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Task ahead of East Africa’s best brains in Arusha August House by Joachim Buwembo

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Arusha in Tanzania must be sharing one characteristic with Las Vegas in America – secrecy. It appears that what is seen and heard in Arusha remains in Arusha, in sync with the unofficial motto of Vegas.

For while the general portrayal of the Arusha-based East African Legislative Assembly, EALA, is that of a not-too competent, wasteful group, it now emerges that there is a lot of great work being executed by its MPs.

Over the weekend in Uganda, for instance, the ruling party resolved to maintain the same members it sent to the EALA five years ago for the new term, giving the reason for this as “their exceptional performance”.

And that is official, stated in the document released by the party after its process to choose members to send to Arusha.

Yet, on Monday, Parliament Speaker Anita Among poured out her country’s frustration to the judges of the East African Court of Justice over the unfair treatment inflicted on Uganda by some East African Community member states in naked disregard of the existing protocols governing trade in the common market.

Uganda’s frustration with the non-application of EAC’s protocols is separately shared by other member countries in the economic bloc.

The same day Uganda’s Speaker was lamenting, EAC Secretary-General Dr Peter Mathuki hailed the government and people of the Democratic Republic of Congo for speedily concluding the internal and constitutional processes to ratify the Treaty of Accession and depositing the Instrument of Ratification well ahead of the schedule with him.

DRC’s Foreign Affairs MInister Christophe Lutundula Apala Pen’ Apala handed over the instrument in Arusha two and a half months ahead of schedule!

In August, Arusha’s august House will thus be joined by the seventh team sent by the august House of Kinshasa.

The expanded EALA will embark on another phase to deliver the dream of nearly 300 million citizens who constitute one of the poorest mass groups of the world.

Yes, international indicators list Burundi and South Sudan as the poorest nations on earth, with DR Congo as the worst place to be for women and girls.

The six dozen legislators so carefully picked by the elected legislators of the seven national parliaments of East Africa will, over the next five years, use their exceptional abilities to create conditions that will lift us from those shameful assessments.

Fortunately, the cream of East Africans going to Arusha next month will be legislating and exercising oversight for one of the world’s resource-richest regions. So their work should be easy.

The East African Community is an economic community, which makes the coordination and utilization of resources for the benefit of its people its main reason for existence.

The cream of East Africans heading to Arusha soon will have, at the back of their minds, the enormous wealth in the region lying astride the Equator from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean that can be jointly harnessed to uplift the lives of about 300 million people, and the change can be noticeably attained over the five years.

The seven EAC members are separately attaining different levels of advancement, this being done in silos. It can be safely assumed that the reason the seven parliaments are selecting some of the best brains in their countries to go join colleagues in Arusha is to optimize the efforts in their countries for the rapidest development possible.

We have marveled at Tanzania’s testing its electric railway, so we don’t have to sing about Addis Ababa’s light electric rail anymore. Just imagine if such compartmentalized projects are instead done jointly by the seven-member states!

The EAC would be the world model for clean energy transportation, since all the resources required for this are within the region. We trust that the realization of these dreams will be accelerated by the new energy of the cream team starting work in Arusha next month.

Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

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“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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Strictly Personal

How patriarchy underpins gender violence today, By Tee Ngugi

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On January 27, Kenyan women flooded city streets to protest rising cases of femicide. These were the largest protests ever held against gender-based violence in the country.

The killings that triggered the outrage were especially horrific. In one instance, a woman was raped, beaten and forced to swallow acid. Another young woman was beheaded in airbnb establishment. In January alone, 14 women were killed in the country. Between 2016 –2024, 500 women were killed. The figures, horrendous as they are, are thought to be higher.

Statistics on gender-based violence paint a very sick society. Almost half of women in the country experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. Then countless others face daily sexual harassment in schools, public transportation, universities and workplaces.

Boda boda riders are notorious for harassing women drivers. In an incident that caused national shame, boda bodas descended on a hapless woman driver they accused of ramming one of them and physically and sexually assaulted her.

A few years ago, some self-appointed moral police would beat and undress women they deemed indecently dressed, as if in a country in which billions are stolen every year, and in which so many sleep hungry, the most egregious crime is a woman’s short skirt.

To be sure, femicide and physical and sexual violence against women is not a uniquely Kenyan problem. In South Africa, rape has reached crisis proportions. In eastern Congo and other war-ravaged regions in Africa, rape is a weapon of war.

The problem of rape also transcends race, culture and religion. In the United States and, surprisingly, liberal Sweden, rape is endemic. And in the so-called traditional societies of Lesotho and Swaziland, rape is a serious problem. In pious India, rape had become so rampant that it even happened in buses. The government, unlike other regions, moved with ferocity to stem the problem.

The Kenyan protesters called for tough legislation against gender-based violence as well as quick police action in response to cases of sexual harassment. These measures will go a long way in curbing the impunity that exists in the country about violence against women.

But, at the same time, we must seek to change deeply ingrained cultural attitudes. Even though we no longer live in the traditional society, residual traditional attitudes still stain our views of women. Therefore, we must explore ways of overcoming these cultural attitudes and making them a liability in society.

At the same time, we must rid our society of erroneous views such as there is a head of a family who lords it over the household and, instead, advocates a respectful partnership. Other erroneous beliefs consider domestic violence as not quite violence and rape within marriage as not quite rape.

Police stations also need to be sensitive to rape victims. Eradicating gender-based violence will, therefore, require uncompromising action at the levels of legislation, policing and culture.

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