The Banyarwanda Question In Contemporary Uganda Politics

Uganda Today Edition: The Banyarwanda Question In Contemporary Uganda Politics

By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
30th March 2024

There was a time when the making of human problems could be explained solely by evoking nature or God. That was the time when nature was the one manipulating humanity the same way it continues to manipulate virtually all other living things that do not have the big brain and mental faculties than humans have.

Through time Man, Homo sapiens, freed himself from the total conquest, control and manipulation of his activities and life by nature.Today, Man is much freer from nature and can conquer, control and manipulate it, the environment, himself and other being far more than ever before. He has erased the boundary between natural and unnatural phenomena. His unwise actions are causing earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, deserts and floods, to name but a few things that used to be natural. He is, therefore, the greatest ecological force causing catastrophic phenomena in the human environment.

He creates problems and may or may not be able to solve them. He is creating the worst problems through science and government choices, mainly environmentally-unconscious policies. He suffers the problems he creates. In other words, problems begin with Man as the cause and end with Man as the victim. That is why we should stop blaming Nature or God. Nature worked with God closely to make our environment an outdoor hospital needing no sanitisers, but our techno arrogance and techno-stupidity driven by wrong policies and wrong science are the cause why climate change has consummated the human environment.

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Throughout my life, since July 27 1949 when I was born, 4 years after the end of the Second World War II, but even far before, Man has been creating problems – local, national, regional, continental and global on more or less a continuous basis. Some have resulted in the extinctions of humanity and other living things.

For example, before I was born Man created the First World War and the Second World War, in which millions of people perished. Another example is global education. This has distorted human cultures and knowledge systems; particularly the indigenous knowledge systems, which were critical to maintaining and sustaining the cohesion, stability and integrity of environment, nature and ecosystems, let alone human energy systems, climates and agro-ecological systems. Resilience was far more assured than is the case today. Everything is chaotic.

In Uganda, Man has made many problems, which cannot be solved by either God or Nature but Man himself. Of course, some are so complex that Man cannot solve them in the short-term, medium-term and long-term. In fact, whenever he has tried to apply simplistic methods to solve the problems, his solutions have become the new problems on a continuous basis. Continuous perturbations by Man’s policy choices and action choices mean that he never accumulates the necessary and essential experience to solve any problem, unfortunately. Instead, the problems are pushed to future generations of Ugandans to solve, yet they never participated in causing them because they are Ugandans of the future.

It has been frequently said that four questions remain unsolved in Uganda:

1. The Banyarwanda question.

2. The Land Question.

3. The Buganda Question

4. The question of what Uganda means to its regions (Central, Eastern, Northern, Western), East Africa, Great Lakes Region, Nile Basin, Africa and the rest of the World.

However, there is also the Federal Question preferred by most Ugandans during the Constitution making process but which the designers of the Uganda Constitution 1995 simply cast as a non-issue, preferring centralism and investing all power and authority in one person, who occupies the post of President of Uganda.

Besides, there is the re-emergent Question of Indians. This had been settled by President Idi Amin expelling Indians out of Uganda within 90 days in the early 1970s. President Tibuhaburwa Museveni is the force behind its re-emergence. The result has been re-Indianization of business and commerce. Indians have even demanded to be a new tribe of Uganda.

As if the Indian Question is not challenging enough, there is also the emerging Chinese Question, also caused by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni. The Chinese have invaded the construction sector and through their loans to Government of Uganda, they have strategized that Uganda depends on them well in the future. However, Chinese are also farming large tracts of land seized by government on their behalf. Most of the food they produce is ferried to China. The same applies to our natural resources such as the gold and rare earth minerals of Busoga and the fish from Lake Victoria.

There is the Question of Slavery – both domestic and external – reintroduced in East Africa by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s political regime. Thousands of youths are ferried off to the middle East into modern slavery through labour firms owned by regime functionaries. Government has boasted that it is reaping trillions of shillings from Ugandan slave workers in the Middle East.
Last but not least, there is the Question of refugees. President Tibuhaburwa Museveni has created a conduit for refugees to flow into Uganda uninhibited. These have come mainly from Karagwe Tanzania, Rwanda, Eastern DRC and Burundi, and are of Tutsi extraction. Of course, there are others from Somalia, South Sudan and the Horn of Africa. Most are nomadic pastoralists coming in to exploit the lassez faire approach to the refugee question by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni.

