MAKERERE UNIVERSITY

A HISTORY OF MIGRANCY, NATIVISM, AND CITIZENSHIP IN UGANDA, 1894-

1995: A CASE OF SOUTH AND WESTERN UGANDA

NICHOLAS TUNANUKYE

BAED (MAK), M.A. HISTORY (MAK)

2017/HD03/19249U

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR

THE AWARD OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY OF MAKERERE

UNIVERSITY

April 2022

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

During this academic journey, I met many people at different stages who in one way or another

helped me sail through the graduate school. It is indeed impossible to acknowledge a good

percentage of them. I highly appreciate all invaluable contribution for a few mentioned below

and many unmentioned.

I am grateful to my patient supervisors: Dr. Simon Peter Rutabajuuka and Dr. Deo Katono

Nzarwa for reading and re-reading countless drafts of my work. They shaped, mentored and

mouldered me to become a student of History. Here too, I register my appreciation to the

members of the doctoral committee namely- Dr. Charlotte Karungi, Dr. Pamela Khanakwa and

Professor Peter Atekyereza whose engagement greatly broadened my imaginations. From the

Department of History, Archaeology and Heritage Studies, I received a learning experience

provided by the staff: Katuramu Ijuka Alex, Kamukama Dixon, Zaina Nabirye, Mulindwa

Fred, Herman Muwonge, Godra Korugyendo, Godfrey Mugisha, Josephine Sanyu and Kasirye.

I would like to acknowledge The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, whose grant to the College

of Humanities and Social Sciences enabled me to undertake this study. When my stipends were

almost depleted, the Directorate of Research and Graduate Training (DGRT) awarded me a

dissertation completion Grant. These grants supported me and my research team: Birungi

Judith, Kabajjungu, Birabwa Cissy, Kobusingye, Martha, Charles Sekitoleko, Johnson, Evas

Kiconco, all respondents to do credible field work in Bunyoro, Buganda and Ankole, archival

research in Kabale and National Archives, and library research in Makerere main library.

My dear parents Mr and Mrs Kataate who tirelessly supported my formal schooling, and

together with my siblings: Rose, Papias, Evas, Savias, Afra, Judith, Martin, Adon, Leonard and

James inspired and encouraged me to soldier on in life.

Special gratitude goes to Dr. Edgar Curtis Taylor for being available to provide every reading

material I required for this thesis. His task as a Departmental Coordinator Graduate studies and

Departmental seminars exposed me to the world of academia. A mong the Departmental

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seminars, I single out the February 4, 2020 with Professor Derek Peterson in which this thesis

gained historical muscle on the usage of archival documents. Together with Dr. Pamela

Khanakwa and Christopher Muhoozi, these graduate seminars ignited historical debates that

were beneficial to this study. To these, I add senior historian Mwambutsya Ndebesa who

continuously challenged my understanding of citizenship puzzle. While Dr. John Baligira

shared with me the recording of the Radio talk show about conflicts in Kibaale in early 2000s,

Dr. Elizabeth Kyazike continuously encouraged me to dig deeper into the histories of the

conflicts.

Beyond the Department, I am indebted to Dr. Veneranda Mbabazi, Dr. Nicholas Ssempijja, Dr.

Chris Tuhirirwe, Dr. Jimmy Spire Sentongo, Professor Edward Wamala, Professor Kigongo,

Dr. Kasozi Mutaawe, Dr. John Atwebembeire Mushomi, Professor Sarah Sali, Professor

Godfrey Asiimwe, Professor Lajul, Professor Dominica Dipio, Professor Susan Kiguli, Dr.

Katushemererwe, Dr Merit Kabugo, Dr. Gibert Gumoshabe, Rymond Otika, Dr. Danson

Kahyana, Dr. Gervase Tusabe, Dr. William Tayebwa, Dr Loice Natukunda, for their earlier

pieces of advice, mentorship and training, their question of “how far?” encouraged me.

My friends and mentors provided moral and all sorts of support. These included: Dr. Sabastiano

Rwengabo, Dr. Agatha Alidri, Hadijah yahya, Arthur, Brenda Chitechi, Fred Niringiye, Gerald

Tushabe, Anne Jepkemboi, Sr. Prossy Nansikombi, Yusuf Kasumba, Vicent Mujinya, Sylvia

Ndagire, Walter, Mabingo, Ssebana, Martin, Wickliff, Ben, Blair, Birungi Deborah, Ms Meresi

Kanoel and her sons: Edwin, Elias and Elijah and Ms Sidona and her sons: Justus Byamukama,

Robert and Paul; The Families of late Bernard Kananura, Emmanuel Ahimbisibwe,

Mwongyezi, Adonia Tukundane, Joseph Kamoga, Gerald Tumusiime, Zeph Mugume, Pastori

Mukwatanise, Edison Tugume, Muhwezi David, Bernard Twesigye and John Tibesigwa.

Support of administrators at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS) provided

enabling environment that I attribute to my success. These champions include: Professor Patrick

Mangeni, Professor Josephine Ahikire, Professor Edward Kirumira, Professor Julius Kikooma,

Dr. Edgar Nabutanyi, Dr. Levis Mugumya, Ms Catherine Kirumira, Vincent Ekwang, Ms

Alice Tomusange, Ms Florence Birabwa, Nelson Amati and Icha

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Fellow classmates of 2018 cohort of The Andrew W. Mellon and Gerda-Henkel, and letter

cohorts, I am greatly indebted to you. I remorsefully mention few. Agatha Tumwine Magezi,

Gloria Longbaam-Alli, Jacqueline Namukasa, Nixon Wamamela, Richard Balikoowa, John

Baptist Imokola, Lynda Nakalawa, Robert Ssemulende, Bazilio Kamya, Clare Cheromoi,

Samuel Auchi, Helina Bafekadu Bakele, Stella Antwiwaa Emmanuel Aturinde, Patience

Akampurira, Nakaiza, Roselyn Ajiko, Grace Kentaro, Musamba William, Elizabeth Katusiime,

Grace Maina, Tukur Mubarak, Pricilla Asiimire, Anatoli Lwassampijja, Fatumah Mirembe,

Samuel Chikowero and Juliet Ssematimba. I enjoyed the guidance of my senior colleagues

especially the 2017 Cohort of Gerda-Henkel scholars: Zaid Sekito, Deo Kannamwangi, Okeny

Charles, Mahajubu Abudul and Perpetua Arinaitwe.

Nicholas Tunanukye

November, 2021.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ............................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.

STATEMENT OF SUPERVISION.................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ........................................................................................................... iii

ABBREVIATION/ ACRONYMS ................................................................................................ xi

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ xii

CHAPTER ONE ........................................................................................................................ 1

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY .............................................................................................. 1

1.1 Introduction...................................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Background of the study .......................................................................................................... 5

1.3 Statement of the Problem ....................................................................................................... 9

1.4 Objectives of the study ............................................................................................................ 9

1.5 Research questions ................................................................................................................ 10

1.6 Significance and Justification of the study ............................................................................. 10

1.7 Scope of the study ................................................................................................................. 10

1.8 Theoretical review of the relationship between migrancy, nativism and citizenship with

reference to Uganda .................................................................................................................... 11

1.9 Definition of Key Terms ......................................................................................................... 18

1.10 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................................ 19

CHAPTER TWO ..................................................................................................................... 21

CRITICAL REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON MIGRANCY, NATIVISM AND CITIZENSHIP WITH

EMPHASIS ON UGANDA ....................................................................................................... 21

2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 21

2.2 Conceptualizing key concepts: migration of people, nativism and citizenship ....................... 21

2.2.1 Migration of People ............................................................................................................ 21

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2.2.2 Nativism .............................................................................................................................. 22

2.2.3 Citizenship .......................................................................................................................... 26

2.3 Understanding the phenomenon of migrations regarding Uganda during the period 1894-

1995 ............................................................................................................................................. 27

2.4 Interactions among the migrants and natives with emphasis on Uganda .............................. 36

2.5 Implications of migration and nativism on citizenship in Uganda during the period 1894-1995

.................................................................................................................................................... 38

2.6 Chapter Summary .................................................................................................................. 42

CHAPTER THREE ................................................................................................................... 43

GENERAL METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................... 43

3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 43

3.2 Research design ..................................................................................................................... 43

3.3 Study Area ............................................................................................................................. 44

3.4 Study Population ................................................................................................................... 44

3.5 Sampling techniques .............................................................................................................. 45

3.6 Data collection methods ........................................................................................................ 45

3.7 Methods of data analysis ....................................................................................................... 46

3.8 Ethical consideration ............................................................................................................. 46

3.9 Constraints encountered during the study............................................................................. 47

CHAPTER FOUR .................................................................................................................... 49

MIGRATION IN THE CONTEXT OF UGANDA, 1894-1995 ....................................................... 49

4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 49

4.2 Migration patterns in Uganda, 1894 to 1960s ........................................................................ 51

4.2.1 The migrant labour phenomenon, Uganda 1920s -1960s .................................................... 53

4.2.2 Reasons for development of labour phenomenon in Uganda 1920s -1960s ....................... 53

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4.3 Career migrants, Uganda 1940s-1995 ................................................................................... 70

4.4 Chapter Summary .................................................................................................................. 94

CHAPTER FIVE ...................................................................................................................... 97

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN MIGRANTS AND NATIVES IN UGANDA, 1894-1995 ..................... 97

5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 97

5.2 Interactions between migrants and natives, Buganda 1920s-1995 ...................................... 100

5.3 Interactions between migrants and natives, Bunyoro 1940s-1995 ...................................... 111

5.4 Tribal associations: Mubende Banyoro Committee (MBC), Bafuruki Committee (BC) and

Bataka Uganda (BU)................................................................................................................... 125

5.5 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................................ 128

CHAPTER SIX ...................................................................................................................... 132

IMPLICATIONS OF MIGRANCY AND NATIVISM ON CITIZENSHIP CONSCIOUSNESS IN

UGANDA DURING THE PERIOD 1894-1995 ........................................................................ 132

6.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 132

6.2 Contested national citizenship and the concept of “home” in Uganda ................................ 140

6.3 Re-discovery of hitherto submerged groups ........................................................................ 148

6.4 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................................ 162

CHAPTER SEVEN ................................................................................................................. 164

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS ....................................................... 164

7.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 164

7.2 Thesis Summary and Conclusion .......................................................................................... 164

7.3 Areas for Further Research .................................................................................................. 168

REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 170

List of archival documents used................................................................................................. 185

APPENDICES ....................................................................................................................... 187

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Appendix 1: Interview Guides for the Key Participants ............................................................. 187

Appendix 2: Written Document/Archival Analysis Schedule ..................................................... 190

Appendix 3: Audio-Visual Sound Recording Worksheet ............................................................ 191

Appendix 4: Transport arrangements for the Bakiga Migrants .................................................. 192

Appendix 5: Project Information Sheet ..................................................................................... 193

Appendix 6: Consent Form (Detailed informed consent forms are attached including the

translated versions) ................................................................................................................... 195

Appendix 7: A Sketch Map of The Bantu and Luo Migration Patterns into Uganda 1800 .......... 205

Appendix 8: Routes and destinations of migrant labourers in Uganda, 1931-1959 ................... 206

Appendix 9: Risk Management Plan .......................................................................................... 207

Appendix 10: Research clearance from National Council for Science and Technology ............... 208

Appendix 11: Introduction Letter from Department of History, Archaeology and Heritage

Studies, Makerere University .................................................................................................... 210

Appendix 12: Places related with Bakiga Migrants in Western and Southern Uganda .............. 211

Appendix 13: Migration Waves in Uganda, 1984-1995 .............................................................. 212

Appendix 14: Migration Patterns in Uganda since 1962 ............................................................ 213

Appendix 15: List of Participants ............................................................................................... 214

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List of figures Figure 1: Regions that comprised Uganda during the colonial period ................................. 2

Figure 2: Proposed theoretical notions of the relationship between migration, nativism and

citizenship in Uganda .......................................................................................................... 17

Figure 3: Sample one of a poll tax ticket used in 1957 ....................................................... 56

Figure 4: Sample two of Poll tax ticket used in 1962 ......................................................... 56

Figure 5: Response to tax refund complaint on double taxation by Nasani Ngundu in 1959.

............................................................................................................................................. 57

Figure 6: David, A mukiga labourer on Kiggundu’s Farm in Butyalyamisana, Bamunanika

interviewed on 7th February, 2020 ...................................................................................... 66

Figure 7: Number of Bakiga Migrants into Rujumbura and Kinkizi. Source: Statistics were

got from the Report on Kigezi Resettlement scheme for the year 1950, KDA, file Number.

DEV.4/2 ............................................................................................................................... 80

Figure 8: A letter by King Tito Winy IV encouraging the Bakiga to migrate to Bunyoro . 90

Figure 9: Analysis of waves of migration in Uganda as identified from this study ........... 96

Figure 10: Bahume Bonaventule Byekwaso (75), a son of former migrant ..................... 108

Figure 11: Goats Killed in tribal clashes in Kibaale ......................................................... 124

Figure 12: Cow carcass from tribal clashes ...................................................................... 124

Figure 13: Distribution of ministerial positions across post independent Uganda ........... 158

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ABBREVIATION/ ACRONYMS ALG African Local Government

ANC African National Congress

AU African Union

BA Bafuruki Association

BC Bafuruki Committee

BU Bataka Uganda

CAO Chief Administrative Officer

DC District commissioner

DP Democratic Party

EAC East African Community

ITEK Institute of Teacher Education Kyambogo

KDA Kabale District Archives

KPPC Kiyonga Parliamentary Probe Committee

LC Local Councils

MAK Makerere University

MAKSSREC Makerere University Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee

MBC Mubende Bunyoro Committee group

MBK Mubende Bunyoro Komiti

NRA National Resistance Army

NRM National Resistance Movement

PAC Pan African Congress

RC Resistance Council

RGCT Realist Group Conflict Theory

RMP Risk Management Plan

UAFU Uganda African Farmers Union

UNCST National Council of Science and Technology

UPC Uganda People’s Congress

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ABSTRACT

This historical study examines the relationship between migrations, identity formations and

citizenship in Uganda, 1894-1995. A qualitative study, the research had three objectives

namely, to explain why there was large-scale population movements between southwestern

region and Bunyoro and Buganda regions, to explore the interactions between the migrants and

native populations; and to examine the implications of migrations and interactions on

citizenship consciousness. Using historical research methods which included analysis of

documents, oral narratives and archival sources, the study established that, whereas migration

had taken place in the region of pre-Uganda, colonial rule encouraged unprecedented internal

migration in Uganda. The new socio-economic order brought about by the colonial state opened

the way for free movement in the protectorate across ethnic boundaries. There were two main

reasons for this accelerated migration: migrant labour and search for land. The migration of

Banyankole and Bakiga from southwestern region of Uganda to Buganda in the 1930s, 1940s

into 1960s was largely in response to the former while the migration of the Bakiga into Bunyoro

and Toro regions during the 1950s and 1960s was in response to latter. The study also

established that, there were complex interactions between the migrating communities and

receiving communities. One major complexity lay in the attitude of nativism, expressed in

subtle ways. Nativism gave rise to two kinds of citizenship consciousness: The Local

Citizenship bestowed by membership to an ancestral community inhabiting a particular region

and National Citizenship bestowed by the statutes of the Ugandan state. The findings of this

study complement earlier studies by Mamdani and Richards, who studied colonialism and its

impact on Ugandan communities along and within settlers and natives frame works. In

particular, anthropologist Richards, in studies in Buganda, found non-Baganda being

assimilated into “Baganda” but also that migrant labourers from southwestern Uganda remained

highly mobile due to the attitudes built during the interactions at workplaces. This study

confirms Richards’ prediction of “tribal conflicts” expressed through attitudes of nativism.

.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

1.1 Introduction

This study is a historical examination of the relationship between migrations that took place

during the colonial and post-colonial period on one hand, and on the other identity formations

and citizenship in a changing political-historical context of Uganda. Migration of people in

Uganda or Africa generally is an old phenomenon. Indeed, there were waves of migrations. The

various precolonial migrations such as that of Bantu migration into Eastern Africa, Luo

migration across Eastern Africa and Sudanic peoples’ migration and settlement in East Africa

(see appendix 7), meant different people intermingling and entering complex relationships, as

well as defining identities and creating new ones. The colonial rule encouraged internal

migration for labour purposes, but also in response to population pressure on land as it was the

case in Kigezi. Others were encouraged to migrate because of the new order brought about by

the state, opening the way for free movement in the protectorate. The migration of the Bakiga

from Kigezi to Bunyoro and Toro districts, in the western region in the 1950s and 1960s, were

in response to these considerations. So, colonialism did not only encourage migrant labour but

also other forms named “okufuruka”1 in Runyakitara linguistic communities. This study centred

on this link between the two waves of migration namely, migrant labourers-bapakasi in

southern Uganda (Buganda) and migrants-bafuruki in western Uganda (Fig 1), and how this

has affected Ugandan citizenship. This study is, therefore, about the three phases of migrations

in Uganda: the labour migrants of the 1920-40s, the Bakiga migrants into Bunyoro since late

1940s and the career migrants into Buganda since the 1960s. It is also about how the migrants

related with the natives, and how those relations influenced the conception of Uganda

citizenship.

1 The term okufuruka in many of western Uganda people is a verb meaning “to migrate” or “migrating”. Omufuruki then becomes a migrant. The term has been used among the Banyoro to refer to the Bakiga migrants as opposed to Banyoro natives.

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Source: G.B Masefield, 1998: 88

Figure 1: Regions that comprised Uganda during the colonial period

The study is also mindful that labour migrancy, proclivity to migrate was determined by factors

that were both internal and external to colonial Uganda, moderated by official labour policy

aimed at maximizing profit to capital (Rutabajuuka, 1989). The Ugandan state found itself in a

situation where self-sufficient ethno-linguistic communities began to disappear and multi

sociolinguistic populations emerging within the context of a larger state (Kasifir, 1979). The

1995 Constitution recognized sixty-five2 indigenous communities as indicated in its third

schedule (Uganda, 2005). Newcomers or migrants and natives have historically interacted in

complex ways, whether conflictual or otherwise (Mamdani, 1996). This interaction has led to

social formations, including migrants and natives with implications to citizenship, arising from

ways in which the groups related. The study focuses on these complex social formations of

migrancy and nativism and their implications for citizenship in Uganda.

2 This number of indigenous communities is as per 1st February 1926, but by 2002, Uganda was a home of over sixty-five indigenous ethnic groups (Uganda Bureau of Statistics, October 2006).

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This thesis has been structured into six chapters and the conclusion. Chapter one concerns itself

with the general introduction and background to the study while Chapter two allocates the study

in the general debates and establishes gaps by reviewing related literature. Chapter three lays

out the methodology used in this study. Chapter four addresses the first objective of the study:

to explain why migration began and continued in Uganda in the period 1894-1995. It was found

out that migration in Uganda has taken three waves. First, Pre-colonial migrations form that

formed the entry point for the study. These migrations constituted the legendary Bantu, Luo,

Ateker and Sudanic as documented by Vansina (1985), Ogot (1974), Kiwanuka (1971), Curtin,

Feierman, Thompson, & Vansina (1995), Jørgensen (1981) and Karugire (1980). It has been

accounted for by environmental factors and contributed to state formation.

Colonial rule set into motion changes in the context of the colonial policy of development of

capital at the service of labour as reported by Trapido (1987) in South Africa and (Shivji, 1987)

in Tanganyika. Uganda was not exception: Indirect rule functioned in a facade state, urban and

rural (Mamdani, 2017), and cash crop and labour reserve zonings (Lwanga-Lunyigo, 1989).

The Second was labour migration during the 1920s throughout 1940s and began to reduce in

late 1950s replaced by career migration, going to school and taking up employment in civil

services as professionals. In this wave of migration, migrants were responding to the challenges

and opportunities created by the establishment of the colonial state. The challenges being cash

economy: Taxation, Bride price, Money Nexus and escape from forced labour and opportunities

being secure environment for horizontal mobility, extended frontiers for physical travel and

improved incomes. The effect of this wave of migration was growing of crops back home with

related aftermath effects like soil erosion and land scarcity, commodification that enhanced

trade and further need for money. Indeed, the reduction of migrant labour had two major effects:

Settled farming and increase in population, and settlement in former cash crop reserve and

continued migration. These effects were significantly felt and led to the third wave of migration

of career migrants who are detailed in chapter five. The Career migrants involved migration

from congested places to other places or regions conceived spacious. They included informal

migrants like those from Ankole, Kigezi, other districts to Buganda (Kampala) in response to

economic privileges associated with formal education and employment in the towns, and formal

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migrants that involved Bakiga migration starting from 1950s coordinated by government. These

later had great impact on the theory and practice of citizenship in Uganda as they interacted

with already settled citizens as natives. The interaction between them (migrants) and the

inhabitants (natives) too, is discussed in chapter five.

Chapter six discusses the implication of migrancy and nativism for the theory and practice of

citizenship in Uganda. It illustrates that the seemingly ethnic conflicts in Kibaale and Kagadi

are a conceptual conflict between local and national citizenship. This claim is justified by the

behaviour and the role of the state in relation to other actors over time. At least in the interests

of the protectorate government-it was one entity and all natives-Bataka were subjects-

Abannansi. But what was in the mind of the natives concerning their position in the protectorate

and relationship with the other ethnolinguistic regions and their people? To the Baganda, they

were separate and different and indeed superior. Unless one was assimilated into Kiganda

system, then everyone from other ethnolinguistic group was a foreigner, mugwila. Migrants

too, regarded themselves as different and separate as target workers, lived in exclusive areas by

neighbourhoods and formed their imagined communities. This varied belongingness was

encouraged by the need for resources as theorised and “agreed upon” by the corpus of academic

works about migration, nativism and citizenship based on instrumentalism, constructivism and

realist group theoreticians in rejection of primordialism. The study interrogates emergence of

ethnic-related conflicts in Bunyoro in 1990s when the Bakiga migration took place in 1950s

which challenges popular theories of ethnicity. This study suggests that neither ethnicity

theories nor realist group theory adequately explain the interactions between natives and

migrants in Uganda. This study thus suggests theoretical notions that can contribute to

theorisation of ethnic group interactions and resultant realities of nativism and multifaceted

citizenship using Bunyoro and Buganda experience. Chapter six thus, discusses the meaning

of, and implications of migrancy and nativism for citizenship in Uganda.

The conclusion chapter wraps up the thesis with the premise that migration takes place in

phases due to different factors at different historical junctures. Migrancy has shaped internal

impetus to unfolding political and sociolinguistic interactions among the people of Uganda.

Understanding citizenship in Uganda requires understanding of historical forces, migrancy that

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underpins it. This is however not to claim that the citizenship puzzle is only explained by

migrancy but rather to underline the fact that migrancy has informed people’s perceptions

towards others world over and Uganda in particular. Thus, all the chapters contribute and

develop the argument that migrancy in Uganda created nativism which gave rise two kinds of

citizenship consciousness.

1.2 Background of the study

While migration of people had been ongoing for long before colonialism (Philip Curtin 1995;

Kasozi 1994), the colonial era introduced migrant labour (Jørgensen, 1987; Richards, 1954 and

McKnight 1996), which had far-reaching consequences. Migrant labour in Uganda was in

response to conditions put in place by the modern economy: the desire to earn money to pay

taxes, mobilising resources for dowry and marriage, access to manufactured goods and

household equipment and cash nexus among others. Motivated by these and other

considerations, many young men from ‘labour reserve’ poured in the ‘export crop reserve’ zone

(Ogot,1974), which greatly affected the migrants themselves, the host communities and the

sending communities. The migrants, regardless of whether they were seasonal or settlers

developed the suspicious approach towards their hosts (Kabwegyere, 1995). Whereas this

approach resulted into the expansion of cash crop sector in the sending communities in an

attempt to end migrancy, those who settled had to mobilise themselves to improve their living

conditions in form of competing for land, employment and political power (Richards, 1954;

Baligira, 2011; Ngologoza, 1998). Meanwhile, the hosts asserted their superiority complex

which intensified ethnic sentiments and awakened flames of nativism in Uganda and

particularly in southern and western regions (Lotte Meinert 2017). Indeed, the entry of migrant

labour in Buganda in the 1920s and involvement of the colonial state to regulate their

participation and identity formations led to the rise of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘tribalism’ (Mamdani,

1999 and McKnight, 1996). This had far reaching implications for citizenship, membership and

connection to a Ugandan society.

It is almost consensual that belonging is inherently interrelated to citizenship. Scholars that

emerged in 1980s like Jacobson (1998), Mosse (1993) and Painter (2002), explored citizenship

in terms of belongingness and identities. To them, the idea of whiteness determined the nature

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and form of citizenship, as ideological, psychological, social and political construct and set of

governing mechanisms, rather than biological or cultural (LeVine, 2019). This definition of the

concept of citizenship in its various permutations, cuts across disciplinary domains of social

sciences- in political science, history, sociology, geography, religion and the cross cutting “Area

Studies”. This belongingness consists in processes and trajectories of acquiring, consolidating

and maintaining membership to a group, as well as preventing other would- be identity usurpers,

ordinarily known as migrants or non-natives who are alien to the ethnolinguistic formations that

are constructively imagined.

Yet this, what humans’ clamour to be identified with, is rarely adequately defined. Existing

concepts are contradictory (Mamdani, 1996), confusing (Gescheire, 2009 and Sentongo, 2015)

or downright unclear (Lonsdale, 2016; Lacina, 2018). This has forced some scholars to

surrender that “citizenship” is an essentially contested concept like justice, democracy, rights,

freedom and power (Ruud, Statham, Giugni, & Passy, 2005; Gallie,1955; Kekes,1977; Ruben,

2010; and Swanton,1985). Without a satisfactory conceptualization basing on historical shifts,

it remains an intellectual futility. To fully understand the concept of citizenship and how it has

been implied in Uganda, we need to give it a historical base in migration connections, beyond

connection criteria: race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, class, and cultural background. This is

because the past is not for its fact’s sake, but rather needs lens to critically investigate, and

interpret those facts (Carr, 1964 &Tosh, 1984).

Citizenship in Uganda was often confined by territorialisation of the state. In the southern part

of the new state, boundaries were created to the benefit of the modern economy, which made

communities see themselves as being different from the others (Ibingira, 1973). It is this

condition that facilitated the rise of “tribes”, the term that was tactically coined by the colonial

master to enforce his philosophy of indirect rule (Mamdani, 1999). Tribes were not pre-existing,

but were a colonial construct to serve colonial interests and convenience. When these tribes

were created, communities looked at each other as different so much so that the migration of

an individual or a group of individuals from one tribe to the other aroused a feeling of difference

– us and them (nativism). Tribalism was an obstacle to self -government in Africa generally,

but still, after independence, it became a serious obstacle to national unity. Since African

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ethnolinguistic groups were not previously tribal or sub-tribal, but saw themselves as distinct

“nations” as opposed to tribes, colonialism created local government boundaries which imposed

artificial boundaries that led to complex patterns of tribal and sub tribal groups (Ibingira, 1973).

This system of distinctness and later artificial divisions, tribalization existed not only in the

areas under study but also in other African communities in the continent as it was the case in

Nigeria (Plotnicov,1964).

By 1920s, the Ugandan state had further “territorised” the country into two, namely the “labour

reserve” zone (western and northern Uganda) and the “cash crop reserve” zone which ipso facto

led to the first wave of colonial migration – migrant labour. Many young men from different

corners of the country went to work in southern Uganda to engage in migrant labour mainly to

earn cash for tax, cloth among others. Host communities developed attitudes and perceptions

which were sometimes reflected in the conditions of work that they imposed on the migrants.

Basing on the treatment, the migrants also developed attitudes towards the hosts. While each

group thought that it was different, they belonged to the same protectorate enjoying the same

rights and having the same obligations though differentiated by classes and levels of

participation in the colonial project (Hanson, 2003).

The second wave of migration which seems to fit in Lee’s theory of migration regarding push

and pull factors, was motivated by population increase and land scarcity. This wave of

migration took place during the 1950s and 1960s and continued after independence. During this

wave, hundreds of the Banya-Kigezi3 migrated from Kigezi to Bunyoro. This wave of migration

had two aspects: one section of the Bafuruki migrated voluntarily and established settlements

in Bunyoro. Another section migrated with the encouragement of the colonial government4

(Ngologoza, 1998).

3 Banya-Kigezi are the people who lived in the colonial district of Kigezi including Bakiga, Bafumbira, Bahororo, Batwa, Banyabutumbi and some Congolese groups which entered through now-border areas of Kanungu and Kisoro. In this study preference is given to Bakiga because they were always identified as Bakiga throughout our interviews in the host communities. Some migrants from Kigezi were not Bakiga, but since the Bakiga were the majority and have maintained their identity, all migrant- Bafuruki are referred to as Bakiga. Terms Banya-Kigezi and Bakiga hav been used interchangeably to mean people from colonial district of Kigezi who are referred to as Bafuruki in Bunyoro. 4 According to Ngologoza the colonial government encouraged the Bakiga to migrate to the neighbouring districts with abundant land. But the post-colonial governments later followed the suite inform of establishing resettlement schemes namely Ruteete resettlement scheme in 1973 and Kasiita in 1993.

8

In the initial years of migration, the Banyoro benefited from the labour supplied by the Bakiga

especially those belonging to the first section by way of exchange for food stuffs as they

engaged in activities like felling big trees and cultivation. Because the two groups Banyoro and

Bakiga had different demands: the Bakiga wanted to work for food and land for settlement and

the Banyoro wanted labourers and land was abundant, there was no loser. So, they lived

amicably without competition nor conflict because feelings of resentment rise in a situation that

the groups see the competition over resources as having a zero-sum fate in which only one

group is winner, has obtained the needed resources and the other is a loser, unable to obtain the

limited resources due to the winning group achieving the limited resource as theorised by

Muzafer.

The Bakiga continued migrating into Bunyoro, some intermarried while others purchased land.

This raises a rather complicated and contradictory situation: why did the Bakiga continue to

migrate to this area? How did the natives–Banyoro react to these Bafuruki migrants? A person

being a native of any part of Uganda is a citizen of Uganda; and yet when he or she migrates to

another part of the country he or she is migrant within the region where he or she has migrated

to. By implication, his or her citizenship rights and identity conflict with the identity and rights

of the natives of the area the person has migrated to. These relationships developed flames of

nativism which conflict with citizenship. This study attempts to discuss the relationship among

migrants, natives, and its implication for citizenship in Uganda during the period between 1894

and 1995.

9

1.3 Statement of the Problem

The establishment of colonial rule in Uganda and the introduction of the modern economy

introduced a new element in migration (Karugire, 1980; Richards, 1954). The new migrant

situation, particularly migrant labour gave rise to a complex relationship among the peoples of

Uganda: the complex relationship of migrants, natives, and citizens (Kabwegyere, 1995). The

colonial state, in theory, created a nation-state in which all the residents were assumed citizens

and yet migration of one group of people outside their native region to another region generated

nativism, feeling of difference, suspicion, and discrimination. Over the years, this complexity

of "migrants" and "natives" and "citizens" has silently underpinned the social, political and

economic events in Uganda. Mamdani (1996) and Richards (1954) have posited these complex

relations as “local and national citizenships”5. The Uganda state has not been unmoved by this

complexity. Thus, the study seeks to analyse the three-spike complexity in Uganda during the

period 1894-1995, focusing on southern and western regions as the areas of study.

1.4 Objectives of the study

This study is guided by two categories of objectives namely, general objective and specific

objectives.

1.4.1 General objective

The general objective of the study is to discuss the historical relationship between migrancy,

nativism, and citizenship in Uganda in the period, 1894-1995.

1.4.2 Specific objectives

Specifically, the study is guided by the following objectives

i) To explain why there was largescale migrations between the southwestern region

and Buganda and Bunyoro regions in the period 1894 - 1995.

ii) To explore the interactions among the migrants and natives in Uganda during the

period, 1894-1995.

5 National citizenship relates to the complexities of representation, power, and claims of citizen participation. See (Ahikire, 2007:44), To Leonardi and Vaughan, regarding the 1940s-1950s Sudan, local and national citizenship were interactive fields rather than discrete spheres (Vaughan, 2016).

10

iii) To examine the implications of migrancy and nativism on citizenship consciousness

in Uganda during the period 1894-1995.

1.5 Research questions

1. Why was there a stream of migration from Ankole and Kigezi districts in the

southwestern to the Buganda and Bunyoro regions during the period 1894-1995?

2. How did the migrants interact with the natives in Uganda during the period 1894-1995?

3. What did the interactions between migrants and natives mean for citizenship in Uganda

during the period 1894-1995?

1.6 Significance and Justification of the study

This study of the history of migrancy, nativism, and citizenship in Uganda provides a historical

explanation to policy and socio-economic concerns of the contemporary world regarding

international and domestic migrations, nativism and citizenship contestations. It further

provides the opportunity for other researchers in the field of migrations and identities to

interrogate the subject using the findings of this study, and contribute to the existing debates

among the scholars of the subject under study mirrored through historical lens. Uganda, like

many other African nation-states still struggles with “national identity” because of failure to

address historical complexities occasioned by the pre-1995 migrancy.

1.7 Scope of the study

This study geographically centres on both the western and southern regions of Uganda (as

indicated in figure 1). Field studies involved interviews that were conducted in Bunyoro and

Buganda for western and southern regions respectively. These identified areas were destinations

of migrants in modern Uganda. Systematic study through related topics was done from Kabale

District Archives (KDA), National Archives and Makerere University Library.

The time scope is from 1894 to 1995. The year 1894 was a desired starting point because it is

when Uganda was declared a British Protectorate. It thus meant a shift from the belonging to

a particular kingdom or societies or nations based on ancestry- obutaka6 to being Ugandans,

6 Abataka, may loosely be translated as natives because it originates from the Bantu-language dialects that is associated with land or soil. Singular omutaka-native. The term native was refined by the British colonialists in

11

Abannansi7. It also meant a shift from being subjects of the traditional kings and chiefs to being

subjects of her majesty, the Queen of England and citizens of the Uganda state. Therefore, the

declaration of Uganda as a British protectorate in 1894 set into motion the events that created

a new relationship between migrancy, nativism and citizenship. The end-point of the study is

1995, because in that year a new constitution was promulgated which re-defined the notion of

citizenship in Uganda (Barya, 2000). Indeed, the framers of 1995 constitution were responding

to the contradictions arising from the relationships created by the colonial state in 1894.

