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Uganda’s distorted history needs to be corrected

The late Samwiri Karugire (1980) wrote that “To undertake to write a history of a country whose societies are so different, almost in all respects, is a task that imposes its own limitations. This means that the historian has to choose what aspects of history appear to be important and this judgement is inevitably arbitrary in many ways”. Historians should explain why they have taken a particular aspect but they should not distort or even lie.

Until very recently Europeans and Africans who studied and wrote Uganda’s history came from aristocratic families in Europe or were associated with royal courts in Uganda. At the time of Africa’s exploration and colonization, racial prejudice was intense in Europe. In the racial hierarchy Africans (Negroes) were located at the bottom of the pyramid and treated as people who had no history and civilization. Africa was therefore described as a ‘Dark Continent’ and darkness is not a subject of history. Africans were therefore described explicitly as people who lived in a state of savagery and barbarism without social organizations and achievements in arts and sciences.

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Why Uganda is implementing a different kind of revolution

The political wing of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) crafted its propaganda message targeting different communities during the bush war. NRM propagandists spoke and wrote about what Baganda and Catholics wanted to hear. They painted the ruling Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) Party led by Obote as a ‘thief’ that had robbed Buganda of its districts during the referendum on the ‘Lost Counties’ and handed them over to Bunyoro. UPC added an injury to Baganda wounds by overthrowing their kingdom. For Catholics who support the Democratic Party (DP) they focused on the ‘rigged’ 1980 elections that robbed DP of its victory.

To bring to NRM camp a large chunk of UPC supporters, the NRM strategists blamed the suffering of Ugandans, during the Obote II regime in the first half of the 1980s, on the government’s adoption of structural adjustment with its harmful economic and social conditionality and maintenance of a colonial economic structure that condemned Uganda to the production and export of cheap raw materials and import of expensive manufactured products which could be easily produced in Uganda, create jobs and increase incomes.

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Uganda’s democracy has become counterproductive

When you talk with people – Ugandans and non-Ugandans – who support the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government led by President Museveni, you are told that Ugandans must be grateful to their leaders because the days of Obote’s and Amin’s dictatorship are over and there is no turning back. They quickly add that Uganda has now become a full-fledged democracy. So what is democracy?

According to the World Book Encyclopedia democracy means rule by the people. It is a form of government that Abraham Lincoln described as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. According to Robert Maynard Hutchins democracy is the only form of government that is founded on the dignity of man, not the dignity of some men, of rich men, of educated men but of all men (and women).

The citizens of a democracy take part in government either directly or indirectly. In a direct democracy people meet in one place and make the laws for their community. That is what happened in ancient Athens. In a large group it is impossible for all people to meet and pass laws. Consequently they periodically choose representatives to represent their interests. This is indirect or representative democracy.

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Reconstructing the dynamic history of Uganda’s Bairu

According to John Hanning Speke (1863, 2006) Bairu (a term of abuse) which means slaves was coined by Bahima to apply to all Bantu-speaking people they found south of River Nile.

Presently the term has come to apply to the indigenous Bantu-speaking people of southwest Uganda (in former Ankole district and Rujumbura county of Rukungiri district) because in other areas extensive intermarriage between Bantu and Nilotic peoples formed mixed and entirely new communities. Bantu speaking people brought with them short-horn cattle, goats and sheep and above all iron technology and manufacturing skills (so they were not cultivators only. They were forced into cultivation by Bahima and Bahororo in order to marginalize, impoverish, dominate and exploit them). The term Bahutu is the equivalent of Bairu in Rwanda and Burundi. We shall apply the term Bairu in its broader sense as originally used to include indigenous Bantu speaking people who occupied areas south of Nile River before Nilotic Luo-speaking Bahima arrived and adopted Bantu language.

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The scramble for Africa is being repeated in DRC

Just as Ethiopia participated in the scramble for and colonization of Africa with European nations, Rwanda is participating in the scramble for and re-colonization of DRC with Western nations. During the scramble for Africa European nations were particularly interested in raw materials. Ethiopia which was originally a small territory (Abyssinia) wanted in particular to expand its territory. Western nations are interested in DRC for its raw materials. Rwanda which is a small country is interested in DRC in particular to expand its territory like Ethiopia did during the first scramble of the 19th century.

Western arguments for breaking up DRC and steps being taken

During a mission to DRC in January/February 2010, meetings were held with representatives of some European embassies, United Nations and International NGO organizations and Congolese from all walks of life. All foreigners contacted complained that DRC is ungovernable because it is too big. If one goes by that criterion alone, then the order of breaking up large African states should start with Sudan, the largest (2,505, 813 sq. km) followed by Algeria, the second largest (2,381,741 sq. km) and then DRC the third (2,344,885 sq. km). Right now there are some voices in favor of keeping Sudan together. I have not heard talk about breaking up Algeria.

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Mounting evidence of Hutu genocide by Tutsi in Rwanda and DRC

First let us recall the definition of genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. The Convention entered into force on January 12, 1951.

