Why the Current Clamor for East African Federation Cannot Produce Unity

Uganda’s English newspaper daily “The New Vision” carried a pullout of “Uganda Argus” newspaper stories taken from the 1960s on formation of the East African Federation that was unfolding at the time.The story from January 21, 1965, titled “Why Federation has failed” particularly attracted my attention. It quoted a memorandum submitted then by Chango Machyo, an academician of Makerere University, and Dan Nabudere, a practicing private lawyer, to a Mbale meeting of President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Prime Minister A. Milton Obote of Uganda for the formation of the then touted East African Federation.The views that this now deceased duo expounded actually expressed the ideas many of us across a wide breadth of the country held at the time thanks of the many moments they shared with us during their mentorship of our then “Lumumba Research Bureau.” The re-reading of this episode fondly tickled my memories and re-kindled the nostalgia of that past.