By Bruno Machabire
Ever since the bad blood was drawn between Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, it came to lime light that Banyarwanda [people from Rwanda or of Rwandan origin] were and actually continue to face a bloody situation in Uganda.
Thirty Banyarwanda elders last year met President Yoweri Museveni to, among other things, petition for protection against harassment by security agencies, especially the Internal Security Organisation (ISO) and to a certain extent the Military Intelligence (CMI) and other government agencies like NIRA that has been denying them national IDs and Immigration centre that has no love for them when ever they come to register for passports.
Banyarwanda (whether Ugandan or Rwandan citizens) who are being harassed are by and large innocent.
Infact it is worth noting that he Banyarwanda factor had earlier also stood in the way of the failed constitutional proposal for “dual citizenship”.
The proposal was blocked in the Constituency Assembly (CA) largely because many delegates nursed the fear that “Rwandese” would “swamp” Uganda once the new Constitution opened the way to dual citizenship.
None of the then CA delegates openly admits that, but privately many concede it was the Banyarwanda factor that largely influenced their stand on dual citizenship.
But how can we allow anti-Banyarwandism to blind us to the broader benefits of dual citizenship, for example?.
Why should someone with a Ugandan parent and a Sudanese or Canadian mother or father be denied to be a dual citizen simply because we are scared of Banyarwanda “taking over” Uganda?
The ongoing witch-hunt against Banyarwanda brings back traumatic memories of 1982 when the Obote II Government hounded and persecuted Banyarwanda, especially in western Uganda.
Their only crime then – as now – was their ethnicity. Obote, Chris Rwakasisi and Co. suspected they were sympathetic to then NRA guerilla leader Yoweri Museveni who they claimed was “Rwandese”!
Today security agencies see every other Munyarwanda – Ugandan citizen or not – as a Kagame spy. It is like 1982 all over again!
Outside Rwanda itself, the Banyarwanda in Uganda form the biggest sub-group, and are also the best documented (Watson, 1991). In 1991, they numbered slightly over 1.3 million and fell into three categories:
(1) One third were truly Ugandan Banyarwanda, whose families lived inside Uganda when the colonial boundaries were finally drawn in 1910. The settlement of the colonial borders added Banyarwanda population in the south-west of Uganda, the so-called Bafumbira. They were mostly Hutu agriculturalists, but intense land-pressure has since driven thousands to migrate to Kampala. Other Banyarwanda, mostly Tutsi, have long been living in Ankole.
(2) About half were descendants of migrants who came to Uganda in search of a better life between 1920 and 1959, i.e. before the so-called peasant revolt and the process to independence in Rwanda. They came as labourers, responding to the acute lack of manpower following the introduction of cash crops in Uganda. Life is reported to have been easier there than in Rwanda (and Burundi). Baganda employers paid twice the rate compared to those in Rwanda, work and food were plentiful and corporal punishment rare. Both Hutu and Tutsi migrated. Hutu, however, appear to have assimilated more easily.
(3) Finally, some 15% were refugees, mostly Tutsi, who had arrived mainly between 1959 and 1964. Ugandan authorities have over time ruled that the offspring of these refugees are also to be considered refugees, thus increasing the original count threefold in the early 1990s. There settlements were solid and permanent – more like villages than refugee camps. But guess what, even then they were excluded from employment in the Ugandan public service so the mistreatment we see today has deeper and sharp roots but amidst all this we are not going mute about this bloody situation our fellow Africans are facing, the reason i task government of Uganda to urgently address this matter because their lives matter!.
The writer Mr Bruno Machabire is a famous Ugandan Activist and A Vocal Human Rights Defender.
