Unequal power relations and impoverishment of Rujumbura’s Bairu
Those who do not believe that unequal power relations can make some people rich and powerful and impoverish others and render them powerless need to visit Rujumbura county of Rukungiri district in southwest Uganda.
Rukungiri district of which Rujumbura is a part has been in the news for more than a year now. It will likely continue to be in the news because the increasing imbalance in power relations between Bairu and Bahororo people – the latter are rulers of Uganda since 1986 with a big number coming from Rujumbura – has continued to disadvantage Bantu/Bairu people. Bahororo people (Nilotic/Batutsi from Rwanda) have amassed so much power which they are using to end – once and for all – Rujumbura’s Bairu resistance to Bahororo domination since 1800. Under normal circumstances, one would have expected Bahororo to use their power to improve the welfare of all the people in Rujumbura. Sadly this has not been the case. The opposite has been the result.
Upon their arrival in Rujumbura in 1800 as refugees Bahororo people used their military power in collaboration with Arab slave hunters/traders and European weapons to defeat and subjugate the once rich, relatively peaceful and numerically superior indigenous Bantu people. Bahororo gave the defeated people the collective name of Bairu (slaves), still in use to this day in 2010.