Some of us went to school for several reasons: to get a good education, job and income to enable us meet our basic needs and a little more but most importantly to make a contribution that would help others improve their welfare. This can be done by creating jobs however modestly or providing facilities that enable others to embark on productive work or providing information or sharing knowledge that can be used in policy formulation and strategy design that can ultimately make a positive contribution in people’s lives.
We (my family and I) have made a modest contribution at two levels. We have made investments in our home district of Rukungiri with the principal intention of helping others to improve the quality of their lives. From these investments we created some jobs, we produce food, milk, timber and fuel wood and provide residential and commercial space for the people of Rukungiri.
Throughout my adult life the desire to help or defend those in need has been at the center of my work. And for some forty years I have tried to understand why Bairu and Bahutu in the Great Lakes Region are poor and getting poorer. Is their endemic poverty due to in-born or human-made causes?
I have applied a multidisciplinary approach in my research effort being a geographer, demographer, economist, international lawyer and historian. I have analyzed Bantu-speaking peoples (later dubbed Bairu and Bahutu which means slave by Bahima and Batutsi respectively) economic, social and political organization from the time they arrived in the region some 3000 years ago to the present day in 2010 including interaction with Nilotoc Luo-speaking long-horn cattle herders from Southern Sudan since the 16th century and Europeans since the 20th century. My findings which I have presented elsewhere will be summarized here. From now the term Bairu will be used instead of Bantu.
When they arrived in south west Uganda, Bairu had cattle of the short–horn variety, goats and sheep and iron technology. They cleared bushes with axes, big knives and tilled the land with hand hoes. Favored by fertile soils, abundant rainfall and suitable climate, they grew a wide range of foodstuffs, herded their animals, hunted wild game, harvested wild fish and collected wild fruits, vegetables and honey. They ate balanced diets and developed immunity against many ailments. They also engaged in manufacturing a wide range of products especially those using iron ore. They exchanged surplus food and manufactured products in local and regional markets and accumulated capital.
They lived in settlements and moved to new sites when the soil got exhausted and practiced shifting cultivation that allowed vegetation regeneration. They also developed a governance system that enabled them to keep law and order and to settle disputes when they arose. They developed an appropriate defensive mechanism in the unlikely event of an attack. Given resource abundance and plenty of land and food there was no need for a long drown-out war. That was the situation at the end of the 15th century – healthy, productive, wealthy and peaceful.
In the 16th century the Nilotic Luo-speaking people arrived in the area, relatively poor and dependent on a vulnerable economy based on cattle which could be wiped out in one swoop of epidemic such as the 1890s rinderpest, drought or theft. As they came down from southern Sudan, they experienced extensive intermarriages with Bantu and formed new communities of mixed farmers with equity.
By the time the new waves arrived in south west Uganda, they had dropped the idea of intermarriage with Bairu; decided to monopolize cattle ownership and dominate Bairu politically, economically and socially. They took on a new name of Bahima (they change names and languages in their new homes but not their culture especially their men do not marry outside their ethnic group so they have remained Nilotic). They grabbed Bairu’s grazing land starving short-horn cattle that belonged to Bairu into extinction.
Because Bahima do not like backbreaking menial work involving food cultivation (they prefer roaming about the bushes following their cattle with minimum effort. They covered up this shortcoming by arguing that cultivation is below their dignity), they invented the concept of Bahima ‘protecting’ Bairu against internal and external attack (not elaborated) in exchange for food, drinks and free labor. So Bairu suffered a double blow at once: they lost their cattle that were a source of food, a store of value and a means of exchange and they had to produce foodstuffs for Bahima and provide labor virtually for nothing, leaving them inadequate supplies of food and labor time to themselves initiating the process of impoverishment, under-nutrition and marginalization.