1.8 Theoretical review of the relationship between migrancy, nativism and citizenship

with reference to Uganda

The relationship between migrancy, nativism and citizenship is a complex one. It involves

processes in which migrants interact with the natives to live together as citizens. The process

of interaction is not static nor unilinear. It involves movements, settlements, adaptations and

exclusion to define and redefine belonging. For scholars understand and explain the existence

and dynamics, individual and group interaction in a historical process, certain theories are

consulted. The literature suggests five main theories that speak to the subject of relationship

between migrants, natives and citizens. These five theories are: primordialism, instrumentalism,

constructivism, decentralized despotism and Realist Group Conflict Theory (RGCT).

This subsection reviews the related theories that try to explain the historical complexity of

relationship between migrants, natives and citizens. The subsection further identifies, among

the theories reviewed, the theoretical underpinnings to which this study anchors itself and

finally, I propose essential theoretical notions that can explain the dynamics of the interactions

between the three realities. Consequently, this subsection shows that three theories namely

primordialism, instrumentalism and constructivism are good but inefficient in explaining the

interaction between migrants, natives and citizens in Uganda. The remaining two, namely

decentralized despotism and RGCT lacks specifity. Based on the field studies conducted among

the native and migrant communities in the study areas, I propose theoretical notions: migrancy,

1945. By 1945 ordinance the term was defined as any person who is a member of or anyone whose parent is or was a member of, an indigenous African tribe or community, but traditionally associated with land, ancestral land. 7 Abannansi may loosely be translated as subjects, during precolonial and colonial times and citizens in the postcolonial Buganda.

12

nativism and citizenship that can help in illuminating the complex relationship between natives,

migrants and citizens in Uganda. A review of each of the theoretical underpinnings referred to

in this study is worthwhile.

1.8.1 The Primordialism explanation

Primordialists like Shils and Greertz believe that ethnic identity is part of essential human

constitution and that humans will always desire to identify themselves with the group whose

characteristics: common language, collective name, shared history, common myth of descent

and allegedly norms common to members of the group, are innate (Shils, 1957 and Greertz,

1963). And, that ethnic groups have the urge to reject the others is the persistence of the

tradition, since ethnic conflicts are a part of old age antagonism that antedates the formation of

the nation-state. The proponents of primordialism presuppose that interaction between and

among communities is determined by allegiance to the common ancestry. When applied to

Uganda and generally Africa, Ssentongo (2015) has found the theory inadequate. According to

him, primordiality assumes a static society and does not take into consideration of the

interactions involving political power dynamics and economic resource distribution moderated

by colonialism. Societies are always dynamic. They are on the move. New communities being

born, weak ones being assimilated into stronger ones, and others experiencing change to

migration, changed environmental circumstances, and political experiences. Because of the

weaknesses associated with primordialism, many scholars on ethnicity and group interactions

in colonial and post-colonial Africa have relied on instrumentalism and constructivism.

1.8.2 Instrumentalism and Social constructivism explanations

Instrumentalism and constructivism theories have accumulated quite wide academic debates

with central tenets grounded in resource access as a major force that determines group relations.

Since the two theories base on the premise that societies are not static but depend on

circumstances to effect change, they have been generally understood as circumstantialist school

of thought. This school of thought was developed by scholars like Epstein and Gluckman, in

disagreement with what was regarded as the old and traditional theory of primordialism. They

proposed that belonging to and interaction in a group or interaction among the groups are

13

determined by social circumstances and situations like labour relations and appeals to class

solidarity (Epstein, 1958 and Gluckman, 1960). The school is based on the argument that social

forces lead to cultural distinctions and which affect a group’s selection of identity symbols from

the whole range of cultural repertoire (Cohen G. B., 1984). Circumstantialists, sometimes

known as mobilisationalists, assume that groups and individuals associate or disassociate

depending on circumstances and environment they live in to which this study largely encores.

For the proponents of this theory, ethnic identity is malleable and dynamic in response to social,

political and historical forces and fluctuates as people compete for positions of advantage in the

modern state. It is this set of theories (instrumentalism and constructivism) that most support

this study because they emphasise ingredients of nativism.

1.8.3 Decentralized Despotism explanations

The decentralised despotism was advanced by Mamdani in his first edition of Citizen and

Subject in 1996, and appropriated by different scholars such Klopp (2001) and Baligira (2020)

in explaining land related conflicts in Narok county, Kenya in 1990 and Kibaale district,

Uganda in early 2000s in Uganda respectively. Mamdani bases on the idea that colonialism in

Africa established a dual system of administration in what he referred to as a bifurcated state.

The political scientist, Mamdani argues that the colonialists in the bifurcated state applied

“direct rule” in urban centres and “indirect rule” in rural areas to enforce and sustain their

power. This system produced two rigid binaries that is the centralised power in the urban and

decentralised power based on customary law, in the rural. While the theory assumes a rigid

political structure of the racialised rural, it does not explain the flexibility in the colonial state

in Uganda during the 1950s that led or encouraged the migration of the Bakiga beyond the

ethnically defined boundaries of Kigezi.

1.8.4 Realist Group Conflict Theory explanations

The primordialism theory is not very relevant to the Ugandan phenomenon because the period

understudy was very dynamic and costs of interactions were taking place not limited to either

identity or ethnicity. The circumstantialism set of theories are relevant to the Ugandan

interactions because the phenomenon of migration, relationship among migrants and natives

evolved and involved a whole range of responses and reactions that embraced sanguity, political

14

power contestations and struggle for resources. But these theories do not address themselves

to the relationship of citizenship consciousness in theory and practice, the study tuned attention

to Realist Group Conflict Theory (RGCT). RGCT was developed by a social psychologist

Campbell and experimented by Muzafer Sherif in 1960s to explain how intergroup hostility can

arise because of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources. The theory also

explains the feeling of nativism in form of prejudice and discrimination towards other groups

to be associated with the competition for real or perceived scarcity of recourses like money,

political power, military protection or social status. The feeling of resentment can arise in a

situation that groups see the competition over resources as having a zero-sum fate, one group

wins and the other loses. When valuable resources are perceived to be abundant then groups

cooperate and exist in harmony but if the valuable resources both physical like land and food

and intangible such as status, prestige and power, are or perceived as scarce, then groups enter

competition and antagonism inform of discriminatory behaviour ensues between them. Using

western and southern regions of Uganda as study areas, it is the RGCT with the proposed

theoretical notions that can sufficiently explain the complex relationship between migrants,

natives and citizens in Uganda. The RGCT attempts to explain why migrations take place, how

group identities develop and why certain groups have persisted while others have been absorbed

into the surrounding populations (Cohen, 1984). RGCT further attempts to explain the nature

of the interaction of migrants and natives and explain how they affect citizens.

The central assumption of this theory has been summarised by Jackson (1993) that if ethnic

group A believes that members of ethnic group B pose a threat to them by “stealing jobs”, then

regardless of whether this is true, ethnic group A will feel resentment and hostility (Jackson,

Summer 1993). The extent to which ethnic group A holds power to follow through on as hostile

feelings determines if unfair or discriminatory behaviour toward ethnic group B will occur. At

the very least, negative stereotypes about the other group will be created and mistrust and

avoidance will result. The assumption was demonstrated by Muzafer Sherif ‘s Robbers cave

experiment. In the two week’s experiment, twelve-years old boys in white middle class were

convened at a summer camp to participate in a three phased experiment. The first involved

group identity. The boys interacted with only their own group members and developed two

group identities where they all belonged namely, Eagles and Rattlers.

15

In the second phase, the boys were introduced to the other group and were required to engage

in a series of competitive activities in which the winning team was to be rewarded so that they

would have a reason to compete intensely. During these fierce competitions, both groups

became suspicious of and hostile towards one another. As tensions increased, the boys

demonstrated allegiance to their group by discouraging one another from establishing

friendships across group lines. No one wanted to be seen as a traitor so boys stuck to their

groups. Hostility increased to the point that physical fights and acts of vandalism broke out.

Despite the direct innervations by the adults, the two groups could not seem to reconcile. Unity

was only restored when Sherif created enabling situations requiring both groups of boys to

depend on each other to achieve important goals equally valued by both groups, this was truck

carrying their food supply scenario. Sherif set up a situation in which a truck carrying their food

supply broke down and the help of all the boys was needed to bring the food to the camp. Upon

completion of a series of such tasks requiring interaction and everyone’s involvement, positive

behaviour towards other group members and friendships across group lines were observed.

Sherif then concluded that the two distinct groups, when the perception of threat was replaced

by cooperation and interdependence, the two groups re-established themselves as one large

group. Thus, the group distinctions made between Eagles and Rattlers disappeared and

everyone felt as if they belonged to the same group. This theory is highly related with Bunyoro

and Buganda ethnic group formulation dynamics of Banyoro-Bafuruki or Baganda-Bagwila

relations.

The theories reviewed share three main assumptions namely; 1) the idea that a group is pre-

existent that is a group predate, and people chose to belong, 2) presuppose that there is

inequality with in a group and between groups that makes the weaker to have the incentive to

remain tagged to the superior, 3) there is shared inherent assumption that group identity,

formation and belonging is an inherent. People must belong, interact or form a group. Why is

it that a group or identity created by the central state has not been attractive enough despite the

shared collective incentives such as shared symbols, shared circumstances among others? Why

hasn’t the state created a group called Uganda? To understand these variations, I propose

16

theoretical notions that can offer analytical leverage that relate migration to nativism, and how

they affect citizenship.

1.8.5 Proposed theoretical notions : migration, nativism and citizenship

The figure 2 represents the relationship between migrancy, nativism and citizenship with the

proposed notions based on the study areas. The figure further shows that due to migration

whether migrant labourers or career migrants leads a complex relationship as they relate with

the natives. The complex relationships render the definition and practice of citizenship in

Uganda to be two-fold: local and national.

Uganda

Migration

- Migrant labour

- Career Migrants

Nativism

- Indicators

- Associations

- Concept of home

Complex relations

over time

- Okupakasa

- Okufuruka

- Marriage

- Language

vocabularies

Citizenship

consciousness

- Local

- National

17

Figure 2: Proposed theoretical notions of the relationship between migration, nativism and citizenship in Uganda

The proposed theoretical frame work based on empirical data indicates that migration of people

involves incentives to migration, settlement, integration, intermarriages and formation of new

societal structures which operate in a complex relationship over a period time. In the process of

interaction between migrants and natives, there emerges nativism (represented by the double

end arrow). Due to varied interactions resulting from the forces of nativism and nationalism,

two overlapping forms of citizenships emerge: local and national respectively in Uganda

(represented by the frame). But migrants relate with the natives in which they will have an

attitude towards the other- “us” and “others” depending on their numeration. The numbers are

very important because they determine group mobilisation, group relations and identity

formation. If the migration wave is with fewer people as it was the case with the first generation

of migrants in Buganda, they are likely to be assimilated to the natives by learning their

language, taking up cultural norms and their economic orientation. In case the migrant wave

can mobilise a considerable number of members, then they can claim their own different unique

identity, sometimes quite different from that of their areas of their origin nor those of their

destinations but usually a hybrid of the two as reflected in the language dialect, names of their

villages and their ways of life as illustrated among the Bafuruki of Bunyoro. Thus, as long as

migration of people exists, their interactions leads to reorganisation of communities with new

definitions, typologies and practices of citizenship.

Thus, the colonial state, guided with common identity indicators like common political

loyalties: national flag, national language to mention a few, common economic relations in new

nation state, people remained loyal to their subnational groupings as evidenced in Bunyoro and

Buganda. Ugandans continued loyalty to their social formations not because they are

primordially or instrumentalised or even socially constructed but rather their real and perceived

physical resources like land and mental/psychological resources like power have been

increasing becoming scarce. Just like the white’s opposition/resistance to civil rights policies

for the blacks in America was not necessarily their dislike for Blacks but the feeling of some

Whites were losing certain privileges, the natives’ royalty to local citizenship is not ethnically

18

motivated discrimination of the Bafuruki but rather the feeling that the Banyoro were losing

their privileges over land, labour, power and social services. This study has indicated that for

some of the Banyoro losing their physical and intangible resources that were embedded in their

cultural norms as it was the case with the Baganda, the feeling of nativism was inevitable. On

the other hand, the Bafuruki in Bunyoro and the Bapakasi in Buganda, feeling that they were

losing their rights over the same physical and intangible resources fully embedded in the Order

in Council of the Uganda Protectorate and constitutions of the Republic of Uganda. The

seemingly ethnic conflicts that existed between the “native” - Banyoro and “migrant”- Bafuruki

or Baganda and Bapakasi were instead a conflict of local and national citizenship occasioned

by reducing vital resources: land, social and power that were reducing on both sides in the

context of elite politics.

1.9 Definition of Key Terms

During the study, some terms have been developed and used in various studies that were

reviewed. Because such terms have ignited debates and developed responding to time, space

and agency, and mostly evolved in response to historical forces, they are defined here as used

in the study.

Migrant labourer – A person who moves from one area to another to find work or better living

condition.

Migrant – a person who moves from his or her domiciled area/region of naturalization (birth)

to another area temporarily or permanently for work or better living conditions. The term will

be differentiated from Immigrant, a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign

country.

Native – The 1945 Ordinance in Uganda defines a native as any person who is the member of

or anyone whose parent is or was a member of an indigenous African tribe or community. This

definition was aimed at distinguishing Africans from non-Africans, for instance, a Lugbara

from West Nile was described as a native in Kampala by the interpretation of the 1945

19

ordinance. In this study, the term native will be referred to as a person who is born or

naturalized within an area he/she claims ancestry.

Nativism- While the present study will contribute towards this discourse, the concept will be

used to refer to the feeling of difference between one ethnolinguistic group towards others.

Baganda - the word Baganda has been used in this study to refer to all persons/people

constituting the native population of the former province of Buganda.

Ethnolinguistic group will be used as a group of people with a common ancestry and language,

a shared culture and historical tradition. Unless in the direct quotation or direct argument, the

term has been used in the place of “tribe”. The term has been desired because of the prejudicial

usage of the term tribe.

Citizen will be understood as a resident/ naturalized person of a nation-state or country

Citizenship is also a concept that has attracted a lot of discourses. In Africa, there are two types

of citizenship. Social citizenship is belonging and membership to the tribal community. Closely

related to a native, but is bestowed on the holder by the community. Legal citizenship is a

condition established by the law of a country under the constitution. In this study, the term

citizenship is understood as membership, belonging to, and identifying with a nation-state.

1.10 Chapter Summary

In this chapter, I have presented an overview of the study, defined key concepts that propped

out during the study, outlined the objectives and research questions that guided this undertaking.

In addition to the significance, the scope and research problem have been articulated. Basing

on empirical data obtained from the identified areas of study and the literature, theories of

ethnicity namely primordialism, instrumentalism, and constructivism; and decentralised

despotism, are partly important for this study with a lot of inadequacies. The theoretical

anchorage for this study therefore, is not uniform. I indicate in a particular section in which a

theory is relevant that feeds in the thesis for this study that migrancy in Uganda created nativism

20

which gave rise two kinds of citizenship consciousness. Thus, given the shortcomings of the

theories reviewed, I, to larger extent, draw from circumstantialists (instrumentalism and

constructivism) which emphasise ingredients of nativism.

21

CHAPTER TWO

CRITICAL REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON MIGRANCY, NATIVISM AND

CITIZENSHIP WITH EMPHASIS ON UGANDA

2.1 Introduction

Debates on concepts, processes, manifestations, and impact of migrancy, nativism and

citizenship have been so intense that historians, sociologists, social anthropologists, states and

individuals have devoted their significant energies to the complexity. These debates have

assigned meanings on national and local citizenship to the citizenship practices which have

often been understood as relevant primarily to the postcolonial state and tended to privilege the

present at the expense of the past (Hunter, 2016). Migration is a worldwide phenomenon. In the

contemporary period, it is a very big issue in both developing and developed countries, which

has raised serious political contestations and conversations (Vitorino, 2020). Within the

developing countries particularly Africa, immigration has been on increasing trend. It has

sometimes caused xenophobia such as in South Africa, Libya, Kenya among others leading to

unanswered questions on citizenship. Within countries there has been increased migration of

people from rural to urban areas as well as across regions (Ehrkamp,2006), and migrants then

interact with residents of the receiving communities in certain ways which makes the discourse

about citizenship recurrent. In reviewing literature, I aim at situating the migrant-settler

interactions and what it means for citizenship. To achieve that objective, I review some of the

outstanding studies and academic discussions on the main concepts: migrancy, nativism and

citizenship, interactions between migrants and setters and the implications of migrancy and

nativism on citizenship consciousness with emphasis on Uganda.

2.2 Conceptualizing key concepts: migration of people, nativism and citizenship

In this sub-section, I conceptualise the three spike realities to understand how they have applied

for Uganda.

2.2.1 Migration of People

Migration has caused the world so much of intertwined complexities that it should be well

understood – especially considering the attempts by various stakeholders and interested parties

to resolve complexities associated with migration. In fact, migration has been so much popular

22

considering the wars in Palestine, Philippines, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, some

parts of the Asia in Bangladesh and so forth. It also has been popular in the United States so

much that among the very first things the Donald Trump administration did after coming into

power was to target migrants. In fact, Whitaker (2017) is of the view that the Trump

administration victimized migrants. This victimisation was further reflected in the famous

events of the Rohingya people (an ethnic Sufi-Sunni Muslim minority that lives in Rakhine,

formerly Arakan) in the State of Myanmar (Mohajan, 2018), also known as Burma prior to

1989, in form of ethno-religious tensions and factionalisms (Dussich, 2018). These violent

tensions which resulted into approximately 1.1 million Rohingya people scattered in some parts

of Bangladesh (Dussich, 2018; Mohajan, 2018), have traumatized the world enough that the

complexities and impact of migration on people can’t be left without empirical understanding.

The daily catastrophic genocides resulting from migration of people in Myanmar, Bangladesh,

Greece, Italy and some countries such as Libya, Egypt and Morocco in North Africa for instance

have been attracting global attention over the years.

Within the present boundaries of Uganda, people are of diverse origins and polities that have

determined their relations since the amalgamation and divisions imposed by the colonial

occupation (Jørgensen, 1981: 35). To fully understand the composition of Ugandan peoples, I

agree with Jørgensen (1981) that there are no pure ethnic groups in the colonial sense of tribes

and physiognomy of races. Migration of people informed the languages spoken and socio-

political and economic structures. By nineteenth century there were more than 63 languages

spoken in Uganda (Criper & Ladefoged, 1971). 37 Bantu languages in southern and western

Uganda belonging to Niger-Congo of the Congo-Kordofanian family of languages and, 26

languages in the northern and eastern Uganda belonging to the Nilo-Saharan family of

languages. This study focused on western and southern Uganda who both, belong the former

yet have been conflicting.

2.2.2 Nativism The concept of nativism has been used differently, thus attracting many definitions and

discourses. Some scholars have contextualized, the concept as a product of migrancy which

manifests itself in the form of citizenship contestations. Thus, the concept becomes the facet of

23

migrancy and citizenship contestations that deserves a quick scan-through of what some

scholars say about it.

Linda Bosniak (1994) argues that nativism was often associated with anti-migrant sentiment

motivated by ethnic or racial bias and sometimes with anti-foreign feelings (Bosniak, 1994:

442). According to Bosniak (1994) therefore, nativism is the practice that simply means

hostility to foreigners. However, he does not refer to the African experience, the nature of

migrants and how such prejudice relates to migrants. southern and western regions of Uganda.

According to Friedman (1967), nativism in the United States of America existed where there

were sufficient members of immigrants to cause Americans to become aware of them

(Friedman, 1967: 409). This argument is in line with Richards’ about foreignness in Uganda.

Unlike Friedman who describes the element of foreignness in the lenses of migrating from other

countries to America, Richards describes “foreigners” in Uganda’s experience as “the people,

according to the Baganda point of view, from other areas” (Richards, 1954: 7). These, according

to Richards, were migrants not limited to Uganda's neighbouring countries (especially Rwanda,

Burundi, the Congo, and Tanganyika) but also Ugandans from West Nile, Kigezi, Ankole,

Bunyoro and Eastern Province to Buganda. Since Friedman (1967) was referring to migrants

from other countries, his description does not sufficiently infer to Uganda because the

phenomenon in Uganda, citizens are of the same country.

Some African scholars have looked at nativism as the new form of nationalism. Quoting Fanon,

Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2009) argues that nativism is the result of the "morrow of independence".

According to him, nativism was openly manifested as a key aspect of the Garveyist slogan of

"African for Africans'' and the drive by Marcus Garvey for the establishment of black republics

across Africa (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009: 65). He further argues that the South African apartheid

ideology provoked various African ideological reactions ranging from African National

24

Congress8 (ANC)’s emphasis on (non) racism approach of liberation and Pan African Congress9

(PAC)'s emphasis on the combination of Afro-Radicism and Pan Africanism and these were

approaches aimed at eradication of black racial inferiority complex while claiming a greater

black identity. He does not however clearly illustrate how such forms of nationalism were

indeed affected or symbolized nativism and citizenship, a weakness shared by both Lonsdale

(2016) and Glassman (2011) who contend that in pre-colonial Africa, struggles for citizenship

focused on incorporation (Lonsdale, 2016), and emphasis directed towards the importance of

the struggle for inclusion (Glassman, 2011). This study seeks to apply the concept of cultural

nationalism which is new to Uganda's experience whose political and socio-economic

environment was very different.

In Zimbabwe and South Africa, nativism was expressed in terms of natives (Africans) vis-à-vis

whites (migrants). These natives were described as citizens while the white migrants were

described as non-citizens. This is a description of meaning that is based on race (Mamdani,

2001 and Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009) contrary to Ulrich's view based on colonial order- the

Khoisan in cape colony in seventeenth and eighteenth-century were left either to negotiate

relations of dependency with the frontier farmers or to bound together with other subordinate

classes in order to better their position (Ulrich, 2016), while in Uganda it is related to the people

of the same race. Such contradictions were taking place across Africa as illustrated by Mamdani

referring to post-colonial societies such as Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Uganda, that nativism

and citizenship contradiction became the centre that informed the agenda of resolution of the

national question relating to the issues of race, settle native binaries and ownership of resources

such as mines, land among others, and the control of public discoveries (Mamdani, 2001: 65).

According to Ndlovu- Gatsheni (2009) nativism was referred to as a real philosophy that radical

Africanists used to describe it as citizenship in the post-apartheid South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Thus, Ndlovu-Gatsheni argued, a true South African citizen was to be “Azanian” (natives)

8 ANC was a South African political party and black nationalist organization, was banned by South African government between 1960-1990 and was victorious in the country's first democratic elections in 1994 and its leader, Nelson Mandela became the country's President. 9 PAC fully known as the pan –African congress of Azania was a South African political movement formed in 1959 as a militant offshoot of ANC and outlawed in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre though it continued its armed opposition until it was legalized in 1990.

25

while in Zimbabwe authentic citizens were to be “sons and daughters of the soil” but not

“Amabbunu” -white settlers (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009:71). His definition is a good one to which

this study seeks to build on concerning Ugandan perspective particularly concerning Buganda

and Bunyoro through establishing the relationship between this migrancy, nativism and

citizenship question as contested both in South African and Zimbabwe.

Some scholars have conceptualized nativism to be synonymous with ethnic nationalism,

segregation, ultra-nationalism, and xenophobia. According to Mudde (2012), nativism is

xenophobic nationalism – an ideology that wants congruence of state and nation, where the

state takes the political view while nation takes the cultural unit. To illustrate it further, Mudde

noted that the above situation makes the non-natives to be perceived as threatening both in

personality and ideology: ideologically, therefore, nativists politicians were described as ‘my

country- first party' (Mudde, 2012). This implies that theoretically, all political leaders put the

interests of their country first, which makes nativism to surpass the logic of nationalism to

engage internationalization and accommodating people who want to come into the country but

are not originally from there. The native population or native culture should be given priority

over other kinds of culture. The context here was of the country level, citizens of one country

looking at migrants of other countries as foreigners. In Uganda, it was within the same country

which makes the definition and the relationship insufficient.

As a form of generalization, Mudde (2012) declares that a large portion of the population

everywhere in the world is nativists. To substantiate on this generalization, he indicates that

nativism is the core feature of radical right in terms of ideology which works in the interests of

the native group while the non-native group is undermined as crime is always linked to them-

outsiders thus rising thorny question of national identity and inclusion or exclusion of some

sections of citizens towards access of national resources. Mudde's generalizations that nativism

is an instinct of human nature: that in all societies world over the natives always feel the

difference and exclusive concerning the newcomers-migrants. This study is set to establish the

validity of Mudde's generalization with respect to Uganda.

26

From the above opinions, nativism seems to be a natural human instinct that exhibits in many

forms including ethnic communities within a country, between countries, between races among

others, and is the function of migration of people on one side, and implications on citizenship

on the other.

2.2.3 Citizenship

It is consensual among the political scientists, sociologists, linguists and historians that the

concept Citizenship has a complex and evolving history. Political scientists seem to agree that

citizenship in a democracy, gives membership status to individuals within a political unit;

confers an identity on individuals; constitutes a set of values, usually interpreted as a

commitment to the common good of a particular political unit; involves practicing a degree of

participation in the process of political life; and implies gaining and using knowledge and

understanding of laws, documents, structures, and processes of governance (Enslin, 2000). The

definition was expanded by the sociologists like Marshall, who classified citizenship as more

complex and dynamic nature, into three categories; civil, political, and social. Civil citizenship

or individual rights to speech, faith, and property emerged as a force in 18th-century England,

when capitalist political systems instituted the protection of property, equality before the law,

and civil liberties (Katz, 2001). Political citizenship, or the “right to participate in the exercise

of political power, as a member of a body invested with political authority or as an elector of

the members of such a body” (Marshall, 1950), developed in the 19th century, when the

franchise was granted first to middle-class and later to working-class men.

Social citizenship arose mainly in the 20th century and includes a broad range of rights, “from

the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the

social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in

the society” (Marshall,1950: 94). All these above definitions suffer from conceptual and

contextual issues therefore this study was among others set to investigate the meaning of

citizenship in Uganda.

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2.3 Understanding the phenomenon of migrations regarding Uganda during the period

1894-1995

The migration of various groups of people from mainly southwestern Uganda and other areas

of the Great Lakes region to Bunyoro and Buganda has been ongoing and has exacerbated not

only conflicts but has also made the migrants and natives interact in certain ways with a lot of

implications to citizenship in the whole country. Examination of the factors that sustained

internal migration concerning Uganda is worthwhile.

Labour migration in East Africa and particularly Uganda persisted as a continuing movement

of people to sell their labour in rural or urban areas away from their homes. In a situation where

the protectorate was divided into two socio-economic divisions, labour reserve and cash crop

zones, the result was the necessity for labour migration (Jenkins, 1946). By 1947 this divisions

had been minimised by the returning Bapakasi who smuggled coffee seedlings from the

Baganda farmers, but also the colonial government was in serious shortage of quality labour

yet the available was ‘underutilized’ with an already seriously growing Baganda kulak

(Mamdani, 1999). They had started employing migrant labourers at a more competitive rates

than the Europeans. These, and other factors made the government to encourage settled farming

and this started buying produce (Fortt, 1954). To understand how this situation has arisen, and

why it persists, it is necessary to account for the nature of labour migration, and its relation to

attitudes towards employment and agriculture in the context of the fact that where capitalism

entrenches, inequality has to shoot up as Rutabajuuka observed: “One of the characteristics of

capitalism is the uneven development of the regions it penetrates” (Rutabajuuka S. , 1996).

There is now a considerable body of literature on labour migration in sub-Saharan Africa which

documents the nature and extent of migratory movements, from ethnographic and urban studies

and surveys of migrants, together with discussion derived from this material giving a more

general account of the causes, effects and persistence of labour migration.

The earliest studies of labour migration were largely concerned with the possibilities of

deleterious effects of migration on tribal life, which involved attempts to analyse the main

causes of migration. There was some variation in the emphasis put on different causal factors,

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but as information was gathered from a growing number of sources, it became clear that the

underlying incentive to migrate was overwhelmingly one of economic need. Subsequent

discussions revolved largely around the levels on which these factors should be analysed, and

the different circumstances of migration found in different communities which can make the

evidence appear conflicting.

One of the earliest attempts to clarify the causes of labour migration came from Schapera, who

was asked to investigate the effects of labour migration on the social and economic life of the

peoples of Bechuanaland10. There was a long history of migration from Bechuanaland to

employment centres outside the Protectorate, but Schapera found that variations in the rates of

emigration and in the circumstances of the migration related to several factors, which together

with statements of the migrants, led him to three groups of causes. First, Economic necessity

that was the most nearly universal cause, resulting from the fact that the current level of wants

had made wage-labour an indispensable source of income for which there were inadequate

opportunities within the protectorate (Schapera, 1947). Consistent with findings of this study,

men with the least opportunities at home, for example those without cattle were most likely to

migrate, while those who could satisfy their wants at home, did so. This explains why most of

the cattle keeping communities in Ankole never participated in the migrant labour experience.

While Schapera underscores land shortage in Bechuanaland as a major factor for migrant

labour, this study found that land had no relationship with migrant labour in the Uganda. It was

rather the colonial economic policies particularly taxation that compelled all the adult men to

migrate to the cash reserve areas for wage labour. To illustrate this further, William Watson, in

his study of the Mambwe of Northern Rhodesia, describes a situation in which there are no cash

crops, and though some subsistence crops may be sold, these cannot bring sufficient income to

cover taxes, school fees, clothes and other wants (Watson 1958). The role of taxation in the

colonial economy has been underscored by Richards and Mamdani as that of incorporating

Uganda into modern economy in which the protectorate would meet its costs of administration,

but more importantly producing labour that would serve the capital. Indeed, all the participants

10 The names of countries have changed since independence. Names of places, and societies used in this thesis are based on historical period and maintained as they were used.

29

from Ankole said that they migrated to Buganda during the period up to 1960s because they

wanted to work for money to pay taxes.

The second factor pointed out by Schapera regards the social and psychological. The author

argues that migration had become an ‘accepted and expected’ part of tribal life, and there were,

therefore, a number of incentives to migrate arising from this pattern, for example, desire for

adventure, the attraction of town life, achievement of status for young men, escape from

communal or domestic problems, and in addition, migration had become a means of initiation

into manhood, replacing the traditional rite of passage which was no longer practiced (Schapera,

1947). While data from Ankole reinforces the love for adventure and attraction to the urban

life, it indicates that in this phase of migration, young men were no longer driven by mere desire

for adventure but life style warranted cash. Cash was no longer a novelty but a real need.

Schapera further points to propaganda and political pressure as initiative for migrant labour.

Schapera also gave some consideration to the role of external forces in such factors as the role

of labour agents – the tapas which opened the flow of migration – and the role of chiefs in

putting pressure on their subjects to migrate (Rutabajuuka S., 1996).

In his studies in Tanganyika, Gulliver (1955) developed the above analysis further, putting the

major emphasis on underlying economic conditions. Given this basic motivation he explained

other factors listed by Schapera, in terms of ‘last straw’ causes, that is, the final link in the chain

of individual motivation that determines the point in time at which a man leaves home, as

opposed to the underlying economic conditions which accounts for the phenomenon of

migration. Several triggers mentioned by Schapera, such as the attraction of the town, or the

idea of migration as initiation were not applicable to the peoples with whom Gulliver was

concerned, who would have preferred staying at home if they could have made money there.

Migrants of this wave never mentioned attraction of the town nor initiation ceremonies. Perhaps

money to facilitate in marriage. 80 % of the participants in this study, showed that they went to

Buganda to earn money for bride price. Bride price was a social obligation that was incumbent

upon a young man starting a family. This argument agrees with Jorgensen’s that Bride price

was raised to certain number of Cows. The cultivator community could not afford this number.

30

The solution was to head to Buganda for Bride price and other family needs in the context of

modern life.

Mitchell (1959) has related persistence of migration to rate and incidence. He posed a

distinction between the rate of migration, variation in which will depend on underlying

economic conditions related to felt wants and local opportunities, and the incidence of migration

accounted by individual motivation or ‘last straw’ causes at a particular moment. He thus,

proposed three axes along which migration operates: Normative, where migration became a

customary pattern within tribes infers that it is likely to persist while the social needs which

gave rise to it persist; Economic, the main basis of migration, and the Individual related

determinants were the precipitating factors determining individual movement (Mitchell, 1959).

Ninety percent of the former migrant labourers that participated in this study said that after

getting cash from Buganda for bride wealth they settled home and never made more trips except

for taxation. However, all of them said that they had visited Buganda several times, this pattern

suggests that economic and individual related motives for migration over raided Mitchell’s

normative classified factors. In general, however, discussions of migration have to consider a

threefold level of explanation: firstly, the general level of poverty or lack of economic

opportunities at home; secondly the relative level of wants or aspirations, and thirdly a

confusion of individual motivation and subsidiary factors which vary between tribes and areas

Hutton (n.d). The first factor, that of the level of economic condition, is the one on which

virtually all studies agree with, as the feature of overwhelming importance in any account of

migratory movement, and most of these accounts are concerned with tribes who are not able to

meet their cash demands at home.

Several writers in different areas of East Africa found much the same situation. Audrey

Richards saw the movement of immigrants from Ruada – Urundi into Uganda as a general

movement. Population from a poorer area into a richer one as observed by Fortt (1954): “The

picture gained from the Kabula and Kyaka ferry answers is that of a people continuously in

need of money to satisfy their social obligations and aspirations.”

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The findings of this study underscore economic imperatives to labour migrations conditioned

by colonial economic policies aimed at cash crop production. Emil Rado (1965) writing about

Uganda in the 1960s emphasises the different economic levels existing between the employed

and others in the community. He observes thus: “The average Uganda African wage-earner,

though poor by the standards of Europe or America, was more than 60% better off than his self-

employed brother. That is why wage-earning jobs are so keenly sought’’ (Rado, 1965:101).

