Bantu and Nilotic conflict is cause of instability in Great Lakes region

The Great Lakes region (defined to include southwest Uganda, eastern DRC, Rwanda and Burundi) conflict will not be solved unless and until it has been understood as an ethnic conflict between Nilotic Tutsi and Bantu Hutu/Bairu people. Geopolitical conflict is taking advantage of ethnic conflict using the minority Tutsi to suppress majority Hutu/Bairu people who have been erroneously dubbed “bad guys” by biased western commentators.

Since the two ethnic groups (Bantu and Nilotic) met in the 15th century, Nilotic Tutsi (whose Nilotic Luo-speakers ancestors entered the Great Lakes region from Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan, not Ethiopia)because of their militaristic character (cattle people always fight for scarce pasture and water points) and collaboration with foreigners beginning with Arab and Swahili slave traders and later Europeans, dominated, dispossessed, exploited and humiliated Bantu people (whom Tutsi dubbed Hutu and Bairu meaning slaves or servants) who were wealthy, healthy and peaceful with advanced civilization including Bachwezi civilization (Bachwezi were a Bantu aristocracy [B.A. Ogot 1999]).

Troubling developments in the Great Lakes region

It has been difficult to fully understand the nature and causes of conflicts in the Great Lakes region because much information is kept away from public view or distorted in favor of Nilotic Tutsi and against Bantu Hutu.

A combination of geopolitical conflicts over Great Lake’s resources in collaboration with Tutsi, anti-sectarian laws in Uganda and Rwanda and reporting the region largely since 1994 in the wake of Rwanda genocide has left many things unsaid like the fact that Tutsi committed genocide against Hutu in Burundi in 1965, 1972, 1988 and 1993 as recorded by Lemarchand (1994) and reported by Patrick Duport in the undated paper titled “The Sub-regional context of the crises in Rwanda and Burundi”.

Evidence is turning up that RPA (Rwanda Patriotic Army) committed atrocities against Hutu people since 1990 but as Amnesty International has reported “The international community appears to be making excuses for the new Rwandese authorities and turning a blind eye to human rights violations committed by RPA soldiers on the ground that they are not as serious as those committed by its predecessor” (New Africa December 1994).