the kind a schoolchild would like to take to her parents at the end of the term.

All the five member states are in serious arrears. The surprise, perhaps, is that Uganda is the smallest offender. The shame about this is that donors — mostly the Germans — only recent built a new headquarters in Arusha for the EAC.

It’s like a Good Samaritan gave the EAC a free new house, but it can’t pay the water and power bills. There was a time long ago, when everyone liked to tell the rest of Africa to come study the EAC, then go back home and copy what it was doing.

But we have now been found out, and perhaps nothing will expose the limitations of the EAC more than the bloody Burundi crisis.

Pierre Nkurunziza’s government in Bujumbura has accused Kigali of backing its opponents, a charge Rwanda denies. On the other hand, Rwanda has accused Bujumbura of consorting with remnants of the forces that committed the 1994 genocide, the FDLR, who have been allowed into the country from DRC.

Fearing Nkurunziza will use the excuse of Rwanda’s involvement to spark a slaughter of the Tutsi, Rwanda has clambered up on the fence and is sitting this one out for now.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, who is the mediator, besides having to worry about his re-election, has been accused by the Burundi opposition of not being even-handed. Tanzania, which in reality sees Burundi as a client state, has opposed the firm approach of the African Union that is intent on sending in a peacekeeping force.

Unless the EAC can save Burundi, it will have little credibility left, especially if it is also failing on the smaller things like paying for its upkeep. Because the question can rightly be asked, what else is it there for?

Part of the difficulty is that today the global diplomatic clout of EAC leaders has diminished somewhat, and they don’t have the ability to rally Africa and the world to the kind of long-drawn effort that helped formally end the first Burundi civil war in 2005.

President John Magufuli is exciting, but neither he nor his predecessor Jakaya Kikwete have Ben Mkapa’s standing in the world.

Museveni hadn’t yet become long in the tooth politically. Now he has to deal with the second Burundi crisis of his long presidency. And, South Africa, a key player, was then led by Thabo Mbeki — the cringe-worthy Jacob Zuma was yet to stage his palace coup.

The difficult times, though, offer an opportunity to audit the EAC. Is the optimism that drove its current structure still borne out by the reality? It doesn’t seem so.

Perhaps the EAC could be rationalised into an organisation that focuses only on economic, labour and security issues, and drop everything else. That would allow for it to have also a smaller, less expensive bureaucracy in Arusha.

Given where we are, the East African Legislative Assembly and the Court are probably white elephants the region didn’t need. The EAC would still work just fine if they were scrapped.

In future, after a spell of success, the EAC can become fatter and more ambitious again.