While Rado’s argument is valid for post independent Ugandan wage earners, and so relevant in

partly explaining the post-independence labour migration, however labour migration during the

colonial era surrounded around production of cash crops especially cotton and coffee in

response to colonial capital demands. It was common to find migrant labourers in the farms or

shambas owned by the small holder peasant Baganda producers other than wage labour in the

colonial government controlled firms.

Information from West African sources seems to indicate that though there were differences in

the patterns of migration, the underlying conditions were related to migration patterns in

Uganda. Prothero, for example, found that migration from the Sokoto Province of Northern

Nigeria was predominantly a seasonal movement of people from an area of high population

pressure and insufficient cash earning opportunities, to areas where these cash needs could be

met as it was the case with the Bakiga migration into Bunyoro (Prothero 1957). Udo,

commenting on the migration of tenant farmers in Eastern Nigeria, found a similar movement

from areas of high density and low cash earning opportunity (Udo, 1964), to areas of low

density and higher opportunity either in cash cropping or wage earning which constitutes a

related experience of the career migrants to Kampala.

In these circumstances, the economies of several tribes have developed to the stage where they

are dependent on the income from wage labour earned outside the area to maintain the standard

of living which is regarded as essential, and as far as information can be gathered it seems that

the persistence of migration is rational in economic terms, given the present productivity of

traditional agriculture. Berg (1965) has attempted to show-case for West Africa that the

seasonal migrant labour pattern was the best means of adjustment to the general economic

situation.

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“Historically it permitted West Africa to enjoy more rapid economic growth than would otherwise have been possible. It continues to benefit both the labour-exporting areas and the recipient area. Because migrant labour permits a better allocation of resources than would be possible under any other form of labour utilization, it is not likely to disappear until fundamental changes appear in West African economies” (Berg, 1965:161).

Other writers have shown the extent to which migration has become part of life in the way that

Schapera found it among the Bechuanaland peoples. For example, Murray Armor shows that

Barotseland recruits to the South African mines were found in a situation in which men spent

their time alternating between careers at the mines and at home, and, in order to maintain the

standard of living they expected, kept returning to the mines throughout their working lives.

Migration had become not only an accepted part of life but also essential to the economy of the

village (Armor, 1962).

Similarly, Valsen (1959) studying the effects of migration on Tonga tribal society, found that

the minimum requirements of the Tonga had reached a level which necessitated a higher cash

income than could be earned at home, so that migration had become a necessary part of normal

life (Valsen, 1959).

While this information stresses the importance of underlying economic conditions, and the

balance of economic opportunities in accounting for the movement of labour, it is not enough

to explain why some areas export labour, and some areas receive it; variation in rates of

emigration both within and between different tribes and areas must also be accounted for. A

considerable body of detailed material has in fact been gathered, mostly within East Africa, but

also from elsewhere, showing the extent to which Africa, but also from elsewhere, showing the

extent to which migration rates can differ over quite small areas and relating these differences

to variations in local earning opportunities.

In considering the history of migratory movement in Uganda, (Powesland, 1957: 9) summarized

the differences in migration patterns: These disparities between one tribe and another and

between one part of the country and another in the relative availability of opportunities for cash

earning, whether for taxes or for other needs that developed, very largely explained the tribal

33

composition of the migrant labour force on which Buganda, and the Jinja zone, came to

depend.

Walter Elkan in considering the labour supply in Uganda comment on the number of times in

the past in which the extension of cash crops into a new area resulted in the decline in the

number of men migrating from that area, and traces a general inverse relationship between farm

incomes in different areas, and the proportion of men in employment (Elkan, 1960). Similar

situation was reported by Gulliver in his studies of two areas of Tanganyika among the Ngoni

and Ndendeuli, found considerable variations in the level of village earnings, with migration

being heaviest from areas where earnings were least, while among the Nyakyusa (Gulliver,

1955), rates of migration varied according to the distribution of cash crops, in a very similar

manner to that Southall describes among the Alur (Southal, 1954). The above writers augment

the findings of this study especially regarding the migrant labour during colonial and early post-

independent period. This study found out that this wave of migration started from 1920s in

response to colonial economic policies, and gradually reduced in early 1960s as they started

growing cash crops, practicing trade but they were also discouraged by the Buganda land tenure

system and mistreatment received from their hosts.

In some circumstances needs may vary over a man’s lifetime so that the pattern of migration

varies not only according to the economic condition of any area, but according to the ages of

the inhabitants. For example, Watson in his study of the Mambwe people of Northern Rhodesia

mentioned above related different rates of migration to different needs and aspirations at

different stages of a man’s life. The youngest man with immediate needs, and lacking the

experience and fare-money for longer journeys, went to the nearest low-paid work on rural

estates; married men preferred the higher paid employment of the Copper belt or other urban

centres, and older men whose cash needs were largely satisfied, aspired less to wealth than to

the achievement of status and power within their tribal society (Watson, 1958).

In general, changes in aspirations tend to be associated with the degree of contact with the world

outside the home area, and it is often those with the greatest degree of contact who are in the

best position to acquire cash at home, but who nevertheless migrate, because they are aware of

34

a range of new needs which cannot be satisfied even by relatively high earnings at home. From

this study, the picture which emerges is the process by which the contact of western societies

with formerly non-money economies brings about a gradual increase in the use and appreciation

of cash, first through the compulsion of taxation and later by the development of new wants.

To the extent that these new wants could not be met within the home area, men were drawn into

labour migration. The examination of the part played in labour migration, therefore becomes

the study of the agents of contact with the wider world that lead to development of the kinds of

new wants that could only be satisfied by cash earning, outside the home area.

Thus, although it can generally be argued that low aspirations were aligned to low standards of

living, changes in the level of aspiration, may owe more to factors such as these, than to any

objective change in the level of economic condition. Lopreato found such a situation when he

had to account for sudden major changes in the emigration rates of Southern Italian peasants.

The peasants were extremely poor, the basic poverty of the area had not changed materially,

and he therefore looked to Merton’s reference group theory to explain the changes in attitudes

to this poverty through the operation of the kinds of factors (Lopreato, 1965:305). The peasants’

abject and enduring poverty, afflicting interpersonal relations that ensue thereafter and the

subservient, handicapped social status that follow from their poverty and from their work

conditions that constituted the objective precondition to their decision to escape their traditional

situation. Once, however, for the various reasons mentioned, the communication channels

linking the peasant world to the national and extra-national societies opened and became objects

of their awareness. The peasant started seeing the outside world a mode of life and standards of

conduct that intensify the discomfort and discontent inherent in the objective preconditions

Through growing awareness of conditions outside his own social, and realization that such

conditions can be achieved by others, the peasant begins to assess his own condition with

reference to social values and opportunities of non-membership groups. That instead of judging

his situation within which he finds himself badly off. This process of awakening to the values

of a wider society and the acceptance of such value is part of the phenomenon of migration, and

accounts for the variation in rates beyond the level of economic condition, and changes in rates

over time. But the story migrant labour in Uganda and particularly from Ankole to Buganda

35

constitute not only a discourse of a fascinating narrative that illustrates the effect of new wants

in the context of the colonial economy but also supplement on the broader literature on the

incorporation of the African societies in the global world.

Tunanukye (2017) found that the major motivations for labour migration to Buganda were:

taxation, resources for marriage, access to manufactured goods, escape from Luwalo and cash

nexus. His findings were consistent with Rutabajuuka’s and Powesland’s in explaining the

factors for labour migrations in the context of the colonial period and to the migrant labourers

themselves and their areas of origin (Rutabajuuka, 1989 and Powesland, 1957). While their

studies give a firm background for this study regarding the motivations for internal migration,

they are silent about the continued internal migration and how later such migrants interacted

with the natives. Moreover, the historical contexts and the nature of the actors studied are

different. For instance, they do not conceptualize in the post-independent Uganda yet the system

of internal migration continued and has shaped the country's socio-economic and political

experience during the period of study.

In his studies in Bunyoro, Baligira engages Lee’s push-pull theory to argue that migration

results from consideration of positive and negative factors at the origin and destination which

push and pull migrants. He, for instance, refers to the cost of travel, government policies, and

language barriers. To illustrate his argument further, he contends that the migrants from mainly

Kigezi region of Uganda and the neighbouring countries like Rwanda and the Democratic

Republic of Congo were at different times forced by certain undesirable factors to move from

wherever they were to as far as Kibaale district, which was either perceived or known to have

abundant fertile land and other attractions. To him, factors that aided their migration of

thousands of people from Kigezi region since 1940 revolved around rapid population growth

and acute land shortage. Baligira (2017) observed that the population of Kigezi district doubled

from 206,090 in 1921 to 493,444 people in 1959. By the 1940s, some Kigezi counties such as

Ndorwa and Rukiga had become so overpopulated that their inhabitants began to scramble for

land. At the same time, the land scarcity in Kigezi did not only culminate in life-threatening

conflict but also led to serious food shortage throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Though Baligira

36

elucidates on some of the factors that explain the migration of the Bakiga to Kibaale, he is silent

on the factors that perpetuated their migration into Bunyoro. He further raises a very important

factor of population increase to which this study can build on. He argues that increased Bakiga

population led to increased competition over the land and widespread conflict that culminated

in cases of homicide in the 1960s.

Whereas there has been a lot of generalizations regarding the causes of migrations of people

internationally and the pre-colonial migrations, no deliberate effort has been directed towards

internal colonial migrations and particularly as to why it persisted in specific areas like in

Bunyoro and Buganda. This study, therefore, aims at understanding why migration has been

going on in Uganda in the period 1894 – 1995 with the view of examining the interactions

between migrants and natives and the implication on citizenship that has become a thorny topic

in contemporary debates.

2.4 Interactions among the migrants and natives with emphasis on Uganda

The interactions of migrants and natives in Uganda has had a lot of implications on the issue of

citizenship. In the world over including Africa, the nature and status of citizenship have

determined and sustained the access to resources, political power and the sense of belonging

(Espenshade, 1995). In America, the claims against migrants had risen barely five years after

independence. Mires noted that the American nation faced ruins from immigrants who were

granted citizenship after only five years’ residence. To him, rapid naturalization raised the

spectre of a government-controlled by foreigners rather than native-born (Mires, 2000). In

Cameroon, the Beti and Balu people proudly proclaim to be autochthones – “born from the soil”

of the forest area in the south of the country (Geschiere, 2009). These same groups argue that

the forest belongs to them because they conquered it. In this case of Cameroon as for America,

access to natural resources was paramount in defining the relationship between migrants and

natives. This study will test whether or not natural resources access has anything to do with the

phenomenon in Uganda.

In Ivory Coast, the interaction between natives and migrants constituted open exclusion.

Geschiere (2009) identified open exclusion to ‘measure’ the depth of the negative interaction

37

in the form of violent struggles. He used the example of Franco-phone Africa in which these

violent struggles informed the policies of the governments. For instance, violent epochs during

president Gbagbo's regime compelled the government to send all people living in Abidjan

except the Ebrie11, to return to their villages of origin to become ‘citizens'. All people who

would not claim a village of origin within the country were considered as migrants and would

lose their citizenship (Geschiere, 2009). For one to claim Ivorian citizenship he had to prove

that he was a native of a village in ivory coast. If one did not have a village of the nativity in

Ivory Coast it meant that he was a migrant, and therefore should not claim citizenship. This is

an interesting understanding and interpretation of citizenship and nativism which can inform

the present study.

Migrants in Buganda interacted with the natives in various ways concerning the conditions they

were living in. Referring to Brownie in 1946, Richards (1954) argues that due to overcrowding,

disruption of local native customs and the possible hostile attitudes could provoke the

indigenous population into violence. Her argument is in line with Schapera and Stanner’s who

argue that the poor living conditions shaped the migrants’ attitudes towards the natives thus

emerging a segregationist attitude (Rockenbach, 2018). This attitude was identified in the

findings of Schapera and Stanner in 1950, that migrants in Buganda were beginning to detach

themselves from the Ganda society and had started setting up separate communities. This study

aims at finding out why the migrants were detaching themselves from the native Baganda and

how it impacted on citizenship during the period under study.

The Banyoro activists who seemed nationalistic responded by forming tribal organizations

based on objective makers. According to Peterson (2015), the Banyoro in the lost counties were

discontented with the “imperial Baganda” and so they worked hard to identify themselves as a

distinct people unjustly governed by a foreign power (Peterson, 2015). To justify their plight

the Banyoro formed the Mubende Banyoro Committee group (MBC). In his study, Ssentongo

(2015) reported about the indigenous Banyoro in open conflicts with the Bakiga on claims that

the Banyoro were being recolonized by the Bafuruki (Ssentongo, 2015). He further established

11 The Ebrie were excused from returning to their villages of origin because they were considered the historical natives of Abidjan. But all Ivorians were obliged to return where they regarded as their villages of origin.

38

that several pluralism initiatives were applied to curb inter-ethnic conflict in the area including

interethnic friendship, learning each other's language, community peace dialogues and

government initiatives at the policy level. While Ssentongo lacks the historical aspect in

explaining the Banyoro-Bakiga relations, and thus failing to put into consideration, Jøgensen’s

argument illuminates, that because of migrations, conquests, intermarriage and assimilation and

increasing tempo of political and technological change, there are no pure ethnic groups in

Uganda including Bunyoro (Jørgensen, 1981: 35), he raises a very important aspect of the state

actors in precipitating the conflict between natives and Bafuruki. The study thus interrogates

these concepts as raised by various scholars by exploring the interaction between migrants and

natives in relation to their impact on citizenship using the two areas of study.

2.5 Implications of migration and nativism on citizenship in Uganda during the period

1894-1995

Citizenship is a very old concept that has undergone many transformations. Since the times of

Athenian democracy and the Roman Republic, its core meaning has been a status of

membership in a self-governing political community. Two kinds of citizenship come out, social

and legal. Hunter (2016) argues that citizenship has been understood differently but the bottom

line is the commonly acceptable element that cuts across - the governed engaged with their

governors before, and later or alongside, the institutions of the modern state (Hunter, 2016). In

the view of the above, migrants, natives and state actors have responded differently towards the

meaning and practice of citizenship in Uganda.

According to Norman (1967), the immigrant preservation of the German language, rather than

any displayed eagerness to master English was an important source of additional friction and

suspicion in Philadelphia. Philadelphians interpreted this reluctance to learn English as an

indication that the Germans were not only innately stupid and ignorant people but also nativists

(Friedman, 1967: 411). Norman’s argument is in line with Leonardi’s who in reference to

southern Sudan, argues that chiefship had originated in mobility and migration in terms of both

the individual acquisition of linguistic and other foreign knowledge (Leonardi, 2013). From the

39

Ugandan perspective, while many immigrants from Rwanda were assimilated,12 some

immigrants in southern region were beginning to detach themselves from native society and set

up separate communities of their own by 1950 as ‘foreigners’13. This study examines the

language factor in the inclusion or exclusion of communities concerning Uganda.

In Pennsylvania, according to Norman (1967), a pattern of hospitality to strangers influenced

and encouraged Germany immigrants to settle in Pennsylvania. This spirit of welcome towards

German immigrants led to the influx of immigrants in the period 1949 to 1955 that aroused

latent nativist fears (Friedman, 1967). This similar situation was evident in Buganda's as

demonstrated by the influx of the Banyarwanda in which Richards, quoting the committee of

inquiry report, estimated that the number of migrants were 100,000 in 1938 a year (Richards,

1954:249). Richard’s findings were in line with Stichter’s who found that in 1948 one-third of

the population of Buganda consisted of migrants from other parts of Uganda, or Tanganyika,

Sudan or Rwanda (Stichter, 1985:3). This study will build Richards’ on Ugandan migrants to

Buganda and Bunyoro using the experiences of Banyarwanda and Burundi as chronicled by

Richards.

Among the European migrants to America and particularly to the American southwest, they

had to develop group cultures different from both Anglo-American neighbours and the former

European forebears (Cohen, 1984). Cohen further argues that they [German, Polish, Czechs,

and Serbian migrants] adopted much of the material culture of their Anglo-American

neighbours and abandoned most of the regional loyalties and habits that defined them in Europe.

He goes on to assert that those who succeeded in establishing enduring communities in the new

environment developed new cultural syntheses based on an evolving body of religious,

linguistic, and associational practices (Cohen, 1984:1032). Whereas religious, linguistic and

associational practices became major symbols to which new cultural syntheses developed,

historical studies still do not identify the new values and symbols that have made migrants to

12 The Banyarwanda and Barundi were assimilated as they adopted the culture of the Baganda (Richards, 1954: 245). 13 Foreigners are the people, according to the Baganda point of view, who came from other areas. They were migrants who not only came from Uganda’s neighbors but also Ugandans from West Nile, Ankole, Bunyoro and Eastern Province

40

form new cultures (Lacina, 2018). There is no clear explanation as to why such new cultures

developed learning from the former and adopting their own, while, Cohen's assertions lack

African context to which this study seeks to provide using narratives of participants from

Bunyoro and Buganda.

The South African state adopted deliberate manipulation of group differences to prevent

interracial class solidarity which shaped the ethnic consciousness of minority groups such as

coloureds or Indians. According to Shula Marks and Trapido, this policy was initiated by the

silence of ‘national’ and ‘racial identity’ which made these [coloureds and Indians] to construct

their sense of community. The study intends to establish whether the silenced national and racial

identities in Uganda were as a result of the state actors in a bid to prevent interracial class

solidarity as argued by Marks and Trapido about South African experience.

The creation of new administrative units in Uganda was in an attempt by the government to

remedy the contradiction between the three notions. Ssentongo (2015) argues that the directive

to split Buyaga with a new constituency around the former Ruteete camp, and Bugangaizi

around Kasiita was aimed at making the voices of the Bafuruki in Bunyoro heard both at a local

level and national level since the creation of a constituency meant national representation.

Though these events look as contemporary issues of 2010, Mamdani relates them with the

universal challenge of the post-colonial governments in the era of neo-colonialism inherited

from the colonial state. For instance, while the colonial state defined citizenship in terms of

power,14 nationalists defined citizenship referring to the virtue being a Ugandan save origin, to

the 1971-1979 state it was a black Ugandan.

Shula Marks and Trapido argue that the incorporative strategy was deeply rooted in the changes

which took place in the Cape economy under the British rule to contain the responses of natives

by politically disarming them. William Porter, the cape attorney general, commented: ‘I would

rather meet the Hottentot at Hustings voting for his representative than meet the Hottentont in

14 Citizenship was dependent on political participation, for one to contest for leadership of any sort from the level of the parish to a member of parliament had to be a Ugandan citizen whose grandparents were lived in Bunyoro by 1926.

41

the wilds with his gun upon his shoulder (Marks 1987: 5). From the attorney general’s comment

and Marks’ argument, the strategy was necessary for the creation of a class of indigenous black

peasant producers who could supply raw materials for the British merchants and constitute a

growing consumer market for their goods and services. Putting into consideration that the

British colonial policy was related but different in the magnitude of application moderated by

the nature of indigenes, the study seeks to establish whether the strategy informed the Ugandan

state concerning Ugandanisation policy that was adopted in the 1960s.

Furthermore, the Uganda state in 1969 adopted the Common Man’s Charter in which all

Ugandans were the people of Uganda, who must move away from the hold of tribal and other

forms of functionalism and tackle problems of poverty, underdevelopment, and challenges of

nation-building basing on the dictum of one country and one people (Obote, 1969). In this

Charter, Obote argues that government structures would be in the hands of "common men" not

to particular individuals- about five as before. To him, the centralization of Uganda's political

system was an act of liberation. Whereas Obote had a point in demonstrating the role of the

state in bringing about national unity and controlling the Baganda sub-nationalism, he does not

attempt to bring on board the aspects to which his government was to deal with ethnic

consciousness that continued to show up in the following years despite his consolidation of

power. This study seeks to understand various approaches in which various actors (state and

non-state) responded to the three spike issues under the study.

In developing countries, some formal and informal policies have been put in place to regulate

internal migration because states were worried about urban unemployment, overburdened city

services, social tensions among others (Lacina, 2018). This argument is in line with Wallace

(2013) and Kundu (2009) who further, argue that governments’ discouragement of migration

is related to the level of democracy (Kundu, 2009; Wallace, 2013). Accordingly, large cities

are dangerous for non-democratic regimes since it becomes possible for collective action and

contagion. While these scholars put forward a very important argument of regulating internal

migration by the state actors, they suffer from generalization in which they assume that all

developing countries adopt similar policies towards migrants to which this study intends to

42

address focusing on Uganda and particularly on the two regions under study where migration

has been historically rural-rural, contrary to the rural-urban classified above.

2.6 Chapter Summary

The literature available has attempted to indicate evolution of nativism in the world over and

Africa of late. It has been attributed to migrancy, and has informed the attitude of state and non-

state actors towards citizenship participation. Friedman (1967), Bosniak (1994), Mudde (2012)

and Higham (1954) talked about it in America, Ndlovu-Gatshen (2009), Shula and Trapido

(1987) in South Africa, Mamdani (2001) in Rwanda and Congo and Geschiere (2009) in Central

and West Africa. Richards (1954) talked about it in respect to Baganda’s view of others so

much so that she predicted open confrontations. The latter places the problem in the colonial

period, which is an important period for this study but does not talk about the state, non-state

response towards the situation to which this study wants to contribute.

43

CHAPTER THREE

GENERAL METHODOLOGY

“Eye witness accounts are supposedly the fountainhead of all history” (Vansina, 1985: 4).

3.1 Introduction

This study was approached qualitatively and guided by historical research methods which

include the analysis of documentary information, oral narratives and archival documents. In

addition, linguistic, sociological, anthropological and political economy approaches were

applied to probe references to migrancy, nativism, and citizenship. Linguistic references were

useful in probing manifestations. Sociological and anthropological references were used to

probe connections between the social and cultural conditions of the migrants in their area of

origin and those of the natives in the host communities, and how they affected the relationship

between the two groups. Reference to the political economy helped in understanding economic

relationships that determined the attitudes, perceptions, social relationships and responses

towards or among each other, which contributes to the understanding of the persistent citizens’

contestations and violent conflicts over identity formations in the post-colonial Uganda. This

Chapter further, specifies the research design, study population, sample size, data sources,

methods of data collection and anticipated problems and limitations of the study.

3.2 Research design

This study employed Oral History Design in the study areas of Southern and Western regions

of Uganda. This is the design that involved the study of perceptions and experiences of people.

It also involves gathering historical knowledge as viewed by individuals (Kumar, 2011:123-

124). It consists of information transmitted orally from the recent ancestors about the historical

experience in the community. It is information based on the narratives and stories, experiences

and opinions of the eye-witnesses. Additional information was obtained from archival sources.

44

3.3 Study Area

The study was conducted in the four districts as they were known in colonial times. These

were: Ankole, Kigezi, Buganda and Bunyoro. Ankole and Kigezi were labour reserve zones

that supplied significant migrant labour to the cash crop reserve zone- Buganda (Lwanga-

Lunyigo, 1989). Buganda was the destination of a continuous stream of migrants during and

after colonial rule, while Bunyoro was the destination of the Bakiga in the 1950s-1970s. Since

Kyaggwe county (Mukono district) was the destination of the migrants, it was selected as the

study area. However, through snowballing, Bulemezi (Luwero district) was included in this

study because some migrants in Mukono referred to their colleagues whom they came with to

have settled in Luwero. Consequently, the study was carried out in Kibaale, Kagadi. Kabale

and Mitooma for western Uganda, and Mukono and Luwero for southern Uganda.

3.4 Study Population

The study population constitutes two categories of participants. The first category were sixty

and above years old men and women drawn from the southern region –Buganda, because this

was the centre15 of the new state- Uganda, and thus a destination of many migrants beginning

in the youthful stage of Uganda state in the 1920s, and western region-Bunyoro which was also

a destination of many migrants in the later stage of the new State Uganda (well thought-out

interview guide for this category is indicated in appendix 1). This category of participants was

chosen because they have witnessed, participated and experienced the unfolding historical

events within their communities. They were able to speak their memories, experiences, opinions

but also narrate stories as handed down from the previous generations. They were not only

identifiable by age, but also through the chairpersons of their villages. Thirty people of this

category were interviewed because they constituted a saturation point.

The second category of participants were opinion leaders. They constituted academicians,

traditional leaders, former national leaders (former Members of Parliament) and religious

leaders because their narratives advanced the knowledge and experience of witnessing

15 Since Buganda was the center of power of the new state, this region is commonly known as the central region. Using compass direction and for reality's sake, the region is in the southerly direction of the country. In this study, the Buganda region will be referred to as the southern region.

45

historical events in Ugandan state during, before and after their tenure of service. These

participants were accessed using snowballing. The researcher identified a starting participant

from one of Banyoro Elders16 referred to him by the Kibaale Chief Administrative Officer

(CAO). During the course of the interaction with some of the Banyoro elders, they referred to

their colleagues, natives, migrants and other senior citizens who were well versed with the

stories of the people of the area. For the southern region, the researcher started with participants

well known to him, while for former members of Parliament (MPs), a list of former

parliamentarians was accessed from the parliament of the Republic of Uganda library and

archival documents from Makerere University main library. From the list, I identified one who

led the researcher to other members. Information from this category was retrieved using a well

thought opinion leaders interview guide (Appendix 1). The number of participants in this

category was thirty-one, who constituted the saturation point.

3.5 Sampling techniques

The researcher employed purposive and snowball sampling method to select the sample size

in both regions. In the western region, colonial Bunyoro and other neighbouring districts as

permitted by snowballing, were sampled because it constitutes the largest number of migrants

(Bafuruki) living with natives (Banyoro) yet it is where various citizenship contestations17 have

been reported (Baligira, 2011). In southern Uganda, although snowballing necessitated visiting

and inclusion of Bulemezi, the Buganda county of Kyaggwe was sampled because it was the

main destination of migrants and pioneers of the modern economy.

3.6 Data collection methods

This study was conducted in the paradigms of oral historical methods of retrieving data

particularly oral history. This method of data collection is desired because the participants’

16 Banyoro Elders constitutes a pressure group that was formed in 1918 to champion the rights of the Banyoro. This group of elders is known as the Mubende Banyoro Committee group (MBC). By 1990s the MBC was a local vigilante group popularly known as the Mubende Bunyoro Komiti (MBK). The group was named for playing a big role in the occurrence of “tragic events”- conflicts between Banyoro and Bakiga in May 2003 (Wamboka, 2003). 17 There have been a number of migrancy-nativism-citizenship questions in Bunyoro, of the recent scenarios was the open violence during February to April 2002. A Mukiga was elected to chairman of Kibaale District but the sitting Munyoro refused to hand over to the “foreigner”- migrant (locally referred to as Mufuruki) (See also Espeland, 2007)

46

perceptions are conveniently recorded including unanticipated ones. Reliability was achieved

by checking oral testimonies against other participants’ narratives, and written documents such

as archival documents, books, articles, together with other written sources or recorded audio-

visual documents.

3.7 Methods of data analysis

Primary and secondary data sources are used to evaluate, organize, interpret and discover

knowledge (Rampolla, 2007). Primary data was retrieved from recorded testimonies of eye-

witnesses and their immediate descendants in the contemporary period, and from archival

documents using document analysis schedule (see appendix 2). These have been used to provide

evidence to describe and interpret the experiences of the natives and migrants. Secondary data

was sourced from published books, content analysis in journals and local newspaper articles.

Though this study heavily relies on primary data for raw information and first-hand

narratives/accounts, it greatly benefited from secondary data for comparison, analysis purposes

and interpretation.

3.8 Ethical consideration

The researcher sought for ethical clearance from Makerere University Social Sciences

Research Ethics Committee (MAKSSREC) and then obtain a permit from the Uganda National

Council of Science and Technology (UNCST) and proceed to the field (letters are appended in

appendices 10 and 11 respectively). In this case where the study was conducted in multi-ethnic

environs; some individual, cultural and gender sensitivities are expected. To deal with such

sensitivities, the researcher ably introduced himself to iron out issues of suspicion (see the

information sheet in appendix 7). Further, I sought for introduction letter from the Department

of History, Archaeology and Heritage studies to access the Kabale District Archives (the letter

is attached, appendix 12). Regarding individual and cultural sensitivities, the researcher, upon

proper identification, sought consent of the participants in their local languages before

interviewing them. The participants’ names were anonymised with pseudo names (RR).

47

3.8.1 Gender Considerations

This study is mindful that historical experiences do not discriminate based on gender. Care was

taken to give adequate space for women's voices as well as men and avoid prejudice or

disadvantage to one or the other.

3.9 Constraints encountered during the study

There were no serious constraints encountered during this study. A few were handled well and

served as a lesson. Issues of representation were a challenge because the country is

heterogeneous with more than thirty-four distinct languages (Kasozi, 1994:11). The selection

of southern and western regions was representative enough because Ugandans belong to the

four language groups namely the Bantu, Luo, Sudanic and Nile Hamitic which are well

represented in the two regions under the study (see appendix 9). Where the researcher was not

well versed with the language, interpreters and research assistants were used and the translated

interview guides were administered in the local language (Appendix 9). The interview guides

were translated into Luganda and Runyoro because they are the widely spoken languages in the

respective study areas.

The study heavily relied on the narratives of very old people whose some of their memory may

be blurred, and who were uncomfortable with some particular hours of the day. The researcher

made prior arrangements for the comfort of the participants through baseline study and

telephoning. Furthermore, many of the migrants in 1890s up to 1920s who would have been the

main target group have long passed away, so information about the experiences and events of

this epoch was obtained from their off-springs as they too provided the testimonies as they were

handed to them as explained by (Vansina, 1961: 24), thus:

If A passes on something he has heard from B, it makes no difference how often he repeats it - what he says at various intervals of time still forms no more than one single testimony, since each time he is passing on what he heard from B. Thus, the tradition on which the testimony is based, and the informant, both remain the same, so that clearly the testimony in question remains the same throughout, irrespective of the intervals of time between the informant's repetitions of it.

Indeed, the sons and daughters of the previous migrants could speak authentically for their

parents since they too, witnessed the migration phenomenon, their stories were checked against

48

those of their colleagues and archival information got from National Archives in Kampala

(Wandegeya), and, Kabale District Archives (Kabale).

On 21st March 2020, I was in Kabale District Archive when Uganda announced the first case

of COVID-19. Efforts were put in place to combat the pandemic. Between 15th March and 14th

April 2020, the president had addressed the nation over eight times with new additional

measures. But the most touching one was the abolition of public transport on 25th March 2020.

I thus decided to leave Kabale for Kampala amidst uncertainties, for the institutions including

ours had been closed. I was only assisted by a private car owner who drove to Mbarara and then

another one to Kampala, of course at a very high cost before private transport was suspended

on 30th March 2020. In Kampala, access to essential services was not simple as before but I had

to soldier on. I was however able to interpret data I had got from Mukono, Kibaale and Kabale,

and beefed up literature. I also drafted three chapters for my first draft of this thesis though the

pandemic curtailed data collection processes for two months, which were recovered after easing

of the lockdown. Using Risk Management Plan (RMP), I was able to resume data collection in

July 2020 up to September 2020 (Appendix 9). Appointments and schedules were made

especially with the second category of the participants because of their work schedules and

available time and resources during the post COVID-19 period.

49

CHAPTER FOUR

MIGRATION IN THE CONTEXT OF UGANDA, 1894-1995

4.1 Introduction

The migration phenomena in Uganda is long and a complex process. It would seem that people

of Uganda have been engaged in a continuous process of movement within regions and across

regions for many years in the past. This process has continued in the recent past but was perhaps

exacerbated by the emergence of the modern state during the period 1894-1914. The

establishment of the modern state in Uganda created conditions which increased the tempo of

migrations within regions and across regions. Across regions there have been three major waves

of migrations in Uganda since 1894. The first was migrant labour phenomenon of the 1920s

through the 1940s into the 1960s. This wave involved the migration of men from labour reserve

regions created by colonial economy to the cash crop reserve zones of the Uganda protectorate

(Lwanga-Lunyigo, 1989 & Jørgensen, 1981). The main strands of this wave were from west-

Nile region to Bunyoro and Buganda and Busoga; and from Ankole, Toro and Kigezi18 to

Buganda. These migrants were absorbed into agricultural sector. They were almost exclusively

male. Having left their families behind, they worked on target for a specific period, after which

they returned home after hitting the target.

During the 1940s and 1950s there was a second wave of migrations across regions in Uganda:

this wave of migration did not aim at earning a wage, or meeting a short run target but a

complete shift, and not from labour reserve to cash crop regions. It involved migration of whole

families. The most notable case of this strand was the Bakiga. Responding to population

pressure and also encouraged by both the colonial government and the Bakiga leaders, the

Bakiga migrants first expanded into north-Kigezi, then into west and north-Ankole and

18 Kigezi officially became a district in the Uganda Protectorate in 1912 following the incorporation of Rukiga in the south, Bufumbira in the south-west, Kinkizi in the north west and Mpororo in the north (map of Kigezi is appended). It was inhabited by three ethno-linguistic groups belonging to the interlacustrine Bantu speakers. The major ethnolinguistic inhabitants were the Bakiga in the south, Bahororo in the north, Bafumbira and perhaps a minority group called Banyabutumbi in the extreme south-west and the pastoral Bahima ruling group, Bashambo only in Rujuumbura (Turyahikayo-Rugyema, 1976). The migration stories discussed in this thesis centre around the Bakiga whose influence has been enormous in the region.

50

eventually into Toro and Bunyoro. This case was very well coordinated by the colonial

government and the regional leaders of the kingdoms involved.

The third wave of migration involved the movement of spontaneous migrants from other

provinces and districts of Uganda into Buganda region, specifically Kampala, Entebbe and Jinja

to take up blue-collar and white-collar employment careers created by the expansion of

industrial and commercial sectors as well as opportunities in the civil service (Zwanenberg &

King, 1970). Some of these elites first came as students, and stayed-on after school since their

professional attainments opened for them careers in these urban centres. This wave involved

people from all the regions of Uganda, and their numbers increased after independence and the

Africanisation drive of the independence regime. Many of these elite migrants did not yet settle

in Buganda or Busoga region. They occupied institutional accommodation like school, city

council or government ministry. For most of this group of elite migrants, they still had their

native regions as homes and regarded their workstation as just a point of sojourn.

