Cultures and Customs

Uganda: Cultures and Customs and National Identity

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 256 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (11 July 2011)

ISBN-13: 9789987160273

ISBN-10: 9987160271

On the other side of Uganda are another Bantu group, the Bagisu, one of the most well-known ethnic groups in the country and in the Great Lakes region.

The Bagisu live mainly in Mbale District on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda. They're a sub-group of the Bamasaaba people of eastern Uganda and are closely related to the Bukusu which is a sub-group the Luhya of Kenya.

The term Bamasaaba is used interchangeably with the term Bagisu, now and then, in spite of the fact that they're different. The Bagisu are Bamasaaba but not all Bamasaaba are Bagisu.

They speak a dialect of the Masaaba language called Lugisu which is not much different from the other dialects within the Bamasaaba group of languages. Lugisu is also understood by the Bukusu.

All the Masaaba understand each other even when they speak different dialects of the Masaaba language. And Lugisu is also called Lumasaaba. The Bagisu themselves are also known as Bamasaaba.

The Bagisu mainly inhabit the western and southern halves Mountain Elgon. The eastern part of Mount Elgon is in Kenya.

They grow millet, bananas an maize on the well-watered slopes of the mountain mainly for their own consumption. They also grow coffee and cotton as cash crops.

Other crops they grow include sweet and white potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables as well as onions and tomatoes. They also own cattle and other livestock.

Bugisu, their homeland, has the highest population density in Uganda. Almost all land is used for growing crops. Shortage of land has forced many people to leave their traditional homeland and settle elsewhere in Uganda. It also has led to social conflicts now and then through the years.

The Bagisu were introduced to cash crop farming on a significant scale when arabica coffee was brought to them in 1912. The expansion of British colonial rule into Bugisu also played a major role in introducing the Bagisu to a cash economy.

And the people became very successful in the production of cash crops. The climate was highly conducive to farming and the Bagisu were able to produce large amounts of coffee. They also used this as a bargaining tool with the colonial government to extract concessions favourable to them by threatening to withhold production until their demands were met.

The farmers formed the Bugisu Cooperative Union to protect the interests of coffee growers and it became one of the most powerful and most active agricultural cooperative unions in the entire country.

Their economic clout became even more potent because the coffee they grew on the fertile slopes of Mount Elgon was of the highest quality in Uganda. And the total output from that small region constituted more than 10 per cent of the nation's total production.

This provided the Bagisu with a very effective bargaining tool, enabling them to have leverage in their negotiations with the authorities for higher prices for their crops and on other matters pertaining to their interests and well-being.

Land pressure during the early decades of colonial rule forced the Bagisu to migrate northwards, a migratory trend which brought them into conflict with the Sebei who have fought against Gisu dominance for over a century. They saw the Bagisu as invaders encroaching on their territory. And they were not alone in taking that position. Other people felt the same way.

Members of other ethnic groups, the Bagwere and the Bakedi in areas south of Bugisu have also claimed distinct cultural identities and have sought political autonomy.

The Bagisu have no tradition of an early migration from somewhere. And very little is known about their history apart from the fact they're related to a sub-group of the Luhya.

The Luhya are the second largest ethnic in Kenya next to the Kikuyu after surpassing the Luo who once were the second-largest. And because their history is known, it must be inextricably linked with the history of the Bagisu in some ways since the Bukusu who are an integral part of the Luo are related to the Bagisu.

Although not much of their history is known, the Bagisu are believed to have separated from the Bukusu sometime during the 1800s, despite their claim that they have lived where they are all the time; no people have. We all came from somewhere.

The earliest immigrants into Bugisu area are believed to have moved into the Mt. Elgon area during the 16^th century from the eastern plains.

Their earliest home is said to have been in the Uasin Gishu plateau of Kenya.

They seem to have been an end product of the mixing of peoples of different origins and cultures, but since their language is Bantu, their predecessors must have been Bantu speakers as well.

Traditionally, the Bagisu had a loose political structure based on clans. Every clan had an elder known as Umwami we sikoka which means chief of the clan.

Clan leaders were chosen on the basis of age and wealth. They were responsible for maintaining law and order, and unity as well as continuity of the clan.

They were also responsible for keeping and maintaining the cultural values of the clan and for making sacrifices to the ancestral spirits.

Often, stronger chiefs would extend their influence to other clans but no chief managed to subdue other clans and impose his rule on them, let alone unite them as a single political entity.

Other important figures in the Bugisu traditional society included the rainmakers and the sorcerers.

The Bagisu practise male circumcision although they don't know how and when it became an integral part of their culture. They may have learnt it from the Kalenjin of Kenya.

The men are not considered to be fully grown or mature unless they're circumcised. They take it so seriously that some people are forcibly circumcised as the following case shows.

A man was grabbed in broad daylight by a group of youths in front of cameras and bundled up into a car to face the knife in his lower parts.

He was an elderly man and the youths who grabbed him didn't care about that. They grabbed his arms and legs and had him dangling or hanging like a hammock, his red necktie partly wrapped around his right arm pit. According to a report in the New Vision, “Bagisu Youth Grab UPC Man for Circumcision”:

“Traffic on Nasser and Nkrumah roads came to a stand-still when an elderly UPC (Uganda People's Congress) veteran from Mbale, Stephen Mujoroto, was 'arrested' by five youth for allegedly dodging imbalu (the Bagisu cultural circumcision rite).

Mujoroto, who is a staunch UPC supporter and former Nsangi sub-county chief in the Obote Two regime, was seized at the Canaan Restaurant on Uganda House at about 11:00am.

Well-built youth, one of them believed to be Mujoroto’s son, held him by the trousers when they identified him chatting away with colleagues.

Sensing danger, the group fled, thinking the Kampala City law enforcers were arresting criminals.

But after the youth explained their mission, Mujoroto’s colleagues allowed them to take him to sort out the 'tribal affair.'

Mujoroto’s pretence to be weak and unable to walk did not save him. The youth lifted him into a special hire taxi and took him to Nsambya to face the circumcision knife.

His friends at the scene later said the group had been hunting for Mujoroto the previous day, but on a tip-off, he hid for the whole day.

A youth said to be his son argued that problems had afflicted their family, he blamed on their father's refusal to be circumcised.

He said they had sent several emissaries, including his elder sisters, to persuade him to circumcise to no avail.

The helpless Mujoroto opted to dodge photographers. Most of his friends had known him to be a Muganda. After his arrest, a crowd that gathered blamed Mujoroto for having sex for such a long time without being circumcised.” - (Ronnie Kijjambu, “Bagisu Youth Grab UPC Man for Circumcision,” New Vision, Kampala, Uganda, 25 June 2008).

Even many of those who undergo circumcision have been converted to Christianity and don't necessarily follow traditional religion. But traditional beliefs including customs such as circumcision are deeply rooted among the Bagisu in general despite widespread influences of modernisation and Western civilisation which have had quite an impact on the traditional way of life.

Many Bagisus, probably the majority, are Christian. There are also some Muslims. But traditional religion is still strong even among a significant number of those who are Christian.

The Ugandan government and aid agencies including UNICEF have accepted the fact that circumcision is a way of life among the Bagisu. And they have made an effort to help the Bagisu make it safer:

“The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has initiated a programme to assist the Bamasaba (Bagisu) in Mbale and Sironko districts modernise circumcision.

President Yoweri Museveni recently told the youths from eastern uganda gathered in Mbale that the Bamasaba ought to modernise the way they handle circumcision to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Museveni said the use of unsterilised knives on two or more boys would spread the pandemic among Bamasaba.

Bubulo East MP George William Wopuwa, however, said in a statement on Saturday that UNICEF had since 1995 developed a programme to help overcome the problem.

Wopuwa, the former Mbale chief administrative officer, said parents and LCs had under the UNICEF programme been sensitised on the dangers of sharing circumcision knives.

He said traditional surgeons had been trained and certified before being allowed to practice, and that uncircumcised medical doctors had been discouraged from handling the ritual.

Wopuwa said when Museveni came to address the youths, local leaders including himself and the Eastern youth MP, Wilfred Kajeke, were not invited.

He said if their presence after entry been recognised, they would have answered Museveni. - (Geresom Musamali, “UNICEF to Modernise Bagisu Circumcision,” New Vision, Kampala, Uganda, 21 October 2003).

One of the most prominent features which distinguishes traditional African societies is adherence to customs and traditions. And the Bagisu are a typical example of that.

Circumcision as a rite of passage is just one of those practices in a panoply of customs and traditions which define many traditional societies in Uganda and other parts of Africa. As Ugandan Professor Kefa M. Otiso of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, in the United States, states in his book Culture and Customs in Uganda:

“Initiation ceremonies were a central feature of traditional Ugandan societies and are to some degree still important even now.

Whereas these ceremonies varied from community to community, they marked the passage from childhood to adulthood or entry into certain social, family, or spiritual groups.

Examples include the outdated tradition of Karimojong boys single-handedly killing a lion or an elephant to prove their manhood and readiness for marriage; the circumcision of boys – and in some cases girls – to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood among the Bakonjo and Bamba, Bagisu, Sabiny (sic) (Sabine), and Sebei; blood brotherhood ceremonies amon the Batoore and Banyankore that united two unrelated people into bonds, obliging them to relate and support each other as biological brothers; and Mukeli Gagi, ritual marriages that initiate some Alur women's husbands into certain spiritual/religious cults.

All these initiation ceremonies usually included training in the rights and responsibilities of the initiates.

Uganda's rapid cultural change as a result of modernization is either undermining or transforming many of these traditional initiation ceremonies. For instance, the role of circumcision as a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood among the Bakonjo and Bamba, Bagisu, Sabiny (Sabine), and Sebei is being transformed, and, in some cases, is being displaced by passage through the formal school system....

The Bagisu, have, perhaps, the most elaborate boy initiation practices in Uganda....The origin of Bagisu circumcision is unclear. But there are several competing explanations, one of which is that it improves a man's sexual prowess. The Bagisu circumcise 12- to 15-year-old boys once every two years.” - (Kefa M. Otiso, Culture and Customs of Uganda, Westport, Connecticut, USA, Greenwood Press, 2006, p. 103).

Although the Bagisu are Bantu and practise cicumcision, it's important to note that circumcision is not as widespread among the Bantu as it is among Nilotics. Almost all Nilotic groups such as the Karamojong, the Kalenjin, the Maasai and others practise circumcision.

That's not the case among many Bantu groups in different parts of East Africa including neighbouring Tanzania. For example, the Nyakyusa and the Ndali of southwestern Tanzania don't have their men – or their women – circumcised.

But in societies where it's practised, even those who may be against it succumb to the knife because there's so much social pressure exerted on them. Failure to do so leads to ostracisation.

Not only do they become social outcasts; they're not considered manly and may not even be able to marry, something which is frowned upon in most traditional societies across Africa.

Among Bantu groups which don't traditionally practise circumcision, the only people who must be circumcised are Muslims since that's mandatory according to Islam.

But it's also a very painful experience. And some people who have come under the knife have written about their ordeal, as did, for example, Nelson Mandela, a Xhosa, in his book Long Walk to Freedom.

The Xhosa, the second-largest ethnic group in South Africa after the Zulu, are among the Bantu groups which practise circumcision.

Among the Bagisu, there's also acceptance of both – the pain and the necessity to be circumcised – and also of the pride in their culture which holds the people together as a group with their own unique identity and way of life. And it's a wonderful journey into manhood, however painful. As Aboubakar Famau stated in his report in The East African Tribune, appropriately entitled, “Bagisu Circumcision, a Painful Life Time Journey into Manhood”:

“Circumcision in the Bagisu community is such an important occasion and as a result, the ceremony normally attracts a huge number of people from different walks of life.

Among the attendants are diplomats, religious leaders, members of parliaments, tourists and other well wishers.

Thousands of cheerful well-wishers would gather as early as dawn at a place called Bumutoto to mark the official opening of the Imbalu circumcision ceremony.

Bumutoto is in the Eastern part of Uganda in Mbale district which is the original home to Bamasaba people who are very rich in culture.

The literal meaning of the word Imbalu or Ipalu is cutting round or trimming of the man’s penis. The knives used for this work are sharpened on a special stone and are not supposed to be used for any other work. The job of circumcision is a hereditary responsibility handed down from fathers to sons and this is the only way one can become a circumciser.

The circumcision among the Bamasaba takes place every two even years. The well-organized opening ceremony lasts for 24 hours and must take place at the Bumutoto cultural site; this is a place where traditionally it is believed to be the original land of the Bagisu ancestors.

The candidates are presented to the audience, dancers decorated with six to eight thigh bells and two hand bells jump high in air to help the initiates on their once in a lifetime chance to make the journey into complete manhood.

The candidates are normally smeared with a mixture of miller and cassava flour. The candidates are lined up for the cutting while a he goat or bull is being slaughtered as a sacrifice in the same courtyard where candidates are to undergo pain. The animal’s heart is then stuck on a stick and displayed for everyone to witness. This is a sacrifice to the ancestral spirits called Bamasaba.

The candidates are then made to stand straight and firm on a sack, holding a stick across the shoulders, and very quickly, the foreskin is cut off. The fastest surgeon can finish the operation in less than a minute.

If the candidate has successfully finished the ritual without fear, women will continue dancing, singing and drumming as a way of congratulating the candidates for his endurance and courage. Kadodi, a popular traditional dance is normally played; in fact any visitor will have mixed feelings at the sight of the kadodi dance. It is a popular dance in town. Normally it attracts young beautiful ladies who twist their waist up and down while excited men follow on.

The men spend along period of their time in isolation until wounds are healed. The elders then prepare to officially receive the initiates back into the community with elaborate ceremonies so that they can begin a new life of adulthood.

The cowards who fear the knife, and instead choose to disappear into thin air, have to pay the Gisu debt.

That is if their fellow Bagisu spot them, whenever they are, they will be caught and the circumcision will be organized immediately. Some who have escaped may be later exposed and denounced by their wives. In this affair, Bagisu men can only run but can not hide, because wherever they are, they will be caught and returned back for the real circumcision.” - (Aboubakar Famau, ““Bagisu Circumcision, a Painful Life Time Journey into Manhood,” The East African Tribune, 22 March 2007).

Another ethnic group that's examined in this study is the Lugbara of northwestern Uganda.

They're one of the largest Nilotic groups in the country. They live mainly in the West Nile region of Uganda and in the adjoining area of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Their language, Lugbara, has many dialects. But the people who speak those dialects understand each other. In addition to the Madi, the Lugbara are also related to the Kakwa and understand each other when they speak their languages.

They're also closely related to the Logo, 'Bale (Lendu), and Keliko, and are distantly related to the Azande and the Mangbetu.

And they and the Madi, their neighbours to the east, are the only representatives of the eastern Sudanic language group in eastern Africa.

Their cultural symbol is the leopard. And they're very conscious of their singular identity geographically, linguistically, and culturally. Their plateau is very distinct from the landscapes of most of their neighbours.

They're farmers and also own livestock, mainly cattle and goats. They also have sheep.

Before the cattle epidemics of the 1980s, they had far greater herds. Cattle, goats, and sheep are also killed for ancestral sacrifices and meat is consumed by those attending the ceremonies. The Lugbara also sell hides and skins, earning valuable income.

They also own poultry and are known in Uganda as the main keepers of the guineafowl which is known as ope in their language.

There's also a sharp division of labour between men and women. Men clear the fields while the women do the rest of the work. Men also hunt and herd cattle while women do domestic work.

The Lugbara irrigate their farms. And some of their fields are also under permanent or shifting cultivation..

Traditionally, their social organisation was based on clans and sub-clans. Chiefdoms came later, introduced by the colonial rulers who appointed locally influential men as chiefs. Below the chefs were headmen The Lugbara never had a king or paramount ruler.

The chiefs usually formed alliances to ensure security and mobilise forces against attacks by other ethnic groups. But they did not have a standing army.

Every able-bodied man was duty-bound to protect his village. Therefore all men were automatically considered to be soldiers ready to answer the call whenever needed. However, military service was never considered to be a permanent duty.

