A tribal tragedy for the Africa I love

These territories are among the most beautiful in the world and their peoples have had too many rotten rulers - colonial and indigenous - for a century and a half. I was born in Uganda; my father's family were Kenyan and my mother's clan had settled in Tanganyika, as it was once.

Watching the news about the Kenyan mob setting fire to a church with my Scots friend, a teacher, I said: "The poor people inside must be Kikuyu, it's always tribal." She was aghast: "You can't say that! That's the typical Western view of Africa - tribes slaughter each other because that's what they do."

We had a noisy argument. But I do believe ethnic politics drives the volatility and self-destructiveness on that continent - and elsewhere.

As an undergraduate at Makerere University in Kampala in the early 1970s, I found it outrageous that the Asian students sat at their own table in the dining room. My African mates explained that black cultural groups all sat separately too, except this apartheid wasn't so visible. When Idi Amin sent in his soldiers to rape and arrest students, they were particular about the names and tribes of the victims they picked.

Corruption, poverty, dictatorship and foreign exploitation poison democracy. So does tribal loyalty. Rwanda, Bosnia, Pakistan and Kenya show how ancestral instincts can be summoned and misused by venal politicians.

Thus Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki is a Kikuyu while his challenger, Raila Odinga, is a Luo. It is all happening again in Uganda, too. Only in Tanzania do most citizens think of themselves as nationals. Ethnic identification was stamped out after independence by Julius Nyerere, who forged a nation with ruthless determination.

Enforced patriotism will not work today but without shared nationhood, Kenyans and Ugandans are damned. The assistant Bishop of Kampala, the Reverend Zac Niringiye, called this week for more cross-cultural marriages and warned: "Unless we get rid of tribalism we are heading nowhere." An honest voice that will doubtless go unheeded.