Dr. Busingye Kabumba's Discussion during CCG Dialogue on Constitutionalism, Politics and State Governance in East Africa - Which Way for the EAC Integration Process?

My worry about the EAC at this stage is formed by its history and its current status in the sense that it collapsed in the past because of a failure of values. The values of Uganda at that time were inimical to those of Tanzania.  You heard President Nyerere say “I cannot sit on the same table with a murderer” and I think this was a very fundamental statement and so the question at the time was “what value do you place ahead of the other?” Do you place the economic a question of a common currency above life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

It’s my view, that among other reasons, the EAC failed in the past because of a failure of values and my concern is that the same danger is present with us today. But beyond the EA Treaty, if we interrogate the values systems of the partner states and I think this has been rightly pointed out that by Hon. Amanya and Ms. Sarah Bireete respectively that essentially, if you have values, in addition to the language, the community can be safeguarded.

The reality of the community so far; the sense of the future and reality of the International organizations is that states remain the major actors, major drivers of the integration and this has its own consequences. For instance looking at the past, because the concerns of the head of state or a state are necessarily different from those of individuals. Lincoln who is held as a great liberator of the slaves in America also said “if there is a way of saving the union without releasing the slaves I would have done so”.   So it is not always the case that the needs and interests of the state are those of the individual. Why am I concerned about the failure of values at the moment? We are talking about constitutionalism, politics and state governance right now and I think a good analysis of that state has been made by my colleagues here that there is a crisis of constitutionalism today; one that truly brings to light the words of the late Prof. Oketh Ogendo that the challenges we have had in Africa is that we have had constitutions without constitutionalism.

Another challenge is that we have had treaties and we have had protocols without an accompanying structure for respect of those protocols and that is why then the question of the Coalition of the Willing (CoW) can be explained in those terms that no one is bothering much about the text because they know they can circumvent it.

What is the danger then of forging around an integration that does not base on certain shared values? The danger as I see is that you can entrench illegitimacy; you can entrench bad governance through a process of integration that is not based on certain clear shared values. There are of course some values in the EA Treaty; one of those is the rule of law. The question is to what extent is the rule of law recognized?