Men hold formal authority over their kin but older women informally exercise considerable domestic and lineage authority. Land is traditionally not sold or rented; it's held by lineages. Women are also allocated rights of use by their husbands' lineage elders.

Marriage is forbidden between members of the same clan or with a man's or woman's mother's close kin. And polygamy is widespread. About a third of the men have more than one wife. However, most secondary wives are those inherited from their brothers or fathers' brothers. A number of other African tribes have the same custom of inheriting wives from dead brothers.

Some even inherit wives of their dead fathers in a number of traditional societies on the continent. Their step mothers become their wives, although this is not practised by the Lugbara.

Divorce is relatively unusual among the Lugbara. And only men can seek divorce. The parents or relatives of the divorced woman or women are required to return cattle given to them as dowry. But if there are children involved, a different formula is used. For every child born, a cow is kept, not returned.

The main grounds for divorce are adultery and barrenness. In fact, in many traditional societies in Africa, a man can ask for divorce if a woman can not bear children.

There are no forms of initiation at puberty, but children of about 6 undergo forehead cicatrization and excision of the lower four incisors.

The Lugbara country is open, composed of countless small ridges with streams between them. The compounds and fields are set on the ridges. Houses are round. They're made of mud and wattle and thatch.

If a man has more than one wife, he moves from one house to another in turn. The house, and especially its hearth, is very much a female domain.

Traditional religion has played a prominent in the lives of the Lugbara. And it continues to do so.

Even before the coming of Europeans who introduced Christianity, the Lugbra believed in a single deity called Adroa. They believed, as they still do today, that He created the world and everything in it.

They also believe that there's a world of spirits and departed ancestors. The spirits influence the affairs of men, as do departed ancestors, and sacrifices must be offered to appease them.

The Lugbara believe that the living interact with the dead of the same lineage and that this relationship is permanent. Because of this close relationship, the dead know what's going on among the living whom they still consider to be their children.

However, in some circumstances, the dead send sickness to the living, in order to remind them that they are acting custodians of the Lugbara lineages and their shrines.

Also, there have been prophets among the Lugbara during hard times and periods of crisis. Divinely-inspired messages, according to those who believe this, have involved the reorganisation of the social order, among other things.

The most famous prophet among the Lugbara was Rembe who led an anti-European healing cult in 1916. He was actually a member of the Kakwa tribe and lived about 40 miles north of Lugbara.

But many of them have also embraced Christianity and are mostly Catholic.

There are also a few Muslims in the region, especially in the few small townships. These are usually Nubians – also called Nubi – and they are not typical Lugbara.

The most prominent Muslim from the West Nile region was Idi Amin who came from the neighbouring Kakwa tribe.

Although the Lugbara are engaged in agriculture, they're not commercial farmers.

Cash crops were encouraged during the colonial period, but, owing to edaphic and climatic factors and the long distance to the nearest markets for cash crops, few have been profitable.

The best markets are in the southern part of the country where the capital Kampala is also located. That's hundreds of miles away, discouraging many people in the West Nile from engaging in commercial agriculture.

Groundnuts, sunflower, cotton, and tobacco have all been tried as commercial crops. But only the latter two, cotton and tobacco, have had some success.

The main export has been that of male labour to the Indian-owned sugar plantations and the African-owned farms of southern Uganda. About one-quarter of the men are absent at any one time, making the Lugbara some of the most well-known migrant workers in Uganda.

Almost all farming is restricted to the subsistence level. They grow a variety of crops but cassava is now their staple food. Traditionally, they have relied on millet and sorghum.

Besides millet and sorghum, they also grow pigeon peas and a variety of root crops including sweet potatoes. But with their increasing dependency on cassava, their diet has deteriorated. Traditionally, they had a highly nutritious diet.

They also grow maize for local consumption and for making local beer. Their main cash crop is tobacco.

Their land is very fertile. They are also known to be very good farmers even though they grow crops on a small scale mainly for their own consumption.

They are, in general tall people, taller than the average Ugandan, and are skillful hunters using mainly bows and long arrows.

They're also known for making very good baskets and pots. Besides pottery and basketry, they have few other aesthetic products. They don't make elaborate carvings or skillfully handle metal.

The iron-smiths among them are members of an ethnic group called Ndu. These skilled workers make iron tools and weapons. They live scattered among the Lugbara settlements and are held in awe by them. They're also feared by the Lugbara as if they have some mystical powers because of their iron-working skills.

But the Lugbara also have a reputation as fierce fighters and very defensive of their land. It was this ability to fight and defend themselves which saved them from being enslaved by the marauding Arab slave traders who were active to the north and west during the 19^th century.

Although many of them have been converted to Christianity, modernisation has not penetrated their society as much as it has other parts of Uganda especially in the southern kingdoms. Theirs is a much more traditional way of life, and conservative.

There have been complaints that after the country won independence, the Lugbara were ignored by the government of Milton Obote.

The situation changed when Idi Amin seized power. The Lugbara got many favours from him during his tenure mainly because he himself came from the West Nile region and saw the Lugbara as his people who were also related to his tribe, the Kakwa.

When Obote regained power in 1980, the Lugbara were subjected to brutal treatment by government soldiers who were fighting insurgents in the West Nile and other parts of Uganda trying to overthrow Obote.

In fact, one of the strongest opposition strongholds was in the West Nile region where remnants of Idi Amin's army had settled. They were resolutely opposed to Obote's rule, and many local people suffered as a result.

Some people claimed the Lugbara and other people in the West Nile region were subjected to brutal near-genocide by Obote's second regime.

But they also inflicted a lot damage on the country when they, together with the Kakwa, constituted a disproportionately large number of soldiers in the Ugandan army under Idi Amin after Amin eliminated the Langi and the Acholi who once dominated the army during Obote's tenure.

Amin recruited them as his fellow tribesmen to consolidate his position and to provide a counterweight against his opponents. In fact, he was a product of both tribes although he was identified as a Kakwa. His father was a Kakwa and his mother a Lugbara, with his ethnicity determined by patrilineal descent as is the case in many African societies.

His reliance on the people from the West Nile, his home region, to back up his regime and stay in power is a common feature of African politics and leadership dominated by tribal and regional loyalties.

Besides the Kakwa and the Lugbara, other people from the West Nile who were recruited into the army by Amin were the Madi, the Alur and the Nubians who were of Sudanese descent but who had settled in the West Nile region. He even recruited some who were Sudanese.

In fact, both the Kakwa and the Nubians live in West Nile and in Sudan, with the Kakwa straddling the Ugandan-Congolese-Sudanese border.

The regional loyalties were also fuelled by the rivalry between Amin and Obote. Although both northerners, they came from different parts of the north. And according to an analysis provided by three Ugandan scholars in their book The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda, 1964 – 1985:

“Like Obote, Amin consolidated his base in the army by using his own ethnic groups. While the friendship between Amin and Obote lasted, their Lwo and Sudanic recruits cooperated to provide a strong military base for both men.

After the coup d'etat Amin brutally eliminated most of the Lwo (Luo) speakers, especially the Langi and Acholi.

In March 1971 more than thirty Acholi/Langi soldiers were dynamited at Makindye Barracks. On 22 July 1971 about 150 to 500 Acholis and Langis from Simba Battalion, Mbarara, were herded into trucks, taken to an isolated ranch, and gunned down.

On going to Israel and Europe in July 1971, Amin gave orders for the elimination of the Langi and Acholi soldiers, fearing they might organize a coup. At Mbarara, soldiers from these ethnic groups were separated from the rest and taken to their deaths.

On 9 July 1971 about twenty new Acholi/Langi recruits were killed; more died the following day. Between 10 and 14 July 1971 some fifty Acholi/Langi soldiers were killed at Magamaga Ordnance Depot.

Further massacres of these ethnic groups occurred at military barracks at Masindi, Soroti, and Kitgum. On a February 1972, about 117 soldiers and other security men of the Obote regime were mowed down as they tried to escape.

What is upsetting about Ugandans is that while the Langi and Acholi suffered, many laughed, thinking their own turn would never come, just as they had laughed at the Baganda in 1966.

But wherever violence occurs in the state, it eventually overflows to everyone. By 1971 the fires of political violence that had been lit at Nakulabye were spreading into the rural areas of Apaci, Lira, and Gulu. Soon, they would scorch all the land.

Amin based his support in the army on the Kakwa and Nubi, with the former Anyanya Zairous and Sudanese forming the nucleus to which were attached other West Nile groups like the Madi, the Lugbara, and the Alur.” - (Abdu Basajabaka Kawalya Kasozi, Nakanyike Musisi, James Mukooza Sejjengo, The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda, 1964 – 1985, Montreal, Canada, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994, p. 111).

But the ethnic alliance of the West Nile groups under Amin's regime did not last long because of Amin himself. He turned against some groups, and thus helped to weaken and undermine his own regime.

Yet, in spite of all that, members of the alienated groups did not conspire against Amin. They feared that once he was gone, they would also be hunted down because they had been closely associated with him and had even worked for him, wreaking havoc across the country at the behest of their boss.

And in many cases, they did that of their volition since they saw themselves as wielders of power inextricably linked with their kinsman at the top who was the military head of state.

But it was Amin himself who engineered his own downfall, first by weakening his base in the army:

“His political fortunes began to decline when he narrowed his base by gradually trimming the large West Nile support in the army.

From 1971 to 1972 the Alur were gradually marginalized. Lieutenant-Colonel Ochima, an Alur with a following in the army, was imprisoned in July 1971 and shot the following year.

After the 1972 invasion of Uganda by Ugandan exiles (based in Tanzania), Alurs were removed from most strategic positions.

The turn of the Madi came in late 1972. Amin accused all Madi of drunkenness and removed and removed them from sensitive positions. He then called in Madi elders to explain to them the crimes of 'their sons.'

Pruning of the Lugbara began in early 1972. Their 'son,' Obitre-Gama, was dismissed in March as minister of Internal Affairs, brought back in a minor portfolio, and again dismissed in mid-1973.

Another Lugbara, Lieutenant-Colonel Ondoga, the ambassador to Moscow, was recalled and made minister of Foreign Affairs. He was later publicly dismissed and his body was found floating in a river.

Many Lugbaras were killed at this time.

Amin dismissed his Lugbara wife, though he took the opportunity to divorce two more from other ethnic groups as a show of 'tribal impartiality.'

By 1975 the Kakwa-Nubi-Anyanya core had closed ranks and was the foundation of Amin's power machine. They held most of the strategic positions, manned key installations, and easily grouped whenever there was trouble.

The other alienated West Nile groups did not fight Amin because they rightly judged that it was not in their interest to overthrow him. If he were overthrown, they would be punished for their natural association with him....

Subsequent events proved them right: the Acholi/Langi militia brutalized the whole population of West Nile in 1980 – 83 for being associated with Amin on ethnic basis.” - (Ibid., pp. 111 – 112).

That was during Obote's second regime after he returned to power in 1980. It was during that period that some critics of Obote claimed the killings in West Nile by his army amounted to near-genocide.

Even during his years in power before he was overthrown by Amin, he was not very comfortable with him. But he could not do anything about it because he feared that he would alienate Amin's supporters in the army even though the majority of the soldiers were Acholi and Langi who supported him, not Amin. As E.D. Mwamula-Lubandi states in his book Clan Theory in African Development Studies Analysis: Reconsidering African Development Promotive Bases:

“Obote put Amin under house arrest in 1969. He was scared to kill him or do something serious since this would have annoyed Lugbara, Kakwa and Nubian forces.” - (E.D. Mwamula-Lubandi, Clan Theory in African Development Studies Analysis: Reconsidering African Development Promotive Bases, University Press of America, original from the University of Michigan, 1992, p. 189).

During the first regime of Obote after the country won independence from Britain, the Lugbara and other people of the West Nile were largely ignored in terms of political representation at high levels in the government.

They were virtually marginalised and did not play a major role in the political developments which took place in Uganda after independence.

But after Amin seized power from Obote in January 1971, many people from the West Nile – especially the Kakwa, the Lugbara, the Alur, the Madi and Nubians – became major actors on the nation's political scene mostly as soldiers and as security and intelligence officers protecting Amin. Some of them also held high government positions including cabinet and ambassadorial posts among many others.

The tragedy is that all those alliances – under both Obote and Amin – were marriages of convenience without solid foundation. They also were not in the best interest of the nation which was still struggling to transcend ethnic and regional loyalties in order to create a truly national identity embracing all Ugandans. Instead, ethnicity became paramount, fuelling challenges against the legitimacy of the state as an institution of authority over the whole country.

Many Ugandans did not accept that back then, and they still don't today. Their ethno-regional loyalties and interests, hence ethnicity and regionalism, come first at the expense of national unity and identity.

While I have not written about every ethnic group in Uganda – besides briefly mentioning most of them here and there – I have focused on a number of them to provide regional balance.

In fact, I have covered all the major ones in detail. Uganda has 25 indigenous tribes or ethnic groups. It does not have very many ethnic groups like neighbouring Tanzania which has 126, and Kenya which has 42.

The ones I have looked at here, in detail, in the Ugandan context also constitute families of ethnic groups or are representative of ethnic clusters – Bantu and Nilotic – in different parts of the country.

But the survey can not be complete without including the Batwa who are neither Bantu nor Nilotic.

The Batwa, or Twa, live in southwestern Uganda. They're also known as Pygmies.

They're also found across the border in neighbouring Congo and Rwanda.

They live in the forest and have a strong attachment to their homeland. They believe that when God made them, He wanted them to live in the forest and protect it.

They also like to be close to nature in an environment where it's quiet and peaceful. And they may the original people together with the so-called Bushmen.

They have lived in the forest for a long time. This has enabled them to develop survival skills unmatched by members of other ethnic groups who may try to live in this kind of environment.

The forest provides them with herbs for medicine. They use traditional medicine for all kinds of ailments and don't depend on modern medicine for treatment.

They're also excellent hunters. They use bows and arrows, spears and machetes as well as knives. Their reputation as excellent users of bows and arrows is legendary. They also use the same weapons to defend themselves.

One of the biggest items in their diet is honey which is also excellent for fighting diseases. And besides meat, wild fruit as well as vegetables and mushrooms are an integral part of their diet.

They have been mostly hunter-gatherers, some in the mountainous forests, and some in forest savannah or lake environments.

They're despised by their neighbours but maintain their dignity by living in isolation.

Many of their neighbours don't even see them as human.

Their neighbours are mostly Bantu except the Tutsi. They're also known as forest people who live in the rain-forests of east-central Africa and as far afield as Cameroon and the Central African Republic.

Other countries in which they live are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon.

But their means of livelihood have been severely affected through the years, reducing them to desperate conditions in some parts of the east-central and west-central regions of Africa.

In all those countries, they suffer discrimination, only in varying degrees. And their plight can be better understood when look at in a larger context embracing all these groups of marginalised people in that part of the continent:

“The Batwa of south west Uganda number only a few thousand people and are one of the hunter-gatherer and ex-hunter-gatherer peoples collectively known as the forest peoples (or ‘Pygmies’) of the Central African rainforests.

The situation of the different forest peoples who live throughout Central Africa varies tremendously, and they probably collectively number between 250,000 and 300,000 people.

Forest peoples tend to suffer severe discrimination at the hands of their farming neighbours and others; but they also to a greater or lesser extent, manage to maintain a resilient egalitarian social system.

Severe discrimination is most evident for those groups, such as the Batwa of south west Uganda, who no longer have access to their forest resource base, but it is also a powerful enduring theme, and often a dominant one, for forest-based groups in relationship to neighbouring farmers.

The three largest groups of forest peoples who still, to a great extent, retain their forest resource base are: the Mbuti (and Efe) of the Ituri Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Baka of south eastern Cameroon and north western Congo Brazzaville, and the Aka (and Mbendjelle) of northern Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic.

For many of these groups the forest continues to provide them with an independent resource base, and it also provides the context for the beliefs and experiences which underpin an economy of sharing and a political system which is essentially fluid and egalitarian.

