The World Bank released Uganda’s periodic economic update just before Christmas. And the big surprise? Its main thrust, arrived at using statistical data and research, is that the country needs to step up regional trade to speed up development.
That is the song that we have been singing for three decades and have just celebrated the twenty-something birthday of the vehicle created for this, the East African Community. The vehicle is running on flat tyres, an empty fuel tank and its several drivers arguing about the direction.
Reading the report over Christmas, which is time for family reunion, sets some of us thinking about time-tested techniques of family preservation. Many Africans born around Independence or before, whose parents worked in public service and formal private industries, grew up in urban and peri-urban areas, in homesteads far smaller than the rural ones where teenagers construct their own little “houses” in the compound.
Sundays after lunch
That generation of Africans remember a phrase that they used to hear on Sundays after lunch. Obviously, the mothers in different countries and towns used different words, but all served the same purpose. In Uganda, the command went like, “Children, go play far away from the house because your father has a headache!” What a welcome command for children to go and enjoy the much-needed freedom! They did not waste time wondering why their father suffered a recurrent headache on Sunday after lunch.
As Africa transited to modernity, Sunday afternoon became time for rejuvenation of domestic relationships in urban areas, where the physical congestion denied couples who shared space with children what was daily available to village couples. It created a sense of timetabling in the lives of couples and the organisational culture possibly rubbed off onto the urban-bred children – who are now retiring or retired from the management of public affairs. Maybe the unrestricted access to daily you-know-what in the countryside denied the rural folk the required sacrificial discipline for developing the competitive spirit while restrictions inspired urban children to seek and gain modern fighting skills.
Isn’t it time East African leaders –the Big Seven — stole a leaf from our pioneer urban dwellers of old and start getting a weekly geopolitical headache so as to refresh our deteriorating community and save it sinking into ineffectiveness and irrelevance?
A week is an important segment in the life of individuals and societies. It is real. The week is a physical reality, unlike many other time measures. The week is closest to accurate subdivision of the year – into 52 weeks. It has seven days – and days are real, being the time it takes the earth to spin on its axis, from one sunrise to the next, at the equator. A year is also real, being the time the earth takes to revolve around the sun. The rest are artificial, like hours and months.
Since the day is too short and the year is too long, the week is the most natural period to schedule human activity, and even religions base their worship cycle on a week, hence the Sabbath, Sunday, Ijumaa.
Geopolitical headache
Suppose our Big Seven start treating their geopolitical headache with a weekly dose of Zoom, Teams or any of the digital interactive technologies produced by Covid-19. They would get off their big white horses of pride and, with humility, frankly address the fears and misgivings each of them harbours! This is as achievable as each of them devotes an hour every week for prayer or meditation, or as each holds a weekly Cabinet meeting.
If the Big Seven held 52 frank discussions in a year, Community relations wouldn’t rot to the extent of some members failing to pay annual subscriptions, borders getting closed, barriers to trade being erected, rebels operating in partner states, members helping overseas foreigners to dump merchandise in the Community to kill East African economies, refusing to open up the EA airspace, thus protecting corrupt, inefficient national airlines, or a member state maintaining visa requirements against citizens of the other six.
If the Big Seven held 52 weekly, one-hour online meetings over 2023, the next economic update by the World Bank wouldn’t be reminding us of the obvious, but about managing our unstoppable gallop to prosperity. The Sunday Father’s Headache principle would turn the Community from a conflict arena into a prosperous, peaceful space for its 300 million citizens.
Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:[email protected]