Uganda now the third safest haven for refugees. One School of Thought argues that President Museveni a new configuration of the Uganda population that will be easier to rule. The economy of Uganda is already a refugee economy. Government has a plan to expand the figure 474,363 refugee learners enrolled at various education levels, ranging from early childhood development to secondary school to university. Refugees from Rwanda, Eastern DRC, Karagwe (Tanzania) will benefit most for an obvious reason: they are all nomadic pastoralists of the Tutsi extraction. Meanwhile these nomadic pastoralists are almost without constraint grabbing the land of the settled communities of Bantu and Luo extraction.

All Ugandan indigenous view the questions not as such, but problems demanding political solutions. However, as interconnected problems, they are so complex that if not carefully addressed the solutions applied may  almost without question compound them making them even more complex. Consequently, the solutions will become the new problems for which we have no prior interaction. Appropriate solutions are remote because the rulers and their technocrats continue to prefer the simple solutions proposed by the disciplinary professionals or to do nothing about them.

Without question the Banyarwanda problem is a project of government being sustained at the expense of indigenous Ugandans. Most of the time, however, the strategy towards the problems has been “Let Nature Take its Own Course”. When efforts to address them have been devised, they have been reactionary, not anticipatory, which has complicated things further. Frequently military solutions are sought and applied because they are easier to adopt and apply by military leaders or governors. This has continually, persistently and constantly made our politics to be heavily burdened by the military. The result is that our politics has for decades manifested as politico militarism. Contemporary politics is overladen with the politico-militarism of the Luweero Triangle bush war combatants, their children and kith and kin. Further research is needed to establish the credibility of this statement.

Not only is the current Cabinet of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s full of retired military people enjoying hefty pensions and serving military people of the Uganda Peoples Defense Forces (UPDF) who reportedly draw salaries both as Ministers and soldiers. The national budget is militarily-driven, militarily oriented and militarily drained. President Tibuhaburwa Museveni himself is a retired General. His Vice-President is a retired Major of the Army. Among the the full Ministers are General Moses Ali (Retired). Major-General Muhwezi (Retired), General Jeje Odongo, Major General Kahinda Otafiire (Retired)., Colonel Tom Butime (Retired) and General Katumba-Wamala State Ministers include General Wilson Mbasu Mbadi and David Muhoozi (both former Chief of Defence Forces (CDFs) of UPDF.

This might explain why our public hospitals are far more overstocked with condoms and masks than medicines and necessary equipment. It should be remembered that people who were once CDFs of President Museveni’s army were Major-General Mugisha Muntu (1989- 1998), General Jeje Odongo (1998-2001), Major-General James Kazini (2001-2003), General Aronda Nyakairima (2003-2013), General Katumba-Wamala (2013-2017), General David Muhoozi (2017-2021) and Lt General Mbasu Mbadi (2021-2024). The latest to occupy the CDF post is Lt General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the son of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, who appoints CDFs, and he has occupied it since 22 March 2024. Soldiers who were in President Museveni’s Cabinet include 1 the Late Major-General Fred Gisa Rwigyema who was Minister of State for Defense from 1986 to 1990, when he led his Tutsi heavy Rwandese Patriotic Front Army invasion of Rwanda, in which he was short dead; 2 General Aronda Nyakairima who was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs on 23 May 2013 and died on 12 September 2015 while traveling on official duties from South Korea to Dubai reportedly of a heart attack; and General Elly Tumwine who served as Minister of Security from March 2018 until 2021, retired from active military service in July 2022 and died on 25 August 2022.

The point I am trying to put across is that when leadership is military-heavy it is the command-obey approach that to predominates. Military capture of civic spaces is unavoidable and civic influence to change anything in favour of civility is excluded in leadership and governance.
It is a big challenge to demilitarise leadership and governance when the rulers are determined to clothe themselves with civility while applying military strategies and tactics to lead and govern.
Given the persistent Banyarwanda question, and the strong and widespread suspicion by many Ugandans that their country was captured by Banyarwanda, who have gone on to capture every sector of the economy and all spheres of life in the country, it is important to ask, “Who in the military culture of leadership and governance in Uganda is really making the big public decisions, in whose favour are the decisions made, if not in public interest, and to which ends?”

