A combination of push and pull factors that led to barbarian invasions and destruction in Europe is developing in the great lakes region with a possibility of a repeat of that barbarian history. The signs are clear and there is no room for complacency on the part of leaders, the public and development partners. The clear signs of destruction in Kenya were ignored and caused the tragic events of December 2007.
The word ‘barbarians’ refers to persons who are primitive, uncivilized or uncultivated. The word comes from Greek barbaros which initially meant persons who spoke a foreign language or outsiders. The Romans later applied a Latin word barbarus to such people as Goths, Vandals and Huns, who lived outside the Roman Empire.
The Greeks considered people in the Mediterranean area about 750 B.C. to have inferior cultures to their own. The Greeks therefore applied the word barbarian in a disrespectful manner. Those who absorbed Greek education, culture, language and ideals graduated from barbarism. The Romans adopted Greek culture throughout their empire.
Many of the barbarians lived in small farming communities between A. D. 1 and 450 and were described as ferocious warriors. Various causes of push and pull explain barbaric behavior. Push factors included population growth in excess of land’s carrying capacity, climate change that reduced cultivable land and pasture and increased famines that led to conflicts causing people to move. In Spain barbarians became destructive due in large part to famine which caused the pillaging of towns. The pull factors included fertile lands beyond their borders and the possibility of welcome in new lands by disgruntled masses. In the latter case, barbarians benefited from the active or passive complicity of the mass of the Roman population because “The social structure of the Roman empire, in which the lower levels were increasingly being crushed by a minority of the rich and the powerful, explained the success of the barbarian invasions”(J. Le Goff 1988).
By and large, invaders were fugitives and their cruelty was in part caused by desperation. The movement of one group set off a chain reaction. By way of an illustration, let us examine the Huns behavior in Europe.
The Huns (Mongolian people) who have been described as savages lived in a hostile and unproductive environment between the Ural and Altai Mountains. They were nomadic people, homeless, hungry most of the time due to famines, and lawless. Consequently like other nomadic people the Huns did not develop any civilization.
Driven out of Mongolia by the Chinese the Huns swept across Europe. They massacred, looted and took slaves throughout Eastern Europe. As they pushed westwards, the Germans panicked and invaded the Roman Empire for safety. The Vandals who settled in Greece rebelled and by 410 they had sacked Rome itself. In 440-450 the Huns ravaged Greece, Germany and Gaul (France). The attack on northern Italy brought the western part of the empire to an end which had also been weakened by other factors. As Rome collapsed, barbarians settled in Germany, Italy, Spain, Britain and France.
The great lakes region is exhibiting somewhat similar characteristics. Population is growing fast and constraining resource capacity especially the land. Climate change is adversely affecting rainfall and temperature patterns contributing to reduced agricultural productivity and food insecurity. The proliferation of arms is already causing problems especially in eastern DRC. The rich and powerful are crushing the powerless and voiceless. The land grab by the rich, the politically powerful, the armed and the connected cannot be denied. The suffering of the masses created conditions for foreign invasion of Zaire and DRC in 1996 and 1998 respectively. Put another way, the masses welcomed the invaders just as they invited them in the Roman Empire.
Income distribution and capital accumulation are tilting in favor of a few families at the expense of the majority. Land grab by the rich and strong in Kenya contributed to the bloody conflict and destruction of property in December 2007 as noted above. Increasing land accumulation by a few, rising unemployment, food insecurity and cross border illegal migrations into areas apparently considered to have surplus land as in Bunyoro, Ntungamo and Rukungiri districts are already causing severe problems that could explode as in Kenya.
The free movement and settlement of people anticipated in the East African Community and federation should that happen is bound to cause serious problems. The rich will squeeze the poor out of their lands and push them into towns where they will not find jobs thus becoming a spring board for barbaric behavior. The suffering of poor, unemployed people and the pain of seeing others so rich is leading many to engage in ungodly activities. Witchcraft and human sacrifice in Uganda should not be dismissed as isolated incidents because they are not. Desperate people as in barbaric Europe are trying to survive or to catch up. Crime in towns has already reached alarming levels. Prisons and police services will not solve the problem.
Before the start of the dark ages, Europe was characterized by four scourges: the sword, the famine, the plague and animals that attacked the human race. The great lakes region is in the throes of the sword, of hunger, of diseases and soon perhaps of wild animals that may begin to attack the human race. The time to act is now.