The blue-collar career migrants mainly migrated to former cash crop zones or where capitalism

had taken a root while the white-collar migrants took up the new opportunities created by the

new nation-state starting from late 1950s through the post-colonial era. However, this study is

about the two waves: the migrant labour wave and the career driven migration wave. These two

waves of migration have profoundly changed the trend of events in the history of Uganda and

informed the formation of new identities at the wake of the era of nationalistic struggles and

have redefined the theory and practice of citizenship in Uganda. The main argument raised in

this thesis is that the migration of the indigenous groups of people from one region to another

has ignited flames of nativism leading to contested citizenship as illustrated in the study areas.

This chapter contributes to the main argument by discussing the trends and imperatives of

migration in Uganda during the period 1894-1995 to answer the first research question: Why

was there a stream of migration from Ankole and Kigezi districts in the southwestern to the

Buganda and Bunyoro regions during the period 1894-1995? To address this question, the

chapter is divided into three sections. First, migration patterns in Uganda during the period up

1950s; second, Bakiga migration in western Uganda and third, chapter conclusion.

51

4.2 Migration patterns in Uganda, 1894 to 1960s

By 1894 Uganda had been inhabited by several multi-ethno-linguistic people19. This study

found out that Uganda has been experienced three migratory shifts: Precolonial migrations,

migrant labour and career migrations. During the precolonial period and the period of state

formation, the legendary migratory narratives had been important in uniting respective

communities. Migratory narratives in Buganda suggest that six clans: the mantis, civet cat,

Columbus monkey, the bird, lung fish of the nkerekere branch and the reed buck claim

indigeneity, and so are termed as Banansangwa, the indigenous. While the rest of thirty-five

claim to have migrated into the area that came to be known as Buganda, they were united by

their related language and leadership (Kiwanuka, 1971:30-32), and other scholars on the

precolonial peopling of Uganda like Greenberg, Kasozi, Ogot, Odhiambo and Karugire have

argued that Ugandans belonged to three main linguistic groups tracing their migration to the

great lakes as far as AD 1300.

In 1894, the British colonial rule was imposed on different African communities that came to

be known as Uganda. What was left was to incorporate the country into world capitalism. One

of the strategies adopted in 1906 to compel natives or subjects to produce for capital, was the

introduction of taxes and the division of the protectorate into two zones: the cash crop producing

zone and labour reserve zone. Thus, the colonial state organised the country on uneven

development strategy namely, labour reserve zones that included Ankole and Kigezi, and west-

Nile and Acholi, and the cash crop reserve zones, Buganda, and Eastern Uganda districts

respectively. According to this strategy natives in the cash crop growing area were left to grow

crops while natives mainly adult males in the labour reserve areas were forced migrate to cash

crop areas. The migrant labourers provided their labour power in cultivation, processing,

transport and construction for the colonial state-owned plantations and farms of the rich

Baganda peasants (Mamdani, 1999). By this strategy of uneven development, the less favoured

areas or labour reserves were to remain underdeveloped to ensure the necessary labour flow to

cash crop zones.

19 For description of migration and peopling of Uganda, See Jøgensen 1981: 35.

52

Consequently, as early as 1906 migrant workers from Toro, Bunyoro and Ankole migrated to

Buganda, compelled by taxation and pulled by the new need for cloth (Jørgensen, 1981). The

imposition of poll tax in west-Nile in 1917 led to the migration of labourers from West-Nile to

Bunyoro plantations and Buganda. However, the European and Asian planters in Bunyoro

campaigned to have west-Nile set aside as exclusive labour reserve for Bunyoro employers,

indeed in 1922 and 1923 labour recruiters from Buganda were banned from West-Nile

(Jørgensen, 1981). The continued labour scarcity in the ‘developed’ areas, the colonial state in

1925 ordered the department of agriculture to discourage the growing of cotton in west-Nile

and other outlying districts so that natives could continue providing labour for the producing

districts. The policy of “zoning” lasted until the Great Depression of 1929-33. As a result of

great depression, some of the European and Asian plantations failed and many dynamics in the

world economy changed, which forced the colonial government to abandon this policy.

The abandonment of the policy of discouraging cash crop production in the “previously zoned”

labour reserves opened the way for the introduction of cash crops such as coffee, tea and cotton

in Ankole, Kigezi, west Nile, Lango, Acholi and abound. But the introduction of these cash

crops in former labour reserve zones did not stop the flow of labour migrants to the previously

cash crop producing zones. The phenomenon slackened a bit and then resumed (Turyagyenda,

1964). The resumption constituted the third wave of migrations in Uganda, in southern and

southwestern Uganda. In order to understand the relationship among these waves of migrations

in relation to Ugandan citizenship, I set out to establish their individual characteristics: the

reasons for migration, the mode and means of transport, their destinations, nature of the work

they were involved in and the general conditions of living and working, and the impression that

the experiences left on the migrants themselves and the sending and the host communities.

The third wave of migration in Uganda was the economic oriented migrants starting from 1940s

throughout the independence struggles to 1990s. This wave had several strands. First, the

continued labour migration to Buganda in response to several factors including opportunities

of serving in colonial government. The second strand was opportunity migrants from Kigezi to

north-Kigezi, Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro. These were responding to agricultural related

problem especially land and colonial government intervention in population pressure on land.

53

But there was another sub strand of migrants from Kigezi to Kilembe mines in the kingdom of

Toro which was highly comparable to migrants from west-Nile to sugar plantations in the

eastern province. This sub strand was the working factory class that mixed with immigrants

from Rwanda and the neighbouring territories to which this study did not investigate. The third

strand were modern era migrants from Ankole, Kigezi and other regions to Kampala to hold

jobs on the account of professional careers and educational opportunities.

4.2.1 The migrant labour phenomenon, Uganda 1920s -1960s

The labour reserve- cash crop reserve zone segmentation had been abandoned by the colonial

state in Uganda in 1926. This segmentation, according to Jørgensen (1981), had led to serious

migrant reduction in population in the sending communities. For instance, he argues that due to

absence of adult males in West-Nile in 1926, estimated at 16 percent, there was a threat of food

cultivation. While in Ankole and Toro, migrants started paying poll tax in the receiving

communities which made the 1923 tax collection too low to cover the salaries of the chiefs

(Jørgensen,1981:110). Nevertheless, their migrations continued due to economic considerations

beyond the state’s intervention. From narratives of the former migrants (returnees) that

participated in this study, migrant labourers from south-western Uganda to Buganda during the

period 1920s to 1960s constituted two generations. The first generation migrated starting from

1920s to 1930s. The members of this generation have long passed on and this study could not

capture their first-hand narratives, archival data from KDA and National archives was

collaborated with that of the members of the second generation. Moreover, the few surviving

members of the second generation were the ‘sons’ of the first generation. Therefore, the

researcher was able to gain insight into the experiences of the first-generation migrants through

the testimonies of the second-generation migrants and archival documents. Oral historical data

from the testimonies of the returnees indicated their motivation to continue migrating from

southwestern Uganda (Ankole and Kigezi) to southern Uganda (Buganda) after 1926.

4.2.2 Reasons for development of labour phenomenon in Uganda 1920s -1960s

Partly consistent to Lee’s theorization of factors for migration, former migrant labourers

identified pull and push motivations for their continued migration to Buganda during the period

under study. Mzee RR55, a respondent in Mitooma showed the need to pay taxes, need for cash,

54

escape from oruharo, and mobilizing resources for marriage as the main push factors. He

further indicated that they were pulled by cheap transport, new necessities, cotton cloth and

colleagues.

Taxes

Payment of taxes was a uniform factor that pushed labourers from Ankole and Kigezi into

Buganda. All the participants in this wave of migration stated that all of them and their fathers

were driven from their villages to migrate to Buganda to earn money to pay government tax

(poll tax). According to them, since the cash crops needed by Europeans had not yet been

introduced in their area, there was no other source of money to pay government tax. Yet, the

payment of tax was incumbent upon all adult males of about sixteen years and above20, and

was paid in cash. So, like their fathers, the former migrants interviewed emphasized that they

took up employment with Baganda landowners. The migrant labourers who became tenants

would rent land from the landlord, cultivate cotton and sell it to raise the required monies while

wage earners would work on the farms of the Baganda peasants on the basis of jobbing. This

finding is consistent with the anthropologist, Richards’ observation in a Baganda village that

some Banyankole and Bakiga migrants were engaged in casual labour form of jobbing in 1952

(Richards, 1954). Tenancy was more rewarding and most common among migrants who had

come with their families, and casual labourers who had stayed for a long period of time in

Buganda. Wage labour was popular among the “bachelors” working for fixed tasks and paid a

“bachelor wage” on completion or monthly.

The returnees like RR55, RR56 and RR58 further indicated that the poll tax was paid annually

and if one was found not to have paid, he would be arrested by the local chief and imprisoned.

It was, therefore, a crime, not a civil wrong to fail to pay poll tax. The fear of coercive tax

enforcement found its way into popular music. For instance, in early 1960s, there was a popular

20 Age was measured by checking for hair in the armpits. This method was consistent with the one that applied in Kenya as reported by Zwanenberg & King, 1970: 7 “…… the collecting officers did not know whether a youth was sixteen years of age or not, and one rough method of estimating age was to look under his arms to see if there was any growth of hair in the arm-pit.”

55

song by Masagazi21 that cautioned about tax payment. It was indeed a moral obligation to pay

tax. The fear of imprisonment because of failure to pay poll tax forced many migrants to move

to Buganda as demonstrated by RR56 when he was asked to tell what forced to go to Buganda:

I was coming from Ishaka town at around p.m. when Mr. Rukari, a chief

(tax collector) approached me demanding for a tax ticket, I did not have

it. I was used of borrowing the tax ticket from Mr. Rutebemberwa but

Mr. Bamwiine had borrowed it earlier than me. So, I ran away amidst

humiliation and lost salt and clothes I had bought. When I reached home

I connected with my friend Mr. Rutebemberwa and joined him for his

following journey to Bulemezi, Buganda because using one ticket was

not sustainable and payment of tax was mandatory.

From the RR55’s narrative, it is further evident tax payment was resisted, by borrowing tax

tickets because they did not bear portraits of the owners.

To the colonial state, taxation was a deliberate effort to solve labour scarcity brought about by

the pre-existing structure of self-sufficiency; the main purposes of taxation were labour

procurement and revenue collection. The natives’ existence was not yet fully monetized thus

selling labour power as a commodity within the context of their limited needs was still too low

to engage in paid labour as argued by Jørgensen (1981:107) thus: “the imposition of taxes and

the introduction of imported consumer goods were the means by which the colonial state

increased the necessities of the African population, both forcing and encouraging Africans to

cultivate cash crops or sell labour-power in order to obtain money for new necessities”. To

ensure that traditional communal systems are ‘fully monetised’ (Zwanenberg & King, 1970),

an annual poll tax obligation was imposed on every adult male Ugandan and paid in cash.

Those who had started paying were required to travel with their poll tax tickets (sample poll tax

ticket in Figures 3 and 4).

21 In early 1960s Fred Masagazi sang a popular song: Atanawa Musolo, depcting the harsh methods of tax collection in Uganda. The musician cautions the people to pay tax to avoid humiliation involved in the process of tax collection ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMiIxAx6jCc

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Source: Former migrant labour (photoshoot by the author with permission during field study in Ankole district)

Figure 3: Sample one of a poll tax ticket used in 1957

Source: Former migrant labour (photoshoot by the author with permission during field study in Ankole district)

Figure 4: Sample two of Poll tax ticket used in 1962

According to RR56, Poll tax tickets were very important because they served as a form of

identification during travel. In cases where one had not yet reached the poll tax paying age or

had not yet paid it for a particular year, he had to borrow the ticket from an elder person who

did not need to travel for that specific period. As tax was an annual obligation, those migrants

who stayed in Buganda had to send money to their home Gombololas (Sub-Counties) to have

their taxes paid and the tickets brought over to them. Those who failed to do that risked facing

double taxation: paying tax in Buganda and their home districts, or harassment from tax

collectors and enforcement agents positioned at strategic points along Buganda -Ankole Road.

Kabwegyere (1995) stresses this element of double taxation thus:

…when labour recruitment went beyond a given district boundary, as when the

Banyankole or Bakiga would go to Buganda, this established a new dimension. If a

person paid tax outside his own district, on returning to his home district, he was

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required to pay another one. The argument was that the money paid to the foreign district

was not going to benefit his own district – and this was true because the policy was that

each district should be self-sufficient (Kabwegyere, 1995:148).

The migrants who were not going back would claim the money that had been paid in Buganda.

From Kabale regional archives, it was evident that several victims of migrant labourers claimed

for their refund of the money they paid for tax in Buganda through the District commissioner

(DC) as shown in figure 5 . This finding is consistent with the previous researches not only in

the former British spheres of influence such as in South Africa and Rhodesias or Nigeria, but

also in French West Africa and Belgian Congo.

Source: Retrieved from Kabale regional Archives ref. No. FIN.17, Box No. 5

Figure 5: Response to tax refund complaint on double taxation by Nasani Ngundu in 1959.

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Oruharo

Some returnees especially RR58 and 59 cited escape from forced unpaid labour – oruharo22

among the Banyankole and luwalo among the Baganda, as a major force for them to continue

migrating despite their freedom to grow cash crops in their areas of origin. Oruharo was a form

of labour used in Nkore before and during the establishment of colonial rule. It was used by

chiefs and kings to perform works that would benefit the community such as constructing

bridges across rivers and swamps. The same labour practice was used to construct houses, clear

compounds for chiefs and palace quarters for kings. It served the same purpose in Buganda and

it was referred to as luwalo.

The colonial administration adopted the institution of luwalo and applied it in the construction

of government/public works. This factor applied to the generation of 1920s and 1930s, when

forced labour was a major government policy in different regions of Uganda. Luwalo was

demanded from all able-bodied men to perform roles in government public works such as road

construction and maintenance, school construction, office building construction and

maintenance of labour camps. Luwalo was thus, a form of labour performed for the benefit of

the community. In societies where the state had emerged such as Buganda, Ankole, Toro and

Bunyoro, luwalo labour at times was utilized for the benefit of chiefs and Kings. A chief would

call upon his subjects to perform any form of labour for himself (the chief) or for the King, and

construction of footpath or manned bridges as it was the case in Ankole. However, such was

always regarded as “tribal” obligations for the good of the whole community. What ought to be

emphasised here is that this pre-capitalist form of labour organization and control was adopted

22 Initially, in Buganda, the Baganda provided cheap labour that was diverted from luwalo. But with the increase of cotton cultivation, the surplus cheap labour had by 1908 been fully employed in road construction yet cotton cultivation was expanding which greatly increased demand for labour in Buganda. Labourers/ porters-bapakasi were needed to pull carts of cotton lint to the nearest market, build and maintain roads, and construct administrative centers. The chiefs recruited luwalo and voluntary wage-labour were by 1909 inadequate for the labour demands at the time, the colonial state then opted for compulsory paid labour, kasanvu between 1909 and 1922. To maintain these two for the benefit of the economy, the state demanded in 1920 introduction of passbook system for all Africans, central registers of luwalo, kasanvu and contract labour, deliberate tribalization, prohibition of labourers leaving Uganda, introduction of differential poll taxes to penalize African males who don’t work hard, levying high tax on hawkers who avoided kasanvu, tightening kasanvu requirements and opting for European supervision of luwalo. Kasanvu became unbearable and was abolished in 1922, partly because it was very unpopular in Buganda but also because migrant labourers began to fill the gap.

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by colonial capitalism as it did with other pre-colonial forms of social, political and economic

organisations.

In Ankole and particularly in west – Ankole, forced labour of oruharo type was widely used

for public works namely roads, gombolola, saza as well as district headquarters, schools,

bridges, swamp drainage to destroy breeding grounds for tsetse flies to eradicate rinderpest and

nagana. RR58 reported the use of oruharo on the construction of roads between Mbarara and

Kasese, the construction of the bridges across river Rwizi in Mbarara and across Kazinga

channel on the border between Ankole and Toro at Katunguru. He further reported that his

father participated in the oruharo labour which was used by the Church Missionary Society

(CMS) in early 1930s during the construction of St. James Anglican Church at Ruharo before

proceeding to work in Buganda. St. James Anglican Church is generally called Ruharo church

because of its locality in the area where oruharo labourers were assembled, after all its

construction is associated with oruharo, unpaid labour.

While RR58 said that he dodged oruharo labour in 1955, his friends were captured and first

offered unpaid labour on the construction of Ntare School, construction of migrant labour

camps (emiginda) at Mbarara and construction of Mbarara Hospital where labour power was

procured through oruharo system. Some young men chose to migrate to Buganda for labour

on Baganda farms for payment instead of the forced non-paid labour. The oruharo was not

incumbent upon the migrant. Once the man was not at home, that year passed without him

having to perform the obligation and it was gradually consolidated into poll tax (Murindwa-

Rutanga, 2011), and burungi bwansi (Labour for the good of public services like roads and

other public utilities).

Resources for marriage and new needs

The testimonies of the participants returnees such as RR55, RR56 and RR58 indicated that the

need to earn money to purchase new necessities prompted them to continue migrating to

Buganda. The colonial socio-economic structure altered the previous forms of basic needs of

life. The utilitarian life that demanded one to have food, shelter and clothings which could be

obtained from the immediate environment through farming or entering indentured servitude

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called okushumba-working from neighbour for a specified time, changed with the colonial

economy. The new necessities like money, cotton cloth, formal education and monetized bride-

price which could not be obtained from okushumba drove many people from Kigezi and Ankole

to continue migrating to Buganda. This was very succinctly stated by RR 6 in an interview as

below:

Before going to Buganda, I was working for our neighbour, Banyaga who would pay

me a bull at the end of the year, but I needed cloth, hoe and wife to marry, I was old

with twenty-two years. The three bulls were not enough to cover the cost of bride price

so I need to go to Buganda like others to work for bride price.

This finding is related with the other African communities such as Ndebele, Shona Swazi and

Zulu whose incorporation into the modern economy by the British made them candidates of

migrant labour in South Africa to acquire not only mentioned new needs but also lobola, bride

price. Payment of lobola was incumbent upon every man intending to marry and since 1859 it

was paid in cash of five pounds per cow, for an average woman eleven, fifteen for a chief’s

daughter and thirty for the king’s daughter (Tofa, 2021; Murry, 1980 & Baloyi, 2014). Just as

Ndebele and Shona young men, RR56, RR57, RR58 and RR59 showed that they migrated and

worked in Buganda more than once. They explained their continued motivation as the need to

raise money for bride price and marriage. They indicated that marriage brought about more

additional expenses which required extra income. Therefore, more newly married males made

more trips to Buganda to earn the money to buy clothings, beddings, and house hold equipment

like cooking pans, plates, cups, hoes, pangas, axes among others. Probing the RR56 during in-

depth interview, for the guiding question: Why did you have to travel that long distance and far

away land? He uttered out statements reflecting a needy situation such as “how could I have

managed my family? I had no panga, no hoe, yet others got them from Buganda!”.

RR55 and RR59 shared related testimonies that they were among the youngest migrant

labourers in Bulemezi. The two had not married when they joined in the migrant labour

experience, they asserted that their choice for migrating to Buganda was that they needed

money. Cash nexus was fast spreading and deepening, and the need for money was no longer

a novelty but rather a real need. Just as it had already been experienced in Buganda during

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Johnston’s days, 1899, the Baganda were “greedy” for cloth and other manufactured articles.

The migrant labourers from former labour reserve zones needed money to buy imported goods.

Contrary to Powesland (1957), who suggested that the migrant labourers were naïve and not

sure about their reason for migration, the migration of men from the labour reserve to cash crop

reserve zone were motivated by nexus, need for cotton cloth and other industrial goods. Money

was increasingly becoming a necessity more that naivety.

Transport

Since 1940, there were changes in the mode of transport, from foot to use of lorries. Up to

1930s, walking was the only means of transport for migrant labourers. The journey from Ankole

to Buganda was between nine and twelve days. With the introduction of lorries in 1940s and

buses in 1950s, journeys were shortened to between one day to two days. Though walking still

remained preferred means for many migrant labourers on the account of being economically

cheap (money saving), many migrant labourers did not have money for transport fare for it took

fifty cents for a single journey to Buganda. None the less, the availability of lorry and bus

transport eased the journey of the migrant labourers from Ankole and Kigezi to Buganda. One

of the returnees RR59 interviewed in Mitooma told of how he had returned from Buganda and

migrated to Mitooma, Ankole. After reaching Ankole he had to return to Buganda for one more

time to attain money to buy house utensils for his new home. Together with his colleagues, they

walked to Mbarara where they boarded a lorry. Using the lorry, RR59 with his colleagues

proceeded to Buganda. This finding is consistent with Taylor’s who reported the availability of

Indian owned lorries from Kabale to Kampala in 1930s (Taylor, 2016). It is possible that the

Indian owned lorries were also used by the migrant labourers as Indians went to Kampala for

shopping.

On arrival in Buganda RR59 was able to locate where he had previously worked and he took

up manual labour in the Banana plantation of the former boss’ farm and later to the

neighbourhoods for lejjalejja engagements (Richards, 1954). RR59 further noted that

challenges along the way to Buganda had been further eased by the availability of emiginda

(migrant labour camps). Especially in 1940s, the colonial government in an effort to encourage

migration by mitigating problems of accommodation constructed migrant labour camps at

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points along the migration route. The labour camps were established at Mbarara, Sanga,

Lyantonde, Masaka, Mitala-Maria, Mbirizi, Mpigi and Kampala. (Labour Advisory Committee

Report, 1943)23. With these major challenges solved, migrant labourers were motivated to

continue migrating to former cash crop reserve zones. Men, driven by any or combination of

the above considerations, were compelled to continue offering their labour power in Buganda..

4.1.3 Organisation of migrant labourers from Ankole and Kigezi to Buganda

Like other migratory waves, migrant labour wave from Kigezi and Ankole to Buganda was well

organised. It involved planned preparations for the journey, coping up with the journey and

work dynamics and return just as the migrants of the during the period up 1926

The migrant labour migration process from Ankole and Kigezi involved three stages namely

pre-departure preparations, undertaking the journey and experiences at the places of work.

Pre-departure preparations

The migrants had prior information from their fathers and elder colleagues so they prepared

them physically and mentally. Mental preparation was very important because it involved

identifying and appointing a caretaker for his family. This process was stressful because the

physical detachment from the family for many months was a frightening idea for people who

had never moved outside their native sub-county. The male migrant would appoint either his

brother or his father to take care of the family while he was away which also had its problems.

The physical preparation involved identifying people to go with and items like beddings. Like

the earlier migrant labourers, the journey was never a one man’s journey, but a group.

Undertaking the journey

Upon forming gangs, the migrant labourers would begin their journey to Buganda at about 5

am whether walking prior 1930s or by lorries and buses in 1940s. Since 1930s, the group would

travel to different stations like Ishaka and Kabwohe and take a lorry directly to Masaka where

some would stop and others proceeded to Kampala. Later in 1940s they used buses. This

23 The labour Advisory Committee comprised of ten members chaired by S.Phillipson on 23rd July 1943 in Kampala (See labour report for the year ending 1943 page 11)

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development in transport saved migrant labourers from wild beasts at Nyekongorere, Lwera

and Malongo which had claimed lives of their fore fathers. and finally, to Kampala.

From the word go, the migrant labourers experienced a lot of challenges which they had to

withstand to reach Buganda. According to RR12, the bush remained the resting place for most

migrants for a long time. It is important to note that even after physical infrastructure including

migrant labour camps and transport facilities had become available, most migrants still made

journeys on foot, not that it was their choice, but they had to save every coin they earned because

most of the Bapakasi were involved in lejjalejja jobbing as casual labourers (Richards, 1954).

The continued foot and head portage among the migrant labourers was explained by the fact

they were paid wages which did not include transport yet the wages were so low that for

migrants to meet their obligations, they had to sacrifice everything including their personal

safety and security.

Experiences at the places of work

On the way and mainly at their places of work, migrant labourers were exposed to greater

dangers of vector bites including mosquitoes and tsetse flies. Thus, it was not surprising that

one of the major diseases from which the migrant labourers suffered during the journey to and

from Buganda and at the work place that would at times lead to death, was malaria fever as

reported RR13 and reflected in Law, Commissioner for Labour’s report of 195724. Until the

1990s malaria fever as an illness was a disease of Buganda as western Uganda was and is

resistant to Malaria compared to Buganda as shown in appendix 14. Indeed, very few migrants

to Buganda escaped malaria infection both along the way and as they settled at their workplaces.

Diseases were the main obstacle to migrant labourers in Buganda. Health care was the

responsibility of the labourers as the employers did not provide medical treatment to the

workers when they fell sick. Fatigue, change of environment, poor working and living

conditions were the challenges for migrants from Ankole not only for those who worked for the

24 Mr. Law, the Commissioner for Labour, made the assessment of the labouring population in 1957 and reported causes death to be malaria, respiratory diseases, tropical ulcer and sleeping sickness of which, “ Malaria continued to be the greatest cause of morbidity in the group” (Uganda Protectorate, 1958, pp. 23-25).

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Baganda landlords or rented their own pieces, but also those working in plantations. As they

started working or even as they travelled, some got sick. The medical officers around Buganda

hospitals, and particularly in Bulemezi (Luwero) where migrant labourers were treated in large

numbers, were in the forefront to urge the state to investigate the conditions of migrant

labourers. The Medical Officer of Mengo, among others, drew attention to the appalling state

of health of the majority of ‘these itinerant labourers’, most of whom were, in his view, living

below subsistence level and many at starvation level (Jørgensen, 1981). But even after the rest

camps for labourers were constructed, they still did not improve the conditions of travel for the

migrants especially those who continued moving on foot. They were so far apart that it was

impossible to move from one camp to the other in a day’s journey. Accordingly, diseases such

as malaria and respiratory diseases were common killers of migrant labourers. This finding is

consistent with the Department of Labour report of 1957. In paragraph 96 of the report, the

Commissioner, Law (1958) noted:

“Malaria continued to be the greatest cause of morbidity in the group, and whilst

statistics have not been collected for causes of death, from reports available it appears

that malaria is also a serious cause of death. In comparison with the previous years the

incidence of malaria in 1957 was higher than last year, but not as high as it was in in

1955’’ (Law, 1958:24).

The health centres were few and far apart to be accessible to the labourers. Those who worked

near the mission dispensaries feared to go for the treatment because they did not have ‘proper’

dressing to appear in public. Otherwise as Law described, the standards of the health facilities

were of low order. For instance, the government dispensaries had penicillin and antibiotics only.

The migrant labourers hence relied on treatment with herbs which were crushed, mixed with

water and drank. The main herb used was known as “Omubirizi” which was also very rare

especially in Bulemezi. They would also expose the malaria victim to excessive heat with a

belief that if he sweated so much the fever would go.

At the work places, migrants were not housed and the employers did not care where the

labourers slept. The responsibility of building and maintaining of the huts (ensisira) where they

lived fell on the shoulders of the labourers themselves. One of the respondents, RR12 narrates:

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On arrival at the place of employment, I was given a temporary room by my employer’s

kitchen that was used as a store for a few days in which I was required to put up my

own hut near the shamba where I worked. When I went back to Buganda in 1958, on

my third journey there, I was accepted for erecting my orusisira in his compound where

we slept five people25. I was the head of my colleagues and I was loved by our boss.

Sometimes he would give us food and I was also given kibanja though I abandoned it

there in 1960.

The RR56’s story is consistent with the 1943 labour report, that:

At most other estates in this district the majority of employees live on estate land, either

in camps provided by the management or in huts erected by themselves. With very few

exceptions housing conditions on these estates are very bad indeed, and in the main area,

for all practical purposes, little better than those provided by the Baganda employers for

their labour” (Uganda Protectorate 1944:31).

Conditions of the migrant labourers continued to worsen in 1945 as testified by the

Commissioner for the Department of Agriculture, thus: ‘casual labour was engaged at fairly

good rates of pay but no housing was supplied, a common feature being the establishment by

the workers themselves of unsightly camps near the scene of work built of grass or mud and

wattle, which soon led to unhealthy conditions’’ (Uganda Protectorate, 1946: 3). Elsewhere, in

estates, workers detested poor conditions through an organized strike to which according to the

Commissioner was for the “ first time for many years and possibly for the first time during the

present century Uganda experienced wide spread strikes and civil disturbances necessitating

the calling in of the military to assist the civil power in restoring order’’ (Uganda Protectorate,

1946:5). Though the strike had been blamed on organizers who wanted to ‘further their personal

ends’, the strike alluded to a collective responsibility in the demand for better conditions of

work namely wage as part of the process of strengthening trade unionism that had started in

1942.

25 According to Richards (1954) a payment of five shillings per month was charged on the migrants who rented and lived in the land owner’s compound.

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Under the housing conditions described above, labour was heavily subsidizing capital because

employers, under fully developed capitalism are obliged to provide accommodation or housing

for the workers. But in the case of migrant labour, not even the time spent on building their own

huts (ensisira) was paid for nor considered as task (orunaku). Moreover, migrant labourers

rented where they erected their ensisira. According to Richards, 1954, they paid 50 cents a

month to the land owner for the right to build a dwelling on his land. Such conditions were well

known to the colonial government. From the Elliot’s report of 1937, on conditions of labour,

noted that the employers, apart from those in Bunyoro who provided contract labour on

plantations with accommodation, set aside areas in which men would build their own huts.

They were not given any time off in which to build, nor provided with any building materials

even when they were freely available on the estate and plantations.

Figure 6: David, A mukiga labourer on Kiggundu’s Farm in Butyalyamisana, Bamunanika interviewed on 7th February, 2020

For a labourer to be effective, feeding is vital. Food must be sufficient in quality and quantity

to provide the required calories to the body so that the labourer reproduces himself. He must

keep strong to provide the labour-power. Under fully developed capitalism, a worker must be

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provided with the necessary means of subsistence, enough to feed him and attain other

necessities to himself and his immediate dependants. In Buganda, the migrant labourers (current

migrant labourer of the blue-collar as shown in figure 6, face similar related conditions) were

not given food by their employers. According to RR57, the migrant labourers had to fend for

themselves mainly by engaging in laborious activities especially okukabala26 in exchange for

foodstuffs. The main food items which migrants fed themselves on were potatoes (lumonde),

cassava (muwogo), beans, green vegetables (dodo) though these were sometimes grown in the

spaces between cotton plants, and egg plants (entura).

Sometimes bananas were sought after, but it was a very rare item because the land owner

himself did not have enough, and it was expensive. According to the testimonies of the returnee

RR58 and native RR10 in Buganda, it required more a bigger lubimbi and kukabala, bigger and

deeper digging to acquire a medium sized bunch of matoke. Particularly a variety of bananas

known as Mbwazurume27 in Bulemezi was for the “disciplined’’ and “hardworking” labourers

and by in 1960, those who were “clean”- had stayed for long in Buganda in terms of time and

trust worthiness, in the opinion of a Muganda lady, RR10. However, bananas were expensive

in terms of labour time required to secure them as its lubimbi28 was always longer. For instance,

a bunch of banana (matooke) would be secured after labouring for the whole of the evening

from about 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm or so compared to other foodstuffs like cassava and potatoes

where by a tin of say lumonde would be secured two hours maximum. Evening work became

an identity indicator to exclude the migrant labourers as anthropologist Richards observed:

“Men and Boys carrying baskets of food on their heads are a common

sight in a Ganda village in an evening. Ganda comment in answer to

26 Okukabala was deep ploughing involving removal of tree stumps, and elephant grass splits and making the seed bed/ field suitable for cotton or coffee and banana planting. 27 Mbwazurume was a variety of bananas to which according to the migrant labourers, due to the level of mistreatment, this variety connotated Luganda expression literally meaning “let the dogs dig”. This expression inferred the Banyankole negative attitude towards the Baganda because it was demeaning. Among the Banyankole this variety or type of banana came with the migrant labourers who liked it due to its big size at its stage of maturity and according to RR10, it was a symbol of segregation experienced by the Bapakasi in Buganda. 28 Orubimbi was a labour system in which migrant labourers would get food stuffs over and above the Orunaku. So, it was extra work after real task (orunaku). Usually after 5:00pm the migrant labourers would go to another employer and work for food. Division of labour characterized this system as each member in the orusisira had his particular day for preparation of a meal.

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questions, “of course they are foreigners! Who else would be going out

at this time of the day to bring back food?’’ (Richards, 1954:121).

The system of food acquisition was very demanding in terms of time and energy for the

labourers and the foodstuffs available to the workers were in most cases deficient in protein and

animal protein since they had to be in the means and reach to migrant labourers. Of course, the

labourers were fully occupied with working for wages, lubimbi mainly for the despised lumonde

as mmere ya mbwa, the food for dogs and home chores, cooking food, drawing water, collecting

fire wood among others. Virtually, there was very little time for relaxation and recreation.

Resting time was when they slept and while drinking some alcohol29 which was paid for unlike

back home which was free. Otherwise the conditions of employment such as hours of work

and the nature of supervision required them to wake up very early in the morning to start on the

day’s work and to sleep only because it was dark.

When RR58 was asked to tell different activities, he was engaged with while in Buganda, he

pointed to manual/ casual labour in which involved payment of a wage which was consistent

with many returnees and Southal’s research about the Alur migrants (Southal, 1954). The

migrant labourers’ activities were related with agriculture and house chores. There were two

elements of engagements: first, securing a job under a landlord and second, renting piece of

land. Working under and for a landlord involved payment was based on piece rate called

orunaku. The orunaku would be ticked by the employer who was known as ‘Matarisi’ on the

30-day ticket otherwise referred to as ‘ekipande’. At the end of the 30 worked days, the labourer

was supposed to get his pay/wage. A hard-working labourer would be able to fill up his kipande

in about ten days since he was capable of realizing more than two tasks (enaku) in one day. In

the case of harvesting, either plucking cotton or picking coffee, the orunaku was based on task

rate as well. The labourer was required to pluck several sacks of cotton usually four or pick

several tins, debe (20 gallons) of coffee. The 30 days kipande was on contract which was

renewable.

