In all the rhetoric we are being treated to about the proposed East African political federation a significant fact has stayed out of the news pages. And that is the fact that one partner, is very apprehensive about opening up her borders to the free movement of East Africans. That member is Tanzania.
Kenya and Uganda will open up their borders to free movement tomorrow, if given half a chance, but Tanzania is holding back everybody. And not without reason. Apart from the fact that it is easier for a Kenyan to obtain a work permit in the United States than it is for them to do so in Tanzania, there are recent developments that are of grave concern to the young government of President Jakaya Kikwete.
Since the beginning of this year Tanzania has been hit by a spate of violent crimes that is unprecedented in it's history and has included a number of high profile bank robberies. The authorities there and the press in general are not in doubt as to where the masterminds of these gruesome crimes come from (the mostly Swahili press keeps on using the phrase "criminal elements from a neighboring country").
It is now clear that as the war on crime in Kenya has intensified and as individuals and organizations have reacted by tightening security, those who live on crime are feeling the heat. And already there is evidence that many of them have gone regional (some hardened wanted criminals were recently arrested in Mozambique). It is quite likely that the source of heightened criminal activity in Tanzania is indeed Kenya.
The issue of crime is so worrying to the Tanzanian government that this blogger has reliably been informed that some Somali's were recently denied entry into Tanzania through the Namanga border. Immigration officials on the ground indicated that the new policy was to bar entry to persons of Somali origin. Everybody knows that these are the nice folks who engage in selling automatic weapons from a certain well known estate in Nairobi. But then not all Somalis are gunrunners just like not all Arabs are suicide bombers.
Genuine businesspersons and citizens of the three East African countries looking to benefit from the new East African initiative will obviously suffer the consequences of these new developments. Although criminals do not require work permits to operate and neither do they usually cross the border at designated border crossings, there is little doubt that free movement of the peoples of East Africa will be delayed for some time to come because of these recent developments.