Article II of the Convention states “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (Human Rights Volume I (Second Part) Universal Instruments United Nations 2002).

The targeted killing or genocide of moderate Hutu and Tutsi that took place in Rwanda in 1994 shocked the world. There is ‘guilt of omission’ to act. The international community did nothing to prevent the genocide when sufficient advance warning had been made available (Mary Robinson A Voice for Human Rights 2006: 222).

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Uganda’s economic growth alone is insufficient for poverty eradication

In May 1987, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government under the leadership of President Museveni signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance. The government opted for the ‘shock therapy’ or extreme version of structural adjustment or Washington Consensus. The agreement called for the abandonment of employment policy in favor of disciplining inflation, promotion of economic growth and export-orientation, privatization of state corporations, retrenchment of public servants, and significant state withdrawal from the economy and virtual abandonment of social policy especially in education and health sectors.

Investments in infrastructure and the economy generally declined considerably. For example in 2008 budget allocation to agriculture, Uganda’s economic mainstay, declined from 4.2 percent in 2007 to 3.8 percent against African Union’s 1993 decision to allocate at least ten percent of national budget to the sector.

The government handed over responsibility for economic management to the invisible hand of market forces and laissez faire (let alone) capitalism as required under the neo-liberal economic ideology. A trickle down mechanism was expected to distribute the benefits of economic growth through employment creation in the private sector. As expected under the Washington Consensus the government focused on law and order by investing heavily in the armed forces, police and intelligence sectors to contain any resistance against the harmful effects of structural adjustment. To mobilize resources for this effort, the government had earlier imposed a 30 percent charge for converting old currency into the new notes against the advice of the IMF.

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The rise of Bahororo in Uganda politics with Britain’s helping hand

From Makobore to Mbaguta to Kaguta

Many people are still asking me to write concisely about the history of Bahororo: who are they, where they came from, where they live, how they are related to Bahima, Batutsi and Banyamulenge, and above all how they rose to prominence in Uganda politics.

Location before they entered the Great Lakes Region

Bahima, Batutsi, Bahororo and Banyamulenge are cousins. They change names and language whenever they move to a new place. In former Ankole District they are called Bahima; in Rwanda and Buruindi Batutsi; in Eastern DRC Banyamulenge and in Rujumbura Bahororo. Until recently Bahororo were relatively unknown because they registered or introduced themselves as Bahima. We shall say more later on.

There is credible evidence that they are Nilotic Luo-speaking people who entered the Great Lakes Region in the 15 and 16th centuries from Bahr el Ghazal in Southern Sudan and not from Ethiopia as John Hanning Speke had written in 1863 (Eric Kashambuzi. Uganda’s Development Agenda in the 21st Century 2009). They are known for their love of long-horn cattle. J. Roscoe described them this way: “Men become warmly attached to their cows; some of them they love like children, pet and talk to them, and weep over their ailments. Should a favorite cow die, their grief is extreme and cases are not wanting in which men have committed suicide through excessive grief at the loss of an animal” (Richard Poe 1999).

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Ugandans need to understand the causes of population growth first

Of late there has been a resurgence of writing and debate about Uganda’s population ‘explosion’ or ‘bomb’ that will destroy development efforts because savings are going into feeding unproductive mouths of children instead of investing in productive enterprises. Increasingly we are witnessing people who are not trained in population much less experienced in this complex subject writing and commenting with confidence like they know more than any other Ugandan or for that matter any other expert. Some of these may have had one day or one week’s seminar in population matters and begin to talk with authority.

Population dynamics are very complex in time and space. We have seen the regrettable results of countries that rushed into reducing population growth rapidly by force or couples that did not want children or just one or two. These countries and their governments are now rushing to reverse the trend. Have you heard of “Conception Day” in one of the developed countries where a national holiday has been declared so that the citizens can stay at home and increase their population? Have you heard of a wide range of incentives that are being offered in developed countries so that their populations can have many children? What I am saying is that rushing into curbing population growth can be costly in the long term.

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Uganda’s diseases of poverty may worsen under the dev plan

The NRM government was unable to detect the diseases of poverty (jiggers, scabies, trachoma, cholera, under-nutrition, pneumonia, insanity and malaria etc) – which have embarrassed the development partners and damaged the image of the government (as it prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections in early 2011) that had presented Uganda as a success story in neo-liberal economic growth and poverty reduction – for the following principal reasons.

First, the government followed strictly foreign advice that focused on inflation control, economic growth and per capita GDP without paying attention to the equity aspects. The distribution of the benefits of economic growth by class and region was left entirely to the invisible hand of the market forces which would not be interfered with at all.

Second, the government focused on producing excellent blue prints such as the modernization of agriculture, poverty reduction action plan and universal primary education with the assistance of renowned development experts from around the world. These blue prints were received by the international community as a model of success story before they were even implemented. The government was satisfied with that assessment which boosted its international standing and did not bother with implementation as long as the donors and the media were happy with what they were marketing on behalf of the NRM government.

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