29 Alcohol in Ankole was never sold but would be drunk for leisure, friendship (entereko) and ceremonies.

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The kipande system and the task basis which was the mode of organization and supervision of

labour were to the advantage and interest of the employer in terms of supervision and realisation

of the net profit. It is imperative to note that at this stage colonial Uganda had to be incorporated

into world capitalism where by labour was to serve the interests of the metropolitan capital

justifying the irony behind Wiggins’ rejection of the task system in 1919. Quoting Wiggins,

McKnight noted: “How then can we expect Uganda to hold her own if, with a shortage of

labour, agricultural labourers are permitted, nay even encouraged, to work 3 hours a day only?’’

(McKnight,1996:255). Accordingly, Wiggin’s view was that the Baganda employers would cut

their labour requirements by two- thirds if only they set their workers to tasks that would take

nine hours to accomplish. But as we earlier noted, the system was very effective for the Baganda

large scale garden owners. Indeed, the labourers would work even harder under minimum

supervision as they struggled to earn their day’s wage by finishing the task set by the employer.

This was because it was also common for an employer to cancel the labourer’s orunaku in case

the work was not properly done in accordance to the employers’ judgment. No wages for the

cancelled task would be paid to the labourer which tantamounted cheating by the employer,

constituting part of exploitation. There was always a uniform amount of task given to all

labourers regardless of whether one was a new arrival or old. What mattered was whether the

task was properly done.

The second category of migrant labour engagement was tenant labour. It involved the labourer

renting a portion of land from the landowner, open it up and cultivate cotton, weed it, harvest

it and sell it to traders and then pay rent to the land lord. In this category the tenant labourer

enjoyed more freedom than the wage earner but took long to get money because he would have

to wait till the cotton harvest. But the latter’s advantage was that he would earn more from the

cotton sales than the wage labourer. The tenant labourer paid his rent in form of cotton bales

not cash. The choice of which form of labour to take was determined by entrepreneurship in

terms of self-supervision of individual migrants, the availability of land for rent, knowledge of

the cultivation of the crop among others. It is this category of tenant labourers whose some of

the members were able to purchase ebibanja (pieces or plots of land) or freely gifted with

ebibanja leading to permanent settlement in Buganda as RR14 of Bamunanika, Luwero. While

the first category returned to the sending communities on account of the nature of land tenure

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system that did not guarantee full ownership and security over land (Zwanenberg & King, 1970;

Carswell, 2002), some members of the second category settled where they got bibanja and

started new life as Baganda as discussed in chapter five of this thesis.

Either way, the work was always too excessive in relation to the physical capacity of the

labourers. While the new arrivals would at times take more than one day to complete the piece

of the day because of distance, fatigue, lack of experience among others, Task system remained

the commonest form of supervision of the labour employed throughout the colonial and early

post-colonial era. All the returnees in Ankole, and interviewees in Bulemezi attested to this

fact, and in conformity with the Commissioner for Labour’s report of 1949, who reported, thus:

Most employment is still on the task work system. In non- African

employment task is usually set for about 5 hours of fairly hard work ( a

diligent worker will often complete his task from three to four hours)

where as an African employer even though he may be paying a higher

wage, is contented with a three hour task (Uganda Protectorate, 1951:13)

In this section an attempt has been made to discuss the imperatives that facilitated continued

labour migration from western province to southern Uganda (Buganda province). The

experiences of migrants on their journey to workplaces, conditions of work and pointing to a

few who settled in Buganda. The central argument raised in this subchapter is that despite the

official end of labour reserve-cash crop reserve zone in 1926, migrant labour phenomenon

continued. Even then former labour reserve zones remained labour supplying areas for the

former cash crop reserve zones (Uganda Protectorate, 1958: 27) . This continuation has been

explained by taxation, money nexus, new needs and transport availability. With the end of

colonial rule in 1962, the migration changed character and form, which I now turn to in the next

section.

4.3 Career migrants, Uganda 1940s-1995

When the Bakiga and Banyankole migrant labourers of 1920s and 1930s started making few

journeys to Buganda for the reasons discussed above and outlined here for emphasis: official

end of labour and cash crop reserve zones, growing negative attitude towards the hosts and

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utilization of proceeds from Buganda; trade and new wants, settled farming became important

in explaining cultivation success and demographic changes. Further, the encouragement of cash

crop growing by the colonial state in the former labour reserve areas quickly reinforced cash

crop growing especially coffee that had been “smuggled” from Buganda by the returning

migrant labourers. Despite the failure of cash crop crowing in Kigezi, land was becoming

extremely scarce in the situations of food crops serving as cash generating venture amidst the

epidemic of famine (Carswell, 2007).

In this section therefore, I focus on the career migrants in Uganda who started migrating in

1940s and throughout the post-colonial period up to 1995. This wave is the main focus for this

thesis because the settlement of Bakiga migrants particularly in Bunyoro has been characterized

with a lot of contestations which challenge the conventional understanding among scholars,

about the theory and practice of citizenship in Uganda. This wave are divided into two strands:

colonial government coordinate migrants into Bunyoro and blue and white collar career

migrants, to Kampala. Using data from Kabale regional archives, oral interviews in Kagadi,

Kibaale, and the settlers’ themselves, I document the experiences of the migrants from Kigezi

district to north-Kigezi, Ankole, Toro and finally to Bunyoro. By documenting the forces

surrounding the migratory shifts, I set the ground to explain why and how the Bakiga, migrants

became Bafuruki (migrants or settlers) in Bunyoro.

The second strand of this career migrants wave involved migrating from western Uganda and

beyond just after independence and found their way to Kampala facilitated by new opportunities

and economic considerations offered by the nation-state, Uganda. I use oral testimonies of the

“settlers”- remnants of migrant labourers and their former bosses, natives in Mukono and

Luwero to gain insight of the experiences of the former migrants who acquired bibanja and

settled, and understand the experiences of the former employers’-natives towards each other.

Key participant interviews provided the muscle about the understanding of post-independence

migration experience regarding the political and economic resource that prompted and

maintained migration to Kampala. I start with the first migration strand which involved

migration of a very large stream of the Bakiga from Kigezi to settle in Kagadi, Bunyoro.

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4.3.1 Bakiga migration from Kigezi south western Uganda to Bunyoro, 1940s-1995

The most comprehensive story so far written about the migration of the Bakiga has been

provided by Paulo Ngologoza. It is here that this thesis contributes to the nature and form of

the Bakiga migration from Kigezi to first, underpopulated parts of Kigezi, second, to Ankole,

third, to Toro and fourth, to Bunyoro, where their stay has challenged the conventional

understanding of theory and practice of citizenship. During the field study in Mitooma, their

destination in Ankole, I could hardly tell the difference between the Bakiga and Banyankole,

save for a few language dialect differences. For instance, a visit to Bitereko, where most

Bakiga settled, one cannot observe a significant difference between the Bakiga migrants and

the rest of the Banyankole, natives. They have lived together calmly and been integrated

through intermarriages and bound together by language. Language is therefore an important

tool for social identity above and beyond language’s primary function as a means of exchange

and communication (Kogan, Dollmann, & WeiBmann, 2021). But in contrast, there are

noticeable differences in attitudes and way of life was observed in Kagadi, Bunyoro. I, thus,

claim that the migration of the Bakiga more than any other kind of migration to Bunyoro

influenced the Bakiga-Banyoro socioeconomic and political relations, which challenges the

conventional understanding of citizenship as membership in the country’s territorial bounds.

Rather, citizenship is highly determined by the community one belongs to.

Earlier migrations into Buganda did not attract permanent settlement because of the land tenure

system which did not guarantee “full” ownership of land compared to western Uganda where

land was freehold (Kabwegyere,1995). The migrant labourers themselves had developed a

negative attitude towards Buganda and Baganda as a consequence of the bad experiences of ill-

health, mistreatment and generally the risks involved in the migratory experience which made

them very mobile-one leg at home and another at work place (RR8). Save for a few migrant

labourers like Mzee RR14, who had migrated with their wives for tenancy, the majority of

migrants of migrant labour category depended on casual jobbing (Richards, 1954), and so when

they met their “targets”, they returned to the sending communities. Debates that came out of

the Bakiga expansion into north Kigezi, Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro centred on the ownership

of and access to land.

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Modern economy in Kigezi came with new cash avenues through wattle industry, cash crops

especially coffee in north Kigezi, and improved modern life increased pressure on land and

environment that worried the colonial government to opt for resettlement of some families. In

addition, to the Bakiga living a settled life meant increase in numbers which put pressure on

land. This modern economy in Kigezi the resulted into two threatening issues: Soil erosion and

wattle industry. Soil erosion became so intense that the colonial government started civic

education in schools of southern Kigezi through annual competitions to control soil erosion.

But wattle industry more than any other factor, contributed greatly to the resettlement or

migration of the Bakiga from Kigezi

Wattle industry and the Bakiga Migration, 1930-1960

One of the major event during the modernisation process of Kigezi by the colonial state was

the establishment of economic crops, particularly wattle30 in south Kigezi. Starting with the

introduction black wattle in Kigezi 1924, boomed in the late 1940s with the entry of Indian and

African traders in marketing of wattle and high demand for wattle barks in India beginning in

the mid 1949. Growing of wattle trees worsen “Kigezi problems” of land scarcity and soil

erosion as J.W. Purseglove, Agriculture Officer, Kigezi reported to the Assistant Agricultural

Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies; through the Director of Agriculture Zomba,

Nyasaland:

the estimated acreage in Kigezi at present is believed to be about 10,000

acres and, with the present over-population, it would be dangerous to

encourage further planting which would limit the area available for food

production and wattle plantations are a serious source of erosion (KDA,

File No. ADC/3, Report dated 14th November 1950: 1).

Consequently, in 1953 regulating wattle growing, production, storage and marketing through

licencing was emphasized by the Agriculture Officer, Kigezi as he guided the licence holders

in his letter of 11th February 1953, thus:

30 Wattle was a tree locally called Burikoti. It was used to supply fuel and building poles and locally for medicine. By late 1956, the wattle barks were utilised for tannia extraction for export to UK, Austraria, Kenya and at wost, Tanganyika. Its xxy of land, labour intensive and required highly fertile area.(Wattle policy ref.6. Department of Agriculture document 20, Kabale Archive)

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under the provisions laid down in the Produce Marketing Ordinance,

1953 it is an offence to purchase wattle bark at places other than gazetted

buying centres. Purchases at these centres being restricted to licence

holders with licenced stores. Offences against this section 6(1) of the

ordinance are punishable by fines up to shillings. 5,000/= (KDA Ref.

No. 6/B/1).

Unlike in other migration narratives by Ngologoza, which he participated in, indeed, at the very

inception of the idea of resettlement, making initial visits and actual implementation, it is this

strand of migration to Bunyoro that he narrates in a quarter a page, and alas, it’s the one that

has been contentious in violent conflicts (Ngologoza, 1998). Whereas the resettlement project

was very vast that it had attracted the attention of the British administrators not only in the

Uganda protectorate but also in Kenya colony. It is however doubtful whether the migration of

the Bakiga was not a state project. As a Secretary General in the colonial government, it is

possible that Ngologoza was more than a Bakiga nation builder (Ngabirano, 2020), but

implementing the colonial state project. Population pressure on land was not a problem per se

that triggered migration of the Bakiga, but land scarcity. Why did land become scarce in Kigezi

during the 1940s? the causality for land scarcity and thus migration of the Bakiga from Kigezi

must be understood in the context of the colonial economic interests and the Bakiga economy

beyond merely population increase.

Emphasis of cash crop production by the colonial state in the whole of East African territory

was changing from the settler based cash crop economy to small holder arrangement. This

change did not spare Uganda protectorate. The colonial state thus encouraged growing of cash

crops in the former areas where it was discouraged, and introduced new cash crops like black

wattle that was for the selected large holder farmers. Black wattle became a major determinant

in the economic organisation of the East African colony. Maxon (2021) has argued that in East

Africa, black wattle was first introduced in Kenya in 1903 by the colonial state through

European settlers to provide fuel for the workers in the project of Uganda railway. However, it

became unsatisfactory for that purpose but was becoming increasingly world’s main source of

vegetable tanning agent after the first world war. In response to that change the colonial state

in Kenya encouraged African households in the central province to grow wattle (Maxon, 2001).

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Hence, starting from 1920s the sale of bark proved profitable in Kenya and planting was

expanded for export. The sturdy increase in the value of wattle bark export from £3,458 in

1922 to £28,992 in 1925, £64,527 in 1930 and £78,811 in 1932 shows that wattle industry in

the small holder farms became a strong engine to integrate East Africa into world economy

through cash crop production.

The campaigns to establish and grow wattle were high so much that by its “disappearance”

from Kenya in 1940s (Maxon, 2001), it became lucrative in the same period in Western Kigezi

where it had been experimented (Taylor, 2016). The small holder farmers in Kigezi as agrarian

community, land was the source of livelihood and it was now competed upon for both food and

cash crops (Carswell, 2007). Since the colonial state was in favour of cash crops, systematic

land alienation followed to encourage the growing of wattle and construction of the wattle

factories which led to overcrowding in Kigezi. The effect of land alienation on the Bakiga in

Kigezi was so intense that the provincial commissioner was concerned and discouraged it as

reported by Purseglove, the Agriculture Officer Kigezi in his 14th November 1950 letter to

Assistant Agricultural Advisor to the secretary of state for the colonies that:

In addition, the Provincial Commissioner stated that he would

not recommend further alienation of land in Kigezi for any new

factory site, whereas there was already enough land at Chigatta

for the necessary buildings, etc31 (Kabale District Archives: Ref:

ADC1 letter number 8).

One major projects that led to scarcity of land which prompted settlement or migration of the

Bakiga was the wattle industry. It was introduced in 1924 and boomed by 1940s, and triggered

northward migration in the same decade as it expanded. While population was seriously

increasing, the effects of wattle industry triggered land scarcity for food cultivation, loss of soil

cover and trained labour supply for food cultivation. With the strain on land,

31 J.W. Purseglove’s letter to G.W.Nye, Esq.,O.B.E., The Assistant Agricultural Advisor to the Secretary of state for Colonies, through the Director of Agriculture, Zomba Nyasaland, titled Kigezi Black Wattle shows the extent to which wattle industry in Kigezi was of major interest in the British colonies. Ngologoza and other Kigezi administrators were obliged to implement the colonial state projects. It is quite clear that the scarcity of land in Kigezi was due to factors beyond natural population growth as argued by Ngologoza in justifying resettlement of the Bakiga out of Kigezi.

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migration/resettlement, starting from the most cultivating sazas (counties) namely Rukiga,

Ndorwa, Kinkizi and Bufumbira was eminent especially in the higher production years of 1954-

1956. No wonder, where the Bakiga settled, cultivation for food and hunger mitigation crops

such as cabbages, Maize were encouraged (Carswell, 2007; Bates, 2005). Related problems

associated with population pressure in Wateita, Kenya colony pushed the colonial

administrators to bench-mark the resettlement project of the Bakiga in preparation for the

establishment of a resettlement scheme in the Shimba hills near Mombasa32 as the Provincial

commissioner indicated, thus:

We are proposing to start a settlement scheme in the Shimba Hills near

Mombasa to provide some relief for the overcrowded Wateita lands. We

should first like first, however, to send the Administrative and

Agriculture Officers who will be in charge of the scheme to visit the

Uganda Settlement at Kigezi, in order that they may study at first hand

the way in which you have tackled the problems involved in large scale

settlement (Provincial Commissioner’s letter of 13th May, 1950 to Chief

Secretary, Entebbe, the Director of Agriculture, Kabale District

Archives (KDA) file ADM Reference Number ADMIN/1/5/10).

Whereas the data collected from the Kabale District Archives (KDA) and oral interviews

conducted in Kagadi, Bunyoro underestimates the role of Ngologoza as none of the migrants

could vividly retell his role in their migration in Bunyoro though secondary literature especially

in Denoon’s edited book, A History of Kigezi in South-West Uganda, Ngologoza noted, thus: “

I was immediately confronted with the problem of resettling people from Kigezi to less

populated areas of Uganda” (Ngologoza, 1972:282). Ngologoza is silent about the real problem,

what caused overpopulation in Kigezi and low population in the neighbouring territories? Was

the problem over population per se or the effects of the population increase in Kigezi that

triggered migration? I argue that what caused the Bakiga migration was beyond the high

population that put pressure on land, to the effects. To explain mass systematic migration of the

32 A member for agriculture and natural resources, Kenya in the letter dated 5th may 1950, wrote a Letter to A.B.Killick, Director of Agriculture in the chief Secretary’s office, Entebbe requesting the placement for benchmarking, it was endorsed by acting chief secretary on 17th.

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Bakiga requires a deeper analysis of the cause of scarcity of and pressure on land. It is possible

that Ngologoza was a self- praising administrator or the colonial state did not inform him and

his African colleagues or the colonial state, as it was always the case, wanted to usurp the

native’s pride of such a grand project of the resettlement. But this too, raises doubts of whether

concealing was only applying for Bakiga migrating to Bunyoro.

In his writings, Ngologoza misses five major aspects of Bakiga migration into Bunyoro that

have shaped their way of life in Bunyoro: 1) Invite by Bunyoro King (Omukama) Winy, 2)

systematic organization of the Bakiga migration to Bunyoro, 3) the participants involved in the

migration, 4) the Bakiga settlement in Bunyoro and 5) the changing behaviour of the Bakiga in

Bunyoro to which this study attempts to unearth. In addition to the push factor-population

pressure on land as underscored by Ngologoza, data has pointed to pull factors- invitation by

the King and socio-economic changes that were taking place in Bunyoro during the 1950s as

major motivations for Bakiga migration into Bunyoro. The story of Bakiga migration into

Bunyoro can therefore be traced from far back, starting with few voluntary migrants, then the

gradual return of migrant labourers into Kigezi since the 1940s, the invitation by the King in

1950s, resettlement by colonial state (volume of migration increasing in that order) and finally

by economic imperatives after Uganda’s independence in 1962. With the combination of the

various factors, the colonial state as it was the case elsewhere in British colonies,33 and the

natives’ demands, embarked on a systematic process of resettling the Bakiga from Kigezi as an

alternative to contain the pressure of modern economy and its effects like landlessness, new

crops amidst increasing population and shrinking food security in Kigezi (Carswell, 2002). The

migration of the Bakiga to Bunyoro took two forms: the voluntary migrants and the colonial

state-coordinated migrants.

The voluntary Bakiga migrants

The story of migrants in Bunyoro started way back in 1900 with a few household labourers or

manual labourers working for rich Banyoro chiefs. Indeed, the Bakiga such as those that were

33 In many of the British colonies especially Kenya, population increase had led to overcrowding. The systemization of resettlement in Kigezi as early as 1945 prompted the Provincial Commissioner to send a delegation benchmarking

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employed by Stafford as mentioned in the Omukama’s letter reproduced in figure 8 had

voluntarily migrated to Bunyoro. Narratives from RR30 indicate that the voluntary Bakiga

migrants engaged in casual labour comparable to that of migrant labourers in Buganda but

differentiated by the Bakiga ability to be assimilated into Banyoro and living a settled life.

This kind of migration involved very few Bakiga whose impact was never felt in terms of

numbers in Kigezi nor Bunyoro, but became a point of reference by the king to justify the

compatibility and habitability of Bunyoro by the Bakiga. Major migration wave from Kigezi

started in 1920s and it involved migration of a very big number of Bakiga into Buganda at the

tune of absence of fifty percent of the men at one appoint in time by 1930 (Jørgensen,1981).

At the wake of the second decade of the colonial rule, in 1920s, there were placards and fliers

in Kigezi and Ankole, like it was in other parts of the protectorate government’s labour reserve

zones, calling upon subjects to go and offer their labour in Buganda (Powesland,1954). In 1940s

the Bakiga started returning from Buganda because the labour reserve and cash crop reserve

zone34 mechanism had gradually declined with growing of cash crops and importation of

modern economy in western Uganda as it was abandoned since 1926.

Colonial state-coordinated Bakiga migration from Kigezi, 1940s to 1960s

The colonial state-coordinated Bakiga migrants were highly systematic and coordinated by the

office of Bwana Disi ( District Commissioner), through his representatives especially Secretary

General (SG) since 1946. The process of migration or resettlement begun with negotiations

were made between the colonial state administrators and the natives. Aware of the colonial

possession with respect to national citizenship, the colonial state argued that the Bakiga be

resettled in other parts of the protectorate where population was still sparse as Ngologoza (1998)

noted:

The government had already considered this problem of population

pressure, but it is now going to tackle it and render necessary help.

Immediately, the central government set itself a task of dealing with the

34 The labour reserve and cash crop reserve zones were a colonial creation mechanism to compel the able bodied into cash crop production especially cotton and coffee. It was achieved through the colonial policy that required payment of tax in cash (Lwanga-Lunyigo, 1989).

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matter, but its plan was to move the people and resettle them in Ankole,

thus differing from Mr. Mukombe’s proposals. Mr. J.W. Purseglove, the

Agricultural Officer who was in Masaka district, was sent to assist the

District commissioner in resettlement scheme,… (Ngologoza,1998: 85).

From the above quotation, the Bakiga leaders driven by nativism and social citizenship

mentality articulated by primordialism theorists rejected, and insisted that their people should

be resettled in less populated areas of their local territory despite the central government’s

articulation of national citizenship. Thus, as suggested by the native Bakiga leaders and in

consultation with the colonial state administrators, it was agreed that resettlement be

implemented in three progressive phases.

First, within the district even when such areas in north Kigezi were dry and extreme south-

western Kigezi was infested by mosquitoes and other vectors and therefore not suitable for

human settlement compared to Ankole and Masaka districts. Second, to the neighbouring

districts and in case there was still a need, then third, to distant districts. After serious

deliberations between the natives and colonial administrators through the office of the district

commissioner, a point of convergence was reached: resettling the Bakiga in fairly under

populated parts of the district, then to the neighbouring, Ankole, Toro and finally Bunyoro as

articulated by the natives through their leaders (Ngologoza, 1998).

Piloting the possible areas beginning with neighbouring areas was the second step in the

migration of Bakiga from Kigezi. The first destination of the Bakiga was north Kigezi. It

involved migration of several families moderated by chiefs to Kanungu and the surrounding

areas up to river Kiruruma. Preparations were made in advance in 1940s and implementation

effected in 1946 starting with ‘filling’ up parts of Kigezi. Leaving the densely populated areas

like Ndorwa and Rukiga, the Bakiga first migrated to sparsely populated areas namely

Rujumbura and Kinkizi on an increasing trend as shown in figure 7.

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Year Yearly Total Running Total

1946 1,500 1,500

1947 3,865 5,365

1948 4,629 9,994

1949 5,008 15,002

Figure 7: Number of Bakiga Migrants into Rujumbura and Kinkizi. Source: Statistics were got

from the Report on Kigezi Resettlement scheme for the year 1950, KDA, file Number. DEV.4/2

From the table above, the number of Bakiga migrants into sparsely populated areas of Kigezi

was exponentially increasing. The Bakiga were migrating from densely populated Gombololas,

sub counties of Ndorwa, Rukiga and the surroundings to north-Kigezi, into areas of Kinkizi,

Rujumbura and Bugangari. This migration strand was in response to increased population as a

result of natural increase with excess birth over death which posed much pressure on land and

consequently overcrowding following the reduction of the Bakiga migrant labourers journeying

to Buganda. The resettlement into north -Kigezi took place rapidly and by 1955, the District

Commissioner lamented that the available land for resettlement had ran out. In response to this

situation, the District Commissioner and Bakiga leaders considered two options: extending the

resettlement further north-Kigezi to areas west of Kiruruma river and Bugangari. The second

option was to resettle the Bakiga in the neighbouring District of Ankole.

Soon, north-Kigezi was “filled” up, and the answer was to engage the Ankole Authorities for

Bakiga to be resettled in west Ankole in a county adjoining north east of Rujumbura, Bitereko

in western- Mitooma whose local conditions were comparable to those of Kigezi. The Bakiga

therefore were assured of the resettlement in their kinsmen’s land not in a foreign land. But still

the feeling of nativism was still clear and lingering with in their minds. This sentiment was

expressed by Kitaburaza, the Secretary General Kigezi District Administration in his report

about the visit by councillors and chiefs outside Kigezi to identify suitable areas for resettlement

of the Bakiga. Kitaburaza reported that the Bakiga leaders and the Kigezi administration are

not at all happy to see their people moving out of Kigezi, but due its being overpopulated it

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cannot help it.”35 The settlement into north Kigezi was only possible up to 1954 as the District

Commissioner, Kigezi in his letter of 16th April,1955 informed the Provincial Commissioner,

Western Province Fort Portal, thus:

Resettlement during this year has suffered an unfortunate setback due to (a) a hold up funds which made it necessary to suspend all movement from November, 1954 to January, 1955, (b) lack of areas into which to put the people. There was no resettlement during January and during February and March 11, 29 people (men, women and children) have been settled.36

From above, while the first setback was a hold up funds, it was land scarcity that posed a great

setback. For instance, in the same latter, the Commissioner reported: “At the time of writing we

have funds available. The balance of the vote is shs. 281,741/=”. From the quotation, the main

problem was land scarcity and there were only two areas in Kigezi (West of the Kiruruma and

North East towards Bugangari) that could still accommodate a few people but not funds.

Further, the two areas were hard to reach because there was no road network in the area, the

river needed a bridge estimated at £3,816 and yet the lorry never had a driver. Ankole provided

a solution to the problems raised. Thus, migration to Ankole overlapped with migration to the

west of Kiruruma river and Bugangari. Given the setbacks, resettlement in the neighbouring

district, Ankole was appropriate since the Omugabe, King of Ankole had welcomed the officers

on tour and blessed the project. But more importantly the district had more space and

economically cheaper for resettlement. Consequently, plans were made, vote for resettlement

increased to cater for the Bakiga migrants into Ankole as the District commissioner, Kigezi

district suggested: “with the economies with which I hope to effect by using our own transport,

I think that in the next estimates period a very much larger proportion of the vote will be

available for spending in Ankole.”37

The first non-Bakiga area to which the resettlement was redirected was West Ankole. There

were several areas which received Bakiga migrants namely- Rwampara, Bitereko and

35 A report on chiefs and councilors out-side tour from 9th to 13th July,1956 written by the Secretary-General,

Kitaburaza on 25th July,1956: 3. 36 KDA, File Number DEV. 4/2 37 KDA, File Number DEV. 4/2

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Bunyaruguru. These areas had almost the same climate and land was initially sufficient. Climate

and land were very important considerations because of the agrarian nature of the Bakiga

amidst population increase and serious environmental degradation , they needed land for

cultivation, and favourable climate to support that source of livelihood (Carswell, 2007).

The process of Bakiga migration had great support of the colonial government, as confirmed in

the Secretary of State for the Colonies’ memo to the officer administering the government of

Uganda protectorate dated 4th may, 1950. The officer noted:

I am grateful for your full report and have noted with great satisfaction

the continued progress made with this scheme. I shall be interested to

watch the progress of the extension of this scheme into West Ankole,

and should be grateful for another report on it at the end of 1950.38

While migration of the Bakiga into Ankole had been voluntary and by the migrants themselves,

from the year 1956 it started to be coordinated by the state through provision of lorry to aid in

transportation of the migrants. Field and archival research indicated that migration and

settlement of the Bakiga into Ankole involved two processes. Firstly, the voluntary migration

process that involved movement of a few migrants and together with their families and property

migrated to areas in Ankole especially gombolola and saza: Bitereko, Bunyaruguru and

Rwampara. These areas were sparsely populated in Ankole though highly fertile for agricultural

livelihood, and easily accessible in terms of distance from Kigezi.

The category of voluntary migrants left Kigezi during the period between 1900 and 1955, they

were searching for farmlands since the colonial state had started encouraging export crop

cultivation (Jørgensen, 1981). The other overlapping strand of the Bakiga migrants were

encouraged by their relatives, and colleagues. From 1940s, the Bakiga migrations were also

facilitated by the colonial state that facilitated horizontal migration in the protectorate as they

unconsciously embraced national citizenship. Many of them found themselves in different areas

in the Uganda protectorate who significantly influenced others into migration. They

intermarried with indigenes and took their cultural norms, language and lifestyles.

38 KDA, Memo by the Secretary of State for the Colonies: number 40391/50; Reference No. 296 Saving, responding reference L.42/1.

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The second aspect in the process of Bakiga migration since 1955, involved the encouragement

and coercion by the colonial state. This involved organising tours, and communications among

District commissioners (DCs). The Bakiga migrants were allocated or given a specified piece

of land usually ten acres per family hold and interestingly this arrangement cut across all major

Bakiga settlement areas including Bunyoro. It was an extension from Ankole to Toro, with

overlaps to some parts of Ankole especially Bunyaruguru as described by Kitaburaza in his

report on chiefs and councillors39. In the report, Kitaburaza described thus:

… a tour was made to Bunyaruguru of Ankole District, and Bigodi and

other areas in Toro District. The party40 set off at 10 a.m. on 9th July

1956 and reached Bunyaruguru-Rubirizi on the same day at 4 p.m. They

were welcomed by Mr Ntaama, Kitunzi of Bunyaruguru and Gombolola

chiefs who entertained them and offered excellent accommodation. On

10th July 1956, the party toured Kyenkaranga vicinity adjacent to

Katerera river, east of Bunyaruguru. Then to Bugwaja area in the same

Gombolola up to Munyonyi hill on the boarder to Kangaho's county

Buhweju. The party further toured Kakindo valley and ended their day

at Maziba hill. In all these areas, the party observed that the soil was

good with plenty of water and sufficient trees from which firewood and

trees could be obtained. It was also observed that natives of these areas

grew plenty of sorghum, beans, cassava, sweet-potatoes, pumpkins,

sugarcane, coffee and bananas.

What is interesting from the Kitaburaza’s description or narrative is that the conditions observed

were similar to those in Kigezi in terms of food and weather conditions and the nature of the

natives in toured areas hence favourable for agricultural livelihoods. Further, the narrative

suggests the discriminative attitude to non-natives as reflected in the way the Secretary General

39 A report on chiefs and councilors out-side tour from 9th to 13th July,1956 written by the Secretary-General, Kitaburaza on 25th July,1956 to The District commissioner, Kigezi (Kabale District Archives Box 6. File Number ref: K.MIG.1. 40 The party was seven-member officials from Kigezi district council, they were: Secretary General, Mr. F.K. Kitaburaza, Saza Chief of Ndorwa, Mr. P. Kakwenza, Saza chief of Kikinzi, Mr. W.R. Biteyi, Gombolola chief of Bubale, Mr. Y. Murera, Gombolola chief of Nyakishenyi, Mr. R. Nzireki, District councilor from Gombolola of Kamuganguzi, Mr A. Magaba, and District councilor from Gombolola of Kasambya.

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(SG) convincing the natives to accept the Bakiga as very good, hard working and generally of

good morals. The Bakiga therefore would easily collaborate with the natives since they shared

related identity indicators namely food etiquettes, customs and language. Moreover, there were

other Bakiga who had settled in the area and would orient them as Kitaburaza reported: “The

party was able to meet one Leubeini, 60 years, the old brother of a Saza Chief in Ankole, Petro

Garubungo of Kajara. Leubeini informed the delegation that his grandfather came to this area

many years before.” It was then very clear that Bunyaruguru was suitable for the Bakiga settlers

and so the party suggested to the host, Kitunzi to resettle six hundred Bakiga families. Upon

negotiations, Kitunzi on behalf of Ankole African Local Government (ALG) would allow the

number of Bakiga between one hundred and two hundred families since many families of

Ankole were prepared to settle in some of the toured areas.

With the help the Muluka Chief of the area, the party made a baraza which was attended by

Kitunzi, Sabagabo, the Muluka and his Bakungu chiefs, councillors and people of the muluka.

After the introduction by the Kitunzi, the Secretary – General, Kigezi District council addressed

the baraza, hence:

… explained to them the difficulties and problems confronting Kigezi

district being overpopulated. He briefly informed them of the close

friendship that exists between Ankole and Kigezi, that people of Ankole

and Kigezi are the same people and they have become friends and

intermarried. He explained how the Ankole government rendered the

inviable help to Kigezi people to resettle in parts of Ankole, Mitooma,

Kati and Rwampara41. He explained that the Bakiga are very good and

hardworking people, and they reproduce at high birth rate, due to

avoiding bad habits of fornication and adultery. They generally do not

practice stealing, they are honest and reliable.

Regarding the responses of the natives, people informed the party that they would welcome the

Bakiga in their area and dwell there with them. The baraza dispersed and the party

recommended the area for resettlement pending Ankole African local government decision. The

41 These areas were inhabited by the Bakiga in the first phase of their migration to Ankole.

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Bakiga preferred migrating to Ankole because there were no restrictions on land access,

ownership and usage. While in other areas especially Toro, land was surveyed to restrict the

Bakiga migrants to only ten acres, in Bunyaruguru, Ankole district the Bakiga were allowed to

access and own land to their capacity measured by their need. Accordingly, the suggestion of

settling the Bakiga migrants into Bunyaruguru area was forwarded to the Omugabe of Ankole’s

government. Consequently, the Bakiga would acquire land which they thought and felt that

them and their families would comfortably live without disturbances regarding surveying,

reducing into plots as it was the case in Toro and later in Bunyoro. In fact, many Bakiga refused

to relocate to Kibaale because they were opposed to plot surveying and generally the land tenure

system that was comparable to that of Buganda which did not guarantee land ownership to the

tenant.

The two aspects in the process to which the Bakiga migrants migrated to Ankole had a very

significant implication for citizenship as they settled. The first category got easily integrated

among the Banyankole (the inhabitants of Ankole District) while the second category took long

to be incorporated. This can be explained in two ways. First, they had migrated with their chiefs

and formed their own nativist associations that kept them remain in connection with their

“homes”. For instance, Bakiga, migrants returned to Kigezi following their complaints

especially about the ruthlessness of Alamutangye, gombolola chief of Bitereko. Second, by the

very nature of migration, movement in groups, the Bakiga migrants/settlers lived in exclusive

areas and so they could not easily adjust to the new neighbours.

RR58 in Bitereko, Mitooma, one of the earlier Bakiga destinations in Ankole, remembered that

it was not until 1960s when the connections with Kabale had weakened. The process of

weakening increased so much, to the extent that mutual visits back-and-forth reduced gradually.