In these contexts, forest peoples are, to varying degrees, able to exert some or great autonomy in determining the nature of their interaction with their farming neighbours and with the more recent incomers to the forest.

The recent political upheavals and civil war in the region has had an especially severe impact on the Batwa of Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern DR Congo; and has accelerated the ongoing marginalisation of these groups who are mostly former rather than present-day hunter-gatherers.

The ongoing logging in south west Cameroon and the construction of the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline may have a similarly devastating impact on the Bakola there.

For many of the Batwa of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and DR Congo, their resource base has either been destroyed or denied them, through deforestation, through the control exerted over them by neighbouring farmers, or more recently through conservation projects restricting or denying their access to the forest. As a result, groups such as the Batwa of south west Uganda have been reduced to virtual serfdom and poverty....

Central African governments tend to see such Forest Peoples as needing to be sedentarised – both for tax and control purposes, and in order to ensure that the rest of the country is not stigmatised as backward by association with such people....

(Bantu and other) farmers have historically had an ambivalent attitude towards these hunter-gatherers: sometimes viewing them as slaves and barely human, and sometimes as equals or even as the original civilising beings.

Where, in the past, these hunter-gatherers have been crucial to farmers, enabling them to benefit from forest produce, protecting them from forest spirits, and ritually ensuring the fertility of their fields, today in many parts of Central Africa, including south west Uganda, the forests have dwindled in importance and as a result hunter-gatherers and ex-hunter-gatherers such as the Batwa have become marginalised and severely discriminated against.

Where their universally acknowledged status as the original inhabitants of the forest and the region once served to underwrite their autonomous forest life and their ability to relate to others as equals, that status is often now seen as a symbol of their backwardness.

Any prior rights to resources which they may have had have been over-ridden, first by colonial and then by national governments who ignore their traditional systems of land ownership.” - (Justin Kenrick, Forest Peoples Programme with the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU), “The Batwa of South West Uganda,” October 2000. See the recent research into the situation of the Batwa in eastern DRC (Barume & Jackson: 2000), and of the Batwa throughout the Great Lakes region (Lewis: 2000). See also a recent survey of different forest peoples' situations throughout Central Africa (Luling & Kenrick: 1998).

Many Batwas in southwestern Uganda have been forced by the government to move out of the forest, disrupting their traditional way of life and causing extreme hardship for them. They have lost their homes and means of livelihood without getting any help from the government.

In 1991, the Bwindi and Mgahinga National Parks were established in southwestern Uganda, causing great suffering to Batwa and other neighbouring local communities.

The Batwa are by far the most affected group since they no longer have access to their forest resources, and so their forest-based participation in the local economy has been destroyed and they have been reduced to being landless labourers.

Not only did they lose their territorial rights and ancestral forest homes; they were denied human rights:

“In addition to their forced expulsion from the living in or using their forests, the Batwa of Uganda suffer severe discrimination at the hands of other communities.

They experience marginalisation and discrimination, a lack of land, of access to formal education and to employment and even to secure an area to put up temporary dwellings involves having to work long hours in others' fields.

They are not represented – locally or nationally. Instead of being able to base their livelihoods in the forests using their traditional skills, they now depend on labouring – and even begging – to support their livelihoods.

To make matters even worse, there has been very slow movement in terms of achieving some form of compensation for the Batwa for their loss of their territories.” - (Penninah Zaninka and Justin Kenrick, “The Batwa Organize to Reassert Their Rights,” World Rainfroest Movement (WRM) Bulletin, No. 62, September 2002).

But they're survivors. They have lived in the forest for thousands of years. They know how to fend for themselves. Their skills have ensured their survival. But there are those who fear the worst.

The Batwa may be extinct one day. According to a report by the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO):

“Hunger could wipe out the Batwa ethnic group in Uganda unless urgent intervention is enforced, researchers have said.

A study conducted by Rose Mwebaza, the coordinator of Uganda Land Alliance for Coalition of Pastoral Civil Society Organizations (COPASCO), reads in part:

'Many Batwa are dying of hunger because they do not know how to survive outside the forest.'

The study, titled 'Lessons from the Batwa Experience in the Conservation and Management of Bwindi Game Park,' states that the loss of access to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest which supported the Batwa subsistence has left them in unfamiliar territory, virtually threatening their survival.

'There are reports that some Batwa go for four to five days without eating and they have resorted to eating banana peels from their Bahutu neighbours. Most young children have run to the urban centres to escape from the hunger and now work as porters and many others have turned to begging for survival,' Mwebaza notes.

She blamed the Ugandan government for gazetting the Bwindi Impenetrable Game Park without consulting the Batwa, the indigenous community in the vicinity.

'It is clear that the government initiated the process of gazetting Bwindi without involving or considering the participation of the Batwa in the process. Most of the planning was done in the capital city, Kampala, hundreds of miles away from Bwindi,' Mwebaza said.

'The Batwa had no knowledge of what was going on and only got to know of the process when Bwindi was already gazetted and they were being asked to vacate the area,' she added.

The game park is a world heritage site located in south-western Uganda. Situated on the edge of the western Rift Valley, the park is 32,092 square kilometres and borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Batwa, who inhabit part of south-western Uganda, are part of a group that is also found in the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi. Their population is estimated at 70,000 to 87,000 dispersed over 100,000 square kilometres and make between 0.02% and 0.7% of the total population in the various countries they occupy.

Mwebaza, who is also a lecturer at the Faculty of Law Makerere University, further asserted in her study that as these groups become smaller, their ability to come up with a common stand and demand for participation in the decision making process reduces. She noted that this has resulted in the complete expropriation of their land and source of livelihood.

'As scarcity and the fight for survival intensify among the Batwa, they are breaking up into even smaller groups and sometimes as individuals to try and find a way to continue existing. In addition, the Batwa have slowly lost their identity, which has over the decades been built on Bwindi and their ability to survive in it,' Mwebaza observed.

She added:

'The Batwa are not only facing a crisis of survival, but also of identity. It is clear that the very existence of the Batwa is under threat. The problem of Batwa identity and survival is made worse by government policies that are now aimed at assimilating the Batwa into the wider community. There is no clear organizational force in Uganda from among the Batwa demanding to retain their way of life or the continued access to their traditional shrines within the Bwindi forest.'

However, against all odds and in spite of their phenomenal marginalisation and the threat of extinction facing them because of loss of their source of livelihood, some Batwa have joined the international indigenous rights movement to reinforce their existence.

'International organizations have taken on the Batwa struggle and have formed a 'Twa Support Group' to ensure effective communication and sharing of information between them and to avoid duplicating activities. The Batwa, with the support of international organizations, have embarked on a process that will enable them to represent themselves effectively at local, national and international levels,' Mwebaza said.

But despite those efforts illiteracy has blocked the Batwa from articulating their plight in the necessary for a, resulting in their fate being overlooked.

'Batwa are illiterate and so they not only fail to keep up with proposed government changes that affect them but they also cannot effectively participate even when they are aware of the up-coming changes,' Mwebaza further indicated.

'In a meeting with local and international NGO's working to support the Batwa in Uganda, the chairman of the Batwa in Uganda informed the group that there are only six educated Batwa in Uganda and even then, they are in secondary school and so they cannot be involved in the decision making process.'” - ( Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, “Batwa Ethnic Group Faces Extinction,” 9 August 2006).

While some observers don't go to that extreme, saying the Batwa face extinction, many of them are equally apprehensive of the situation and concede that if nothing is done to protect them, they face a bleak future.

The Ugandan government and others in the region – as well as the ones in southern Africa especially Botswana where another marginalised people, the San and the Khoi live – are pursuing a policy of modernisation to force these people to abandon their traditional way of life and become part of the modern society.

But such a policy is bound to fail because the people who are being forced to change don't want to change. And even for those who want to do so, more often than not, only grudgingly, it's obvious that they can not change right away because adaptation can not be done overnight.

Tragically, in this clash of civilisations or cultures, the marginalised groups end up being the losers. It's also a form of cultural genocide.

And their future is indeed bleak. According to a report by Thomas Fessy, BBC World Service, “Batwa Face Uncertain Future”:

“Just after dawn, as the fog slowly leaves the slopes of the Muhabura volcano, some Batwa people make their way to the neighbouring farms hoping to get a job for the day.

The Nyarusisa community is landless. Families are squatting on other people's land or live in shabby camps with no sanitation.

The Muhabura volcano is one of the three inactive volcanoes that make the south-west Ugandan border with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Right next to the Mgahinga National Park's boundaries, the slopes of these mountains are intensively cultivated and settled by dominant Bufumbira and Hutu people.

Nearly two decades ago, the Batwa lived in the mountain forest of Mgahinga as well as in the deep forest of Bwindi, called the Impenetrable Forest.

In these two places, where a small area of forest is surrounded by large numbers of poor rural farmers trying to scrape by and live off the land, conservation is a tricky issue.

'It is a question of trying to balance the protection of the forest with the needs of the local communities,' says Alastair McNeilage, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, who works at Bwindi.

When the area was divided into three forest reserves - Mgahinga, Echuya and Bwindi - in the early 1930s, the Batwa stayed where they had been living for generations.

However, when the Ugandan government decided to reinforce the protection of the mountain gorilla habitat, the Batwa were moved from their lands to make way for national parks.

They have become conservation refugees. Anthropologist Chris Sandbrook explains that in the early days of conservation 'local people were excluded from protected areas and kept out with some kind of law enforcement, which has been called fortress conservation.'

Up on a hill, between the Echuya forest and the Bwindi Park, community leader Sembagare Francis recalls:

'One day, we were in the forest when we saw people coming with machine guns and they told us to get out of the forest. We were very scared so we started to run not knowing where to go and some of us disappeared. They either died or went somewhere we didn't know. As a result of the eviction, everybody is now scattered.'

Conservationists, back then, saw local communities as a major threat to wildlife. John Makombo from the Uganda Wildlife Authority says that they aimed to achieve 'sustainable conservation.'

'Originally, when the Batwa were living in the forest they were hunting down all the fauna and that was eradicating almost all the animals: the gorillas were in danger, the chimps were in danger,' Mr Makombo said.

'So, it was not wise to leave [the Batwa] inside the forest. I think it was better to manage them when they are outside the forest.'

Conservation outcasts

It seems that the Batwa have suffered more than other people from the creation of the parks because they were the people whose livelihoods were most closely related to the forest.

Even now, they tend to be the poorest and most marginalised people who have fewer opportunities to benefit from tourism and other development programmes that have come along with the parks.

They live in unsanitary housing conditions, typically mud huts where the rain comes through.

According to the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU), most are unable to invest in permanent structures as they fear being removed by the owner of the land on which they are squatting.

UOBDU co-ordinator Penninah Zaninka says that the government 'should really think of resettling the Batwa and give them better shelters so that they could benefit from development projects that the government is doing for other citizens of Uganda.'

The government seems to have handed over its responsibility to the few organisations and church groups looking at the plight of the Batwa people.

Minister of State for Tourism Serapio Rukundo told the BBC that it is for 'their future that the government told them to leave the forest.'

He added: 'The question is also: what is the quality of life you would like the Batwa to live? And what rights are you going to guarantee for the animals?'

However, the quality of life of the Batwa does not seem to be taken into account by conservation programmes.

UWA's John Makombo defended their approach: 'Their conditions of living are not our responsibility. Questions of poverty are not our responsibility.'

Eroding culture

Targeted worldwide by the many tribes evicted from protected areas, big conservation NGOs have now made it clear that they do not support the creation of protected areas that displace indigenous people.

WWF International director general James Leape says mistakes have been made in the past.

'I think that we have, over the last 20 years, learnt case after case that it's a mistake to see conservation and development as opposed to each other. It's clear that we will only be successful in conservation if it works for local communities.'

Nevertheless, hardly any of the staff working for the parks is from the Batwa communities.

'They don't give us a chance to work for the park, when they select people they forget the Batwa,' a member of the Batwa community said.

The Batwa also complain that they cannot access the forest to practice their traditional culture. Most of them fear the park rangers.

'They told us that if anybody goes in the forest to carry out any activities they would be killed,' says Bernard, an elder.

'We have all our traditional equipment here like things to help us collect honey, bows and arrows for hunting - but we haven't taught our children. Even if we wanted to teach them, we can't in this community as we would need to practice in the forest. I'm really not happy that our children cannot learn our culture.'

While their forest-based culture is eroded, the United Nations passed a declaration at the end of last year on the rights of indigenous peoples. It says they cannot be forcibly removed from their lands or territories.

Margaret Lokawua, board member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, says the Batwa have a case for compensation but it will take some time.

'The Batwa can use this declaration to defend their case and I think they will win; the government will give them a piece of land," she explained.

'But looking at the governments that we have in Africa, it takes time. Meanwhile the Batwa will continue to be squatters on other people's land.'

There may be some hope, but this declaration is non-binding and Uganda was absent when it was adopted.” - (Thomas Fessy, “Batwa Face Uncertain Future,” BBC World Service, 9 March 2008).

The marginalisation of the Batwa may be the most extreme case in Uganda. But there are other groups which don't get as much attention from the government as the big ones do.

And while it's true that Uganda is composed of many ethnic groups, it's equally true that the history of the country has largely been shaped by only a few of them, especially the ones which had powerful kingdoms or other major centres of power.

One of these major traditional centres of power – besides Buganda, Bunyoro, Ankole, Toro and Busoga – is Teso.

The people of this area are called Iteso. They are a branch of the eastern Nilotic language speakers and are one of the largest ethnic groups in Uganda.

The eastern branch of Nilotic is divided into the Teso-speaking and Maa-speaking (Maasai) branches. The Teso branch is further divided into speakers of Ateso (the language of the Iteso) and those of the Karamojong cluster including the Turkana, Ikaramojong, Jie, and Dodoth in Kenya and Uganda.

Iteso traditions relate that the Iteso originated somewhere in what is now Sudan and moved south over a period of centuries. But it's not possible to calculate the time of this movement.

A body of Iteso is said to have separated from the Karamojong and moved further south. This may have been a very early separation because the clan names and ritual customs associated with the second of two distinctive groups of Karamojong and Jie people are not found among the Iteso.

Iteso clan names reveal a history of long-standing ethnic interactions. Names of Bantu and Northern Nilotic origin are found among them. And they were probably well-established in their northern Uganda heartland by the mid-1700s when they began to move farther south.

Traditions recorded among the JoPadhola indicate there were two waves of Iteso migration from what's now Sudan.

The first was family-based and peaceful. It was followed by a more extensive and aggressive migration that left the Iteso in control of a large swath of territory that by 1850 extended as far as the western highlands of Kenya.

European travellers record extensive fear of Iteso warriors; nonetheless, the Iteso soon suffered reverses that caused them to draw back to their current territory in Kenya.

Since then, the northern and southern Iteso territories have been separated.

Relations with other societies throughout the precolonial period were alternately peaceful and acrimonious.

And as a result of spatial inter-mixture and intermarriage, Iteso elements and customs can be found among neighbouring peoples and vice versa. Intermarriage has always been extensive.

It is likely that ethnic identity hardened during the colonial period, as it has since, when resources such as land were newly defined as belonging to “tribes.”

The Iteso in Kenya and Uganda were conquered by African colonial agents of the British,And the colonial rulers ruled through them indirectly.

What's now western Kenya was transferred from Uganda to Kenya in 1902. As a result, the economic and political histories of the northern Iteso – those in Uganda – and the part of the southern Iteso living in Kenya have taken vastly different courses.

At independence, the Ugandan Iteso were far more wealthy than their Kenyan counterparts. This difference resulted from the status of Uganda as a protectorate reserved for “African development” and western Kenya's status as a labour reserve for the European-owned farms in the “White Highlands.”

As a minority people in Kenya, the Iteso are not well-known and have been viewed with some suspicion by surrounding peoples. On the other hand, the Kenyan Iteso have not suffered from the political destabilisation their brethren have in Uganda since 1971 when Amin seized power.

Events in the colonial period and since have elaborated cultural differences among the Iteso that were regional in origin. The language of the northern Iteso, for example, was extensively influenced by the Baganda people, who ruled the Iteso on behalf of the British colonial regime, whereas that of the southern Iteso (in Kenya) is in some ways closer to Turkana.

