Are we or not learning from history?

I sat with a friend in one of Arusha’s business centers yesterday, and we chatted the evening away discussing many challenges the world faces today. Many issues came up in our discussion that included the United Nation’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s (ICTR) performance today in comparison to many other missions the UN has carried out in the world. But like the proverbial cow that starts grazing on grass near its kraal before setting off to the fields, I chipped in and was interested in how UNAMIR performed at a time when the world intentionally turned a blind eye to the massacres of innocent Rwandans. The legacy UNAMIR left in Rwanda and the legacy ICTR is about to leave in bringing justice to hundreds of Genocide suspects in Arusha will be discussed sometime to come in this column. All this directs us towards learning from history and changing the world for the better. Once this isn’t respected, we keep getting challenges that need simple solutions and are dragged on unnecessarily for a long time. There are many situations you and me can cite just because we don’t learn from history. A few of these include the unending humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the continued ideology of genocide in the world and lack of political will to expedite the East Africa Community integration process. This is a case in point. In 1967, the treaty of East African Cooperation came into effect with much pomp and former Tanzanian president Julius Kambarage Nyerere was the first leader to lead it. After the community’s collapse forty years ago, I would expect us to look back and learn from where we went wrong and put things right other than looking at selfish ends. Former Ugandan president Idi Amin denied Tanzanian EAC employees permits to work in Uganda just because Tanzania under Nyerere had refused to recognise him as Uganda’s legitimate president. What followed was bad blood between the two countries’ administrations to the extent that when Amin appointed a new set of EAC parliamentarians representing Uganda, Tanzanian MPs refused to sit in the same building with the Ugandan legislators. With this in place, the legislature and the secretariat of the EAC could not operate. These and more are examples of how the new EAC should build on those weaknesses and perform vibrantly. The reasons for EAC’s collapse were quite clear and to a large extent personal. Our presidents at the time totally disregarded regional integration, if they had respected it, East Africa would probably be one of the most developed blocs in the world. With this kind of bad history for the EAC, news filtered in this week of how EAC’s five partner states had failed up to now to find a common ground concerning the right of establishment, ,residence and free movement of services. The right of establishment guarantees nationals of member states the right to work and set up investments in partner states within the region without discrimination. This is the only practical way the region’s over 120 million people will equally benefit from the integration. This will spur growth in the region strengthening to negotiate with the rest of the world at a more competitive level.bYes, reservations will always be there. But these can only be eliminated if member states come up with laws that will regulate the behavior of newcomes in their respective new places of residence. If you are allowed to move, then you also must be allowed to stay. You can not start a business in a country where you are not allowed to stay. Unless we take this principle seriously, we might be learning nothing and forgetting nothing from history. Contact: gmuramila@gmail.com