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Jim Muhwezi’s claim of poverty eradication is not supported by facts

The leadership of NRM government has mustered the art of using sound bites, attractive titles and high flying concepts like poverty eradication, universal primary education, modernization of agriculture, monetary discipline, individual merit, economic metamorphosis, entandikwa and bona bagagawale, etc. These expressions raised the hopes of Ugandans who believed they would soon emerge out of medieval conditions of poor housing, poor feeding and poor dressing, etc. Government representatives have talked with confidence that Uganda will exceed the targets set in the MDGs by 2015. They even began to talk about joining the club of Asian tigers and dragons. The World Bank and IMF who used Uganda to test structural adjustment programs went along with government obsession with economic growth, per capita income and macroeconomic stability leaving the rest such as social and ecological conditions to the operation of market forces.

As a member of the inner group of NRM leadership, and using the same flattery approach, Major General (rtd) Jim Muhwezi, Member of Parliament (MP) for Rujumbura constituency in south west Uganda recently issued a statement to the effect that poverty eradication – not even reduction – is all that he does in his constituency. I responded that poverty in that constituency has actually increased during his term as MP. Someone whom I believe thought I was de-campaigning Jim Muhwezi challenged me to elaborate. And I concurred.

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Why Bahororo were unknown until recently

Since I began writing about Bahororo in Uganda’s history, politics and economics, some people who have visited my blog have asked me to shed some light about why Bahororo were not known until very recently.

Bahororo are Batutsi people from Rwanda who founded Mpororo kingdom in northern Rwanda and parts of southwest Uganda. The kingdom was established around mid-1600 and disintegrated in less than one hundred years from internal causes. The people in Mpororo kingdom were called Bahororo (Bantu people who were already there and Batutsi new comers who founded the kingdom).

After Mpororo disintegrated the parts in what later became Uganda were taken over by Bahima under Bahinda ruling clan. As Chretien observes “After the fall of Mpororo, the take over of the Nkore dynasty on the western highlands was accompanied both by installing armies and by reinforcing the power of Hima [Bahima] lineages over the rest of the population, labeled Bairu” (Jean-Pierre Chretien 2006). According to Speke (1863) Bairu means slaves. Therefore by labeling all the people in former Mpororo kingdom Bairu, former rulers of Mpororo (Batutsi from Rwanda) became Bairu and therefore slaves. To avoid being labeled Bairu, inter alia, Batutsi who remained behind adopted the name of Bahima but deep in their hearts remained Bahororo. According to Samwiri Karugire although Mpororo kingdom disintegrated and went out of use and did not figure on any map of Uganda … “her people, dispersed as they were, have tenaciously remained Bahororo in everything but geographical terminology whose absence does not seem to have made any impression upon them” (Karugire 1980). Bahororo maintained their Nilotic identity because their men do not marry outside of their ethnic group.

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Rujumbura history must not be repeated

I was trained in and have practiced the art of diplomacy at the highest level in international relations. Simply put diplomacy includes the art of establishing contacts through which problems are solved in a subtle manner or behind-the-scenes if you will. When circumstances force me to speak or to write I have used language – body, spoken or literary – to convey messages without divulging sensitive details or naming names.

As mentioned elsewhere I have studied the history of the Great Lakes Region especially my home area of Rujumbura for over forty years. I have read extensively and listened carefully to oral stories. Because I did not get much information from using questionnaires, I decided to use other techniques including travelling by bus between Uganda’s capital city of Kampala and my home town of Rukungiri – a decision that frustrated many people particularly my relatives because as a senior United Nations staff member I was not expected to travel that way.

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Correcting historical distortions is not sectarianism

Those who have benefited from historical distortions such as the Hamitic Myth in the Great Lakes region are trying to use all instruments to maintain the status quo. Batutsi and Bahima – and their Bahororo and Banyamulenge cousins – who have dominated Bahutu and Bairu for over six centuries with the support of Europeans originally from aristocratic families since colonial days have come back to power through the barrel of the gun with external assistance. Their numerical inferiority and unpopularity do not allow them to get and sustain political power by real democratic means – winning elections at gun point and/or banning popular parties under the pretext of being sectarian is not democracy as we understand it in the sense of free and fair electoral processes from registration, to campaigning, casting ballots, counting votes and announcing results in a transparent and inclusive manner.

To hang onto power, they are therefore resorting to military might and expensive intelligence networks, giving quality education to their children at home and abroad at public expense, dividing tactics that have created so many non-economically viable, almost tribal-based districts, controlling strategic ministries, impoverishing the majority ethnic groups by denying them quality education, healthcare, food and nutrition security, character assassination and intimidation and aligning themselves with foreign powers that in turn are using them to advance their interests in the Great Lakes region in ways that are contributing to instability, economic distortions such as focusing on illegal natural resource exploitation and massive abuse of human rights.

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Understanding slavery & slave trade

Slavery is an institution or a practice in which people own other people directly or indirectly. Ownership has an element of belonging. You belong to me and therefore I own you because, for example, I protect you or, in some cases, because I employ you. In return, the owned person submits to or accepts to be dominated by the owner and works hard as a slave.

A slave is a helpless victim to or of some dominating influence. A slave is also a contemptible person. Contempt is an act or mental attitude of despising another person and a contemptible person is an individual who deserves to be despised. To despise means to regard some one as inferior or worthless.

When someone from one ethnic group brags that he is worth 1000 people from another ethnic group, he is saying that members of the latter ethnic group are inferior or worthless. The inferior people become helpless victims in the process – hence slaves.

Slavery is an old institution with roots in pre-historic times (before writing was invented). Slavery reached its peak in Greece and the Roman Empire and declined during the middle Ages. The colonization of the New World (North and South America) resulted in a resurgence of slavery and slave trade.

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Fellow Ugandans

When our country became a protectorate in 1894 it was occupied by two major ethnic groups – Bantu and Nilotic people in a territory situated at the centre of Africa, the source of the Nile and in a region immensely endowed with human and non-human resources.

Foreign visitors to the region before and after Uganda became a protectorate, were impressed by the abundance and variety of foodstuffs, manufacturing industries and resilient, innovative and industrious people never seen anywhere on the African continent. Winston Churchill advised all foreign visitors to Africa not to skip Uganda.

Notwithstanding, on the eve of the second decade of the 21st century, Uganda cannot feed, clothe and shelter her people adequately. The September 2009 report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) observes that Uganda has entered the fourth successive poor harvest. This is a man-made problem due mainly to poor ecological policies. In 2005 Uganda was categorized in a UN report as a hunger ‘hot spot’ country needing food assistance.

The once vibrant manufacturing sector is all but gone in the name of comparative advantage that has consigned Uganda to the agrarian status.

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