As a result of living among Bantu- and Nilotic-speaking peoples, the southern Iteso have probably been subject to a greater variety of cultural influences.

The Teso territory in northeastern Uganda stretches south from Karamoja into the well-watered region of Lake Kyoga.

The great majority of Iteso occupy Soroti District and some of the adjacent areas in the north-eastern part of the country. Farther east and south, they constitute about half of the population of Bukedi District. These Iteso are separated from their more northern Ugandan colleagues by Bantu-speaking peoples, notably the Gisu, Banyole, and Bagwere.

They are not separated spatially from the Kenyan Iteso of Busia District in the Western Province, with whom they share a common border

The Iteso of Soroti District, Uganda, are called the northern Iteso in the ethnographic literature; the Iteso of Bukedi District, Uganda, and Busia District, Kenya, are called the southern Iteso.

The southern Iteso occupy the foothills of Mount Elgon and the surrounding savanna. The northern Iteso environment varies from low and wet near the shores of Lake Kyoga and its neighboring swamps to high and arid in the north.

In both areas, annual rainfall is separated into two wet seasons – the “short” and “long” rains. It varies considerably from year to year and locality to locality.

The Iteso have always moved their households in response to changes in economy, politics, and climate. After the 1950s, land scarcity and colonial (later state) control prevented the Iteso from adapting their economy to the environment. And their population in the more arid parts of northern Uganda is sparse and small.

They're basically farmers but they also own cattle and other livestock. Originally they were cattle herders like the Karamojong but not strictly pastoralist.

Unlike the other Teso-speaking ethnic groups, the Iteso have never been transhumant or nomadic; agriculture has played as significant a role in their social, economic, and expressive lives as cattle have among the other groups. But recent cattle raids by the Karamojong – who use automatic weapons including AK 47s – have resulted in a sharp decline in cattle ownership among the Iteso.

In fact, the situation has deteriorated so badly in recent years that many people in the northern regions of the Teso territory have been forced to move to camps for displaced people fearing nigh-time raids by the Karamojong.

The civil strife intensified through the years especially since the mid-1980s. According to a report in the New Scientist, “Disease Stalks Villages in Uganda's Undeclared War”:

“Three years of civil strife in Teso, northern Uganda, have forced half a million people from their homes and left another million starving and stricken by tuberculosis, snail fever (schistosomiasis), scabies and measles.

John Maitland, a British doctor who chairs the Teso Relief Committee and recently returned from a fact-finding mission there, said that 'medical care, immunisation, planting and harvesting have all been reduced to nothing'.

Cattle rustlers from the Karamoja district have stolen five million animals from the Iteso - the inhabitants of Teso - in the three years since President Yoweri Museveni came to power in Uganda.

Museveni disarmed the Teso militia which protected the Iteso from raiders. The Iteso, who rely heavily on meat and milk, are now severely malnourished. They are caught between the disabling effects of their traditional enemy, the cattle raiders, and a disaffected guerrilla army.

The rebels raid Teso villages for food and money. According to Maitland, state health workers in Teso have run out of medicines and equipment: 'There is an alarming increase in schistosomiasis and tuberculosis. Measlea...is now a killer again.'

One of the most reputable hospitals in the region, Kumi Leprosy Hospital, is on the point of having to close altogether. The other four hospitals in the region are just running. 'AIDS is there just a little bit. It will increase because the soldiers are there,' Maitland says.

The Ministry of Relief and Social Rehabilitation has estimated that Soroti district needs 20 000 tonnes of maize and 14 000 tonnes of beans to plant, as well as 200,000 hoes, if it is to get a harvest this year.” (“Disease Stalks Villages in Uganda's Undeclared War,” New Scientist, 22 July 1989).

But the conflict in Teso territory in northeastern Uganda was not ignited by cattle rustling. It's true the Karamojong cattle rustlers unleashed terror among the Teso. However, the main culprit was a rebel group known as the Uganda People's Army.

It was based in Teso and started its insurgency against the government in 1987, about a year after Museveni seized power from President Obote. The group was opposed to Museveni's rule and was active between 1987 and 1992.

It was also ethnic – mostly Teso and Nilotic, while most of the national leaders under Museveni were Bantu and southerners. Therefore the conflict also had an ethnic and regional dimension. The Teso supported Obote, a fellow Nilotic and fellow northerner.

The insurgency caused a lot of suffering among the Teso before it ended through mediation.

The Teso have been successful farmers for a long time unlike some of their neighbours. Even those who suffered during the war when their homeland was the battleground between the rebels and government forces have shown a remarkable degree of endurance. And many of them are successful farmers today as much as they were before the war.

One striking example was Winnie Asege who chaired a widows' organisation known as Dakabela Widows Farmers Association among the Teso. According to a report by Frederick Womakuyu in one of Uganda's leading newspapers, New Vision, in its edition of 2 March 2009, entitled “She Led Teso War Victims to the 'Promised Land'”:

“She kept answering her phone as we drove on the dusty and uneven road to her home. We went past dry shrubs and grass-thatched huts before getting to her house, a permanent structure.

Winnie Asege, 38, of Dakabela village in Soroti district, is a successful farmer, who has inspired many in Teso region, eastern Uganda. But her journey has not been rosy.

Asege suffered extreme poverty, hunger, war and community bias against women, but she managed to pull through.

In 1987, the Uganda People’s Army, a rebel group based in Teso, launched a struggle against the Government. The women were mostly affected; many were raped and killed, but fortunately, some of them like Asege managed to escape.

'The rebels attacked our home at night and burnt two grass-thatched huts, but my husband and our child were hiding in a nearby bush. We had to walk through thick bushes for several days till we reached Karamoja. We were terrified by the several corpses we saw on our way.'

Asege did jobs like washing plates, till she raised enough money to start brewing malwa, a local brew. 'I couldn’t do any other business apart from making local brew. But since I was getting wasted, I abandoned the business and returned home in the 1990s when the region was peaceful,' she says.

But on getting home, there was poverty and hunger. 'All our gardens had turned into bushes. There was virtually no crop – there was nothing to eat,' she says. 'Together with other women, we went back to cultivate our farms, but digging in bushy gardens was a task.'

Realising that it would take months or even years for one woman to plough a garden, she mobilised the Dakabela to form a group, to pull resources together and cultivate their fields.

'We formed a group of 10 women and set up a timetable. We ploughed each member’s gardens in turns, until we finished the entire group’s gardens,' she adds. 'We started by growing cassava on 10 acres.'

They sold the cassava at sh105,000. “We decided to continue growing cassava and also start growing cereal. Our earnings increased to about sh400,000,” she adds. We named our group Dakabela Rural Women’s Development Association. In 2001, when the group learnt that they were getting a raw deal from cereals, they went into citrus fruit growing.

'We had planted maize and had to wait for the next season to be able to grow more and besides, there was no income security. We also learnt that despite the fact that citrus fruits do not mature quickly, they can be harvested two to three times a year,' Asege, the chairperson of the group, says.

'When we zeroed down on citrus fruits, the group acquired about eight acres of land for the project.'

They bought 400 trees of improved citrus fruits at sh2,000 per tree from the National Agricultural Research Organisation. They sold cassava and acquired a loan of sh1m to buy Valencia and Washington orange breeds.

In 2005, they harvested fruits on four acres. 'We managed to get about 284 bags because the weather was not good, but in 2006, we harvested 500 bags,' says Rose Alaso, a member of the group. 'We sold the fruits to our customers in Kenya at sh40,000 per bag. We also sold some in Rwanda, Kampala and Soroti.'

By 2006, the group had grown to about 35 members. More women joined the group due to the large profits it was making. 'We divided the money among ourselves. The National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) was teaching farmers modern farming methods in Soroti, so we invited them to educate us' Alaso adds.

NAADS asked the group to identify a project in which to acquire more knowledge. 'Since we were already growing citrus fruits, we decided to concentrate on fruit growing,' Asege explains.

Armed with knowledge, they went back home and started individual projects. 'I set aside four acres of land for fruit growing. I bought about 400 seedlings from farmers in Soroti,' says Asege.

'My first harvest was last year. I got about 116 bags from two acres. I will harvest about 400 bags in December this year. I sell my fruits to Kenyans at sh50,000 a bag. I supplement my earnings with the group earning. In total, I make about sh20m annually.'

In 2006, the group planted more oranges, totalling to about 1,200. Each tree produces about two bags of oranges. 'Kenyans booked the fruits already and paid sh75,000 per tree. We made sh60m from the 800 trees,' she says.

The group also started a bee-keeping project. 'The NAADS sensitised us on bee-keeping and we learnt that it requires less labour,' Alaso says.

The NAADS and Italian Cooperazion, an NGO, gave the group four hives. From their fruit sales, they bought another 101 hives at sh50,000 each. Last year, the group harvested about 1,200kg of honey and sold each at sh6,000. 'We harvested honey from 30 hives. We hope to collect about 3,000 litres annually,' Asege says.

The group used its earnings from honey to start a piggery and goat keeping project. 'We bought six exotic pigs; two males and four females,' says Asege. 'We sold 10 piglets at sh20,000 each and acquired another six.'

The NAADS gave the women a hybrid he-goat to improve their breed. 'The project is still in infancy, but soon, we shall be able to sell one hybrid at sh150,000. A local breed costs sh40,000.' They group has about 40 local goats.

These projects have solved the groups’ worries, as the members have been able to educate their children, access quality health care and live in decent houses.

'I make about sh20m from both my individual projects and the group investments. Three of my children are in good boarding schools in Kampala. I have also managed to build a house,' Asege says.

'I can afford to eat a balanced diet and will soon buy a vehicle,' she boasts.

At least six farmers in the group earn sh20m annually. Alaso makes sh4m annually. She is also constructing a permanent house.

During his recent visit to the region, President Yoweri Museveni visited the Dakabela association and pledged an irrigation pump. 'If the President fulfills his pledge, we shall be able to deal with the drought and cultivate more crops,' Asege says.

'We also don’t have ready market; sometimes the price of a bag of oranges drops from sh40,000 to sh20,000,' Alaso says. 'The Government should find ready market for our products.'

The group is focusing on initiating new projects, like pineapple mango and pine growing.” - (Frederick Womakuyu, “She Led Teso War Victims to the 'Promised Land,'” New Vision, Kampala, Uganda, 2 March 2009).

Many Tesos joined Uganda's cash economy when coffee and cotton were introduced in 1912 and the region has thrived through agriculture and commerce.

Traditionally, the Iteso lived in settlements consisting of scattered homesteads, each organized around a stockade and several granaries. And they still do so today, although with modernisation many also live independently while others have moved to urban centres in other parts of Uganda. They are urbanised like the Baganda, although not to the same extent.

Groups of homesteads are united around a hearth where men who form the core of the settlement gather for ritual and social purposes.

The groups usually consist of patrilineally related males whose wives, children and other relatives form the remainder of the settlement.

Several groups constitute a clan. Clans are loosely organised but clan elders maintain ritual observances in honour of their ancestors. However, such observances should not be construed as ancestor worship.

The Teso don't worship their departed ancestors but see them as intermediaries who intercede with God on their behalf; a common belief in many traditional African religions.

The Supreme Being is called Edeke in the Teso language.

Traditionally, the Teso believe that ancestral spirits bring bad luck if they are not appeased.

Every family had a shrine where libations were often poured or placed to placate the ancestors. And the practice is still common among many people who follow the traditional religion.

Western influence has had an impact in changing those beliefs. But even a significant number of people who have been converted to Christianity still believe in the power of their ancestors and their influence on the living.

Men of the clan consult the elders about social customs, especially marriage, and rituals.

Many of their customs are not unique in the region because of intermingling with members of other ethnic groups and shared history. The Teso share many cultural traits with the Langi, one of the largest ethnic groups in northern Uganda and in the country.

They have been influenced by the Karamojong who are their Nilotic brethren, and by Bantu groups especially the Basoga who, in turn, have been heavily influenced by the Baganda and the Banyoro.

There is also a clear division of labour in Teso society as is the case in many traditional societies in Uganda and other parts of Africa.

Much of the agricultural work is done by women. Women may also own land and granaries. But after the introduction of cash crops, most of the land was claimed by men and passed on to their sons.

Separation between men and women is also strictly enforced traditionally. Men and women don't eat together. They eat separately, a custom I have also observed among members of different ethnic groups including the Nyakyusa of southwestern Tanzania. Even modernised Africans from many different ethnic groups strictly enforce this custom, including those who live in cities.

The Teso also have strict taboos. Traditionally, women did not eat chicken the same way women didn't among the Toro.

There are a number of other animals even Teso men were not allowed to eat. For example, the bush-buck – called ederet in the Teso language – was taboo for many clans.

It's still a male-dominated society and little has changed in terms of relations between men and women in spite of the influence of modernisation which has reached even some of the most remote parts of Uganda in varying degrees.

All Teso men within a settlement, related and unrelated, are organised on the basis of age, similar to the Nyakyusa of southwestern Tanzania whose age-villages became the focus of some of the best anthropological studies in Africa in the 1930s, especially by Professor Monica Wilson of the School of African Studies at the University of Cape Town.

She wrote about them in a number of books including Good Company: A Study of Nyakyusa Age-Villages, and Ritual and Kinship Among the Nyakyusa.

I have also written about them in my book Africa and The West.

And the role played by members of the age-villages among the Nyakyusa is similar to the role played by their counterparts among the Teso.

Each age-set among the Teso spans 15 to 20 years, providing a generational framework for sharing the work of the settlement. Age-sets also exercise social control by recognising status distinctions based on seniority, both between and within age groups. They also share responsibility for resolving disputes within the settlement or among neighbouring settlements, strikingly similar to what the Nyakyusa did traditionally in southwestern Tanzania.

The Teso are basically conservative and stick to tradition probably more than many other groups in Uganda. But also, like many other people of the Kenya-Uganda border region, they have a history of extensive multi-ethnic contact and have come to share many customs with neighbouring peoples, although not at the expense of their identity or cultural distinctiveness.

The Teso of Uganda have also been been described as being among the most economically adaptable of people. And in remarkable contrast, their brethren across the border in Kenya have an undeserved reputation for cultural conservatism. They are probably no more conservative than the Teso of Uganda.

Although all the major traditional kingdoms are located in southern Uganda, the northern part of the country is not without its share of attractions including major ethnic groups and traditional institutions.

Besides the Teso, the Acholi and the Langi are the other main groups in northern Uganda.

Strictly speaking, the Teso are a northeastern group, therefore still northern but not typical northern like the Acholi and the Langi.

The Langi are sometimes called Lango which is also the name of their language. They live in Lango, a sub-region in north-central Uganda north of Lake Kyoga.

Their language is a Luo language and is mutually intelligible with Acholi (which is also Luo) and is related to other Luo languages in Uganda and Kenya.

It's a western Nilotic language like those of the Acholi and the Alur who are their northern neighbours. But the Langi also share many cultural traits with the Ateker, their neighbours to the east and who are classified as eastern Nilotic.

When the Langi migrated to the region from the northeast – Sudan and some anthropologists claim from Ethiopia – they found the Acholi who had arrived there earlier, also from the north, and intermingled with them.

Because of their long interaction with the Acholi, the Langi lost their Ateker language and adopted Luo spoken by their Acholi neighbours.

The situation is similar to what happened in Ruanda-Urundi (Rwanda and Burundi) where the Tutsi – who migrated from north – also lost their original language after intermingling with the Hutu and adopted the language of the people they had conquered.

In fact, in the case of Uganda, some Langis identify with the Luo.

But in spite of their linguistic affiliation with other Luo speakers, the vast majority of the Langi reject the “Luo” label. They say they're not Luo.

Some historians believe the Langi represent the descendants of 15^th century dissenters from Karamojong society to the east.

Langi society is organised into localised patrilineages and further grouped into clans which are dispersed throughout the territory.

Clan members claim descent from a common ancestor. But they are seldom able to recount the nature of their relationship to the clan founder.

