Wither Regional Integration?

Regional Integration has been one of the unquestioned pillars of development and development assistance. If West, South or East African countries open their borders to regional trade and harmonize their rules and regulations it is a good thing. If they agree on overcoming their national self-interest in quest of common positions, if they give up parts of their sovereignty to achieve common progress, both the West and the South will profit. That at least was the premise of many an engagement. It’s what you call a no-brainer. In Europe and in Africa big business has underwritten this blueprint for political and economic integration and driven its implementation as a precondition for globalization. And citizens are being swept away by the logic of inevitability, by the advantages in lifestyle and only object here and there when their personal livelyhoods are directly affected, if increasingly. In the case of the East Africa significant progress was made since the aborted attempt of an East African Community was resurrected with the new EAC in 2000. Now, there is a customs free zone plus a more or less functioning common market. And there are plans for a currency union and even a political federation at the end of the integration dream. But despite of these remarkable achievements the East African agenda has recently come under attack from the inside. Some of Africa’s proverbial „big men“ have been slowly chisselling away at the democratic framework in their respective countries and are now attacking the pillars of the rule of law – endangering or even stopping the EAC-integration in its tracks. It is a (anti-)constitutional backlash in most of its member countries that renders the EAC – and with it the AU – helpless in the face of the newly emerging conflicts and crises in Burundi, the DRC and South Sudan, as we have seen over the last weeks. The most obvious case is Burundi where President Pierre Nkurunziza is in the process of triggering a civil war by not respecting the constitution and the Arusha Accords. In neighbouring Rwanda his colleague in power was just a lot smarter in tinkling with the democratic ground rules in his country. He deftly organized a 98% majority of the population for his third term in office. In Uganda President Museveni uses the power implicit in a de facto one party state to win the February election and follow in Robert Mugabe’s footsteps. In Kenya the government of President Kenyatta uses all too real security threats as an excuse to unhinge the democratic foundations of the country. And the election crisis in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar has led the Union government to break basic democratic rules;  just that - without dead bodies like in Burundi - nobody hasn’t yet noticed or has called the annullment of the Zanzibar election and its planned rerun on March 20th for what it is – a clear breach of the constitution. Which means that currently no leader of the EAC countries can call a spade a spade – since they all belong to the same club of constitution mongers. No wonder then, that the numerous  EAC and AU-meetings on the threatening catastrophe in Burundi could not produce any results. Ostracism, sanctions, interventions? No way. Who would dare to create a precedent of peer criticism followed by group pressure when constitutions are violated and human rights ignored all over the community? It is indeed no accident that the much (self-)applauded African Peer Review Mechanism is just being silently laid to rest these very days. But what exactly is happening in these EAC-member countries? Has the era of multipartism which started in the 90s suddenly come to a crashing end? Or have these once hope inspiring multiparty democracies always been houses of cards, built for the international gallery on promises and policies, investing donor money but no indigenous political capital in the hard job of creating independent institutions? According to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation governance standards have slipped in 21 African countries between 2011 and 2014. The new alternative of Chinese development funding and „security concerns“ as ideal subterfuge for justifiying undemocratic measures might have contributed to this downward slide in accountability. As the relative young new leaders in Kenya and Tanzania show – it can’t be just a generational problem. Yet it would take more than a book to analyse the various reasons for the accelerating anti-democratic backlash. If you want to check on the democratic disintegration of East African countries over the last few years, just look at the media situation – no overdue Freedom of Information Acts habe been introduced, but plenty of new draconic media laws which just take the restrictive colonial laws into the digital age – from the old newspaper acts to the new cyber laws. Whichever local or national form it takes – the democratic space is shrinking. But what do these developments mean for the idea and the practice of regional integration? Can a regional body like the EAC function as a community of increasingly undemocratic nations headed by purely self-serving and populist leaders? Can you have a „people centered“ East African Community, as Article 8 stipulates, with 5 cloned „big men“ in the presidency? Is a currency union compatible with semi-authoritarian governance? Are we heading for a new Pan-Africanism of censorship and constitutional brinkmanship? What are the so called „Recs“ (Regional Economic Communities) for, if they can’t discipline or sanction their recalcitrant members? And where can opposition to bad governance find a voice within those regional communities? In a parliament, like the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), not elected by the people but mainly handpicked by dominant parties? And finally. If only some of the answers to these questions are negative: what would this mean for development assistance, which has been banking on and bankrolling regional integration for years – and not only in East Africa?