In addition to change in generations there was also acceptability comfort and settle-in by the

migrants. The case was different for the migrants to Toro and Bunyoro: there continued a flow

of back-and-forth movements between migrants and the stayees. For instance, when Kitaburaza

and the group visited the migrants in Toro, almost all of them had called on Kigezi. The

difference in generations was kept by the younger generation opting to marry wives from Kigezi

rather than Bunyoro or Toro. One of the pieces evidence that supports the sustained contacts

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back-and- forth movements of the Bakiga migrants was the establishment of a bus service line

between the towns of Kabale and Fort Portal and Kagadi during the 1960s and 70s up to 1980s.

Whether the voluntary Bakiga migrants or the government coordinated ones into north Kigezi

or Ankole, it was a matter of time that they were integrated into indigenous communities in

north-Kigezi and Ankole. This integration was responsible for the cordial relationship that

existed among them. This relationship continued even when land became extremely scarce to

contain more Bakiga. Whence, in 1950s, the destination of the Bakiga shifted from Ankole to

Toro. As numbers increased in Toro, Bunyoro became their destination.

Land in Ankole became extremely scarce as population was increasing on a fixed resource,

land. The Ankole administration became worried at the rate at which migration was taking

place resulting into the scarcity of land in the district. The Ishengyero was so concerned that it

had to pass a resolution in 1963 and notified the District commissioner, Kigezi on 8th January

1963 to stop the migration of the Bakiga into the district. The resolution of Ishengyero stated:

Ow’Ekitinisa the Enganzi, supported by Mr. Rutehenda, brought a

suggestion that, “it has been found out that very many people from

Kigezi enter the Ankole Settlement areas. Some of these come legally

but most of them come illegally and secretly- which brings some

difficulties to the chiefs. It is understood now that some Banyankole

want, very urgently, also to settle in these settlement areas. So therefore,

I ask this Ishengyero allow the idea of banning the settlement of people

from Ankole so that this government can first see that settling in

settlement areas is good as it is ordered by the Ankole settlement Bye-

law.” The resolution was passed with 33 votes without opposition42.

With the banning of the Bakiga migration into Ankole, a lot of exchanges were eminent, ranging

from council meetings, petitions and spoilt relationship with the Ankole administration. These

responses tell a lot about territorisation and decentralised despotism as theorized by Mamdani

42 Report by Kitaburaaza to District commissioner, Kigezi (Kabale District Archives): File Number ref: K.MIG.1.

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(2017), but more so, portrayed the nativist nature of the Banyankole leaders since there were

no complaints nor rejection of the Bakiga by the ordinary citizens of the area. However, the

colonial government was in support of the Ankole’s Ishengyero action. In this line of argument,

the action of Ishengyero and the colonial government implied that the Bakiga in Ankole were

abanyamahanga- foreigners.

Yet, to the Bakiga migrants or settlers, it was population pressure and so they sought for other

areas of Uganda for settlement where they lived amicably with other citizens. When finally,

the consensus was reached, it became legally forbidden for the Bakiga to continue migrating to

Ankole. Nevertheless, it was socially right to continue migrating there, although many found

nowhere to settle and proceeded to Toro and Bunyoro. Whether the Bakiga were conscious of

the illegality to migrate to Ankole, they continued migrating there using the earlier connections

thus challenging the legal or formal definition of citizenship in Uganda and confirming the

argument of this thesis that migrancy in Uganda created nativism which gave rise two kinds of

citizenship consciousness.

According the report by Secretary-General of Kigezi, Kitaburaza, who led the delegation to

Ankole, found out that Ankole would only accommodate about two hundred Bakiga families.

The delegation then headed for Toro for more land. Tours were made in the remaining parts of

Toro where the Bakiga were advised to migrate though it was not desirable. Toro did not attract

the Bakiga women to the extent that whenever the husband opted for permanent migration, the

wife would either escape with some children or in extreme cases opt for divorce. Whereas a

good number of the Bakiga migrated and settled in Toro, a big number was attracted to

Bunyoro. The second part of the tour, therefore, regarded movement to Fort Portal, Toro and

particularly to Bigodi of Kibaale where some Bakiga settlers had already gone. On their way

Toro on 11th July 1956, Kitaburaza, Biteyi and Mulera called on Kilembe mines to check on

the Bakiga labourers, not migrants or settlers working there. They never saw all of them but a

few; checked on them and continued with their journey. The party was welcomed by

Ow’EKitinisa Katikiro at his palace, had lunch at Fort Portal and proceeded to Kibaale where

the Bakiga were settling.

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At Bigodi in Kibaale, the delegation referred to above met saza chief of Kibaale, Y. Lubani,

the Sekibobo, A. Bashaija-resettlement liaison officer, Merchant who had been a field officer

in Kigezi, Burikiro with some of the old Bakiga settlers of the area, and new arrivals who had

gone there to hold plots.

The Gombolola Chief Mumyuka joined them later with Provincial Agricultural Officer,

Western Province. The officials informed the delegation that many of the settlers had returned

to Kigezi to harvest their sorghum and other crops before permanent settlement in Bigodi. There

were thus, few Bakiga who had remained in Kibaale. On 12th July 1956, the delegation toured

the area adjacent to the resettlement camp and moved around the settlers’ bibanja, that were

ten acres per family hold. It was further observed that land was black and characterised by

elephant grass, sign of fertility. They were able to see food crops like sorghum, peas, finger

millet and beans which grew well. Crops were related to their staple crops of the Bakiga. To

encourage other settlers, the delegation took with them some yields to Kigezi43. Moreover, the

yields were hardly different from those of Kigezi.

From the Secretary-General of Kigezi’s report, we are informed that on the same day, 12th July

1956, before the baraza, the delegation toured the resettlement area of Nkongora. The baraza

was held at 11:30 am at the camp, Bigodi, was attended by the delegates, Sekibobo, Mumyuka,

chiefs, some Kibaale county councillors and about sixty settlers. About a hundred of the settlers

had gone back to Kigezi to harvest their sorghum. According to the report, the baraza learnt

that one hundred sixty families had already settled down in their plots at Bigodi and some new

settlers were still coming. However, the baraza noted that Nkongora area had been reserved for

settlement of Banyarwanda from Bufumbira-Ruanda and that twenty-eight families from

Gombolola Muko, Ndorwa County already had land there. Thus, a total of one hundred eighty-

eight families already held land in Kibaale county. It was further noted that one hundred forty-

nine surveyed plots were ready for occupation, and that the allocation would be ten acres per

43 The effort of encouraging the Bakiga to settle in Kibale was quite immense compared to Ankole. The detest for the land tenure system of Bibanja was real. It reminded them of their and their fathers’ experiences of bibanja in Buganda. This partly explained why a smaller piece of land in Ankole was better in the view of the migrants, than the ten acres of kibanja in Toro or Buganda.

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large family. In short, every tax payer who had settled in Bigodi would be given ten acres of

land. However, if he had a larger family and had ten acres already cultivated, he would be given

some land from the reserved acreage as this extensive Secretary-General of Kigezi’s report

stated.

Moreover, the Kitaburaza report revealed that in the baraza, the settlers were advised to be royal

and keep good reputation of Kigezi. This advice carried a lot of meaning and implication for

citizenship. Even though the Bakiga settled in Bigodi, Kibaale or Kabarole, they were seen as

foreigners who owed royalty to native rule of their hosts. Even other problems were attributed

to the settlers as they were suspected to be badly behaved, thieves and uncivilized. For instance,

it was reported that the rule (although the Toro chiefs were not very serious with it) was: “... if

a settler broke the rule would be repatriated to Kigezi”44. However, the Bakiga had to cope with

their new home. The first settlers were delighted to find Augustino Bashaija, the first Mukiga

in those areas who welcomed them and supported them in different odds of life. According to

RR 26, a mukiga settler, the ten-acres plots of that good land could well support small families,

one wife and not more than five children. The Bakiga established their shambas as the land

was fertile and it was similar to some parts of Kinkizi-Nyakashure and Rujumbura- Bugangari

of Kigezi District. Hence the Bakiga settled with their families and encouraged other fellow

Bakiga to migrate to Toro.

Migration to Bunyoro from the 1950s-1960s

Meanwhile, arrangements were under way to respond to the Omukama of Bunyoro’s requests,

which led to increased migration of the Bakiga into Bunyoro. Migration into Bunyoro started

on a small scale, voluntarily, and migrants inviting their colleagues to follow them. The number

of migrants increased because of :1) the banning of Bakiga migration into Ankole, 2)

44 Other problems included mistreatment by drivers, lack of water and damage by game on top of discrimination by the Toro chiefs and in terms of political participation as the Kigezi administrators brought the issue to the attention of the Omugabe of Ankole and Omukama of Toro thus: “in conclusion, we humbly beg both, the Omugabe and the Omukama, always to treat us as their people feeling at heart that we are their people, remembering also to give [B]akiga their share when promotions are being considered for natives. We have a living hope that this will be so, for we have found one of the [B]akiga settlers having been appointed as an Askari in sekibobo’s country. I should here remind the Authorities concerned that, Bakiga should not only be restricted to being appointed askaris, but also where possible be appointed for other posts if available (KDA, 1956 report pages 6, 7 and 8)

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Government provision of means of transport -Lorries, and more importantly, 3) the invitation

by the Omukama, King Tito Winy IV, who was more of a Ugandan oriented (embraced national

citizenship) than a Munyoro King (local citizenship). This was expressed in his letter written

on 17th June, 1955 to the Provincial Commissioner, Western Province and copied to The District

Commissioner, in which the King encouraged the Bakiga to migrate to Bunyoro. The letter that

available in the KDA has been reproduced in photocopy form below.

Figure 8: A letter by King Tito Winy IV encouraging the Bakiga to migrate to Bunyoro

The Omukama’s letter and the stories narrated by RR32, RR30 and RR23 during field

interviews point to encouragement and invitation of the migrants by the Omukama Tito Winy

IV. The population factor seems to be the main factor Bakiga migration to Bunyoro. Starting

from late 1950s, many Bakiga headed to Bunyoro for settlement. The rapid population increase

in Bunyoro in 1964 suggests increased in the number of migration from Kigezi to Ankole

following the ban on migration into Ankole in 1963.

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The process of the Bakiga migration to Bunyoro

The process of migration to Bunyoro started with men securing knowledge of the availability

of land in Bunyoro from either a chief or a relative who had earlier settled, or a colleague

returning for the first time. Individually, but most times in a gang, the Bakiga would visit

Bunyoro using a lorry and acquire or hire a piece of land which they tilled for a season. This

would secure the individual food for the following visit, permanent migration from Kigezi and

settlement in Bunyoro. The chief in Kigezi would then book a lorry for the intending migrants.

At a given day and date (an example of a transport schedule is photocopied in appendix 4), the

lorry would pick the gang of men and ferry them to Bunyoro, mainly in Kibaale and the present

day Kagadi. After planting crops for food and erecting ensisira, like those that they or their

fathers would erect in Buganda, the men would then return to Kigezi to physically and

psychologically prepare their families for migrating to Bunyoro. This involved convincing the

wife and children to prepare them for new life.

The preparation process at times took so long and affected the harvest of crops in Bunyoro. It

was common for the family to miss the lorry following the escape of some unprepared family

members. One Kapeta in his letter dated 25th March 1957 complained to the District

commissioner, Kigezi:

I beg to inform you that on the 24th January 1957,

when I was leaving Kigezi for Toro, my wife

Durukasi Kakabalanga bluntly refused to leave

Kigezi with me. She remained there with my six

children. Could you kindly send that woman with

the children? If she loves me no longer, we should

divorce each other.

From the above quotation, two observations can be made. First, some women detested

migration despite the arrangements made by their husbands and organisations by the colonial

government- provision of lorries. Second, in some instances, women preferred divorce to

migration to Bunyoro. These observations imply that migration was a tough decision that

involved family instabilities and marriage breakages. While it is true that land in Kigezi was

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becoming extremely scarce to cater for the family hold, women still had chances to fend for

food from other households. As long as food was in the home, a woman’s main role was

complete. Other roles revolved around the preparation of food, such as cooking. There were

three emerging fears that prompted some women to have a negative attitude towards migration.

These were availability of food, new life in a strange place and cultural ties. According to RR

29, migrating was a hard decision for the assertive45 woman because:

….as a woman I had many responsibilities ranging from caring

for my children and my parents. Abandoning my parents was

hard. What about my friends and neighbours who hosted me in

case my husband chased us from the house as he came home

drunk? Omuri Bunyoro noyambwa oha? [Who would help you

in Bunyoro?]

RR29’s fears raised moral issues of drunkardness, domestic violence and cultural

marginalisation of women (Oxfam International, 2018). In most cases, women were not

consulted nor involved in the preparation of resettlement, but merely informed of the migration

plans. All these risks involved in the process of migration and settlement necessitated ample

preparation for the new experiences.

Pre-migration activities involved the household arranging all its belongings, including goats,

beddings and other necessities. These were moved to a picking point, usually along the feeder

road. The weather conditions such as rain and sunshine were a bother. This was because the

lorry might take about a week to come, depending on its availability and the family’s

relationship with chiefs. Loading the lorry was incumbent upon the already disgusted migrant.

The family members travelled with their animals on board the lorry. Along the way there might

be accidents but not everyone was compensated as a result , only a few were.

In Bunyoro, the Bakiga settlers met some challenges. For those that settled in Kibaale, they

were first offered temporary residence in the compounds of the Banyoro, and those that settled

45 The Bakiga women are generally considered to be very assertive (Oxfam International, 2018:44). With reference to care for the children, elderly, ill or disabled and other tasks like fetching water and fuel collection were tasks done by women though men were required participate.

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in Kagadi erected the ensisira that they had built in their previous visits near their gardens. The

Bakiga migrants, could not depend be dependants forever. They worked tirelessly for their

survival. Upon two to three years of bumper harvests, the settler would save some food for sale

and school fees. RR33 told of how his father who grew groundnuts and cassava which have

remained their staple food and lucrative items for trade in the current Kagadi town.

Until 1957, the Bakiga worked for the Banyoro in agricultural related works, cutting down trees

to reduce tsetse flies and snakes. According to RR28, the “whole area of Kagadi was full of

bush, big trees and anthills which harboured tsetse flies and big snakes. We feared there”, RR28

confessed. He continued to narrate how the Bakiga “helped” to chase away the vermin in

Bunyoro by cutting the trees and opening up a big area of Kagadi for cultivation and settlement.

The majority first worked as labourers to the Banyoro and Bakiga who had arrived earlier. Some

Bakiga received free land from Banyoro while others came when land had acquire much value,

so they bought some pieces of land from the Banyoro neighbours and Bakiga settlers .

Anew chapter of the new Banyoro started with hard work and domesticating and reclaiming the

empty land by the Bakiga. Socially, there were intermarriages, some Bakiga were assimilated

by the Banyoro and some Banyoro were also assimilated by the new comers. From 1950s,

intermarriages were also evident with other migrants from other parts of the protectorate and

even as far as Kenya. According to RR60, it was important to from both a munyoro and a

mukiga wife for easy integration, this process of integration discussed in Chapter 5 of this

thesis. Many migrants that migrated from Kigezi found themselves in the same area so they

maintained their cultural norms like language. They further took up education and Christianity.

One may argue that they had indeed become indigenes of Bunyoro as they started referring to

each other as brothers or sisters, depicting national citizenship.

Economically, the innovative and hardworking Bakiga tilled the virgin fertile land in their areas

of settlement and became rich in the context of modern economy. They started small shops in

their new areas of residences and sold produce to fellow Bakiga and other buyers, including

Banyoro. Indeed, many Banyoro started buying produce from the Bakiga and have become

business partners. When business in produce and industrial products imported from Kampala

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increased, shops increased in Kagadi and other trading centres like Mpefu. Soon the former

“bush” had become settlements, and exchange areas such as Mpefu become very important

trading centres. Indeed, the development of Kagadi town and other trading centres like Mpefu

in the area are associated with the activities of the Bakiga. The establishment of money

economy in some parts of Bunyoro is attributed to the Bakiga migration. This can be proved by

names and naming of the trading centres and towns that were established in the areas of Bakiga

settlement which carry Rukiga language and not Runyoro meaning. Examples of the townships

and trading centres are Mpefu, a Rukiga word that describes a type of grain originally grown

in Kigezi, and Kabale trading centre which is related to the Bakiga’s area of origin, that had

by the 1910s been established as a centre of commerce (Taylor, 2013). Other settlements with

related name meanings like Rugashari are shown on the map in appendix 12.

4.3.2 Spontaneous migrants to Kampala, 1950s-1995

One other strand of career migrants from Kigezi and Ankole was the spontaneous migrants.

This strand was not very organised as the previously discussed ones. These took the pattern of

rural-urban migration. However, they were responding to the opportunities created by the new

nation-state, since late 1950s and increased after independence. This strand of migrants

involved the Bakiga and Banyankole, and other streams of migrants from other parts of Uganda

taking up blue-collar jobs in industries in Kampala and Jinja, and white-collar jobs public

service following their graduation from Makerere University and other educational institutions

in Kampala.

4.4 Chapter Summary

Since 1926, there were continuous migrations from former labour reserve zones to former cash

crop reserve zones. The continuity was motivated by taxation, cash nexus, new needs, and

improved transport. The reduction of migrant labour in the second half of 1940s saw the rise of

career driven migration wave that involved migration of Bakiga from South Kigezi to North

Kigezi, Toro and Bunyoro on one hand and blue and white-collar migrants to Kampala on the

other. The chapter has discussed the factors that sustained different migration strands from late

1940s through 1950s and post-independence period. The Bakiga migration was in response was

also in response to the effects of “modern economy”, including the wattle industry that was

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introduced in Kigezi and increased soil erosion, population pressure on land, and

encouragement by the colonial state. This wave lasted up to 1960s though it continued on a

small scale through 1970s and 1980s.

The chapter lays the foundation for the triggers that led to the seemingly ethnic conflicts in

Bunyoro in 1990s, that have been blamed on the migration of the Bakiga. Through navigation

of the two different waves of migration: labour migration and career migration, it was the latter

wave particularly the Bakiga migration to Bunyoro that has had far reaching impact on the

trend of events in western Uganda since 1940s. This is because it became permanent migration

and settlement. Permanent migration and settlement involved reorganisation of societies in the

context of colonial policy of localisation and post-colonial policy of decentralisation. These

societies have been manipulated by the elites stalking nativism within the interaction between

the “migrants” and “natives” under the elite controlled state, as discussed in next chapter.

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4.3.1 Diagrammatic summary of migration in southern and western Uganda 1894-1995

From the conclusion and discussion of the waves of migration involved in the peopling of

Uganda, a summary of migration waves described in this chapter is diagrammatically

represented in figure 9 below.

- The Bantu, Luo, Ateker and Sudanic to what came to be Uganda

- Flight of some Baganda to north Nkore

- These migrated from labour

reserve zones to cash crop reserve zones. Ankole and Kigezi districts were “reserved” to Buganda while West Nile and Acholi were “reserved” for Eastern Uganda

- These migrants were responding to new opportunities created by new nation-state.

- The continued migrant Labourers (Bapakasi)

- Bakiga migration to Bunyoro (Okufuruka-Bafuruki)

- Banyankole and Bakiga migration to Kampala not Buganda (Abakoozi)

Figure 9: Analysis of waves of migration in Uganda as identified from this study

Wave 1: Pre-colonial

Wave-Way back in 11th

Century

Wave 2: Migrant

Labourers (Bapakasi),

1906-1960s

Wave 3: Career migrants,

1950s-1995

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CHAPTER FIVE

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN MIGRANTS AND NATIVES IN UGANDA, 1894-1995

5.1 Introduction

In chapter four, I discussed the imperatives that led to migration shifts and the processes of

migration in the study areas. In this chapter, I discuss the processes of migrants’ settlement

into the areas of destination. The chapter draws Muzafer’s realist group conflict theory to make

sense of various relationships that developed as a result of migrations, and the forces that

determined the interaction among groups of migrants and the natives. Focusing on migrants and

natives relationships in western and southern regions, the chapter tries to answer the second

research question for the study: How did the migrants interact with the natives in Uganda during

the period 1894-1995? In this chapter, I argue that the migration experiences of the migrants

and natives interactions had far-reaching consequences on citizenship in Uganda. The chapter

views nativism from the stand point of the general academic discourses of the last quarter of

20th century Africa, including history, anthropology, and ethno-ideology of difference per

excellence (Mbembe, 2002).

Through the interviews conducted among the returnee migrants, settled migrants and their

former employers, the study found out that migration in the areas under study culminated into

a complex interaction between migrants and natives. This interaction was largely informed by

social citizenship. From the interviews, we learnt that nativism was a product of a very complex

process of colonialism and the nature of postcolonial state. Information from interviews shows

that most of the Banyankole and Bakiga migrant labourers were by 1950s returning to the

sending communities but some especially those that had been accompanied by their wives had

settled in Buganda. These were assimilated and gave up their customs and language to the

Kiganda ones.

While the Bakiga migrants from Kigezi were integrated into the communities in Ankole and

Toro, it was not the case in Bunyoro notably after 1990. Easy assimilation is explained by

presence of cultural similarities between the migrants and natives in terms of language and

custom and this is in line with to Muzafer’s RGCT. On one hand, the Bakiga migrants needed

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land for cultivation and settlement and on the other, the Banyoro natives had “excess” land to

accommodate the Bakiga, but above all the Bakiga were important as a source of labour power.

The migrants were preoccupied with casual work as ‘the hoe ate the soil’. Whereas some Bakiga

were engaged in trading activities, by the 1940s, the Banyoro and Bakiga ethnic consciousness

was very low. As population increased throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, land as a

resource from which humans derive their livelihoods in the context of agricultural production,

became extremely scarce. The predominance of communal land ownership and land use rights,

which were regulated by the King, were increasingly becoming individualised.

The Banyoro were still embedded in the communal system yet the Bakiga migrants had

embraced private ownership and access to land. As the Banyoro evoked local citizenship to

justify their primordial privileges over land, the Bakiga were appealing to national citizenship

that guaranteed their rights over land in Bunyoro. The differences in perceptions towards land

triggered the binaries between the natives and migrants. For instance, the Banyoro have blamed

the decline in their cultural values on the Bakiga settlers who have largely refused to adapt the

native cultural norms of the Banyoro (Nyombi & Kaddu, 2015:6). This chapter thus, attempts

to illustrate the complex ways in which migrants have interacted with natives in the regions

under study as shown in the perceptions held towards each other inform of name nomenclatures,

group formations and participation in politics. These interactions have been associated with the

extent of acceptance and integration on one hand or rejection and appeal to nativism on other

in the context of access to and utilisation of resources especially land and political resource

To fully explore the interactions between migrants and native, it is important to lay bare the

origins of the words okupakasa and okufuruka because they greatly relate with migration,

influence relations in the society and define nature of citizenship consciousness exhibited by

individuals in Uganda.

5.1.1 The etymology of the words okupakasa and okufuruka in the context of Uganda

This study has established that terms okupakasa and okufuruka have evolved over time and

space and have been used with fluid meanings.

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Okupakasa

The term okupakasa as known in many Ugandan communities. In Uganda, the term okupakasa

was first used to mean porters or workers who moved from their distant homes to work

elsewhere as it was the case with the Indian coolies porting during the construction of Uganda

railway. Even the local person who worked in railway construction during the early 1900s was

referred to as mpagazi - a Swahili word which meant a porter. Porters (Wapagazi) were used

in Buganda during early colonial period for construction of administrative centres in Entebbe

and construction of church buildings. During the 1920s, the Baganda witnessed a stream of

migrants from different areas of Uganda taking up jobs in Baganda large scale peasant farmers

as Bapakasi. A mong the Banyankole and Bakiga, the term okupakasa was used as migrants

who involved in migration to Buganda for the reasons discussed in chapter four this thesis. To

the Baganda, the Bapakasi were -migrant labourers from other areas of areas or even the

Baganda who worked for others to earn money (cash). By 1930s the dominant number of

Bapakasi was from south-western Uganda hence the term Bapakasi came to mean migrant

labourers in Buganda. Many of the Bapakasi returned to the sending communities and a few

like Mzee RR14’s father, who remained in the host communities were assimilated as they gave

up their customs and language to Kiganda customs and Luganda respectively thus contributing

to the multi-layered citizenships analysed in chapter six.

Okufuruka

The use of the term okufuruka and abafuruki have evolved. In Rukiga, the term okufuruka is

the equivalent of to migrate in English. Therefore, right away the Bakiga on their migration

pattern identified themselves as Bafuruki but also remained Bakiga in the receiving

communities. In Ankole where the language dialects are closely related, the Banyankole

described the Bakiga migrants as Bafuruki or Batoroki; but in Bunyoro they were described as

Bakiga and they also maintained their identity as Bakiga until 1990s. The use of the term

Bafuruki in respect to the Bakiga migrants in Bunyoro is recent and it was connected with the

political rivalries that emerged in the region arising from the democratic and decentralisation

reforms brought into place by the 1995 constitution.

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The interactions between migrants and natives in the study areas during the period 1894 and

1995 were determined by migration dynamics, attitudes developed in during the process

migration and settlement; and nature of the colonial and post-colonial government economic

policies that informed citizenship consciousness in southern and western Uganda. I thus look

at the specific interactions: first, between the migrants and natives in Buganda region and turn

to Bunyoro region, section 5.3 of this chapter.

5.2 Interactions between migrants and natives, Buganda 1920s-1995

Narratives and experiences of the former migrant labourers, and their former employers were

obtained from interviews. These have been used to construct the story of the interaction between

migrants and natives in Buganda. Their narratives were checked against each other’s, and

coalesced with archival and secondary data. The findings of this study that the Banyankole and

Bakiga migration into Buganda region were highly mobile are consistent with Richards’(1954).

The study established that unlike the Bakiga migration and settlement in Bunyoro that was

aimed at permanent settlement and integration, the migration from western Uganda to Buganda

region was intended to reinforce uneven development by the colonial state (Mamdani, 1999).

Thus, okupakasa was introduced and sustained on the premise of mobility of labour through

availing “favourable” conditions that sustained “bachelor life”.

Participants who were former employers of migrants in Buganda informed the researcher that

the presence of migrant labourers was beneficial to them. To support their assertion, they argued

that the migrant labourers would dig and offer manual labour which could not be obtained from

the fellow Baganda. According to RR 38:

…most of the Bapakasi offered cheap labour, built their busisira

in our homesteads which gave them prestige and security. The

Bapakasi would wake up early in the morning, till the land and

did heavy digging (okukabala), weeding, harvesting and sun

dried coffee.

According to RR37, the Bapakasi were very important for the employers’ wellbeing

individually and at family level. The Bapakasi thus established good relations with their

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employers in the context of employer-employee relations. When the Bapakasi became “trust

worthy” in the view of their employers, the employer would rent out some pieces of land to his

trusted labourers. After a season on the rented land, the labourer would pay a given number of

sacks cotton or cash after sale. Where the Bapakasi received bad treatment, they would shift to

another employer. They thus used their mobility as a means of struggle. In the 1930s and 1940s,

the Bapakasi worked for the Baganda families as manual labourers. However, from the early

1950s, the Bapakasi started the practice of renting a plot of land from a muganda landlord whom

he paid depending on sacks of cotton harvested and money earned.

Beginning from late 1950s, some migrants from western Uganda in Buganda started opting for

permanent residence in Buganda. While some migrants were stopping their journeys to

Buganda and opting for settled life in the sending communities, other migrants especially the

newly married men migrated with their nuclear families, opting for permanent residence. These

became tenants in the Baganda families. According to RR40, some of the Bapakasi “behaved

well” and the Baganda landlords and developed relations with them. RR40 narrated that:

The Bapakasi built their ensisira, behaved well as they were not

thieves and they had learnt Luganda. Some had started living

with us for a very long period like two years without returning

so we offered them free kibanja to live on. Others worked very

hard and saved their money with their trustworthy employers or

their leader to the tune of three hundred shillings and bought

bibanja from the native Baganda and became basenze. When

they forgot their problems of being Bapakasi, some of them

ended up marrying46 from the Baganda families and became

abaana be waaka”47

46 Marrying from a muganda family was not easy for a non-muganda and almost impossible for a mupakasi. It was even discouraged. It was better to remain with the produced child and expand the Baganda community as per the precolonial mentality of community expansion, than permanent marriage. Omukazi wampeta, “of the ring” in the proper Baganda marriage to which according to Southall (1954) very expensive as it involved a white satin dress and a veil for the bride and a special ornamental kanzu for the bride groom and large feast. In addition, one required crockery, cooking utensils and cash of fifty to one hundred pounds to complete marriage (Southal, 1954, p. 177). 47 Abaana be waaka meant being part of the family through marriage.

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The above narrative indicates the mode of land acquisition in Buganda by the settlers including

gifts or free access from the employer. The narrative exposes how the Bapakasi acquired land

through purchase using their wages. Marriage relations was an important aspect in the Bapakasi

integration into the Kiganda culture which culminated into a change from obupakasi (labouring)

to obusenze (settlement). Otherwise all migrants in Buganda were welcomed as Bagwila,

foreigners from any gwanga, country like Busoga, Ankole and the like. They were Bagwila

because they were not born in that area and ‘ekitundu si kikye’, the individual does not belong

to that area but rather belonged to the area of origin, except after being absorbed. This finding

is consistent with Richards’ (1954) and Mafeje (1991) both arguing that even when the migrants

got assimilated in the Baganda communities, they were identifiable by differences in language

dialects and nature of work the migrants involved in as observed by Richards on the view of

the Baganda towards men and boys sighted carrying baskets on their heads in an evening: “Of

course they are foreigners! Who else would be going out at this time of the day to bring back

food?” (Richards, 1954: 121). To her, migrants could be identified by the work they did. The

unequal relations extended the frontiers of difference between the migrant labourers and their

hosts, which reinforced nativism at both ends. This perception was also with in the migrants

themselves as exhibited in their strategy of being highly mobile, having one leg at the work

place and the other at their home of origin. Finally, due to this attitude, migrants of this phase

rarely settled in Buganda.

By mid 1950s, migrant labourers from Ankole and Kigezi were reducing both in numbers and

journeys to Buganda. According to RR28 the migrant labourers had acquired cash crops mainly

coffee. RR28’s narrative reflected what was taking place in Buganda where land owners were

adopting new mechanisms of procuring “cheap labour,” an alternative to migrant labour. Thus,

what, Mamdani (1999) has classified as civil servants, traders, and kulaks; it was evident that

these categories invested on land and constituted themselves as progressive, farmers whose

participation in politics and social affairs was influential in agricultural and marketing

interventions. In terms of agriculture, the progressive farmers had acquired about 15-45 acres

of land and were very ambitious (Mafeje, 1991). They opted for mechanised agriculture and

had the support of colonial government, which extended credit facilities through the Uganda

Credit and Savings Bank. This bank was for traders and farmers established, in 1950

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(Zwanenberg & King, 1970). With regard to in marketing, the progressive farmers had formed

the Uganda African Farmers Union (UAFU) in 1941 to champion their political and economic

interests. Though marketing was an exclusive of the colonial government (Bibangambah,

1996), the progressive farmers through UAFU demanded their rights to market their produce

through their own marketing cooperatives (Karugire, 1980 & Asiimwe, 2002). Thus, while

migrant labour continued to flow to Buganda, it was engaged as unfree labour because it was

the responsibility of the employer to regulate labour so that it can reproduce itself (Rutabajuuka

S. P., 2000).

The progressive farmers in Buganda were depending on mechanised agriculture and family

labour as the sociologist, Mafeje (1991) contends: “…Cotton, which is an extremely labour

intensive crop, was under prevailing conditions in Uganda better suited to small-scale

production relying on family labour than on large-scale production relying on hired labour”

(Mafeje, 1991:139). From Mafeje’s argument, the migrant labour which was regarded as cheap

was increasingly becoming expensive and this led to a change in the trends of migration from

the late the 1950s. The Bakiga shifted their migration routes and labour engagement of

okupakasa to dependence on their home-initiated economic avenues. No wonder, when the

Bakiga arrived in Bunyoro they engaged in high level economic venture like trade and intensive

cultivation of crops such as maize and ground nuts for self- sustenance, as narrated by RR 38,

a mukiga in Bunyoro, during an interview:

When we reached here in Bunyoro we had to change the ways of

life in order to survive and get money. While in Kigezi, we used

to grow sorghum but in Bunyoro sorghum was not useful. We

thought of a new crop- maize and later groundnuts. Even the

Banyoro never grew maize. Maize and groundnuts became our

major crops for food and cash because the areas we occupied

were fertile since they were never inhabited. We became

economically powerful, educated our children and were no

longer labourers of the Banyoro.

It is therefore evident that the Bakiga improved their lives economically and socially. These

changes came with economic dominance over the native Banyoro. The Banyoro resentment of

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the Bakiga as foreigners was the threat that the Banyoro were losing labour at the same time

when the migrants were becoming economically powerful and capable of becoming politically

dominant.

In late 1950s and in early 1960s, there emerged a category of migrants who were staying for a

longer period of time, perhaps ten years in Buganda. This category represented a change from

wage labour to tenancy. The migrants had acquired bibanja, pieces of land from their

landlords. They were moving from obugwila, foreignness to obunnansi, citizenship. But this

change was articulated with in the prevailing economic and social stratum responding to the

political atmosphere in colonial Buganda. Traditionally, the Baganda were used to tributary

land system which led to slow adoption of new land-labour relations.

The landlord-client or tenant relations were never dependant on labour but rather social

attachment. When Kassanvu, a system of paid compulsory labour in which every adult male

had to work for the colonial administration for one month each year was introduced in 1909,

which required the tenants or clients to offer their labour power, it was highly protested leading

to its abandonment in 1920s. In the 1920s, to overcome this problem of labour for cultivation

of cash crops (Wrigley, 1959), landlords needed regular and dependable labour thus the

introduction of labour for tenancy. Labour for tenancy offered their labour power in exchange

for a piece of land for the landlords to meet their subsistence needs. According Mafeje, many

of the labour for tenancy generally came from Rwanda because they had no other means of

access to land and as immigrants, their bargaining power was weaker than that of the Baganda

(Mafeje, 1991). The argument that Mafeje advances is in line with Richards, that due to

problems of access to and ownership of land following the 1928 busulu and envujjo law.