They have been well-organised as a society for centuries, although not as complex as the Bantu kingdoms of southern Uganda:

“(Traditionally), leadership was centered around the clan which would be both a kinship unit and the basic constituency of politics within the Rwotdoms.

The Rwot (chief) had the duty of controlling the entire clan. He was helped by a council of elders. The other senior members besides the Rwot were the leading elders of the clan.

The council of elders was responsible for the general administration and the maintenance of law and order within the clans. They organised the payment of debts, luk (adultery and fornication fines) as well as bride-wealth. Th(e) council was also responsible for the distribution or deposition of the property of the deceased.

Many clan elders were usually brought together to form the Odonge-Atekere and one of them would be elected Rwot or Awitong as he was called.

The Odongo-Atekere were the clan branch leaders and the Rwot had the duty of controlling all the affairs of the clan. He led the warriors to war and mobilised defence during an invasion.

After battle, he organized a feast during which the Moo and Moi (military ranks) were conferred upon those that deserved them. These ranks were for those who had displayed excellent performances during the battle.

Dwelling

The Langi dwelt in villages. A village could contain more than a hundred huts built in a line. In front of the hut, there was a line of granaries belonging to the individual families. Beyond them, at a distance, was the community cattle kraal.

When someone needed a new site on which to build a hut, he would take a chicken and some beer to the desired site and leave them there for a day or two. If on his return he found that something had eaten the chicken or drunk the beer, he would abandon the site as it was considered an ill-omen.

For fear of evil spirits, the Langi avoided building near swamps and also avoided building near stony or rocky ground.

The huts were of different types. An iguruguru was a small hut intended for sleeping in as a guest house. It was made with a low doorway that people had to enter crawling.

The low doorway was to prevent enemies from aiming their spears at the people sleeping during the night.

The unmarried youths slept in small huts called otogo whose doorways, approached by means of a ladder, were only big enough to allow a person to craw in and out.

This type of hut is now very rare but it had its entrance closed by a grass mat and is said to have been very warm inside.

The family shrine (Abila)

It was built in front of the home and it was identified by particular plants.

The shrine had a great degree of sacredness surrounding it. It was not only a resting place for the ancestral spirits but it was a place where spears were blessed before and after the hunt.

All skulls of the animals which were killed during the hunt were placed at the Abila and, except for the very elderly; women were forbidden from changing anything placed in the Abila.

Military

The society had no standing army. All able-bodied men were considered warriors.

Before war could be declared, a foreteller would be consulted to predict the results of the war. If luck was 'proved,' old women would spit into the hands of the warriors and they would then set off. The leaves of the olwedo tree were put in the path where the warriors passed to enhance their luck in the impending fight.

War booty was normally retained by whoever looted it. After the war, a ceremony was convened in which to award the Moi ranks. The person who killed a big or an important person was styled Anuk; his privileges and other titles were increased by making tattoo marks on his left shoulder and neck.

The highest Moi was Abwangor. During this ceremony, a goat was slaughtered while the elders stood in front of the family shrine and its blood was allowed to drip on the warriors. The goat was then skinned and its meat divided accordingly.

Judicial system

The judicial system of the Langi was harsh by modern standards because in certain instances, offenders could be dealt with on the spot by whoever caught them. For instance, there was no case to answer if a man speared another one to death after having found him sleeping with his wife.

There was nothing like manslaughter since a murderer would be killed if he was caught. So also could a notorious thief. As for the latter, he could even be killed by his own people.

Often on the intervention of elders, murder could be compensated in the form of goats, cows or a young girl. If the murdered person was a man and the girl who would be surrendered gave birth to a boy, she would be set free and returned to her people.

If she had proved good, she would be married to a young man within the clan and bride wealth would be accordingly paid.

Murder victims were almost always men since it was considered cowardly to kill a woman or a child.

If a woman killed her husband, she would be returned to her people and the bride wealth would be refunded. She would in addition be required to pay compensation.

The woman had a lesser role than a man to play in society except as a source of wealth and custodian of the rituals of birth divination.

Other offences in the Lango society included pre-marital pregnancies and fornication. If a boy refused to marry a girl and the girl died in labour, the case was tantamount to murder. If she successfully delivered, the child would remain property of the girl’s parents and could only be redeemed if the boy married the girl.

Wizards were usually held responsible for causing deaths, the failure of crops, long periods of drought and other devilish acts against society. Such wizards whenever caught or proven were executed.

Proof in such cases was always arbitrary.

Part of such proof was the possession of odd objects whose purpose was completely unknown to the people, for example, the placenta of a new born baby or the bones of a dead person.” - (“The Langi of Uganda: Origin, Religion and Culture, Dwelling, Political Set-up”).

Originally, the Langi were pastoralists but they later became farmers.

They ate meat and drank milk. And their economy was based on barter. They used to barter cattle, goats and grains with the Acholi, the Labwor, and the Kumam and later, with the Arabs. But as they continued to move towards Lake Kyoga, they abandoned their pastoral economy.

But they still own livestock. So they are both “pastoral” and agricultural – except that they now live in permanent settlements instead of moving from place to place as typical pastoralists do, traversing vast expanses of territory in search of pasture.

Their main crop is millet. They also rely on animal husbandry for subsistence. In some areas, people also cultivate maize, eleusine, peanuts, sesame seed, sweet potatoes, and cassava.

They also grow and eat simsim which was introduced by the colonial government in 1911.

When they first started farming, their first food crops were millet, peas and others. They later started to grow groundnuts and sweet potatoes which were introduced form Bunyoro.

Both Langi and Acholi generally assign agricultural tasks either to men or women. In many cases, men are responsible for cattle while women work in the fields.

In some villages, only adult men may milk cows.

An Acholi or Langi man may marry more than one wife, but he may not marry within his lineage or that of his mother. A woman lives in her husband's homestead which may include his brothers and their families. Each wife has a separate house and hearth for cooking.

Many of these cultural practices and customs are shared by other Nilotic groups in northern Uganda, although some of them are unique to the Langi.

The Langi have also been victims of violence for decades since Idi Amin rose to power in January 1971. Although some of them initially supported him as a fellow northerner, they later fell out of favour with him as did the Acholi.

The majority of the Langi and the Acholi in the army did not support Amin; they supported Obote.

Also, Amin was not a Langi or an Acholi. He was a Kakwa, a member of one of the smallest ethnic groups in Uganda.

And, although he was a northerner, he did not come from the same region as the Langi and the Acholi did in north-central Uganda. He came from West Nile, a region in the far northwest bordering Congo and Sudan.

During Obote's return to the presidency in 1980, the Acholi did not support him as they did in the past when he was Uganda's leader from the 1960s until his ouster by Amin in 1971. They accused him of favouring his fellow Langis at the expense of the Acholi. As Thomas P. Ofcansky states in his book Uganda: Tarnished Pearl of Africa:

“Since late 1984, Vice-President and Defense Minister Paulo Muwanga (a Muganda from Buganda) had been plotting against Obote.

Apart from objecting to the president's plan to name his cousin, Akena Adoko, chairman of the Public Service Commission, Muwanga wanted to negotiate with the insurgents – unlike Obote, who believed he could achieve military victory over his opponents.

Although these differences slowly weakened his regime, Obote lost power because of his inability to preserve the fragile Langi-Acholi alliance, especially in the UNLA (Uganda National Liberation Army).

Many Acholi believed that Obote favored his fellow Langi in new military appointments and promotions.

In August 1984, this conflict escalated when Obote named Smith Opon-Acak, a Langi, to the post of chief of staff. This left the soon-to-retire seventy-one-year-old General Tito Lutwa Okello as the only Acholi in a key military position.

As soon as Opon-Acak tok office, Acholi personnel accused him of unfairly advancing the careers of his fellow Langi and of deploying only Acholi troops to combat zones.

Soon afterward, disaffected Acholi soldiers started plotting with opposition leaders to overthrow Obote. Troops in the ranks also began disobeying their Langi officers. In June 1985, for example, soldiers assigned to Magamaga Ordnance Depot refused to go into combat against the NRA – Museveni's National Resistance Army – in western Uganda.

A few weeks later, inter-ethnic fighting at Mbuya Barracks, which came about when it became known that Obote had ordered the arrest of several Acholi officers, claimed the lives of at least thirty UNLA personnel.

To prevent a future purge or massacre of Acholi military personnel, Brigadier Basilio Okello, an Acholi, mobilized anti-government UNLA troops at his Gulu headquarters (in Acholiland in northern Uganda) and marched on Kampala to overthrow Obote.

Along the way, he defeated pro-Obote Langi forces at Karuma Falls and at Bombo (Bombo was the headquarters of the Ugandan army and the Ministry of Defence until December 2007 when they were moved to Mbuya, a suburb of Kampala).

Finally, on 27 July 1985, Brigadier Basilio Okello and his men entered Kampala, seized Radio Uganda, and announced that Obote's regime had come to an end.” - ( Thomas P. Ofcansky, Uganda: Tarnished Pearl of Africa, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 1999, p. 56. See also Phares Mukasa Mutibwa, Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes, Africa World Press, Lawrenceville, New Jersey, USA, 1992).

Obote's reliance on his fellow Langis in the government and in the military as well as intelligence services could, ostensibly, be attributed to concern for security – as some may contend – since he could not trust members of other ethnic groups.

In Ghana, for example, Jerry Rawlings was accused of having given a disproportionately large number of high government posts – including intelligence – to Ewes from the Volta Region in eastern Ghana. His mother was an Ewe and his father Scottish.

Security was one of the major reasons given for favouring members of his tribe. Supporters of Obote gave the same reason.

There's some truth to that. And most African leaders advance the same argument.

But in most cases, it's raw-naked tribalism by these leaders. And it has almost ruined Africa, igniting conflicts in different parts of the continent.

Whether or not Obote had genuine fear of members of other ethnic groups whom he thought might overthrow him is besides the point. What's critical is that the appointment of a disproportionately large number of his fellow tribesmen, the Langi, to high positions in the government and in the military infuriated and alienated many people who were not Langi.

And that was potential for catastrophe in the context of Uganda's volatile politics and ethnic relations. As Professor Phares Mukasa Mutibwa, a Muganda, of Makerere University states in his book Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Promises:

“Within the military the Acholis Tito Okello, the Army Commander, and Bazilio Okello, commander of 10 Brigade Northern Zone, based in Gulu, also felt that the time had come to negotiate with the NRA fighters.

For the Acholi soldiers, who formed the bulk of the army, the war which Museveni's guerrillas were fighting against Obote was quickly becoming a war against the Acholis only.

The soldiers who were being sent to the war front were virtually all Acholi, and the Langi officers and men were manning safe areas of Kampala and being deliberately kept away from the war zones.

In short, those who were dying in hundreds to prop up Obote's fledgling regime were not Langis but Acholis.

Thus Acholis' concern over Obote's determination to continue the war against Museveni was less humanitarian than due to the realisation that if the war did not stop, their sons would continue to die at the hands of the NRA. They joined the negotiation lobby to save their skins, and thus in Obote's eyes they became a disloyal group – marked men....

It became obvious to all that Obote was ignoring the Acholi factor in the Acholi-Langi alliance on which the fortunes of the 'liberators' group of the UPC (Obote's Uganda People's Congress) had depended since Amin's overthrow.

The Acholi began to see that Obote was pursuing a deliberate policy of discriminating against them in favour of his own tribe, the Langi. It was the time-honoured game of using allies to get into power and dumping them when he could use them no longer.” - ( Phares Mukasa Mutibwa, Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes, op.cit., pp. 161, and 162).

Ethnicity became the paramount factor virtually in all appointments. And Obote continued to pile up enemies. He had the Langi on his side. But everything else was stacked against him. As Professor Mutibwa goes on to say:

“It was not only in the civil service and the management of the economy that the Langis were taking the lion's share. In the military too they were being pushed into positions which others thought they did not merit.

The most celebrated example of this development came when the Army Chief of Staff, (Major-General) David Oyite-Ojok, was killed when his helicopter was shot down by the NRA at Kasuzi near Nakasongola in December 1983.

All eyes were focused on Obote to see whom he would nominate for this crucial post.

Did he have a Langi to put in the shoes of his long-time comrade-in-arms and confidant, Oyite-Ojok?

All those best qualified to replace Oyite-Ojok, most notably Bazilio Okello, were Acholi.

Obote mused to himself. He did not have a suitable Langi for the post, but after postponing the decision for almost six months, he appointed Smith Opon-Acak (a Langi)....

By the beginning of 1985 Obote was not in control of what was going on in Uganda generally, but especially in the field of the military which was clearly in the hands of the aggrieved Acholis.

In June 1985, at the crucial moment when his personal presence at the scene of events was of paramount importance, Obote left the capital to officiate at a not very important ceremony at Mbale – one is reminded of his trip to Singapore in January 1971, leaving the road clear for the coup by Idi Amin.

Oblivious of the true significance of his enemies' plans and actions, Obote started issuing orders and sending emissaries from Mbale.

He directed his lieutenants in Kampala to take charge of the situation, and to arrest and detain the associates of Brigadier Okello. He sent an emissary – a Mr. Wacha-Olal, who had acted as one of the members of the presidential triumvirate during the time of the Military Commission in 1980 – with proposals for peace-talks to Bazilio Okello, then in Gulu, but the Acholi brigadier was no longer interested in such proposals from a man whom he could not trust.

Instead, Bazilio Okello sent a message to the north across the border with Southern Sudan where the supporters of Amin and former soldiers of the FUNA (under Major-General Lumago) were living.

An agreement was concluded between the Acholi and the West Nile FUNA (Former Uganda National Army) remnants, on th basis of which an Acholi-West Nile alliance was established to collaborate in Obote's overthrow.

The FUNA fighters and other West Nile elements arrived in Kampala a few days before the coup.

As everything was collapsing all around him, Obote made a last desperate appeal to his 'godfather,' Julius Nyerere, to send troops to quell the Acholi coup, but Julius did not act.

Perhaps he had had enough enough of Uganda's problems, and in any case Nyerere, with his Ujamaa policies in tatters, was in the process of packing his own bags to make way for his successor, Ndugu Ali H. Mwinyi.

Nyerere told Obote that as he was soon leaving office he could not commit his successor to policies which would in effect be open-ended.

Many Ugandans sighed with relief, to see that at last the great Tanzanian leader had realised the folly of endlessly propping up a man, however close a friend he might be, who was so unpopular in his own country.

Tanzania's policies towards Obote and his government had in fact begun to shift from as early as mid-1984 – to the extent that it started quietly supporting the NRA's fight against Obote.

While his UPC parliamentarians were waiting in the National Assembly for the start of a meeting which he himself had summoned, Obote boarded his Mercedes and drove towards the Kenyan border.

This time he overflew Tanzania on his way to Zambia. His regime was over.” - (Ibid., pp. 162, 164 – 165).

Obote, a Langi, was gone. He never again regained power and died 20 years later on 10 October 2005 at the age of 80.

But when General Tito Lutwa Okello, an Acholi, became head of state after Obote's ouster, the ruling Military Council which was the government was predominantly Acholi. Five of the nine Military Council members were Acholi.

It was a clear-cut case of ethnic favouritism. It was also one of the main reasons why Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) refused to join the government of “national unity” although other opposition groups did.

Still, the ouster of Obote did not end suffering for the Acholi. They had suffered under Amin, and they were to suffer again.

It was also just the beginning for the Langi – at least the second phase. They had been favoured under Obote. So they did not suffer under his rule. But, like the Acholi, they also suffered earlier under Idi Amin. And they were to suffer again together with the Acholi.

Both – the Langi and the Acholi – have suffered at the hands of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group which has been wreaking havoc across northern Uganda for more than 20 years.

The terror unleashed by the Lord's Resistance Army has sometimes degenerated into inter-ethnic violence between the Acholi and the Langi in northern Uganda:

“The massacre of more than 200 people last Saturday by Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in a displaced people's camp in the Lira district (in Langi territory) has culminated in inter-ethnic violence, leaving five people dead.

The ethnic killings took place in Lira town Wednesday afternoon during a protest demonstration organized against the Saturday massacre of civilians. It is the first time ethnic violence between the Langi and Acholi tribes has erupted in the 18-year rebellion in northern Uganda.