When Bairu got cows from Bahima for non-free services rendered they would get infertile cows or those close to death or bull calves! Or they would get meat from a dead cow in settlement of a debt. Bahima would not part with a healthy, productive cow
As Eric M. Aseka has observed Bahima in Ankole (Nkore) were the most cattle-conscious of the pre-colonial Ugandan societies. “Status in the kingdom was determined by the ownership of cattle and justified by an elaborate racial ideology and mythology surrounding the Bahima pastoral history and cattle symbolism of power and political domination. Chiefship in this society represented an institutional arrangement in the mediation of tensions between two types of citizens, the pastoral Bahima and agricultural Bairu [who had lost their short-horn cattle]. Being a Muhima [singular for Bahima] meant to be operative in a hegemonic framework of advantage which accorded rights to leadership, privilege, access to position and status… The political institutions radiated from the royal kraal that was the chief political instrument of control [and domination and exploitation] of the Bairu majority by the [minority] Bahima” (E. M. Aseka 2005). Since independence a lot of work is being done to de-mystify Bahima racial ideology that has formed the basis of their dominating Bairu for centuries.
Then at the start of the 20th century came Europeans – British to be specific. They demanded raw materials (cotton, coffee, tobacco and tea that were not grown in the country at the time) for their expanding industries and foodstuffs for their growing population and markets for their surplus manufactured products. This resulted in three developments that disadvantaged Bairu further.
The introduction of taxes payable only in cash disturbed gender division of labor in an agrarian economy as men had to seek wage employment in faraway places like in Buganda abandoning their responsibility of clearing vegetation for crop cultivation. Much fertile land previously devoted to food cultivation for domestic consumption was diverted to export crop production. The former was shifted to marginal lands and resulted in reduced productivity and an increase in food insecurity which showed up in under-nutrition. Not least, the importation into Uganda of British manufactured products, not necessarily of better quality in all cases (G. Lanning1979) out-competed local industries which went out of production creating job and income losses.
Thus Bairu’s interaction with Bahima and British resulted in the former being dominated, exploited and marginalized and impoverishment, and then condemned for being indolent and mentally dormant (Piers Brendon 2007). Bairu should demand an apology and compensation in one form or another.
Having been driven from prosperity to poverty, Bairu pinned their hopes of improving their status on education. Parents worked hard and sacrificed a lot so that their children get educated, find good jobs and incomes and escape poverty traps. They did very well in the first ten years of independence to 1970. Then came Amin and his military government in the 1970s and education went downhill due to political instability and got worse with structural adjustment program particularly since 1987 when the NRM government signed an agreement with the IMF that introduced stiff conditionality with serious implications for education.
Overall there is consensus that structural adjustment or Washington Consensus wherever it occurred has made conditions worse. Peter Lawrence, among many others including R. K. Mclymont (2009), has observed that “In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, GDP per capita, health, mortality and adult literacy rates have all deteriorated significantly over the past decades; over a third of the population is classified as under-nourished; and in some regions, civil wars, with their accompanying mass rapes and population displacements, appear almost endemic” (New Left Review March/April 2010).
In Rukungiri district which I have studied closely the introduction of school fees and other expenses, closing some schools or classes in order to reduce education expenses has dealt a serious blow to the hopes of Bairu children who had hoped to rid themselves of poverty through education. Parents tried to keep their children or some of them in school by selling their limited assets especially land but that was not enough. Men have gone to look for jobs in faraway places so they can keep their children in schools but jobs have been hard to find.
Out of school children or teenagers have no jobs, they are marrying young and producing mouths they cannot feed. People have accumulated debts they cannot repay, they have become criminals and drunkards and stress and hunger have taken a heavy toll on many Bairu who are now landless, jobless and illiterate. It has been reported that insanity has become a serious challenge in the district. Jails are full. Diseases of poverty are evident everywhere and desperate Bairu are beginning to commit suicide. The situation cannot get worse!
I call on the NRM government, the opposition and development partners to do something necessary but not to present per capita incomes from the district as a sign of progress because by their very nature they do not reflect the dire situation on the ground.