By Joachim Buwembo

East African Community ’s intellectual interaction, competition and cross-pollination of ideas peaked at the close the 1960s in newly independent Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

But the seeds of division planted in EAC’s womb at its 1967 founding also germinated, sprouting with the splitting of the University of East Africa as its constituent colleges of Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Makerere became independent universities answerable to their respective governments.

Two mental giants, Jomo Kenyatta and Julius Nyerere, were respectively in State Houses Nairobi and Dar es Salaam at the height of the global West – East ideological rivalry, while ideologically neutral Kampala provided intellectual arbitration for the fierce bi-polar competition.

The star-studded bench at good old Makerere had stellar political scholars such as Kenya-born Professor Ali Al’amin Mazrui; Kenyan student leader Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, and later Tanzania-born Ugandan teaching assistant Mahmood Mamdani, who was just returning from a decade of studies in America, where he participated in the civil rights movement.

Six decades after independence, Nyerere’s and Kenyatta’s political grandchildren are at it again, but using less intellectual firepower, denying audiences their grandparents’ humour.

Remember Nyerere’s jibe at Kenya being a man-eat-man society, making Kenyatta scoff at Tanzania being a man-eat-nothing society? Now you hear stuff like “our broke neighbours have no dollars and we have refused to give them some… and their investors running away.”

But I wouldn’t rush to write off Kenya — not yet, and maybe never. As we grow older we become wiser. Years ago, I could laugh at a businessman crying of being broke; today I would instead salute him in awe, knowing there is a bank stuck with useless collateral as he makes more dime in “new” companies.

Kenya is not broke, it has intangible wealth bequeathed by its shrewd founders. In the region, Kenya is like the US is globally — heavily indebted but not about to lay down and be run over by anybody, not even China.