Did you know London is for Londoners?
Joseph Ochieno
Last week I had reason to catch a train from London Waterloo. Since I could not locate my destination on screen, I went to information desk. “The next train to Windsor and Eton Riverside will depart at 18.58 hours from platform 19,” I was told.
Platform 19 was at the other end, near the former Euro-Express terminal. Within minutes and on time, we were off to the shires and so I now had time to make a useful call to Kampala.
“How is London?” asked the other side, to which I responded to their amusement, “London is for Londoners”. I recently developed this habit of responding to make a point. In the 1990s, I used to amuse friends and colleagues that I was only a ‘tourist on transit’ in London. It always took some explaining on my part.
I recall around the same time when there used to be huge public demonstrations against the then British Conservative government shortly before they enacted “Asylum and Immigration Act 1996”. This legislation was intended to restrict refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants (read non- Europeans).
I told the then Shadow Home Secretary Jack Straw, that the best way to deal with these ‘problems’ was to address root causes from source. Stop creating, supporting and entrenching usually corrupt, nepotistic one party or one party cum-military regimes like Uganda’s.
Robert Mugabe had not yet said anything about millions of landless Africans so Zimbabwe was still a darling. I noticed that the train had slowed down as we approached Twickenham. The driver announced that it was due to congestion along the connecting lines to Reading.
Just around then came a call from my good friend Tony, who is visiting London. Amongst other things he told me that news breaking had it that a plane had crashed in Kenya, killing two ministers.
Worse, another plane had crashed at Khartoum airport with more fatalities feared. I went into sombre and prayer mode. Another round of wasted lives in Africa. Back in London, prior to turning on the television, my hand led me to Walter Rodney’s book, “How Europe underdeveloped Africa”.
Rodney suggests that Africa was easily colonised for amongst others because “inadequate economic capacity, as well as certain political weaknesses namely, the incompleteness of the establishment of nation states which left the continent divided and the low level of consciousness concerning the world at large”.
While Africa slept, the world had “been transformed into a single system by the expansion of capitalist relations”, he adds. How else could we explain the never ending tragic stories, I thought to myself. Only the previous day, the big news from Africa was about famine in Ethiopia, except that it was unlike Zimbabwe where the famine was blamed on poor Mugabe for being a “failed rain maker”.
Our own Museveni was part of the evening news, telling the BBC that Mugabe had messed up because he failed to create enough jobs for the youths, hence the claim for their ancestral land from white settlers!
Anyhow, when challenged as to why he changed the Constitution in order to rule for life, he likened himself to Israel’s Shimon Peres who has been around and recycled since the creation of the Jewish State in 1948. So long as one is elected, he said, like the elections which took place in Luwero in 1981.
Looking away, I noticed a gift from an ANC friend. Reading through, I stumbled on Thabo Mbeki’s inauguration speech as president on June 16, 1999.
“As Africans, we are the children of the abyss, who have sustained a backward march for half a millennium. We have been a source for human slaves. Our countries were turned into the patrimony of colonial powers. We have been victim to our own African predators.”
How else could we be so much defined by tragedy and decline while others are so precise, on time and ever moving forward?
I shall reflect from London, home and elsewhere, but wherever you maybe, come with me in order to build our own London for posterity.
Mr Ochieno is UPC’s special presidential envoy to the United Kingdom and Ireland





Enterprising Solutions to Poverty in Africa – working in partnership to promote ethical trade

On behalf of His Excellency Mr Joseph Muchemi, Phillip Angell and all at Africa Now, we are looking forward to welcoming you to Africa Now’s evening reception on Thursday. To briefly refresh your memory, details of the event are as follows:

6 for 6:30pm on Thursday 19 June
Held at the Kenya High Commission, 45 Portland Place , London W1B 1AS
Light refreshments will be served

A map of the location can be found by clicking on the link below.
http://www.multimap.com/maps/?hloc=GBW1B%201AS

The evening will provide you with an opportunity to find out more about the work of Africa Now and in particular, how we work in partnership to bridge the gap between smallholder producers and markets.