The two ethnic tribes share the same language and many cultural norms and have also borne the brunt of LRA attacks. But the Langi are blaming the Acholi for allegedly forming the bulk of the LRA, whose leader Joseph Kony is from the Acholi tribe.

Hundreds of Acholi and Langi have either been killed or abducted by the LRA. One of the worst massacres, in which more than 240 people were killed by the LRA, took place in Atiak in Acholi land in 1995.

The peaceful protest demonstration degenerated into the indigenous Langi attacking the Acholi living in Lira town, killing five. The Acholi are located in the Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts, while the Langi are in the neighboring Lango district.

The demonstration, planned to protest the attack on the Barlonyo internally displaced people's camp, saw police shoot dead two other people when the crowd attacked a police station accusing them of failure to provide security.

Mobs ran wild and set fire to several homes and restaurants thought to belong to Acholi people. Some Acholi are now taking refuge at Lira police station, while many others are in hiding.

Some of the demonstrators held banners reading 'The United Nations must intervene' or 'Stop political pride and seek foreign military assistance.' The banners were referring to the war in northern Uganda which has claimed thousands of lives.

The Ugandan government of President Yoweri Museveni continues to reject requests from opposition politicians and church leaders to seek foreign assistance to end the war, maintaining it will defeat the rebels militarily.

Many politicians and church leaders have condemned the inter-ethnic violence development between the two tribes, with Gulu Diocese Archbishop John Baptist Odama saying, 'We have been very saddened by the recent events in northern Uganda. Today a peace march ends up in a death trap.'

A member of parliament for Lira municipality, Cecilia Ogwal, criticized President Museveni for what she said is responsibility for continuation of the war.

'Have a compassionate heart toward northern Uganda just like you have for western and other parts of Uganda.'

He seems to have this 'I don't care' attitude because that is why the war has lasted for 18 years. Please treat us like the rest of Uganda,' she said.” - ( Report from Lira, northern Uganda, “Inter-ethnic Violence Follows Massacre in Northern Uganda,” published in Asian Political News, Kyodo News International, Inc., 26 February, 2004).

The people of northern Uganda have suffered on an unprecedented scale.

And it's ironic that both – the Langi and the Acholi – have been victims of violence unleashed by fellow northerners, starting with Amin. As Jenkins Kiwanuka, a retired high-ranking government official who worked in Uganda's ministry of foreign affairs, stated in his report in The Monitor, Kampala, Uganda, in its edition of 2 February 2008, entitled “There Was No Harmony Between Amin and Langi After Obote's Overthrow”:

“Samuel Olara, a human rights advocate and son of dictator Idi Amin's one time comrade-in-arms, the late Gen. Bazilio Olara Okello, took advantage of the 37^th Anniversary of the coup that propelled Amin to power to join the numerous writers who have testified to the killing of thousands of Langi and Acholi soldiers and ordinary Ugandans during Amin's regime.

In his article 'Amin's Dead and the Game of Numbers' (Daily Monitor, January 26 and Sunday Minitor, 27 Jan), Olara talked about 'some attempts' that had been made in the media 'to whitewash the Amin regime.'

He was obviously referring to columnist Timothy Kalyegira's desperate defence of Amin last year when he challenged the people of Uganda to give him at least 600 names of people who were allegedly murdered by Amin.

Unfortunately, or possibly fortunately for Kalyegira, his crusade was brought to an abrupt end by a public that detested his defence of Amin's horrors.

And as if that was not enough, Okello's own son now comes out and condemns Amin.

I am personally happy though, because Olara has given me yet another opportunity to correct the misrepresentations Kalyegira made in his article titled 'Amin's Dealings with Acholi, Langi in the 70s' (Daily Monitor, November 10, 2007).

He said in that article that after Obote's ouster, the dictator maintained 'harmonious working relations' with soldiers and public servants from the two tribes; that 'many of Amin's inner circle bodyguards from 1971 to 1979' were Acholi and Langi. He also made the point that even Amin's first wife was a Langi; that from 1965 Amin had a Langi personal secretary called Rose Akullo, who died in a motor accident in 1977.

First of all, Amin had a Langi wife in 1954. I wrote about her long ago and told how Amin returned to his house at Jinja army barracks and found former President Obote's cousin, the late Dan Albert Obote (a Langi), and another man talking to her.

When they could not tell him what they were doing in his house during his absence, he held them by the neck and, in their own words, banged their foreheads against each other rhythmically, 'as if he was playing an accordion'.

When he released them, they fled to my house, which was nearby, and I administered first aid to them.

Like Amin, Obote also married a Muganda wife, Miria Kalule, but that did not stop him from sending his troops to Luwero where thousands of Baganda were killed during his war against the National Resistance Movement, or from attacking the Kabaka of Buganda's palace.

Miriam (also known as Miria) herself confessed in an interview that whenever she tried to talk to her husband about what was going on, Obote would retort that they (the UPC – Uganda People's Congress – government) knew what they were doing.

I first met Amin in 1954 in the army at Jinja, so I knew him well enough. Because he was a brave soldier, he was very popular among his fellow soldiers all of whom, like him, were non-commissioned. They included Acholis and Langis.

Amin used as window dressing the Acholis like Pangarasio Onek, the bandmasters, bodyguards and chaplains who stayed in the army after he took power. They were not a threat to him at all. In any case, they were kept under constant surveillance by intelligence agencies and spies from the other tribes Amin trusted, and so were those in the civil service.

Why, if Amin still trusted the Acholis and Langis as Kalyegira alleged, did he order the Acholi bodyguard out of his vehicle while he was driving some journalists around the bazooka-shelled section of Entebbe airport?

Olara's testimony renders added credibility to what Apollo Lawoko stated in his Dungeons of Nakasero that Amin at one time devised a plan, that later aborted, to reduce the population of the Acholis and Langis by 25 percent.

Amin could promote you today and have you 'removed' the next day. He once directed a Col. Arube to inspect a guard of honour in Entebbe in his presence (I was personally there), only to hear a few days later that Arube had been murdered. It was alleged that that he had been plotting to stage a coup.

The same Amin once called me and the then Foreign Minister, Elizabeth Bagaya, to his office and branded us saboteurs for informing our embassies of a statement he had himself issued accusing members of the Langi and Acholi communities in Nakawa and Naguru of sharpening spears and pangas to destabilise the country.

He ordered that they be kept under surveillance and directed Radio Uganda to broadcast the statement continuously, attributing it first to a government spokesman, then to a police spokesman, then to an army spokesman and finally to a 'public spokesman.'

When a Military Attach'e in Moscow, an Acholi, protested against the surveillance, Amin denied any knowledge of the statement and assured the officer that those were fabrications from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

That is the situation that Kalyegira described as 'harmonious relations' between Amin and the Langis and Acholis, and if indeed they were, then I am afraid the expression has lost its meaning.”

The Langi were not safe under Amin, although initially some people thought they were because they and Amin were fellow northerners, even if from different regions in the north.

Being from far northwest, Amin was not really a typical northerner like Obote.

And the most prominent ethnic group in northern Uganda is not the Langi but the Acholi. The Langi are second to the Acholi in terms of prominence in northern Uganda.

The Acholi are also one of the most well-known ethnic groups in Uganda and in the entire East Africa.

They speak Luo as their native language.

Their homeland is the former Acholi District – now divided into the Gulu and Kitgum districts – and the adjoining area of southern Sudan. Most of them live in Uganda.

The Acholi landscape is characterised by rolling grasslands with scattered trees, streams, and rock outcrops. Northern Uganda is usually drier and less fertile than the south. The dry season is long and hot and the Acholi have adapted to this harsh environment.

Most Acholis are farmers – or peasants. Their man crops include millet, sorghum,beans, various kinds of peas, maize, cassava, vegetables, groundnuts, simsim (sesame), fruits and cotton.

The most common domestic animals are – and have long been – chickens and goats, with some cattle, especially in the dryer portions of Acholi.

Men have traditionally played a significant role in agriculture, especially for such time-limited, labour-intensive tasks as clearing, planting, and harvesting, often as part of lineage-based cooperative labour teams.

Women also work in the fields. They're also responsible for most child rearing, all cooking and other food-preparation tasks.

The building of houses and granaries has historically involved both men and women, with each performing specified functions.

Boys and girls are typically socialised into distinct gender roles and do household and other chores accordingly.

Since the advent of colonial rule, an average of 10 to 20 per cent of adult Acholi males at any one time have been involved in migrant labour or employment in the police or army that has taken them from their home and families – mostly to the south.

But only a small number of Acholis have filled middle-level or senior civil-service positions in independent Uganda. Most of these jobs are taken by southerners who are, relatively speaking, far more educated than their northern counterparts.

The situation is reminiscent of what happened in Nigeria where northerners – especially the Hausa – also joined the army during colonial rule and after independence in disproportionately large numbers as riflemen, while better educated southerners, mostly Ibgos and the Yorubas, served as army officers and as civil servants.

The neighbours of the Acholi include the Luo-speaking Langi, Paluo, and Alur to the south and southwest, the central Sudanic-speaking Madi to the west, and the eastern Nilotic Jie and Karamojong to the east.

One of the main reasons why the Acholi are so prominent in Ugandan contemporary history is that they joined the army in very large numbers and virtually dominated the armed forces as did other northerners.

Although the Acholi constituted less than 5 per cent of Uganda's population during the early years of independence, they were disproportionately represented in the army. An entire third of the enlisted men in the Ugandan army were Acholi. And more than 15 per cent of the police force were also Acholi.

Their dominant role in the armed forces also enabled them to play a major role in Uganda's political life.

When Obote first became prime minister and then president, they strongly supported him as a fellow northerner although he was a Langi, not an Acholi. And when Idi Amin seized power, they also supported him against his southern opponents.

And the military rulers of Uganda after Amin was overthrown were Acholi and other northerners until a southerner, Yoweri Museveni, rose to power after he toppled Obote.

Museveni became the first southerner, and the first Bantu, since independence to lead Uganda on long term-basis, besides Benedicto Kiwanuka who served very briefly as prime minister a few months before independence and Yusuf Lule who served as president, also for a very short period of time, after Amin was overthrown. The rest were Nilotic, and from northern Uganda.

General Tito Okello, an Acholi, was president of Uganda for six months from 1985 until January 1986 when he was ousted by Museveni. And another Acholi, Bazilio Olara-Okello, also briefly served as Uganda's military head of state for two days between 27 and 29 July 1985 when he was chairman of the military council, the supreme ruling body during that tumultuous period. He later became lieutenant-general and chief of the armed forces.

Even the army officers were mainly Acholi, as were the enlisted men, during those years. And they recruited into their ranks fellow northerners including the Langi, members of President Obote's ethnic group.

But their prominence in Uganda's security forces – army, intelligence, and air force – has also been a curse, sometimes, in a country wracked by violence. The violence has been fuelled by ethnic rivalries and the Acholi have been at the centre of this maelstrom in a number of conflicts.

In the most recent phase of conflict beginning in the mid-1980s, the Acholi have largely been at the receiving end of the violence. Uganda's current army, various local rebel groups and heavily armed Karamojong raiders have all raped, looted, killed, and destroyed, making any kind of normal life in Acholiland impossible.

Traditionally, the Acholi have been ruled by chiefs for centuries. Chiefdoms consisted of a number of fenced villages, each with recognised land rights vested in the patrilineal lineage – known as kaka – at its core.

Lineage heads, assisted by lineage elders, organised production based on cooperative village-lineage labour; controlled marriage; oversaw rituals and were the main advisors to the chief. They were also responsible for most of the social control exercised in Acholi.

But through the decades, chiefdoms in Acholi have become vestigial institutions, and the fences that once enclosed villages have disappeared.

Most Acholi, however, continue to live in neighbourhoods – parishes – that not only consist predominantly of patrilineal kinsmen and their wives but often carry the old lineage names.

Most Acholi also continue to live in thatched, round mud houses, although wealthier ones and those who live in towns or near major roads have square houses of mud or block with iron or tile roofs.

Localised patrilineal lineages, some of which have “brother” lineages of the same or different name in other parts of Acholi, have long been the fundamental social and economic units in Acholi.

Numbering between 400 and 500 by the turn of the 20^th century, these exogamous groups claim descent from a common ancestor – although means exist to incorporate many types of “outsiders” as well – and have special lineage shrines, ritual ceremonies, praise-calls and totems.

Traditional religion still plays a very important role in the lives of many Acholis.

Historically, Acholi religious beliefs focused on three types of spirits. There were the spirits of known relatives, especially lineage ancestors. The second type was non-ancestral and was for the chiefdom as a whole.

Spirits of both of these types were generally beneficent. They were approached with such general concerns as good health, fertility, and appeals or thanks for good harvests in ceremonies that usually emphasised the consciousness, cohesiveness, and continuation of their respective groups as functioning corporate entities.

The third group of spirits were those of unknown persons and dangerous beasts. These were hostile and personified as ghosts and were believed to cause sickness and other misfortunes and were dealt with by means of spirit possession.

Extensive mission activity in Acholiland by both Protestants and Catholics has attracted many followers since the second decade of the 20^th century, bringing about fundamental change in the lives of many people in that part of Uganda.

But in spite of all that, traditional beliefs still persist and are often meshed with Christian doctrine in complex ways. One illustration of this is the various spirit-possession-based millennial – and military – movements that have been prominent in Acholi during the extremely difficult period of the late 1980s and early 1990s, most famously the Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena.

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) led by John Kony, a cousin of the late Alice Lakwena, is the most brutal manifestation of these kinds of religious beliefs which are also expressed by military means. Kony claims he speaks with angels and wants Uganda to be ruled on the basis of the Ten Commandments.

Ironically, he's an Acholi himself who has unleashed terror and wreaked havoc among his own people for more than two decades and continues to do so at this writing in 2009.

His rebel group has been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths through the years since he launched his rebellion in 1986 when Museveni came to power. And the Acholi are among those who have suffered the most in this brutal conflict.

Tens of thousands more have been enslaved and raped and have had their limbs, lips and ears chopped off by the LRA rebels. Countless of these victims have been children who have been forcibly recruited to serve in the Lord's Resistance Army as child soldiers, porters and as sex slaves. And the rebels continue to wreak havoc in northern Uganda with impunity. It is a horrendous tragedy.

The suffering is unparalleled in the history of Uganda, the misery and horror seldom seen elsewhere, telescoped in this collective sentiment echoed by the victims: “When the sun sets, we start to worry.”

It's time to go to refugee camps where it's safe to sleep. And it's not always safe, because of the rebels. They could strike anytime. And they have, many times.

It's living hell.

Although the Lord's Resistance Army is responsible for this carnage, others are equally responsible.

The rebels don't make weapons. They don't make guns. They don't make bullets. Someone is arming them.

Sudan has been known to provide them with weapons and operational bases for years. But there are others. Some army officers within the Ugandan army itself are also responsible for fuelling and perpetuating the conflict.

And others place the blame even farther afield, across oceans. Although there's some truth to that – without the weapons which are manufactured abroad and which are sold to rebel groups in Africa, there would be no atrocities perpetrated on this scale – it would be wrong to blame outsiders for the entire holocaust, a calamity that has now become synonymous with northern Uganda.

One Ugandan, quoted below, has provided a perspective on the conflict. It's a perspective shared by some people and may be by a significant number of them. But it's also a perspective that may be disputed by some even if not in its entirety by all those who disagree with his analysis. It is, nonetheless, interesting and thought-provoking.

He was born in 1975 in Aboke, a town in northern Uganda, but – because of the war – he lived for 21 years in the nation's capital Kampala where he attended the renowned Makerere University. He graduated from Makerere in 1999. It was the decade when the conflict was at its peak in northern Uganda.

His name is David Kaiza, 34 years old, a reporter of The East African, a weekly newspaper based in Kenya's capital Nairobi. And he had this to say about the conflict in his article, “Northern Uganda: A Region Massacred by Western Scholars”:

“It was not until October 2004, during perhaps the worst phase in the two-decade war in northern Uganda, that I finally managed to visit the internally displaced people’s camps, more than a year after a massive June 2003 onslaught by the LRA.

