MWANGI: To hasten integration, lets talk about culture

By Isaac Mwangi, East African News Agency

The recent past has witnessed increased activity in culture and sports, a trend that deserves to be encouraged for closer integration of East Africa’s people.

In fairly quick succession, the region has witnessed military games, parliamentary sports, and a cultural festival at Cyanika on the Uganda-Rwanda border.

But these activities are few and far between, involving a few select groups and border communities. While no doubt a step in the right direction, the impact as far as the wider community of East Africans is concerned is minimal.

Sports and cultural activities lead to an appreciation of other people, a spirit of camaraderie, and a general disposition of goodwill towards others with whom interaction is made. Such activities should, therefore, be made as inclusive as possible, bringing together greater numbers of participants. Moreover, the aim of such activities should be to cultivate an East African ethic.

What is required, then, is a wider application of the strategies already in place to cover more groups in the population, in addition to greater frequency of these activities beyond mere annual events.

But beyond these activities, we must also come up with ways of making integration a way of life. The best bet for doing this would be to look at our education systems. It is through a holistic education that we can bring up future generations who will think of themselves first as East Africans, appreciating other peoples and debunking the myths associated with their forefathers.

In actual fact, since culture encompasses a people’s whole way of life – their customs and traditions, religion, dress, etc – it would be simplistic to think that sprinkling of games and a few stage plays is all that’s needed for East Africans to become united. That unity has to be first and foremost in the mind.

Rather than focusing on the histories of our own European-created nation states, for instance, we can rework school curricula to look at the region as a whole. A Kenyan child should be at home discussing the colonial history of Rwanda and Burundi, while a teen in Burundi should have an appreciation of the factors that led to the unification of Tanganyika with Zanzibar and the attendant challenges today.

In fact, student exchanges will provide a continuous flow of integration beyond what any sports gala or cultural festival can achieve. This is already happening to a limited extent at university level, but needs to come down to the level of high schools and below.

For that to happen, of course, there has to be a measure of equivalence, a standard of comparative attainment that ensures easy movement of young people across the region for education and jobs. It is these young people who will then apply the integration gospel in a practical manner.

Human interaction is largely about communication, which is captured in language and its dynamism. Fortunately, we have Kiswahili as the region’s lingua franca. Kiswahili can serve as a potent vehicle for developing a distinct East African bond and presence on the global scene.

The Chinese, Arabs, Japanese and others around the world are proud of their own cultures – of which language is a leading component. If other peoples must struggle to understand Chinese if they want to do business with them, there is no reason why East Africans should act like beggars; we ought to hold our heads high and take pride in our local languages and culture. As it is, the effects of a neo-colonial mentality have robbed many East Africans of all pride in their own heritage.

Obviously, we do not learn about cultures so that we can practice and replicate each and every aspect of what our ancestors did. Rather, we learn about the past so as to understand the present and better prepared to confront the future.

This is why culture is dynamic, and a wide appreciation of each other’s cultures will greatly help in not only developing greater areas of a common outlook, but also a deeper level of tolerance.

Hopefully, as we integrate our markets and business systems, we will keep in mind that all this will be an exercise in futility if we fail to capture all aspects of our people’s way of life. We cannot afford to do otherwise.