Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 734053,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/734053/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 154,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "the people of East Africa are still hopeful that sooner rather than later, we shall have a political federation. I am not shy to say that the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni has always haboured the ambition of becoming the first Head of State of East Africa. He has said so openly; that, one of the things that he would like to do before he retires from politics is to make sure that there is a political federation in East Africa. I do not know how much commitment or support he has from his colleagues but I believe that we should not look at the federation as a top-down approach; that should come from political parties in Parliament. That should be championed. I hope that as Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale gets more and more excited about the National Super Alliance (NASA) every time he speaks in the House; that one of the planks of the NASA Manifesto should be a strong commitment to the unity of East Africans. The principle we now have that you can go through the borders without a passport is made a reality. It should be freedom of movement of persons and capital. My relative from Tanzania visited us three days ago. She went through an ordeal at the transit station in Namanga. They were expected to disembark from their vehicle which was coming from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, take out their luggage, carry it across the border so that it could go through customs and then board the vehicle again on the Kenyan side. She was carrying a 40 kilogramme bag of rice that she was bringing to us from Tanzania. You can imagine that she was compelled to carry this 40 kilogramme bag of rice across the border from Tanzanian to the Kenyan side of the border. This does not augur well for East African unity or the principle of free movement of capital, labour and goods across the borders. A mere luggage which has no bearing on commercial transaction except personal consumption should not be taken out of a vehicle to be inspected. I do not think it makes a lot of sense. If there are inspectorates, it should be inspected in the vehicle and the passengers are allowed to walk through rather than the ordeal they go through at the moment at the border. It makes wananchi look at the pronouncements of politicians with a lot cynicism. When we have platforms at EAC meetings, we talk in lofty terms about the desire to unite our countries but we are not uniting our people in practice. Madam Temporary Speaker, I do not want to talk about the terms of reference of this Committee but I will talk about the vision that should inspire its work. I remember when we had the East African University before the university became separate; one in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda – those days, there used to be a lot of interaction at the East African level among scholars and academics. We used to have the East Africa Social Sciences Conference which made us appreciate the issues that we were going through in East Africa, whether political, social or economic and discuss them together. Papers were written with strong comparative studies of the three East African countries. It is unfortunate that since the University of East Africa was divided and we had distinct universities – it is not that this was a bad development but the interaction at the university level, notwithstanding that fact that we have an East Africa Inter-universities Council based in Kampala - the interaction among universities in the East African level is rather weak. I hope that these are some of the things that should be strengthened at the EALA by legislation and policy. One thing that we should consider in reform of EALA and EAC is the need, once laws are passed in the assembly, to domesticate them in each of the member states. Since our members go there to represent us, these laws should be The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}