Labour for tenancy including Banyankole and Bakiga, demanded recourse to wage labour. With

payment in cash, the behaviour of migrant labour changed from settled life to highly mobile

life just as their predecessors (Richards, 1954). The findings of this study communicate well

with Mafeje and Richards as shown when RR 58 was probed with a question: Why didn’t you

settle in Buganda instead of making several journeys? He responded thus: “Itaka rya Buganda

rikaba niribuzabuza, ebya mailo nkaba ntakubikyenga kandi omuka okaba nogura itaka

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oturaho. Nyowe Buganda nkaba nimpangisa itaka mpiga pamba deru nshashura mukama

wítaka atwaraho ebishaho bibiri” translated as:

land in Buganda was confusing, I didn’t understand mailo land

system yet at home one would buy land and live on it. While in

Buganda I would rent land, grow cotton and at the end of the

season I would pay the land owner two sacks of cotton.

The quotation indicates that the spirit of the Banyankole migrants having one leg in Buganda

and another in the area of origin continued from the migrant labourers to career migrants in the

1960s. This continuation was highly connected with access to and ownership of land in

Buganda during their period of labour engagement. This attitude extended to career migrants

as confirmed by their practice of owning two homes: at the ancestral home -owaitu and within

the urban area (omutawuni).48

As some migrant labourers settled in Buganda, social relations changed and were much linked

to ownership of and access to land. All residents in Buganda are known as abanaansi. The

residents were generally categorised into two: abataka, natives had full political and civil rights

in the community, and abasenze, who were settler had limited rights. There were some kind of

mobility a settler, after acquiring land on permanent basis, would become a full citizen

(omutaka). A migrant of tenancy who acquired land through either purchase or gift, held it on

temporary basis (kibaja). However, by the 1900 Buganda Agreement, mailo land system was

introduced. That meant that the abataka owned a given number of square miles of land on

which the abasenze settled. In this way, the abataka became landlords and abasenze, tenants.

By the 1950s, some migrants from Ankole to Buganda had settled as abasenze. Otherwise the

abasenze and abataka would drink together in bars, did business together and lived amicably

though nativism still showed up in politics, social services provision and institutions.

The omutaka, RR14 (Fig. 10), while attesting to nativist tendencies that existed at institutional

levels, narrates, thus:

48 This description of home and house was given by many respondents especially RR 36 belonging to career migrants during the field study in Mukono and Luwero.

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…. I was aspiring to become a priest, so I was taken to Kisubi

Seminary where the Baganda seminarians treated me as inferior.

They discriminated against me and bullied me as a

munnamawanga. You see this scar on my body, I got it from

them! Along the way in the Seminary, some of my colleagues

kept on ‘cutting’ my desk and some of my books as they kept on

‘jokingly’ telling me that how can Bahume become a priest to

preach to others? Why don’t you change your name? They even

suggested the name Byekwaso49, which I adopted since then.

Life continued but with indicators of discrimination. On that

fateful day, the Baganda boys hit me on the head, I thought it

was usual joking but I became unconscious and I found myself

in Kisubi Hospital. They treated me and became okay. However,

whenever the Father would visit me he kept inquiring,

Byekwaso, who hit you? Because I wanted to continue with my

studies and protect myself from the wrath of the boys, I kept

answering “I am not sure” and at times, “I don’t know” several

Fathers came to check on me in those two weeks I was in the

hospital. So, when I became okay and returned to the school, our

Father told me that I could not afford priesthood because priests

tell the truth. Even after explaining and identifying those that hit

me, the Father said it was too late and that was my end with my

career of priesthood.

From the testimony of RR14, three interrelated issues arise. First, the extent of discrimination

based on ethnicity in a Seminary mirrors the level of nativism in the Baganda communities.

Second, the change in the name suggests the possibility of “openness” of the Baganda to

integrate the non-natives. Third, RR14’s failure to continue with his vocation as a priest

indicates the lost opportunities and mistreatment the migrants experienced in Buganda, and

49 The name Byekwaso is culturally cross-cutting. Among the Baganda, it is not tied to a clan but rather universally used as idiom. The name is also common among the Banyankole, Bakiga and Basoga carrying the same meaning as scapegoat.

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resultant forms of resistance namely, abandoning some of the bibanja, migrants living in a

separate neighbourhood, others returning home among other forms. Though RR14’s

experience as the son of settler seems exceptional in the school setting, we learn that nativist

tendencies were common in communities. Nativism therefore, is associated with consequences

which are extremes to both parties- winner on one part and a loser on the other as viewed from

the theorisation of Muzafer’s zero sum gain in group relations.

When RR14 was asked a question whether there were others who were given names, he

narrated how the some bataka discriminated against the basenze from other regions as

obunyoro, kukawuwo to instil and maintain inferiority complex among them, as opposed to

ban’ansangwa, Baganda wawu with the view of sustaining superiority complex among the

native Baganda. While the abasenze (settlers) aimed at unity as the survival mechanism, the

abataka ba nansangwa (natives) kept a social and political distance with them. The socio-

cultural boundaries were only minimised by marriage, speaking or learning Luganda language

and adherence to the customs. Apart from the demeaning names and other ‘normal’ cases of

discrimination, the abasenze had good relations with native Baganda save some harassments

and too much dislikes that would culminate into death of some migrants or settlers.

In case of death, the migrants or settlers had to sell off their bibanja in that area and migrate to

the other, where they could live peacefully. RR 14 and his father migrated from Kioga in

Mukono to Bamunanika in Luwero, after losing one of his uncles due to a land conflict with a

mutaka. After the incidence, they sold one of pieces of kibanja, abandoned another three, as

they settled in Bamunanika, following their colleagues that had lived in the area. It was

common, for security purposes and driven by nativism, for migrants to settle in the same area.

The logic of settling in the same neighbourhoods was to protect each other in cases of need.

When the settlers’ population increased, the homesteads became villages or communities

dominated by migrants and at times villages were given names related to the dominant area of

origin.

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Figure 10: Bahume Bonaventule Byekwaso (75), a son of former migrant

Source: Interviewed on 31/7/2020 at his home in Nalweweta, Bulemezi . Photograph taken with permission by the author using camera

Language has been very essential in shaping the settlements, movements, attitudes and

perceptions of people towards others. It has been regarded as a weapon of change in the broader

social movement in the context of social relations and gender (Mukama, 2018). In this study,

language was very significant in three major aspects: in revealing the participants’ perceptions

and prejudices, establishing positions of domination and, identifying it as an instrument of

social control and maintenance of unequal relations. The phrases used by both migrant and

native communities were very poignant in depicting relationships among them. The native-

migrant relations, which were at times personate and other times demeaning, suggest their

nature of interactions because language is not used in a vacuum. Words/names/phrases like

obunyoro, abanamawanga, abapakasi, sserwajja okwota50 and abasenze as used to refer to

migrants in Buganda were not only demeaning but also meant a compromised position they

occupied and therefore inferior. On the other hand, names/phrases like abataka and

50 In addition, Sserwajja okwota is the short term for the general aphorism among the Baganda completed as sserwajja okwota lusinga nyinimu ukutannama.

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banansangwa as used among the Baganda to mean original natives connotated a superior

position, which has been highly guarded throughout their interactions with the newcomers.

Post-independence interactions

The career migrants relations with the natives were at best dull. The majority of the entire

generation was accommodated in institutional housing. In these housing estates, or even in the

private housing accommodation there was more contact with people from other areas of Uganda

in addition to the Baganda. In these areas of residence, the interactions were in English and

there was no exhibition of discrimination or insinuation of inferiority or superiority. The

relationship was thin: not so much surrender or knowledge or involvement, but just human

contact. The main attitude of this group of migrants was as if Kampala-Buganda was a

temporary location, a transit point to “home”- home being the place of birth or origin. Because

of this thinking, there was a stampede during the festive season as the migrants scrambled to

home for the festive season. Some of the migrants who did not like the hustle of public transport

hired buses to ferry them from Kampala and Jinja to south-western Uganda to celebrate the end

of year festivities. It was like “going home” because the place where they worked and stayed

for the 51 weeks a year, was in a foreign land was not home.

Due to the fact that the majority of this generation of migrants were rural-urban, and therefore

stayed in towns, the contact with the natives- the Baganda population was small. Perhaps only

in the markets. And there, the language of transactions was cash not names or name calling.

There was little insinuation of inferiority or superiority in those relationships. Until 1995, the

migrants of this generation maintained strong ties with south western Uganda as their home.

This finding is consistent with Geshchiere’s observation on the Acholi people’s attitude towards

graves as not only instruments of identity but also as tools to lay claims over access to and

ownership of land by strong attachment to home. Geschiere, 2009 in his footnote 39 on page

273, exclusively illustrates the Acholi’s, like many African communities’ attachment to their

“home”. He observed:

… on changing funeral rituals among Acholi migrants (from the

north of Uganda) in Kampala, the country’s capital. Since it was

becoming too expensive to send the body of a deceased person

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home for the burial—at quite a distance from Kampala—people

began to take home the pole that was used to close the grave in

the city. However, suspicious bus drivers began to charge for

such a pole as if a person were being transported, or they refused

to take a pole that clearly symbolized a body. So, people now try

to hide these poles in their luggage.

The strong attachment to “home” has ignited flames nativism that raised throughout the

migrants’ experiences in Kampala. This feeling directly informed the migrants’ decisions in

Buganda to go back to their “homes” during the festive seasons and cultural activities. In

Bunyoro, the attitude was different. The Bakiga permanently migrated, so they did not have a

physical attachment to their would-be homes. The customs and the norms they practice identify

them as having two homes because they associate with one another as Bafuruki as a separate

layer of belonging, but also with the Banyoro in the spirit of national citizenship in Kagadi as

discussed in sub-section 5.3 of this thesis.

One fundamental event in the history of Uganda which was related to and attempted to confront

the citizen and native was the 1966/67 constitutional changes. This set of events that culminated

in the abrogation the 1962 independence constitution, fundamentally originated from the whole

question of native, migrant and citizen. The non-Baganda - Career migrants to Buganda in the

Government of Uganda found themselves foreigners in Buganda and yet they were either

legislators or civil servants and citizens of Uganda. The situation that they found themselves in,

of nativism-we and they was one of the reasons behind the constitutional crisis of 1966/67.

The policies of the migrants in Buganda, operating through the Uganda government after 1966

indicated that they were frustrated by the idea of two citizenships in the same country: local

citizenship and national citizenship. In one of the policies under commanding heights strategy

of Milton Obote, the Uganda government which was mainly run by migrants into Buganda

attempted to dissolve these feelings of nativism and cultivate a common identity in two ways.

First, the government constructed several hospitals in 1968/69 and were distributed in such a

way as to balance the country (Karugire S. , 1980). Secondly, under the secondary school

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program, the government aided schools were placed into a pool and candidates who completed

primary education could be posted to a government aided secondary school in any region of

Uganda.

The 1966/67 revolution in Uganda may in a way be considered a contest of nativism: between

the Baganda and their government at Mengo hill and the migrants in the central government at

Nakasero hill. The resolution of the Buganda Lukiiko to the Uganda government to remove

itself from Buganda soil was the epitome of citizenship contests in Uganda. Although it did not

specifically impact on the migration patterns between Buganda and southwestern region, it

nevertheless reflected the longstanding trends originating from the establishment of the Uganda

Protectorate.

5.3 Interactions between migrants and natives, Bunyoro 1940s-1995

The impact of Bakiga migration into Bunyoro greatly changed the demographic map of

Bunyoro. It increased the general population of the region but more importantly the Bakiga

population outnumbered the native Banyoro population by 1995. While the Bakiga took over

land for agriculture, the Banyoro were attracted to towns and trading centres that developed as

a result of the changed economics of the area. Secondly, the Bakiga migration changed the

economy of Bunyoro. Before the Bakiga migration the Banyoro practiced subsistence farming

based on cassava and beans as food crops. The Bakiga transformed this economy by introducing

maize and ground nuts as food crops and cultivated them on commercial basis. The Bakiga

further established a cash economy which stimulated the rise of trade as an additional sector to

support commercial agriculture. In addition, the Bakiga established themselves as middlemen

in production and market chain which led to the rise and expansion of trading centres in the

region. The consequences of the Bakiga migration modelled their interactions with the Banyoro

which can be generally described as by nativist and the major drivers to seemingly ethnic

conflicts and citizenship contestations that broke up in 1990s.

The Bakiga maintained their system of elders guiding and advising the young. On the national

citizenship contexts, the Bakiga in Bunyoro have followed the same political system in place,

they remained subjects of the Her Majesty during the colonial establishment and after 1962,

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they became citizens of Uganda just like a munyoro or an Acholi, a Muganda or any other

ethnic inclination as per independence constitutional provisions.

Identity nomenclatures then started developing among the apparently heterogeneous

communities. The term okufuruka and so omufuruki, was common among the Bakiga, so they

identified themselves as Bafuruki. To the Banyoro, the Bafuruki were Bakiga because they

mainly migrated from Kigezi, which was predominantly inhabited by Bakiga. At this point, I

note that while the Bakiga migrated to another area for settlement in Uganda, the Banyoro

welcomed them as Bakiga, a common name/ stereotype for all migrants in Kibaale as

foreigners, whose responsibility was to labour and live in uninhabitable areas, without any

negative impact on cultural, socio-economic and politics of the region. This attitude never

changed throughout the colonial period even in post-independence era, the same way the state

did not change either. The state has maintained the attitude of the formal or national citizenship.

The Bakiga kept on encouraging their fellows to join them in farming and trading activities as

their population was steadily increasing. By 2000, the population of the Bakiga was surpassing

that of Banyoro in the districts they settled particularly Kibaale and Kagadi (Ssentongo, 2015).

Further, they maintained their language and culture but also dominance in education and

economic achievement. Within this context, there was a likelihood of the Bakiga dominating

the politics of the area to which some sections of the Banyoro termed as the “second colonizers”

after the Baganda (Miirima, 2003).

The Mubende Banyoro Committee (BMC) was founded in 1918 and started being very active

in 1921. The BMC aimed at championing the interests of the Banyoro and demanding for the

land that had been allotted to the Baganda chiefs, and ensuring cultural purity among other

considerations. It was BMC that spearheaded the demand for land, which the Banyoro Elders

pointed out to had been taken over by the non-Banyoro tribal groups (Kamali, 2001). The MBC

in their memorandum to a parliamentary committee driven by nativism, demanded that the land

bill section recognize the Banyoro as indigenous inhabitants on land in Kibaale. Even when the

Banyoro elders were aware of these constitutional obligation or freedoms of ownership of land

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in any part of Uganda, they detested the Bafuruki presence in Kibaale as observed by Onyango

thus:

“The Banyoro in their memorandum argued that they do not

dispute the constitutional guarantee that any Ugandan is free to

acquire land and settle in any part of Uganda, but the massive

way in which non-Banyoro are being brought to Kibaale district

indicates that there is a plan by unknown source to wipe the

Banyoro off the map in Kibaale district and create the Kigezi-

Rwanda district in Kibaale” (Onyango, 1998).

While the Banyoro had a point on the land question and whether the “unknown source” was

the state or by nation builders like Ngologoza who had warned the Bakiga against forgetting

their culture51, the bottom line was the ownership of resources in terms of land and numbers-

demography that redefined the theory and practice of citizenship in the country. This shift was

that of privileges becoming rights. The Bakiga Bafuruki in Bunyoro were becoming citizens of

Uganda, thus owning and accessing land was no longer a privilege but a right. As rightly put

by Marshall, capitalism and modern state emerged with a new egalitarian and legally defined

form of community membership (Marshall, 1950). Hence, a new kind of citizenship like that

professed by the Banyoro since 1940s, slowly pulled part of the privileges hitherto enjoyed by

the well born. The Bakiga migration into Bunyoro increased population and pressure on land

as it was the case in Toro (Hartter, et al., 2015). When the Bakiga arrived Bunyoro, they found

in Kibaale and Kagadi comparatively unoccupied land with few Banyoro, as attested by RR30:

I came here in 1963, when much of this area [Kibaale and

Kagadi] was mainly bushland and it was easy to get land because

it was unoccupied and moreover the Banyoro were spread out.

Land was relatively open and abundant. We just settled in

unoccupied land in Kagadi which we quickly converted into

51 Ngologoza warned: “I would, in writing this, like to remind the settlers that even if they become rich and change their mother tongue, they should remember the proverb, ‘even hot water eventually cools’. They must never forget the good customs and characteristics of the Bakiga, nor forget their own language, and they must feel in their bones that they are Bakiga, remembering where they used to live” (Ngologoza, 1998: 98). The related warning was re-echoed by Kitaburaza on his visit to Bakiga migrants in Mitooma indicate the primordial nativism among the Bakiga. Migration was physical but the soul was in Kigezi.

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productive farmland as more of our fellow Bakiga were moving

in. In the process, this Bush land with big trees, scrubs, snakes

and dangerous insects was cleared and wetlands drained.

The main crop that was grown by the Bakiga in Bunyoro was maize. Even though maize was

not widely spread among the Bakiga in Kigezi, it was common among the Bakiga migrants in

Bunyoro. According to RR33 growing maize was favoured by the conditions in Kibaale and

Kagadi he narrated, “maize was/is easily grown, intercropped with beans and can resist dryer

conditions. Remember we occupied drier areas that were un inhabitable by the Banyoro.

Therefore, we grew maize because it was resistant to such hard conditions”. This finding is

consistent with Carswell’s, whose research in Kabale suggests that maize became a commonly

grown crop among the Bakiga communities in Toro around Kibaale game reserve because of

its resistance to dry conditions and that it was grown for sale and food (Carswell, 2003). Maize

crop was very important among the Bakiga communities in Bunyoro because the earnings from

Maize sales were invested in the purchase of land and hiring additional labour.

In the 1950s, there were large tracts of bushland which migrants could acquire, such lands were

too peripheral to be settled and cultivated. The Bakiga were seen as “in need” and so, the

Banyoro did not have any apprehension of the Bakiga migration. Just like it was in Bulemezi,

the natives were willing to allocate land to new migrants in the periphery to provide a buffer -

Gwanga Mujje to minimize crop raiding (Kabera, 1983). This intention of the natives fitted

very well with the Bakiga traditional land tenure system of which was individual based and so

the Bakiga acquired as much land as they were able to cultivate. Having larger groups were

important for defence and building of social capital- security and wealth. The Bakiga migrants,

especially the second generation of migrants, established farms of their own, as more land was

converted in agriculture (RR34). The Banyoro were aware of the strong Bakiga bonds in the

Bakiga culture of living closely together. The Bakiga would bring more family members to the

area leading to sharp increase in land prices (Kabera, 1983). With the increase of the Bakiga

in the peripheral Bunyoro, most Banyoro communities relocated to urban centres such as Hoima

and Kibaale town. The pattern of settlement then reflected ethnic composition. The Banyoro

were inhabiting fairly urbanized areas, and their counterpart Bakiga were in the rural Bunyoro,

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hence Buyaga East came to be predominantly Bakiga as Buyaga west that was more urbanized

became exclusively for Banyoro.

From about 1960, land in Bunyoro acquired monetary value and indeed its price/value rapidly

increased during the 1960s (Kabera, 1983). The earlier system of approaching the local chief

and giving the migrant as much land as he/she could clear had developed into market

determined- the Banyoro began selling their land to the Bakiga migrants, especially bushland.

By the early 1970s, it was common for the Bakiga to acquire land through purchase and

unsettled land was still relatively abundant and a few settlers were Bakiga. The Banyoro were

few. According to Mirima, the Banyoro population had reduced during the 1890s due to wars

with the Baganda supported by the British. The Bakiga were increasing the amount of land by

buying more from the Bunyoro. Some of the Bakiga who had already established themselves

would also sell land. RR 34 explained that they were only limited by money: “We purchased

our land as much as we wanted but only limited by money”. RR 34’s explanation fits well with

the land acquisition policy that was based on willing-buyer and willing-seller basis (Baligira

2020). Many Banyoro and some of the Bakiga that had come earlier realized that they actually

had more land than their capability to cultivate it, yet there were willing buyers. By the 1990s,

when the system of willing-buyer willing-seller was deeply being entrenched in the local

economy, the Bakiga settlements were growing, new migrants were also arriving and more

farms especially of maize were being established. The widespread cultivation of maize and

conversion of acquired land into agriculture, in peripheral Bunyoro (the Bakiga occupied areas)

became important centre for food crop production.

The Bafuruki during the period between 1940s and 1990s had been influenced by the wind of

change of social citizenship that originated from the United Kingdom illuminated by

colonialism. Marshall has argued that in the 20th century, social citizenship began to emerge

with the right to material resources and social services becoming new needs and rights, as

opposed to the primordial philosophy of the privileges of the well born. The case of the Bakiga

in Bunyoro challenges the primordial belief in which the Banyoro were providers of material

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assistance as a matter of charity. Membership to the society was changing in the context of

universality. The Banyoro no longer had the monopoly of essential services that had made the

Bafuruki to transform into the Bataka (land owners). Land was owned and accessed by those

that worked hard. The business of the Bakiga became farming as noted by Ngologoza, “the hoe

ate the soil” which made them wealthy and made their life never to be the same again.

Meanwhile the Banyoro remained dependent upon the migrants but in a changed status, that is

not on their labour but on their produce and trade.

The tensions between the Banyoro and the Bakiga in Kibaale, or by Bakonjo and Batoro in

Bundibugyo, or Baganda and Banyala in Mukono or the Acholi and Madi in Gulu which have

been summarily been termed as ethnic conflicts by scholars like Ssentongo (2015), are what

Marshall had theorized as ‘sharp tensions’ between the slowly emerging legally authorized

inequalities of the modern state (Marshall, 1950). These sharp tensions have exacerbated the

great class inequality of capitalist societies to produce local and national citizenships. By the

beginning of the 21st century, the former calm country, Bunyoro had become politically charged

with nativist ideas under two associations on either sides. MBC, had championed the interests

of the Banyoro, and the Bafuruki Association (BA) on the other, championing the interests of

the Bakiga. The nativist mobilizations presented have propelled /spurred not, I argue, violent

ethnic conflicts but a complex process of transition into social citizenship characterized by

contextual and theoretical conflict between national and local citizenship.

The study has shown that recognition of historical norms and structures that define the society

bring about harmony. These norms, identity indicators, once transferred to the national level

such as the flag, motto, anthem, court of arms, constitution lead to national cohesion. The

national anthem as conceptualised by Kahunga (2014) has been reflected, reinterpreted and

understood in the process of generational progression. National cohesion with emphasis on

Uganda as the motherland for both physical and emotional attachments. In in his research about

Uganda’s “National Anthem”, (Kahunga, 2014) argues that the lyrics of the national anthem

reflect the nature of attachment Ugandans had for Uganda in relation to the nature of citizenship

and its meaning. Accordingly, the first generation (1894-1962) received the formal education

during the colonial times so national cohesion was fostered by formal education reflected in the

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combined struggle for independence. Following the attainment of independence (1962-1970),

nation-building was the national agenda praising the milestones achieved. Indeed, the song

combined five languages reflecting unity in diversity amidst the milestone achieved of

independence as emphasised by Kahunga (2014), i.e.

…okwetegyeka, okwefuga, okwerema, …Uganda will live in freedom forever… … …..independence forever, Cherie…. …tunafurayi for ever…

The complexity of national and local citizenship becomes more eminent beginning with 1971 with emphasis on economy and militarism, local balanced with national citizenship as the concept of the home becoming more pronounced (Kahunga, 2014). Refrain:

…Uganda my home in Africa… …Evergreen equatorial zone… …One land and one nation… ….Oh, Uganda my home… Stanza 1 …Lake Victoria at Entebbe… ..As our major airport... …Kampala our beautiful capital city… Oh, Uganda my home… Refrain Stanza 2 ..Long live our [ Dada] Dear President... …Long Live the People of Uganda… …Abide in God and Serve Him… …Oh, Uganda my Home… Refrain Stanza 3 Namirembe the Church of Protestants… …Rubaga the Church of Catholics… …Kibuli the Mosque of Muslims… …Oh, Uganda my home Refrain

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During the period April 1979 to October 1995, the general feeling was more of local citizenship

than national. The political and socioeconomic life in Uganda surrounded around the defeat of

Amin through war, nativist divisions - Buri mbuzi aha nkondo yayo based on regional and ethnic

based parties. These are however based on historical connectedness or at least in cognizant with

the historical experience the society has witnessed, the flamers of the 1995 Constitution were

aware of this fact as alluded to in the preamble. Owing to Uganda’s history of ethnic violence

as indicated above, the Constitution enshrines four kinds of citizenships in Uganda as detailed

in Chapter Three. Recognition of local citizenship is not put into consideration, yet ethnic

groups had been enshrined in the introduction. While in theory all members of ethnic

groups/indigenous communities were citizens of the republic of Uganda without geographical

limitations, the clashes in Kibaale in 2002 and 2003 painting a different picture.

As long as land was available, the Bakiga were welcomed as fellow citizens though they

exhibited elements of nativism by forming associations and maintaining contacts among

themselves and initially with their “home”- Kigezi. The collective action in the demands for

political participation in the politics of the area, and the natives’ claims against “bad morals” of

the migrants illustrate the existence of nativism during the Bakiga migration and settlement.

Both the Bafuruki and the natives treated each other with some form of suspicion until there

was development of similarities and assimilations facilitated by intermarriages, and sharing of

identity indicators such as language, cultural norms and economic ways of life as experimented

in Muzafer’s groups of boys in formulation of RGCT.

Tusabe ( 2002) contends that human beings belong to humanity and so people should first

identify themselves as humans even when living in a pluralistic environment, occasioned by

the “accident” of birth. This of course points to the African historically known Ubuntu

philosophy, or humanism as reflected on by Kasozi (2011). But this obuntu has long been

suppressed by the circumstantial needs. Tusabe suggests a high level of citizenship, where

people should locally identify themselves the way they are, then identify themselves as the

world. To him, an individual belongs to two communities, that is the world, and the nation-

state. Yet, the nation-state is made up societies which might not even be aware of their

allegiance to it (the nation-state). Tusabe, suggesting that individuals should unlearn and

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disregard historical narratives because they are sources of ethnic violence and hindrance to

achieving national cohesion and world citizenship is inaccurate. Rather, historical narratives

have been the major cohesive forces that bound communities together and an alternative to

national social cohesion as learnt from migration and integration narratives. Although it is true

that colonial rule through its policy of divide and rule, worsened the matters of divisionism

along such lines, our field research indicate that the colonialists did not put into consideration

African forms of societal or community boundaries. Indeed, in designing and flaming the

territorial boundaries for the protectorate, the consideration of belonging and cultural values

that characterized African societies did not matter, access to resources was primary.

5.3.1 Migration and nativism in Uganda, 1894-1995

From February 2002 to may 2003 skirmishes of violence took place in Kibaale, especially

Kagadi. These were regarded as ethnic violence, while other researchers like Baligira regarded

these episodes as recurrent land question and political crisis, which were catalysed by the local

council elections. When Ruremera, a mufuruki won with the biggest majority vote and

Sekitoreko, a native was defeated, the post-election conflicts ushered in. Most of the post-

election conflict resolution attempts were framed in the context of ethnicity and “tribalism”

with disregard to national identity. This study found out that the electoral processes were highly

charged as politicians evoked nativism against the broad national imaginings (Anderson, 2006).

There then existed the nativist oriented politicians and national based ones and these binaries

have interacted in more complex terms as political and indignity questions. To understand the

historical and contextual binaries, the process of migration and forces that surrounded the

raising of nationalism, and its mobilisations require more interrogation. What stands out clearly

is the concept of ethnicity and its mobilizational forces.

Mudoola (1996) argues that interests and aspirations of people are dictated by ethnic

considerations. It is the interests of people that constitute the membership of that group

(Mudoola, 1996). Mudoola’s argument is not far from Brass (1991), who conceptualized

ethnicity and membership to the group as identity and mobilisation based on group’s objective

and symbolic use of a group in every aspect of culture with the view of creating an internal

cohesion to create two binaries: “us” and “them”. These two scholars conform with Fredrik

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Barth whose definition of ethnicity centres on social organisation where the members determine

and maintain their identity based on already made primordial forces of cultural norms (Barth,

1998). All these scholars fail to underscore the mobilizational forces which they assume static.

Membership to a community or lack of it has been highly mobilized by forces that bind them

or disintegrate them, for our purposes, those forces converge on that force is migration and the

resultant impact, nativism.

Social scientists have used the concept, “ethnic group” to refer to societies with the common

or shared sense of identity based on shared culture, language, religion and customs. Whereas

sociologists and other social scientists use different indicators in their conceptualization of

ethnicity. The converging point has always been group identity. Therefore, group identification

becomes varied from the sense of possessiveness and belongingness, shared beliefs and values,

but more importantly, historical identities which make a group distinctive. Such identities or

belongingness demonstrate themselves in ethnicity but ought to be understood, I argue, in the

context of advancement of the interests of the individual group of people, whose interest is to

dominate others and maintain the function of “superior” and “inferior” mechanism. Niwabiine,

2003 contends that if the domination becomes un reasonable, ethnicity leads to violence. In this

study, I argue that to harness the benefits of group identity, and more significantly at national

level-national citizenship, social cohesion and stability in such a hetero-ethnic branded country

as exemplified by Bunyoro, ought to be approached in its historical context of the migratory

and politicking forces that moulded it.

Despite the Anti-Sectarianism act of 1987, the flames of nativism were never silenced. Social

citizenship shrived over and above the national identity. Several incidences in eastern Uganda

can illuminate the argument. These incidences took place in Iganga, a district in eastern Uganda.

Ethnic related conflicts in Iganga rose in 1990s in which the native Basoga witch-hunted the

“foreigners” in their area which culminated into the death of several Itesots52 and the remnants

52 Eric Ogoso Opolot and Odyambo Egwazu in Iganga, in their Newspaper article reported about the tribal wrangle between the Basoga and other ethnic groups living in Nakkalama subcounty that ended with the death of two people. The two journalists reported that the Resistance Council (RC) officials mounted an operation in which non-Basoga, James Serwadda, a munyankole and Panglasio Kolwo, Etesot were killed. The bi were allegedly

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had to sell their land cheaply or lose it because of intimidation and threats of eviction (Opolot

& Engwau, 1993). Similar cases had been reported in Mukono which stalled the Koome islands

in which the Alur residents were “disdainful to authority and not willing to live in harmony

with the other ethnic groups on the island” (Ssentongo,1992).

Nativism has been ignited in Uganda in form of ethnic awareness not only in but beyond

Bunyoro. At the wake of local council elections of 1990s, during the ‘decentralization process’,

the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government in Uganda, the took nativist approach

and reinforced local citizenship. The resistance councils (RCs), were established on ethnic lines,

and so the local councils (LCs) too during the 1990s. The whole “project” decentralisation in

Uganda reinforced tribalized communities based on instincts other than the national motivated

interests which has exacerbated conflict between the Banyoro and Bakiga. This finding is

consistent with Dowd & Tranchant’s ( 2018) that decentralization in plural societies reinforces

the strength of narrow ethno-regional identities and detracts from nation-building.

Strengthening regional parties encourages ethnic groups to splint, seeking to control their own

jurisdictions for institutional, economic and political resources (Alava, Bananuka,

Ahimbisibwe, & Kontinen, 2020). The climax of these nativist forces was the restoration of

kingdoms and creation of others since 1993.

“Kingdomization” of Uganda by the colonial state through maintaining the hitherto existing

kingdoms and creating them where they never existed in form of “tribal” councils, exacerbated

the spread of nativism during colonial period. Karugire (1996) succinctly underscores the role

of colonial state in legitimising nativism through establishing local councils, as he argues thus:

The 1949 Ordinance was aimed at democratizing the institutions

of local governments where they existed (especially in

kingdoms) and to establish them in those districts where they had

not been established. Such councils were to devolve several

social services within their areas. In the exercise of their powers,

thieves and rapists, however during the process of taking them to the gombolola headquarters, a mob gathered and killed them. Their homes were also demolished and set on fire while the non-Basoga neighbours of the suspects were rounded up and grilled as if to suggest that that all non-Basoga were thieves and rapists. Bad behavior was associated with non-Basoga.

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the councils were subject to the guidance and veto of the

protectorate government. In other words, the 1949 Ordinance

was the first formal recognition of the district as the basic unit of

local government in the protectorate. We have already observed

that in the demarcation of districts, care had been taken to include

an ethnic group into a district, and that this had largely been

achieved (Karugire 1996:22).

The post-colonial governments inherited the system that was already divided along territorial

ethnic lines. The creation of districts including Kibaale with the kingdom boundaries in the

process of decentralization made the ethnic factor to informally take the precedence (Peterson:

2016). Tukahebwa (1998) and Mukyala (2000) have claimed that ethnic considerations

culminated into ethnic conflicts during the decentralization process in Uganda. Tukahebwa, in

his study of Ntungamo district revealed that before 1996, parliamentary in the district were

calm. However, in the post 1996 parliamentary elections, he argues, the candidates who lost in

the elections engineered a vote of no confidence in the chairman elect who had scored a majority

vote. Critically, the reasons that the opposition advanced to justify the vote of no confidence

were based on ethnicity and ethnic consciousness. Indeed, it was alleged that the chairman, a

Muhima, discriminated against the Bairu. The flames of nativism were based on the ethnically

constructed identity considerations that had determined the relationship between the Bahima

and Bairu during the colonial times in a formerly interdependent community based on

occupational consideration (Karugire,1980). Indeed, the past became alive through the ethnic

tensions that characterised the district in the late 1990s.

Therefore, what took place in Kibaale, Bunyoro in 2002, was the conflict of the social and

national citizenship which was not exclusively for Bunyoro, but the country’s predicament that

was inherited by the post-colonial governments. Niwabiine seems to deny this fact and argues

that the Kibaale incident was simply a Mukiga allying with other migrants like the Bafumbira,

Bamba and Bakonjo to overwhelmingly vote him to district chairmanship which provoked the

native Banyoro into a mob that turned into violent conflicts. To Mirima, the Bakiga arrogance

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brought the conflicts because not all the migrants in aggregate were mobilized as assumed by

Niwabiine. Both ignore a rather serious issue that was responsible for a violent conflict of such

a magnitude. The violent conflicts were more than just a 2002 migrants’ alliance, or the Bakiga

arrogance. Rather, it was a product of accumulated long and short term held differences among

the people of the region over contested citizenships.