One School of Thought holds that the NRM/A’s bush war of 1981-86 in the Luweero Triangle of Buganda was engineered and carried out by Rwandese refugees in Uganda. According to the school of Thought. some refugees joined the bush war directly from the refugee camps; from the countryside where they had settled; from various institutions of government; and clandestinely from Rwanda and the Mulenge area of the DRC occupied by Rwandese refugees called Banyamulenge who today are causing chaos in the DRC as M23 and are ostensibly backed by the Kagame regime in Rwanda and the Tibuhaburwa Museveni regime in Uganda.

All this, the school of thought argues, is happening amidst the persistent, perennial Banyarwanda Question in Uganda. The school of thought goes on to argue that through well-crafted propaganda the bush war combatants succeeded in convincing the vulnerable Ugandans that it was “a liberation war to rid them of bad leaders”. When they ultimately captured the instruments of power in Uganda through the barrel of the gun, the school of thought goes on, they began celebrating their victory and “freedom” every year at enormous cost to the Uganda taxpayer. Submits the school, “They did not only repeatedly refer to past leaders as swine, but through the celebrations, they created and continue to sustain a conduit for siphoning of public money to diverse destinations including the pockets of the combatants. Many of them became stinkingly rich and are dying rich, thanks to theft of public money as our country sinks further into the abyss of poverty.”

Prof. Oloka Onyango (1997), in his article “The Question of Buganda in Contemporary Uganda Politics”. published in Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 15(2): 173-189, devoted his intellectual energy to tackling the question of Buganda mentioned above in contemporary politics of Uganda.

Edgar Tabaro (2020), in his article “The question of Banyarwanda Citizenship in the Great Lakes Region. Published in the Daily Monitor, September 20, 2020 addressed the question of Banyarwanda in the whole of the Great Lakes Region. Apparently, it is Banyarwanda in power in Uganda who are pushing hard, behind the facade of pan Africanism, to ensure that all the countries in the region and as far as Sudan become members of the East African Community. In the last decade or so countries such as Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and South Sudan have become member of the East African Community. It is, however, a contradiction that the governments of Rwanda and Uganda are supporting the Banyamulenge rebellion in the DRC. The Banyarwanda (Tutsi), have been persistently accused of fanning armed conflicts in the Great likes region, particularly in the Democratic Republic Congo (DRC), where Banyamulenge Rwandese refugees are interfering in the politics of DRC through armed conflict the same way it happened in Uganda in 1962 through the 1970s, 1990st o the present.

In fact, the NRM/A-made Uganda Constitution 1995 raised Banyarwanda among the indigenous groups of Uganda, making them secure in the country (Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative, 2021 citing New Vision of 5th September, 2021). They have gone on to be securer than the indigenous Ugandans.

In this article, I want to delve into The Banyarwanda question in contemporary Uganda politics. From what I have written so far, the question, which can be characterised as Uganda’s enduring problem, is deep-seated in the country’s past politics and contemporary politics. It promises to remain so well in the future, This problem has historical, political, ecological, cultural, ethnic, colonial and neocolonial connotations. The school of thought I have alluded to in the article holds that many problems of national concern and the concerns of indigenous peoples have to do with the Banyarwanda question or problem.

It is a problem that needs serious research so that we can use the results of research to predict its impact on leadership and governance well in the future
The various spheres of human endeavour and dynamics penetrated, controlled and influenced by the constitutionalised Banyarwanda in Uganda include: land use, constitution-making, policomilitarism, leadership, governance, legislation, education, health, agriculture, fishing, mining, legislation, elections, adjudication, culture, development, transformation, business, commerce, diplomacy, democracy, human rights, wars, resource exploitation and use, employment, budgeting, environment, ecology, society, identification, policy making and policy reviews, academics, et cetera. This is in the true spirit of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s pronouncement when he assumed power in 1986 that “This is not a mere change of guards but a fundamental change”.

If Banyarwanda, who were not recognised as citizens before, are now citizens as the constitution-making occasioned by the Luweero Triangle combatants, the majority of whom were Tutsis, are now a constitutional “indigenous group” of Uganda, then they have a right to be involved in everything, including making policies and laws, which are political processes, for Ugandans. They have been involved in the making of the Uganda Constitutions. They have been involved in the making of obnoxious laws, including: Anti-terrorism Act, 2002 (Act 14 of 2002), Parliamentary Elections, 2005 (Act 17 of 2005), Presidential Elections Act, 2005 (Act 16 of 2005), Referendum and other Provisions Act, 2005 (Act 1 of 2005), Refugees Act, 2006 (Act 21 of 2006), Uganda Peoples Defense Forces of 2005 (Act 7 of 2005), the Movement Act, 1997, the Political Parties and Organizations Act, 2005, Local Government Act (Chapter 243), the Sectarianism law, Retrenchment Programme Decentralization, Looting of DRC resources. They benefited and continue to benefit from all these at the expense of the indigenous people of Uganda.

