When Kenya celebrated 60 years of independence in December, the notable absence of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame spoke volumes.
That they were not invited—as the Kenyan government later explained—signified Kenya’s uneasy relations with some members of the East African Community.
Such tensions were intense in the 1970s when Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Uganda’s Idi Amin were at loggerheads over ideology (for Nyerere) and chest-thumping for Amin.
Of late, there has been talk of a fallout between President Museveni and President William Ruto. But President Museveni is not alone.
In July last year, opposition leader Raila Odinga claimed that State House snubbed President Suluhu after she flew to Nairobi to mediate between Azimio la Umoja One Kenya and Kenya Kwanza’s violent wrangling over the cost of living and conduct of the 2022 General Election.
Are we back to the 1970s?
Uganda has revealed the widening fissures in the relationship between Museveni and Ruto by dragging Kenya to the East African Community court over oil transportation. Previously, a phone call between the two would have unlocked the oil transportation bureaucracy. Not anymore.
On July 24, 1976, Amin cut the electricity supply to Kenya, protesting the Kenyatta government’s alleged oil blockade, almost similar to what Museveni is going through.
Amin went on State radio and warned: “If the blockade continues, Uganda will have no alternative but to fight for her own survival.”
Kenyatta understood what that meant. War.
