"Big egos hampering regional cooperation", say politicians

Power-hungry national leaders are the greatest threat to regional cooperation in the Great Lakes, according to two senior members of the East African Legislative Assembly. The Hon Sheila Kawama-Mishambi and Capt Dudu Buher told IRIN that the realisation of an integrated, peaceful Great Lakes community with common policies on human rights and development was being hampered by egotistical presidents. They said this was because national leaders were unwilling to devolve powers to regional bodies, and because personal squabbles between leaders were preventing peaceful solutions to the region's problems. They were speaking after the annual Great Lakes Symposium, held in Uganda's parliament on Tuesday, sponsored by the government of Uganda and The Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation (MNF). During the forum, Prof Tarsis Kabwegyere and Joseph Butiku, the head of the MNF, had outlined a vision for a Great Lakes region as "more politically and economically integrated at all levels and in all sectors, including common citizenship". According to them, the Great Lakes region would "become a fully developed country" with a "technology-based industrial economy", in which people were healthy, HIV and other diseases were defeated, and armed conflicts were a thing of the past. But Kawama-Mishambi and Buher warned that this vision of unity would be unlikely to be realised in the near future by the region's current leaders. "[Ugandan President Yoweri] Museveni just wants to have his little chiefdom. He doesn't want other bodies outside Uganda meddling in its affairs," Kawama-Mishambi said after the meeting. "And I imagine [Tanzanian President Benjamin] Mkapa, [Rwandan President Paul] Kagame and those others are the same. There are some big egos in governments that are hampering efforts at regional cooperation." She added that any initiative towards peace and political unity in the Great Lakes would come from the grassroots, if anywhere. "You cannot rely on the regions' leaders, but on the people of these areas - people who have to cross borders regularly, for instance. It will never just be handed down from above," she stated. Buher agreed, adding that conflicts in the region were being driven by some very narrow interests. "Most people don't even know what these conflicts are about," he said. "But in the meantime, these hostile relationships are dealing a blow to the grand vision."