The evidence is there for all to see. It is the young Ugandans who dominate our population to reverse this. In my recent article “The military capture of Uganda’s civic spaces yesterday and today,” I concluded that the military capture of Uganda’s civic spaces combined with the revamping and spread of the grass culture all over the country is the most dangerous threat facing Uganda today and tomorrow. There is need for civic action to save the country.” That was a subtle way of saying that there is need for a genuine liberation to recapture people’s power from those who captured it for themselves.

All the spheres of human endeavour I have mentioned and not mentioned are greatly influenced by contemporary politics of Uganda dominated by the bush war combatants and those attached to them in terms of identity, kith and kin, ethnicity, culture, history, ecology, human energy system and origin.

Therefore, the range of politics that the constitutional indigenous group can influence and be central to by virtue of dominating the whole spectrum of politics, is painfully broad. This means that the natural indigenous groups can only be purveyors second fiddle, slaves and captives of the constitutional “indigenous group”. It makes independence, nationality, sovereignty a collective mockery in Uganda. In fact an excessively large number of members of the constitutional indigenous group critically occupy most top government jobs in every sector of the economy.

They dominate in the military, police, everywhere – and are working hard more to occupy every civic space than to create opportunities for development, transformation and progress of the country.

From what I have stated above, the contemporary politics of Uganda that is firmly influenced and controlled by the constitutional Banyarwanda of Uganda include: land use politics, military politics, constitution-making and constitution-remaking politics, land use constitution-making, military politics, leadership and governance politics, legislative politics, educational politics, health politics, agricultural politics, fishing politics, mining politics, electoral politics, judicial politics, cultural politics, development and transformation, business politics, commercial politics, diplomacy politics, politics of democracy, human rights politics, politics of conflicts, resource exploitation and use politics, employment politics, budgeting politics, environmental politics, ecological politics, social politics, industrial politics, academic politics, identity politics, interests politics, academic politics, intellectual politics and institutional politics.

They influenced and controlled the outcome of the constitution-making process and decide what aspects of the constitution work or do not work, and what changes are made to it to suit their choices in leadership and governance in Uganda.

They control and influence judicial processes. Sometimes Executive interventions have been enough to decide the fate of court cases or who persists on the bench on the Bench of Judges. In any case Judges are appointed by the Executive.
They influence who becomes Chief Justice or Speaker of Parliament; virtually everything. We are aware of the militarisation of the electoral process. I do not need to belabour too much to highlight the Banyarwanda impact on virtually everything that takes place or does not take place in contemporary politics of Uganda.

Even environmental politics of Uganda is heavily infested with the thinking, choices and actions of Banyarwanda in the environmental sector. They have made this their exclusive right over the last 38 years. Other indigenous groups have been reduced to celebrating, praising and dancing to the tune of the new constitutional indigenous group. Unfortunately, our academics in our diverse universities consider these issues as beyond their preferred research choices. Everything I have stated in this article requires thorough research, not of disciplinary type and style but interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary and extra-disciplinary because it is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon.

So, we do not have a critical cadre of researchers who can work beyond the boundaries of their disciplines. By extension, we are critically short of credible information on the degree of penetration, control and influence of the ecological-biological, socioeconomic, sociocultural and sociopolitical dimensions of our political culture and practice in the 21st Century. Besides too much fear of researchers inhibits us to undertake such research yet future generations need it to equip themselves with proper tools to unmake what has been made by the constitutionally-made indigenous group: the Banyarwanda.

The primary question is: How did the so-called Banyarwanda question start, mushroom, proliferate and intensify and how is it being maintained and sustained in Uganda? How is it influencing other problems in the country? This is beyond the scope of this article, which seeks to record the place of the constitutional indigenous group of Uganda since 1995 – the place of Banyarwanda in Uganda’s contemporary politics.

I labour a lot to  inform you how the Banyarwanda question came to be at the centre of Uganda’s contemporary politics. Many Ugandans – educated or not educated have no knowledge of it, are unaware of it, do not understand it, have no concern about it and, therefore, cannot meaningfully and effectively engage in genuine liberation. There is a lot of awareness campaigns to be waged to ensure that there is adequate awareness for collective action to be taken towards effective liberation.

For God and my Country