Travelling with a medical aid team for this paper (The East African, October 11, 2004), the tight military regime meant we could only drive into the war-effected villages after 10 in the morning and had to clear out by 4 in the afternoon; hence the lines of sick people who had not received medical help for over a year, were too long to be served in that space of time. They would have to wait another week when their camp came back on schedule.

In the meantime, those who failed to reach the doctors on time would continue to die at the rate of 5 a day. The World Health Organisation considers it a crisis when 1.7 people out of 10,000 die a day. Northern Uganda’s death rates were therefore three times a crisis.

At about 3 that afternoon, there was a commotion at the edge of the camp. We heard distant ululation before a half-fearful, half-desperate family burst in carrying a bundle of cloth.

Then they stopped, the ululation turning to wailing. In the bundle was wrapped the body of a girl, Winnie Akwero, who that morning had gone into coma.

The family, having gone a year without any medicine, had given up on her, so it looked like divine intervention that a medical team had arrived.

Then, just 50 metres away from salvation, Winnie sneezed and died.

The cruel reality was that the number of people (including UPDF – Uganda People's Defence Forces – soldiers cheated out of income by commanding officers who used the money to set up money-lending businesses in Kampala) lining up for treatment was so large that this little incident was hardly noticed. Later, one of the American volunteer doctors asked me about the war: 'Is this a tribal war?'

I thought a while and nodded, 'Yes.'

I could have launched into the history of a hundred years of accumulated British divide and rule, into a scholarly explicative of post-colonial collapse, the politics of regional and ethnic hatred that so scarred the country.

But she’s American, I thought and lengthy, jargon-laden expositions make them tired. They like short, obvious explanations.

It might have been eastern Congo, Darfur, Zimbabwe or Somalia and still the task would have seemed too tedious. Now Obama is expected to come in and sort Africa out. His erudite, un-American president’s intelligence seems capable of taking in even longwinded explanations.

But to fully grasp what is happening, Obama has to read books, carefully sift through the centuries-old sediment of hostile, anti-African, Western scholarship. Nowhere has the continent been massacred as it has been in anthropology texts.

Perhaps he will need to talk to refugees and IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) to escape the nuanced, interest-ridden foreign office papers that simply say what is in the West’s interest.

A year-ago, the conflict in northern Uganda looked likely to come to an end. Now it has drawn in four African armies. The outcome is almost certain: Kony won’t be defeated.

One, he knows the bush; regular, centrally commanded state armies are not cut out for his kind of war.

Second, but more grimly, it is an illegitimate war that, like the one in eastern Congo, pits head-on totally divergent interpretations of the histories of the peoples of East and Central Africa.

Third, a factor that Obama can certainly do something about, the Ugandan army, perhaps now the Congolese and Sudanese and Central African Republic armies too, will not be interested in ending the LRA war: Ugandan People’s Defence Forces officers are some of the richest soldiers in this region because of the war. Kony has been kind to the UPDF.

What the American volunteer referred to as “tribal” becomes operable when you take tribe to mean ethnic or nation, for at the very depth of the conflicts in northern Uganda and eastern Congo, is an ugly contestation over who has a right to call himself African.

The debate started with colonialism’s classical policy of divide and rule and continues to divide the Great Lakes region.

In the introductory sections of his book, The Rwanda Crisis, Gerard Prunier presents a history of colonial Belgium dividing Rwandese into Caucasian-looking 'Tutsis' and Bantu 'Hutus.'

It was a fateful, inescapable creation, for this privileged externalisation of the Rwandan aristocracy to the status of half-whites meant that throughout the years of colonialism, they were not subject to the worst racialist treatment of the time.

But a hundred years since the group agreed to this elevation, the price they pay for it remains unacceptable.

It is until you have interviewed refugees from eastern Congo that the bitterness of the conflict hits you: 'They say we want their (beautiful) women,' the non-Tutsi Congolese tell you. 'They say we are not proper Africans,' the 'Tutsi' Congolese say.

The ugly truth of Rwanda and now the eastern Congo conflict was and remains that depending on their facial features, one brother passed for 'Tutsi,' the other for 'Hutu.'

In similar vein, northern Uganda leaders will tell you how Museveni’s jubilant soldiers trooped into Gulu town in 1986, after the overthrow of the Okello regime. 'You used to say we were weak,' the then NRA soldiers told the local populace. 'Now we have defeated you. You will live like grasshoppers in a bottle. You will see the world but you will not touch it.'

This statement has long been interpreted to mean that the southerners intended to keep northerners permanently encamped.

In reverse, Prunier refers to 'northerners nostalgic for the days of Nilotic dominance in Uganda.'

A scholastic subterfuge palmed off on the region decades ago, continues to undermine peace and stability. It can neither be solved militarily nor diplomatically. Only the most patient and thoughtful leadership can tackle it.

It is an ugly, pseudo-racist conflict that needs to be understood in these terms if it is to be properly handled.

To have been divided into broad, anthropological types means that Ugandans view the war in terms of history, rather than politics. Hence, for hardliners in Museveni’s camp (and this includes Museveni himself), 'we have defeated you' remains unconvincing as long as Kony carries a gun.

A negotiated end to the war would mean a historical failure. Hence, when Museveni visits northern Uganda, he does so in full military gear. He is not meeting his 'citizens,' he is on a foray into 'enemy' territory.

As he said, Uganda is a country of 'Bantu speakers,' and northerners don’t speak 'Bantu.'

For Kony’s backers, the war seems to be proceeding well, for exponents of “Nilotic dominance” see themselves as undefeated by the old enemy, nearly a thousand years since their ancestors overran the kingdoms of southern Uganda.

To speak to refugees from eastern Congo about their war is to come into contact with an interpretation of history that churns the stomach. An intractable, even existential outrage hangs over such sentiments; it’s beyond minerals, beyond politics.

To a large extent, 'tribalism' was created through breaking up older, settled kingdoms such as Buganda and Bunyoro-Kitara; large, influential centres of power that encompassed many language groups who had come to accept centralised authority, were reduced to 'tribes.'

Where 'tribes' did not exist, the colonial governments and scholars made sure they did – 'Nubians' being a good example. But because neither country nor land called Nubia is in the vicinity, they are forever externalised.

It was a work of evil genius. For a people once externalised – 'Tutisified' or 'Nubianised' – fell and continue to fall prey to Western manipulation, ready to pick up guns and fight for their 'survival' when in most cases this is code for paving the way for Western speculators to get their hands on coltan.

These are the deep intimacies of conflict that Western leaders have so far broad-brushed off — or instigated in the pursuit of gold and oil.

Plutocrats in London, Paris and Washington continue to prosper on the old instruments of divide and rule.

Sorting Africa out will be a lot more than just banging Museveni’s and Kony’s heads together.

It will mean undoing decades of CIA, M15-sponsored 'scholars' who continue to churn out books and 'studies' that 'inform' policy makers and stir up sentiments of former 'greatness' within desperate 'tribes.'

It will also depend on what the new US president says to the British prime minister and the French president.

There is some degree of irony involved in the Obama ascendancy. He is now going to have to revitalise the very Western economies that his father’s people and his wife’s great-great grandfather were once exploited to create.

As a scholarly man, Obama will understand the intricacies of dubious scholarship. There remain a myriad 'research' and 'regional' Western institutions that continue to sponsor divisive studies and churn out journals by the truckload.

The recent book by British 'scholar' Tom Stacey titled Tribe seems written to ensure that the wars in northern Uganda and eastern Congo do not end.

Already, Obama has given notice: 'To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history,' he said.

He also went on to say, clearly to avoid alienating the right, that: 'To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build.'

Both true and complex – a lot of those sowers of conflict, President Obama, live next door to you in Washington.

Yet the best thing Obama can do is leave the continent to its own devices. It may seem ironic, but Africa ought to be more wary of Obama than any other Western leader.

The continent must not forget that he is presiding over a system that succeeds by breaking other societies and will not start going into reverse just yet. It will be foolish for us to enter into any binding agreements with the US just because his name starts with an O.

The dilemma is a fine one: While it is important for the image of Africa that we wish him success, for the continent’s self-interest, it is important that he not succeed too much or he will merely strengthen a hegemonic system whose renewed strength will continue to create bogus wars on the continent.

After all, he is likely to be the last black US president for a long time to come.” - (David Kaiza, “Northern Uganda: A Region Massacred by Western Scholars,” The East African, Nairobi, Kenya, 23 January 2009).

In the meantime, northern Uganda continues to bleed. And as the north continues to suffer, the whole country suffers.

This reminds me of what President Sekou Toure of Guinea once said in a larger context with regard to Africa being one: “Africa is like a human body – if one finger is cut, the whole body feels the pain.”

Appendix I:

Causes and consequences of the war in Acholiland

Professor Ogenga Otunnu

THE roots of the current war between the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Acholiland are entwined with the history of conflicts in Uganda and the rise to power of the National Resistance Movement/National Resistance Army (NRM/A).

The conflict has persisted because of fragmented and divisive national politics, strategies and tactics adopted by the armed protagonists, and regional and international interests.

The harrowing war has claimed many innocent civilian lives, forcefully displaced over 400,000 people and destroyed schools and health centres. In addition, the war has been characterized by widespread and systematic violations of human rights, including rapes, abductions of men, women and children, torture, increased economic decay, and national and regional insecurity.

Uganda: Land and People

Uganda lies along the Equator, between the great East African Rift Valleys. It is a landlocked country, bordered by Sudan in the north, Kenya in the east, Tanzania in the south, Rwanda in the southwest and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the west.

With a landmass of 241,139 square kilometres, its population is about 20 million.

Its territory includes Lake Victoria, Lake Albert, Lake Edward and Lake Kyoga. These lakes, together with several elaborate networks of river drainage, constitute the headwaters of the River Nile.

The country’s economy is primarily agrarian, comprised mostly of smallholdings though pastoralism is dominant in Karamoja and Ankole.

Lake Kyoga forms both a physical and linguistic marker.

South of Kyoga is the so-called Bantu region, with the centralized pre-colonial states of Buganda, Toro, Ankole (Nkore) and Bunyoro the dominant territories.

North and east of Kyoga are the non-Bantu territories of the Acholi, Alur, Langi, Iteso and Karamojong.

The Acholi inhabit present-day northern Uganda and southern Sudan, where, in the pre-colonial era, they constructed decentralized states.

In the 1970s, the Acholi district of northern Uganda was divided into Gulu and Kitgum districts. In 2001, Kitgum was subdivided to create a third district of Pader. The three districts constitute an area commonly referred to as Acholiland.

Conflicts and fragmentation in colonial Uganda

Contemporary violent conflicts in the country are directly related to the profound crisis of legitimacy of the state, its institutions and their political incumbents.

This crisis, in part, reflects the way the state was constructed through European expansionist violence, manipulation of pre-existing differences, administrative policies of divide and rule and economic policies that further fractured the colonial entity.

These policies did not only undermine the faltering legitimacy of the state, but also impeded the emergence of a Ugandan nationalism and generated ethnic, religious and regional divisions that were to contribute in later years to instability and political violence.

One significant divide was along the lines of religious affiliation, which can be traced back to the arrival of Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism in Buganda.

These religious groups engaged in a ferocious conflict for dominance, and the Protestant faction emerged victorious after the Imperial British East Africa Company intervened in their favour.

Anglicans were to late dominate the top positions in the civil service, and this structural inequality was maintained after the colonial era. Consequently, religious beliefs and political party affiliations were to become entangled.

Conflicts in the colonial state were exacerbated by the partition of the country into economic zones. For example, while a large portion of the territory south of Lake Kyoga was designated as cash crop growing and industrial zones, the territory north of Lake Kyoga was designated as a labour reserve.

This partition, which was not dictated by development potentials, led to economic disparities between the south and the north.

The fragmentation of the society was compounded by the economic-cum-administrative policy that left the civil service largely in the hands of Baganda and the army largely in the hands of the Acholi and other northern ethnic groups.

These policies also widened the gulf between the socio-political south and the socio-political north. This was further sustained by the administrative policy that relied on the Baganda as colonial agents in other parts of the country.

The policy of divide and rule, which rested on so-called ‘indirect rule’, led to widespread anti-Buganda sentiment.

Conflicts and fragmentation in post-independent Uganda

The post-colonial regime inherited a fractured state. Milton Obote responded to this crisis of legitimacy by forming an alliance between his political party, the Uganda People's Congress (UPC) and the Buganda monarchy party (Kabaka Yekka).

With this marriage of convenience, Obote became the Executive Prime Minister and Kabaka Mutesa II became the President and Head of State. However, the alliance collapsed over a conflict over land (the ‘lost counties’) between Bunyoro and Buganda.

The ‘divorce’ led to widespread violence in Buganda. Obote responded by detaining five government ministers from the Bantu region, dismissing the President and Vice President and forcing President Mutesa into exile and suspending the 1962 constitution.

The government also imposed a state of emergency in Buganda, occupied Buganda’s palace, following the flight of the Kabaka to England, and introduced a republican constitution.

Some Bantu-speaking groups perceived this struggle for legitimacy and power as a conflict between the Bantu south and the non-Bantu (Nilotic) north.

These difficulties overlapped with the instability generated in the region by the superpowers’ quest for hegemony during the Cold War.

These crises were compounded by a conflict between Obote and his army commander, General Idi Amin.

In 1971, Amin seized power.

Immediately after he came to power, Amin ordered Acholi and Langi soldiers, who constituted the backbone of the army, to surrender their arms. The overwhelming majority of them did so. However, many were subsequently killed.

The government extended its conflict with the Acholi and Langi by arresting, detaining and killing highly educated and influential members of the ethnic groups.

Over time, Amin began to target people he perceived as disloyal from other parts of the county.

To protect the regime which lacked political legitimacy in the country, Amin recruited new soldiers into the national army from West Nile.

In addition, he appointed prominent Bantu to important positions in his government.

The regime, however, largely maintained the dominance of southerners in the civil service and commerce, while the northerners largely controlled the government and army.

In April 1979, the exiled rebels, who were overwhelmingly from Acholi and Langi, assisted by the Tanzanian army and Yoweri Museveni’s Front for National Salvation (FRONASA), overthrew the Amin regime. Yusuf Lule assumed power.

However, ideological and ethnic conflicts within the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) and the national army led to the collapse of the Lule administration within months. Godfrey Binaisa took over, but was himself deposed in May 1980 by Paulo Muwanga and his deputy Yoweri Museveni.

The new administration organized general elections in December 1980, which were won by Milton Obote and his Uganda People’s Congress. But widespread irregularities and political violence undermined the legitimacy of the elections.

The main challenger, the Democratic Party (DP), rejected Obote's victory. Museveni also rejected the results.

Thereafter, a number of armed groups, including Lule’s Uganda Freedom Fighters, Museveni’s Popular Resistance Army (later they were to merge to form the National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A), and Dr Andrew Kayira's Uganda Freedom Movement/Army (UFM/A), declared war against the Obote government.

In West Nile, Brigadier Moses Ali’s Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) and General Lumago's Former Uganda National Army (FUNA) also engaged the army and the UPC in bitter armed opposition.

Fighting was particularly intense in the Luwero triangle, where the mostly Baganda population was targeted for their perceived support of rebel groups. Many innocent civilians were tortured and murdered by the UNLA.

Although the UNLA was a national and multi-ethnic army, the NRM/A held the Acholi exclusively responsible for the atrocities committed, and this disputed perception was to shape subsequent attitudes toward the conflict.

In July 1985, conflict between some Langi and Acholi soldiers led to the overthrow of the Obote regime.

The coup, which brought General Tito Okello (an Acholi) to power, shattered the military alliance between the Acholi and Langi and escalated ethnic violence.

The Okello regime invited all fighting groups and political parties to join the military government.

Every armed group and political party, with the exception of the NRA, joined the administration.

The NRA, however, engaged the regime in protracted peace negotiations held in Nairobi. In December 1985, the Nairobi Agreement was signed under the chairmanship of President Moi of Kenya.

However, the Agreement was never implemented and Museveni seized power on the 25th January 1986.

The NRA’s seizure of power effectively meant that for the first time, socio-economic, political and military powers were all concentrated in the south.

The new administration, which absorbed political and military groups from the south and Moses Ali's UNRF group, engaged in intensive anti-northern propaganda.

The administration also discriminated against groups from eastern Uganda and West Nile.

This severe alienation and marginalization led to armed conflicts in Teso and West Nile.

After much destruction and displacement of the population in Teso, the government negotiated an end to the conflict in the east.

Emergence of the conflict in Acholiland

By April 1986, the Acholi had largely come to terms with the NRA victory.

The majority of former UNLA soldiers also heeded the appeal made by the government to hand over their arms and demobilize. The response by the Acholi ended the armed engagement in the territory.

However, after months of relative calm, anxieties escalated when the NRA began to commit human rights abuses in the name of crushing a nascent rebellion.

Over time NRA soldiers plundered the area and committed atrocities, including rape, abductions, confiscation of livestock, killing of unarmed civilians, and the destruction of granaries, schools, hospitals and bore holes escalated.

These atrocities in Acholiland were justified by some as revenge for the 'skulls of Luwero.'

Against this background of mistrust and violence, in May 1986 the government ordered all former UNLA soldiers to report to barracks.

The order was met with deep suspicion, in part, because it was reminiscent of Amin's edict that led to the 1971 massacre of Acholi soldiers.

Some ex-UNLA soldiers went into hiding; others fled to Sudan and some decided to take up arms.

Soon, these ex-soldiers were joined by a stream of youths fleeing from NRA operations.

During this period, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which was perceived by Acholi refugees as an ally of the Museveni government, attacked a refugee camp in southern Sudan.

On August 20, 1986, some Acholi refugee combatants, led by Brigadier Odong Latek, attacked the NRA. This armed group, known as the Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA), was later joined by the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces/Movement (HSMF/HSM), Severino Lukoya's Lord's Army, ultimately to be followed by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Why the war has persisted

The war has lasted for nearly sixteen years because of a number of interrelated factors.

To begin with, the war in Acholi has become an extension of regional and international power struggles.

On the regional front, Uganda provided military hardware and sanctuary to the SPLA. In retaliation, the Sudan government provided sanctuary and military hardware to the LRA.

On the international front, both the Uganda government and the SPLA received military and political support from the US, in part to curtail the influence of the Islamic government in Khartoum.

Another factor perpetuating the conflict has been that the war has become a lucrative source and cover for clandestine income for high-ranking military and government officials and other profiteers.

In addition, the unwillingness of the government and the LRA to genuinely pursue a negotiated settlement has sustained the war.

Lastly, atrocities committed by the LRA against unarmed civilians and the unwillingness of the rebel group to accept alternative political views on the conflict have prolonged the war.

Consequences of the war

The horrific and prolonged consequences of this war have devastated the society – a society that has been reduced to ‘displaced camps’, where people languish without assistance and protection.

The war has also destroyed the culture and social fabric of the Acholi society. Large numbers of orphans, who fend for themselves, illustrate this tragedy.

Furthermore, some children have been abducted by the LRA and forced to torture and kill. Thus, the Rt. Rev. Macleod Baker Ochola II summarized some of the effects the war on Acholiland as follows:

‘Violent deaths of our people in the hands of various armed groups; arson perpetrated on mass scale in our land; rape and defilement of our women and girls; abduction of our young people; forced recruitment of our people into rebel ranks; the prevalence of a general atmosphere of fear and disenchantment amongst our people; mass displacement of our people; creation of protected villages which have become breeding grounds for malnutrition and deaths resulting from cholera, measles, and preventable diseases amongst our people; and destruction of our infrastructures and continuous decline in socio-economic growth.’(KM, 1997)

The war has also destabilized other parts of the country and contributed to other regional conflicts in the Great Lakes.

The multi-faceted and interrelated causes and consequences of the war should not, therefore, be seen as exclusively an Acholi issue. Nor should the war be treated as merely a humanitarian crisis.

It has many dimensions: political, social, economic and humanitarian. As such, durable solutions will need to respond to all of these challenges.

Dr. Ogenga Otunnu was Assistant Professor of African History, Refugee Studies and Contemporary Global Issues at DePaul University (Chicago) when he wrote this article in 2002.

He also taught African History and Refugee Studies at York University (Toronto) and has published on refugee crises, conflict resolution and genocide in Africa. Research for this article was partly done by Jane Laloyo.

Source: Conciliation Resources, 173 Upper Street, London, UK.

Appendix II:

Obote: Reflections on his Years in Office

and other subjects since Independence

LET ME take stock of my life history as prime minister, later president of Uganda twice, and as leader of that great political party, the Uganda Peoples’ Congress (UPC).

What have the UPC and I achieved in our life history?

My Successes

When I look back, I see the liberation of Uganda from colonial rule and later from Idi Amin’s tyranny as my greatest contribution to my country. The second pillar of my legacy is the economic development of Uganda.

In both my first and second administration, Uganda’s economy grew impressively well: at an annual average of 5 percent in the 1960s and 6 percent in the early 1980s. These facts can be verified from the library of the Ministry of Finance in Entebbe.

In the economic sphere, by the time Idi Amin staged the coup, Uganda was a net supplier of ready made textiles and garment to major departmental stores like H&M, C&A, Marks & Spencer etc.

Museveni does not know that Uganda by 1970 had reached a stage of the manufacture and export of industrial products and was competing very well in European markets, and was about to enter the US market.

As a result, throughout the 1960s, Uganda enjoyed an impressive trade surplus, as our export volumes and values increased considerably. The share of industry and services increased, while that of agriculture to total GDP reduced. There was also a rapid expansion of the monetary economy.

The third pillar of my work is investment in social infrastructure to improve the quality of life of our people. We wanted our people to live well.

So we invested in housing estates for the upper and middle-income groups. Large-scale apartment blocks like Bugolobi, Bat Valley and Bukoto estates are a product of this effort.

The UPC administration made significant investments in health by building 22 rural hospitals in every district (then) and over 500 dispensaries in every sub country in Uganda. Our investment in education in both my first and second administration was also significant and that is why UPC is popular all over Uganda.

We expanded existing schools like Budo, Mwiri, Nyakasura, Ntare, and all other A-class secondary schools from 320 students to 760 by building more and better classrooms, dormitories and laboratories.

We expanded Makerere University and other institutions of higher learning, in terms of student in-take, physical infrastructure, academic facilities and student welfare.

Then we built roads, improved the rail system and expanded our air services. My government established state enterprises and ran them more efficiently, more profitably and more effectively than many, if not most private enterprises in Uganda.

State owned banks, industries and other parastatal bodies attracted the most professionally talented Ugandans and increased the participation of Africans in their own economy.

We also promoted the development of private enterprises owned by Ugandans who competed effectively, just like state enterprises, against both multi national companies and Asian owned business.

It is Museveni and Amin who killed state enterprises and turned them into incompetent and loss making enterprises.

The fourth pillar of my achievements is in the field of international relations. I was a founder member of the Organisation of African Unity. During that conference, I played a major role in hammering out the compromise between the Monrovia Group and the Casablanca group, and personally suggested the creation of a body to drive Africa towards unity.

I am very proud of the role played by me personally and my government generally in the liberation of many African countries from the yoke of colonial rule. We contributed money, logistics and diplomatic support to the different liberation movements in Africa in both my first and second administrations.

Uganda was among the countries that former South African President Nelson Mandela visited when he ran from South Africa and visited other African states looking for support.

In his book No Easy Walk to Freedom, Mandela does refer to my meeting him and offering support.

Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana were the three major Commonwealth nations that opposed Ian Smith and his Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965.

It was because of my deep involvement in the struggle for South Africa’s liberation that I went to Singapore to attend the Commonwealth conference there in January 1971, and caused the British to gang with the Israelis, South Africans and Amin to overthrow my government.

My Failures

On the negative side, I consider control of the military as being my major failure.

I regret ever having trusted Idi Amin. I should also never have left Tito Okello and Bazillio Okello in command positions in the army.

I am reluctant to condemn Paulo Muwanga because I am not very sure about his role in the coup.

In any case, Muwanga remained a strong UPC until he died.

I also regret that my second administration was unable to stop the killings and massacres of innocent civilians in Luweero by Museveni and his insurgent army. As head of government, it was my duty to ensure the safety of person and property in Luweero from all threats – be they from within government or from without.

I also regret the move to the left. With hindsight, I think we should not have attempted socialist or nationalisation policies.

Regarding the attack on the Lubiri, I regret it only in as far as I was the head of government. I had nothing to do with it.

I was having a luncheon at Kampala Lodge with Bulasio Kavuma, Badru Kakungulu and Elidad Muwonge of Bugerere when we heard at about two o’clock, a bomb at Lubiri.We later found out that it was Idi Amin’s soldiers who were bombing Lubiri.

I called for Amin, he came and we discussed it. Amin tried to justify his action saying that the men who were in the Lubiri wanted to overthrow the government, wanted to overpower the army. I did not accept that one. I ordered him to return the troops to the barracks, which he did.

By this time, the battle of Mengo was over, although many authors have said the battle went on into the night.

Unfortunately Mutesa was my friend.

Regarding the current political situation in Uganda, I am not happy with the proposed cabinet White Paper because from the little I have read, it seems as though Museveni wants to manipulate the return to multi party politics without actually freeing political parties. Regarding federo, I think Buganda should get it. In the 1960s we accepted it as the UPC government.

We found that federo virtually means division of work between two governments. We assessed the different institutional and resource capacities of the different districts/regions – Toro, Ankole, Bunyoro, Busoga and Buganda and we gave them different degrees of control of their own resources.

I regret to say that Buganda used federo to undermine the central government.

The Kabaka was used to attempt to overthrow his own government when he was also president of Uganda, a very unfortunate development.

Also important to note is that at the time, ethnic loyalties were very strong in Uganda and the kingdoms did not help much in helping the young nation to develop a national identity.

One of the reasons why the government, and later the constituent assembly, decided in 1967 to abolish kingdoms was because of this problem.

Today, Ugandans have a strong sense of nationhood and therefore kingdoms no longer pose a threat to national unity, at least not to the magnitude that we had to deal with in 1960s.

Regarding Buganda, the current Kabaka, Ronald Mutebi is a more understanding king than his father, with better judgement to avoid the pitfalls Mutesa led Uganda into.

In any case, although many people in Buganda may not accept this, the dissolution of their kingdom as a result of conflict with the central government in 1966/7 has taught them to be more careful in the future and therefore not to press unrealistic demands on the central government.

My return to Uganda

I hope I will return home, because Uganda is my country and I have spent the best efforts of the last five decades to the development of my country.

There was a time when Ruhakana Rugunda was Minister for the Presidency and he presented a paper to cabinet about my return. As it turned out there was no plan at all but a manoeuvre to try and lure me back to Uganda and perhaps to kill me.

Recently, Museveni asked a friend of his, an Indian here in Lusaka that he should like to meet me. And I asked the Indian, what for? I never received a reply and when the day of the meeting came, I sent a delegation to meet Museveni to get the message from him.

Instead, Museveni turned around and claimed I am the one who had called the meeting. Since he had nothing for my delegation, the meeting collapsed.

I am very reluctant to meet Museveni. I would not want to meet him. If in the unlikely event I found Museveni in the same room as myself, I would walk out. I hate Museveni very much because the man killed my parents; I would be inhuman not to hate him. The army attacked my father’s home! He was a blind man.

My father told the boy who used to hold his stick to go and climb a tree. The boy went. My father was put in the courtyard in his chair. The soldiers came and they cut off his tongue.

They said they would not waste a bullet on him. He died bleeding. I built a house with a water-tank on top and had a bore-hole in front of my mother’s house. So people who came to draw water would also fill the tank up. The tank served my mother in her house.

They went and pulled off the borehole that it was built with government money. I had never used government money in all the years that I was in government to do personal work or to build my house or my father’s house. In short I was never corrupt. Never!

If there has been a Ugandan president who has never been corrupt, I am that president. So my mother got a heart attack and never recovered.

I would not want to talk to Museveni face to face. Museveni is a killer.

My conditions for returning to Uganda are simple. When the parties are operating, and there is no more dictatorship, I will return to Uganda. I am the father of the nation.

Whatever people may say, whatever Museveni says, I am the father of Uganda. I cannot live in Uganda when it is being ruled under a dictatorship and the army.

I would rather be out! Museveni being in government does not necessarily mean dictatorship and military government. Museveni can be under democracy. It depends on the situation.

One time I read that Museveni had offered to rebuild my house in Lira. I don’t accept that. He destroyed it, now why would I want the taxpayer to do it for me?

If by accident of history I found myself in the same room with Museveni, I would poke him if I had a stick. That is how much I loathe and hate the man. He is a huge fellow I can poke him anywhere.

My message to him is that he should not bother me. I am willing to come home provided there is no dictatorship and no one party rule. He is punishing Ugandans for nothing and punishing himself for nothing. The man does not sleep. I have been a president I know he does not sleep. He is worried that all the suffering he has taken Uganda through will come back to haunt him.

I personally was never worried about being overthrown when I was president the way Museveni worries about it. This is because while I was president, I served the people. Museveni is president to serve his ego. If I were overthrown, I would worry about the service to the people. If Museveni is overthrown, he would worry about himself.

So what else would someone do other than overthrow me? You have got to replace me and do wonders that UPC did for Uganda. All those who replaced me failed to register my achievements.

I do not therefore miss being president because I never worked for it. I did not like titles like Your Excellency.

You remember in 1980 while we were campaigning I stopped UPC members who had been in the NCC from calling themselves honourables.

My days as president were days spent very well. However, there were days spent badly. My major preoccupation was working for the people of Uganda and the people of Africa.

I would consider a day good if I spent it successfully designing or implementing a project that would improve the lives of the people of Uganda. A bad day would be a day spent without designing or implementing a good project.

So I would spend most of my time as president working on projects like the construction of hospitals, schools, roads, industries, water projects, electricity for the people and other economic projects.

One of the major problems of being president was being cut off from my family. Being president is a very demanding job. You cannot be with the family and be president successfully at the same time.

My greatest joy for being prime minister and later president twice was to be able to serve the people of Uganda.

Travelling abroad for international conferences was a great experience. I remember the time I travelled to London for a Commonwealth conference. It was 1963. When I arrived, Kwame Nkrumah then president of Ghana shouted to all other heads of state and said, “There is Obote!”

I was very proud to be introduced by such a great man, to such a gathering of leaders. I was very proud.

The one person I admired most was Nkrumah who is now dead. He was a personal friend and an inspiration in the struggle for Africa’s liberation and unity.

The other leader was Mahatma Ghandi. I never met him but I liked his philosophy.

Nkrumah had ideas about Africa, which were good. But implementation was difficult.

He was not patient enough to cultivate implementation. He was in a hurry. But he was an illustrious leader. Africa has not had such a great man again.

Nkrumah was frustrated by the western powers through the manipulation of the price of cocoa on the international market. They pushed it downward in order to cause him foreign exchange problems and when he was overthrown, the price went up in Ghana, which means that those who were responsible for it put the price down in order to undermine Nkrumah.

Nkrumah thought African, governed African, lived African and died African.

Another leader who inspired me was Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India. He governed a difficult party, the Indian National Congress, and a difficult country, India, and he did it democratically.

The other leader I respected a lot was Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. He was a personal friend and a very successful president.

I admired and liked Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and we were close friends.

One of the icons of Africa was Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. The other was Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria.

I had also great admiration for Sekou Toure of Guinea and when I was overthrown in 1971, he sent me a message of support.

Source: The Monitor, Kampala, Uganda, 25 April 2005; Godfrey Mwakikagile, Africa After Independence: Realities of Nationhood, Second Edition, Continental Press, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2009.

Uganda: Cultures and Customs and National Identity

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 256 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (11 July 2011)

ISBN-13: 9789987160273

ISBN-10: 9987160271