The contested citizenships and long held differences among the residents of Bunyoro since

1940s were associated with mobilizations and alliances that fostered the migrants together on

one hand and the native Banyoro on the other. For instance, the migrants in Kibaale received

overwhelming support from the Bakiga MPS and the Banyoro MPS, who almost shifted the

battle field to State House (seat of government). The creation of a fully-fledged ministry of

Bunyoro Affairs whose first minister was rejected because he was not a Munyoro indicated the

central government’s’ unwillingness to enforce national citizenship. The bigger irony in the

august house is that though a national assembly, had since then seen the formation of caucuses

based on regionism, which promoted social or local citizenship above national citizenship that

the parliament should have stood for. Further, the architect of the Bakiga migration had warned

them against losing their identity. Ngologoza had noted thus:

I would, in writing this, like to remind the settlers that

even if they become rich and change their mother-

tongue, they should remember the proverb “even hot

water eventually cools. They must never forget the

good customs and characteristics of the Bakiga, nor

forget their own language; and they must feel in their

bones that they are Bakiga, remembering where they

used to live (Ngologoza, 1998:98).

What comes clearly in Ngologoza’s words is that the Bakiga should maintain their solidarity as

an entity since the days of the Bakiga migration. Thus, what had been underestimated as

insignificant phenomena by writers like Tukahebwa and Mirima in the early years of

decentralization process of 1990s had turned into a bloody conflict in 2000s, when the Banyoro

youth and Bakiga settlers confronted each other to the extent that president Museveni suggested

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a presidential takeover of the district amidst heavy deployment of the police force, death and

destruction of property, as shown in the photographs below.

Source: http://www.ugpulse.com/government/24-arrested-over-kibaale-tribal-conflict-that-

has-claimed-3/331/ug.aspx#.Wu2zzzZOd

Figure 11: Goats Killed in tribal clashes in Kibaale

Figure 12: Cow carcass from tribal clashes

Source: http://www.ugpulse.com/government/24-arrested-over-kibaale-tribal-conflict-that-

has-claimed-3/331/ug.aspx#.Wu2zzzZOd

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Therefore, the interaction between migrants and natives in Bunyoro has been characterized by

moments of peace outside electoral period and violence during the times of political elections.

This interaction has been moderated by feelings of nativism that are usually evoked during and

post elections, which have seriously strained the attempts or efforts for national unity in the

context of national politics.

5.4 Tribal associations: Mubende Banyoro Committee (MBC), Bafuruki Committee (BC)

and Bataka Uganda (BU)

Associations acted as mobilizational forces used by both native and migrant communities

(where they were formed) in the sense of “sons and daughters of the soil” and assertion of

citizenship rights respectively to maintain their imagined identities intact. The aims of these

associations were formulated around the reinforcement of difference not similarity. Nativism

appeared to be the underlying principle and was illustrated in the associations’ activities.

5.4.1 Mubende Banyoro Committee (MBC)

The earliest nativist association to be formed in Bunyoro was the Mubende Bunyoro

Committee (BMC). It was formed in 1918 by the autochthonous Banyoro elders, mobilised to

fight for their citizenship rights in a localised sense. The association became more pronounced

in 1921, when it embarked on open resistance against the Baganda administrators in Bunyoro.

The membership of MBC included Banyoro elders who wanted a loud voice against the

Baganda collaborators, who had taken over Bunyoro land, the so-called lost counties, as a “gift”

from the British colonialists (RR34). Consequently, the members were very active during the

colonial times. They were politically mobilised under nativist considerations. Thus, the MBC

successfully mobilised the masses against the alien rule of the Baganda under the mantra,

“Nyangire Abaganda” (Baligira, 2021), and pushed for the independence of the Banyoro from

the Baganda. It should be recalled that the rebellion determined the results of the 1964

referendum.

When Nyangire resistance was defeated, the Banyoro weakened and opted for a temporary

solution of petitioning to London, and they were promised a referendum immediately after

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independence. Once the referendum was held in 1964, out of the struggles by the leaders of

MBC, there was no longer a converging factor to continue with the association. From 1964, the

Bafuruki factor was not prominent, indeed the Bakiga were taken as natives as long as they

lived in Bunyoro. After all the Bakiga and the Banyoro had similar language dialect, had

intermarried and participated in the referendum to favour the return of the lost counties even

when the Buganda establishment ferried many Baganda into the lost counties to vote in favour

of the Buganda retention of the lost counties. Buyaga county which was predominantly

inhabited by the Bakiga overwhelmingly voted for the lost counties return to Bunyoro.

However, the Banyoro experience of the Baganda administrators nursed their suspicious

attitude towards the Bakiga given the Bakiga increase in population and their dominance in

major spheres of life namely, politics and economic. According RR38, a leader of BMC, the

Bakiga were becoming new colonizers comparable to the Baganda of the colonial period in

Bunyoro. The scarce resource, land, was still abundant and the elective positions were still too

few for the Bakiga to participate in as representatives from Bunyoro. Moreover, the Banyoro

and the Bakiga interests in these two scarce resources: land and politics were still low, and

MBC activities were largely minimal, almost non-existent.

During the 1990s, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) embarked on the decentralization

process and the constitutional making process. It is during this period that the tempo of nativism

increased, especially the resurfacing of associations and restoration of kingdoms. The MBC re-

surfaced, claiming that the continued migration of the Bakiga was threatening to wipe out the

Banyoro from the Ugandan map. Suffice to note that the Bakiga kept on encouraging their

fellows to migrate to Kibaale. So as long as the Banyoro felt that their identity was being

threatened, their memories of historical injustices, brought about by migrations, arose and

ignited flames nativism.

5.4.2 Bafuruki Committee (BC)

The economic power of the Bakiga in Bunyoro had not yet been realised and their goals had

been parallel to those of the native Banyoro. The goal of the Bakiga was the need for money

and the goal of the Banyoro was the need for labour. This made the relationship between the

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two to appear calm, living a symbiotic life which is consistent with Muzafer’s theorization of

group relations. Once the goals the Bakiga in Bunyoro changed to that of owning land in large

scale using their financial power, the Bakiga no longer offered labour to the Banyoro. Instead,

the Bakiga started to competing for labour and land which were previously exclusive for the

Banyoro. Out of this competition, the Banyoro started referring to the Bakiga as Bafuruki and

the Bakiga asserted themselves by forming a pressure group, the Bafuruki Committee (BC).

This led to the relationships changing from calm to conflictual, as (Schelnberger, 2008)

argues:

The Bakiga are considered to be hard-working and therefore tend to be rich by Ugandan standards. The Banyoro are considered to be less industrious and seem to have settled with a certain degree of poverty, an ‘attitude of poverty’. Many Banyoro are jealous of the economic success of the settlers.

From the above quotation, Schelnberger was partly right because of the changing economic

and social dynamics in Bunyoro including change in social relations whereby The Bakiga, who

had come as labourers for the Banyoro were highly becoming economic independent to the

extent of employing the native Banyoro. The BC grew in 1990s as a counter BMC by the

Bafuruki or Bakiga elders aimed at deterring the native Banyoro from the threats of eviction. It

became active in 2002 by taking part in the political negotiations following the post 2002

election conflict in Kibaale.

5.4.3 Bataka Uganda (BU)

The Bataka Uganda was formed by the members of the elders’ liberationist party that took a

political path to reinforce the nativist ideology of the Baganda land owners53 (a section of the

Bataka who were chiefs). It was formed 1922 to petition the return of land to commoners and

clan heads. It metamorphized into the second version that is Baana ba Kintu in 1938 aimed at

championing the commercial interests of the Baganda indigenous famers and traders in terms

53 The Bataka have been categorized into two. Either ways they are related with land. The first category refers to the Baganda clan heads. For instance, by 1922, Buganda was organised around 52 clans heads and therefore there were 52 Bataka. Second, Abataka as local citizens of Buganda as described by Kayunga(2010): “Omutaka was also used to refer to a citizen of a particular locality as opposed to “omusenze” (a settler)” (Kayunga, 2010, p. 37). In the latter, the Bataka were quite many because many Basenze were increasingly acquiring land on a permanent basis so the membership of BU was expanding and the interests broadening.

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fair prices. The second generation of the migrant labourers who rented plots worked under

conditions that the association influenced.

By 1946, BU illegally operated in very uncertain conditions as their interests were pro-Bataka

not necessarily Kabaka’s chiefs nor colonial administration. Thus, this group was very critical

of the colonial administration and the king’s representatives, ministers and chiefs who had

unfairly benefited from the land distributions sanctioned by the 1900 Agreement but were

favoured the 1906 Native’s Ordinance. Some scholars like Karugire regarded this group as a

political group or party fighting for independence (Karugire: 1996). Others like Mutibwa

referred to the group as rebels who were inciting the populace against colonial rule (Mutibwa,

2016). Related to Baana ba Kintu, BU aimed at working towards ridding the Uganda of the

Asian trader especially in villages where the Asians dominated the commercial sectors mostly

cotton and coffee (Asiimwe, 2002). Ignatius Musazi and other Bataka aimed at commercial

progress of the progressive Baganda farmers.

The bottom line of these association, I argue, was more than political consideration. Its aims

included cultural purity and economic considerations. Just as the way the people of Kenya had

lost powers over their land following the Resident Native or Squatters Ordinance of 1918, the

Bataka feared that the same might happen to Ugandans under the East African Administrative

Federation, later the British East African Dominion. They feared that it was a move to dilute

and weaken Buganda kingdom, thus destroying their culture (Kieyah & Mbae-Njoroge, 2010).

The broader aim of the Bataka protests towards the colonial government and the Kabaka’s

chiefs was more of the cultural and historical sentiments than the instrumentally defined

attitudes, as has been claimed by researchers like Peterson ( 2016). BU aimed at preservation

of Baganda’s sovereignty so that their prime land was not given up to Europeans as had

happened in Kenya, South Africa, Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Phimister, 1988).

5.5 Chapter Summary

In this chapter, I have argued that the migration of the Bakiga and Banyankole into Buganda

was mainly itinerant with few that settled. The settlement process was determined by the

migrants’ ability to be integrated into the Kiganda culture. The Baganda were highly welcoming

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and hospitable. It was prestigious for a mutaka (native Muganda) to host as many migrants as

possible for labour purposes. The Baganda were hospitable but never tolerant because they

never accepted the Basenze (migrants or settlers) on the premises of natural presupposition of

welcoming the newcomers the way they were, but rather the Baganda were “hospitable” on

condition that the migrants or settlers were willing and ready to give up their culture and beliefs

for Baganda culture. It was, therefore, treacherous for the assimilated settlers to practice their

own culture. When such perfidious behaviour was identified at any stage of settlement,

regardless of the number of years or generation one had spent in Buganda, he or she was

declared different and discriminated against as a mugwila- alien. Consequently, many of the

Banyankole and Bakiga of second wave of migration always worked in a gang and were highly

mobile. The perception of assimilation and integration as against assertion of identity and

disassociation has persisted among the Baganda throughout generations, hence nativism in

Buganda has always been sustained.

Migrancy in Buganda aroused her nativist tendencies and so produced many highly mobile

migrants and few settlers who have maintained two homes: in Buganda and Ankole or Kigezi.

On the other hand, the perception of the Banyoro towards the migrants was determined by

ability to offer their labour power regardless of assimilation or maintenance of the migrants’

cultures and traditions. The migration of the Bakiga into Bunyoro was thus permanent. It was

not until 1990s when the decentralisation processes, amidst scarcity of resources, that feelings

of nativism became high. Nativism in Bunyoro became so high that the natives under their

umbrella body MBC, coined the term Bafuruki to differentiate the natives from settlers which

in turn determined politics and socio-economics of the region up to the present. Therefore, it is

my contention that migrancy in the study areas bred nativism. This assertion contributes to the

argument of this thesis that migrancy in Uganda created nativism which gave rise two kinds of

citizenship consciousness.

This chapter has laid bare migration processes that have led to nativism. The second phase of

peoples’ migration in Uganda was in response to socio-economic and political circumstances

made possible by the colonial apparatus. This kind of migration laid the foundation for the third

phase that is career migration. This is because the colonial economy monetised economic and

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social necessities that culminated into two binaries: labour reserve zones and cash crop reserve

zones (Lwanga-Lunyigo, 1989). The migrants mostly came from Ankole, Kigezi and other parts

of Uganda and outside it to worked in Buganda. The migrant labourers returned to their areas

of origin, where they started to grow cash crops in the 1950s. on the other hand, the Bakiga

migrants into Bunyoro permanently settled there starting from 1950s, and became a strong

economic power and later a political force, starting with the decentralisation process in 1990s.

The chapter earlier noted that because of migration, the peopling of Uganda had by 1800 been

complete. All the current ethnolinguistic communities (except the Banyarwanda and Indians)

notably the Banyoro, Baganda, Bakiga and Banyankole, among others, had already settled and

were living sufficiently and amicably despite a few skirmishes (Ogot, 1974). The new force of

centralisation and imaginary divisions expanded by the colonial state was inherited by the

postcolonial state in Uganda. The decentralised despotism by the colonial regime spurred the

constructed conflicts that were seemingly ethnic but were a result of the tribalized Ugandan

societies by the colonialists through their system of indirect rule (Mamdani, 2017). The system

of indirect rule was inherited by the post-colonial Ugandan state in form ethicised districts

which legitimises divisionism as a political resource. This study has concentrated on the new

socio-cultural, economic and political forces that came with colonial occupation which, greatly

altered and redefined the theory and practice of membership to the community-nation-state, the

context of graduating from ethno-linguistic modelled states to tribalized nation-state, Uganda

(Mamdani, 2017). When Uganda was declared a British protectorate in 189454 it meant that

every ethnolinguistic group, ipso facto came to be identified as the subject of Her Majesty.

Theoretically, national citizenship came to be defined as the membership to the national level

with attached privileges and obligations like payment of tax, over the social membership to

former ethnolinguistic states.

Whereas the study has established that migrants labourers worked in the cash crop zones until

such a time when cash crop growing namely cotton and coffee was encouraged in labour reserve

zones, they never settled in the host communities. This finding is consistent with Rutabajuuka

54 The territory that was comprised of Buganda, indeed Uganda is a corruption of the Buganda kingdom, Busoga, Bunyoro, Toro, Kigezi until 1926 when the boundaries were finally fixed, became the British protectorate.

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(1989), Richards (1954) and Mamdani (2000) who argue that the colonial migrant labourers in

Buganda had one leg at their workplace and another at home. The study further drew from these

scholars’ insights on the colonial administrative policies, and migration and its linkage with

commoditization process and cash economy. Mamdani (1999), Barya (2000) and Kabwegyere

(1995) have argued that monetary economy was part of the colonial mechanism of sustaining

an unsettled migration in case the migrant labourers formed a large organised group otherwise

a trade union that would be apolitical threat. Indeed, McKnight (1996:348) had earlier argued

that:

Colonial officials specifically endeavoured to construct a system

of controlled migrant labour that would bring natives into an area

to work and then return them whence they came. A person’s

obligation to the tribe would dictate their place of residence, their

choice of work, their obligation to work and their movements

around the protectorate.

From McKnight’s view stated above, it becomes quite clear that the colonial government was

worried about the emerging working class that was yet to define its new identity. This partly

explains why the colonial government was very quick at repatriating the ‘foreign workers’, non-

Baganda following the 1921 Kampala strikes which marked the beginning of the tribalization

process. From 1921, migration was based on tribal consideration hence explaining why the

Banyankole worked in Baganda Kulaks coffee shambas in regulated size. To maintain this

phenomenon of fluid labour, tax payment was done from their home areas. Starting from 1930s,

this study found that the migrants who had paid their tax from Buganda were refunded or else

they faced double taxation55 In this chapter I analyse the imperatives to migration of people

from the former labour reserve zones to cash crop production zone and then shifts in migration

following the tribalization process which became open at the close of the second half of the 20th

century.

55 To illustrate the issue of tax refund, see A.J.P Ssentongo’s, District commissioner Kigezi letter of 10th August 1959 to the protectorate Agent, Kampala regarding the tax refund of Nasani Ngundu reproduced as Figure5.

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CHAPTER SIX

IMPLICATIONS OF MIGRANCY AND NATIVISM ON CITIZENSHIP

CONSCIOUSNESS IN UGANDA DURING THE PERIOD 1894-1995

6.1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the implications of migrancy unveiled in chapter four and nativism that

developed during the process of migrant-native interactions as unwrapped in chapter five on

citizenship consciousness of both the migrants and natives in the study areas. The central

argument that the chapter advances is that citizenship in Uganda has been implied in four ways.

First, it has been multi-layered, deidentified, contested and rediscovered which succinctly

contributes to the main argument for this thesis that migrancy in Uganda created nativism

which gave rise to two kinds of citizenship consciousness. The average Ugandan has two

citizenships- ‘’imagined’’ identities (Anderson, 2006), that is the local citizenship bestowed by

membership to an ancestral community inhabiting a particular region, and national citizenship

bestowed by the constitution of the Republic of Uganda and several other legal documents in

form of acts and statutes of the legislature. The meaning of citizenship itself has always been

elastic, which requires conceptual underpinnings before the meaning for Uganda is derived

(Guermond, 2021).

This study set out to understand the meaning of citizenship in Uganda using the southern and

western Uganda regions. Questions such as “what do you understand by citizenship?” were

asked during fieldwork, and responses analysed against literature. It was evident that the general

understanding and implication for citizenship in the study areas challenge the formal definition

of citizenship. While the formal citizenship is understood in terms of territorisation inherited

through colonialism and legitimised into written laws that defined Ugandans as objects of

colonialism (Mamdani, 2017), local citizenship rejects territorisations and embraces the norms

and customs that are inherent to specific groups of people. Local citizenship presupposes people

as live actors, not merely as objects without agency. The distinctions understood by the state

(both colonial and post-colonial) have been internally protested and deconstructed into new

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identities occasioned by the long-neglected agency of the people, thus oftentimes becoming the

source of conflicts. The solution to these conflicts described by the state as ethnic or tribal

conflicts, as it was the case with Bunyoro, has been attempted in form of “square strands into

circular holes”, thus making seemingly ethnic conflicts recurrent as the chapter illuminates.

Recognition and respect for the inherent local citizenships and appreciation of the differences

as entities at the national and regional levels is suggested as an asset to peaceful coexistence of

“migrants” and “natives” in western and southern Uganda. This chapter lays the conceptual and

historical evolution of formal citizenship, and shows how colonialism in Uganda influenced the

practice of citizenship. The second subsection shows how migration lead to multi-layered

citizenship in Uganda that culminated into contested national citizenship with emerging

meanings of residences or “homes”. Finally, the chapter concludes that the seemingly ethnic

conflicts that manifest in the study areas are theoretical and practical conflicts of citizenship

occasioned by the historical forces that acted on the politics and socioeconomics of Ugandans.

6.1 Conceptual and historical meaning of the concept of citizenship for Uganda

The concept of citizenship has broader meaning beyond the formally perceived one. The bigger

sense of citizenship has been provided by Marshall in his essay, Citizenship and social class

(Marshall, 1950). Marshall theorized citizenship as full and equal membership in a political

community. It is this theorization to which this chapter hinges on. But the bottom line is that

the concept is not confined to just law, rules or constitutional system. It has evolved for a long

period.

Philosophers and jurists have thought about the concept and debated it in changing social,

economic and political situations. The concept can be defined in four broad historical epochs.

First, the Greco- Roman times (Ancient times) which ranges from about 4th Century BC for the

next 1000 years. During that period, the meaning of a citizen was that person who takes part in

the activities of the civis/ polis, i.e. small states (Boyd, 2013). This meant that the definition of

citizenship was associated with participation. Citizens got the motivation to come together,

discuss problems and take decisions for the state or society. This meaning was propounded by

the early philosophers like Aristotle. To Aristotle, a person who did not live in polis, a city state

of ancient Greece, was either a beast or a god (Dunning, 1900). So, a citizen acquires a quality

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meaningful life only by living in a polis ( a city state) meaning that citizens must take part in

decision making process and that process should involve all adult male persons of the society

concerned. In other words, in those days in Greek and Roman civilizations, citizenship was

based on exclusions. Women and working classes were excluded because they had no role or

practical contribution to make towards running of the states. It is during this period when the

concept emerged and took shape especially during Roman civilization compared to the Greeks

because the Romans had to administer a vast area with a number of nationalities or peoples, in

public spread. Philosophers of citizenship were then faced with a bigger question in the face of

different nationalities as to who was a citizen? Were the people living outside Rome, who were

certainly ethnically different from Romans but under Roman Empire, also citizens? The

dilemma was that what was the different between the Roman citizen of Rome and non-Romans

living outside Rome. The solution was that ethically non-Roman people do not enjoy the same

facilities or rights, which a typically genuine Roman citizen was entitled to.

The second was late medieval and early modern period that ranges from 17th century on wards

to the next two centuries which centred on citizenship defined in terms of responsibilities

(Rosow, 1981). Philosophers of citizenship like Jean Bodin in France were puzzled with what

was the exact responsibility of a citizen. To Bodin and his followers like Baron Montesquieu,

a citizen was attached and determined by family life of the people and obligations towards the

family, church and the state. The responsibilities emphasized in the early modern period

necessitated recognition of rights, which became the central idea in the third stage in the

development of the concept of citizenship. Bodin underlines the importance of non-ethnic

people in the society because citizens’ basic family has to be protected. Because his writings

were influenced by trouble political times in France between Protestants and Catholics and

riots, he emphasized that there should be security as elaborated by Thomas Hobbes that the

personal security is the basic demand as it is common in many countries. The state comes after

gaining security then citizens demand the right of conscience as underlined by John Locke. In

democratic nations or even in the monarchical states, Locke argues, the citizen must have right

to speech up to the present time when journalists came to exercise full freedom to report and

think freely. A problem arises when the government/state comes in to suppress them.

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The third stage was the 19th century period, in which citizenship was determined by the

emergency of two major related economic systems: capitalism and liberalism. They are twin

ideologies as liberalism emphasized removal of the restrictions on the rights of citizens and

capitalism had the related interest of freeing the citizens from the bondage of feudalism.

Liberalism, therefore, was a political ideology while capitalism was an economic ideology. In

the 19th century, the demand was to politically and economically emphasize the rights of the

individuals to enhance progress of citizens. Individuals had basic rights as underlined by John

Locke: right to life, right to property but more so right to personal property. The bigger question

was, who would guarantee the protection of those basic rights? These philosophers then

contended that the state would do it. This fits within the basic philosophy of liberalism and

basic need of capitalism.

Lastly, the 20th century epoch was characterized by the emergency of welfare states ideology

especially in Europe and its practice after the second world war, which created a situation in

which old liberal values had to be reviewed: freedoms of speech, expression, property, and

thinking that were the only things needed by citizens. The western liberalized democracies of

Europe had developed new needs. There was also another important event that happened during

this some time: the emergency of a working class beyond the industrial workers but a class of

people without positions who, according to Karl Max had nothing to lose but their fetters – the

marginalised, deprived and under privileged sections of the people. It was Thomas Humphrey

Marshall whose contribution on the discourse of citizenship has been tremendous especially in

1960s. Marshal crowned the concept of citizenship that enables the excluded elements and

marginalized sections of the community to have a full minimum standard of living. From

Marshal’s philosophical lens, citizenship implies that citizens have rights that are minimally

necessary for life i.e. decent living.

However, the African conceptualization of citizenship was a peculiar one because of the

influence of an external force that is colonialism. Mamdani theorises very well the influence

of colonialism on the practice of citizenship in Uganda. Although he overemphasizes the role

of the colonial state as though the political structure acted upon an object, by the very nature of

colonialism, Mamdani rightly asserts that colonialism created political structures that brought

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about distinctions of the “native” and “migrants” (Mamdani, 2017). Mamdani argues that due

to colonial political structure, certain people were turned into migrants and others natives. Yet

movement from one territorial enclave to settle in the another as defined by tribal belonging

rendered the migrants foreigners in the areas they settled, hence the native was practically non-

existent. There was thus, no natural native nor settler (Mamdani, 2017). Mamdani’s belief in a

conservative colonial political structure is idealistic. Peoples’ actions as exemplified through a

shift from okupakasa to okufuruka broke the conservative colonial structure of uneven

development that had been sustained through “indirect rule” and taxation. This flexibility in

breakdown of the political structure greatly changed the social and economic life of the Bakiga

since the 1950s.

Given the above historical evolution and philosophical underpinnings of the concept

citizenship, the concept can be demystified further into two broad patterns in the case of

Uganda. First, civic republicanism which imply political participation which is related to the

common good of the society in terms of public spirit and civic virtue, and the second which

emerged with liberalism and capitalism has been termed as liberal citizenship. Liberal

citizenship centres on the rights of the private citizen and private interest which the individual

expects and demands that society and government must protect, if not, then there will be

political movements and democratic pressures. The civic - republican premises on active

participation of the citizens in the state and society as alluded to by Ahikire, Madanda, & Opolot

( 2013) and Barya (2000). A political system in which it is the citizens who matter as it was in

Greece as put forward by Aristotle’s idea of Good man and Ideal citizen (Dunning, 1900). For

instance, Mao (2021) commenting on the candidature for position of speaker of Parliament of

Uganda argues that:

…if the electors behave like citizens, then we shall have an

outcome everyone can accept or at least be able to live with. But

if they shun the higher ideals of the National Assembly as

people’s House and lose sight of the bigger picture, then the

esteem due to the august House will collapse even more (Mao,

2021).

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Mao’s argument relates with the meaning of citizenship in terms of participation and rights of

the individuals as theorized by Aristotle. Accordingly, individuals are classified into three broad

categories: idiots, tribesmen and citizens (Mao, 2021). Unlike idiots who abuse power and

personalize it for private use, the tribesmen use power to their narrow group- “tribe” while the

citizens use power for the benefit of the entire society. Although the categorizations overlap,

the trajectory of the society is determined by which of the three categories is dominant at any

one historical moment.

Niccolo Machiavelli, operating in different political situation, contended that citizens demand

that individuals’ freedom of speech, liberty, conscious were emphasized (Machiavelli, 1996).

Just as emphasized by Charles de Montesquieu, the role of institutions as critical in the

protection of the citizens’ rights (Rosow, 1981). Jean- Jacques Rousseau’s thinking is that

people gather and try to come up with general will which becomes the basis of the law of the

land. The main focus is both civic and republican character of the concept. It is John Stuart

Mill who gave a revised meaning of citizenship under liberalism, arguing that duties and rights

must accompany each other otherwise citizenship has no meaning. The thoughts of the above

thinkers were integrated in Marshal’s theorization as social citizenship theory in the context of

full and equal membership in a political community, and in further context of a civil society

defined by Herbamas. Herbamas thinks that the state should facilitate equality for all the people,

integrating excluded marginalized people into the full enjoyment of citizenship. Citizenship

then takes a legally constituted connotation as well as a politically philosophical connotation,

which I termed as national citizenship category in this study.

In most of the western democracies, the approach to citizenship has been rethought in response

to challenges of the growing number of migrants who often times restored close ties with their

country of origin, which has made the whole idea of national citizenship increasingly absolute

(Kymlicka, 2003). Whereas there is almost a consensus that citizenship concerns the

relationship between women and men and their membership to a group or community that

confers rights and responsibilities, and their relations in particular to a state (Sweetman,

Rowlands, & Abou-Habib, 2011), in Uganda, citizenship has taken three meanings. First, in

terms of rights and responsibilities as enshrined in the constitution: this is about national

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citizenship and identity as people of Uganda. Second, in terms of membership bestowed upon

by membership to a kingdom or community of origin- local citizenship. The third is in terms of

international conventions regarding universal human rights. These three meanings have

sometimes overlapped, and so its fluidity. The concept of citizenship arose in the ancient city

states and it meant ownership of property. It involved property owners exclusive of women,

slaves and poor members of the community (Ahikire, Madanda, & Opolot, 2013). Thus, a

citizen was known by rights and privileges hence one had a right to vote but liable to taxation

and military service.

The Romans understood citizenship as a device to distinguish the residents of the city of Rome

from ‘others’ whose territories had been conquered and incorporated onto Rome. When the

Roman empire grew, the Romans granted citizenship to their allies throughout Italy and other

provinces until 212 CE, when it was extended to all free inhabitants of the Roman empire. Here,

the citizenship conferred important legal privileges in the empire. The meaning of national

citizenship disappeared from the scene of world politics in Europe and was replaced by a system

of feudal rights and obligation during the middle ages. In the late middle ages and renaissance,

citizenship in various cities and towns of Italy and Germany became a monopoly of the

merchants and the privileged persons from the claims and prerogatives of feudal overlords.

Therefore, the meaning of citizenship solidified in eighteenth century during the American and

French revolutions, when the term citizen came to suggest the possession of certain liberties in

the face of coercive powers of absolute monarchs. At the same time, in England, a citizen meant

being a member of local municipal corporation as opposed to a subject who was the individual’s

subordinate position relative to the monarch or state. Apart from international transactions like

transfer of territory and so to say international citizenship, the principle ground of acquiring

citizenship are by: 1) birth56 within a certain territory, 2) descent from a citizen parent, 3)

56 Citizen by birth is the basic principle of citizenship like in the US and British common wealth, though they also recognize the nationality by descent with a lot of limitations. In some countries, at times provisions of nationality laws overlap which often results into Dual nationality: A citizen of two countries. Alternatively, the lack of uniform rules on citizenship acquisition and loss have sometimes produced lack of citizenship- statelessness

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marriage57 to a citizen, and 4) naturalization. In this study, cognizant of the processes in the

evolution and elasticity of the meaning of citizenship in Uganda has been a contested one. It

has been understood in twofold: as membership to a particular society, and as membership to

the nation-state, Uganda. I argue that the existence of practically different tiers of citizenships

and legally one, has perpetuated the seemingly ethnic conflicts that have often times culminated

into violent conflicts among the people of Uganda especially post-election conflicts. I illustrate

this claim by examining the processes that have shaped the theory and practice of citizenship

in Uganda by focusing on migration as one of major processes that has influenced the practice

of citizenship in the country.

In this chapter, I lean against Marshall’s theory of citizenship because it offers an opportunity

to lay bare the typologies of citizenship and how they have evolved overtime. Unlike Mamdani

who is stuck in the conservativeness and rigidities of the colonial political structures, the

flexibility that had been ardent in 1950s among the Bakiga can be well understood from

Marshal’s theorisation of social citizenship. Marshal theorises the underlying factors beyond

the intentions of the colonial state to include the underground complexities that were taking

place as people interacted with their environment. The life histories of Bafuruki and natives in

Bunyoro to explain that citizenship in western and southern Uganda and Uganda in general has

been influenced by migration. Due to migration, citizenship in the study area has had varied

connotations leading to violent situation through a disregard of ideas of citizenship. Through

the Archival documents from Kabale District Archives and National Archives and Records

Centre, and secondary sources, the study found that local citizenship has overshadowed national

citizenship in Uganda. This has resulted from the flames of nativism following the process of

migration, thus making the whole notion and practice of citizenship problematic.

Due to migration, citizenship in Uganda and generally in the world has evolved and been

influenced so much that digital or virtual migration has led to the emergence of netizens –

internet citizens. This chapter attempts to show how migration and nativism in Uganda imply

57 Acquisition of citizenship by marriage to a citizen was a prevailing principle until after World War I . A wife and children shared the nationality status of the husband and father, the head of the family. With the introduction of women’s suffrage and equality in 1920s, nationality was not affected by marriage, rather a mixed system which emphasized woman’s and child’s freedom of choice.

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on the theory and practice for citizenship. The migration process has dissolved “tribal” and

cultural boundaries through marriages across cultures and adoption processes. To this end, in

consistent with RGCT, Ugandans in the study areas have identified themselves in one

group/nationality as Ugandans. It was only during the period of elections that competition for

power and scarce resource that is land, emerged. The study has shown that when competition

emerges, sections of Ugandans evoke nativist ideology to mobilise and remobilise nativist

motivated groups.

The nativist formations included emergence or reinvention of kingdoms, and demands for new

districts justified by the group consciousness as it was the case for the demand and creation of

Kagadi district in 2012 for migrants in Bunyoro and west Buyaga constituency for migrants

(Kiva & Zimurinda, 2011). Indeed, the native-bafuruki divide in Bunyoro reached the peak

during the parliamentary and local council elections. Otherwise, Ugandans living in Bunyoro

were aware of the uniformity as related to Bantu speakers. The dialects in language and ethnic

differences of more than thirty-four have been magnified by elites for power and economic

resources. The influence of elites in the study areas in the decentralisation processes have

perforated the Ugandan society over the years in terms of multi-layered identification and de-

identification of belongingness, contestation of national citizenship and re-emergency of new

social formations in Uganda during the period under study.

6.2 Contested national citizenship and the concept of “home” in Uganda

The participants in this study distinguished “home” and “house” by expressing what they

understood as home- owaitu as among the Bakiga and Banyankole and ewaffe among the

Baganda. Owaitu and ewaffe meant the same thing- our home, which carries meanings of

nativism and local citizenship. Among the career migrants, especially those who had not

established homes or settlements in their area of destination-Kampala58, it seemed obvious that

Kampala or Wakiso or Mukono was not their home. In this group, their nuclear families lived

in rented premises in Kampala city or neighbouring districts but the extended family lived in

58 Kampala here means all areas in the metropolitan district of Kampala and the neighbouring districts which are residences for career migrants.

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the homeland59. They considered themselves as sojourners and temporary residents. Owing to

this consideration, this group always made plans for the region of origin investments decisions,

marriage decisions, construction of permanent family housing and final resting place, burial.

The career migrants of the earlier generation conformed to the above arrangements. After the

1980s, the majority of them started to think of establishing settlements in the destination region.

The explanation for this change was that they had already established homes in their homelands

or original region, so they now had two homes: the one in destination area and the one in the

original region. They maintained two homes. Indeed, it was considered prestigious for the

career citizen to have a permanent house at the place of origin. It was considered humiliating

for someone to die without constructing a permanent residence in the village home or original

homeland. In fact, among the aspiring political class it was considered a must because it

demonstrated beyond doubt the local citizenship of the person.

National citizenship has attracted debates and controversies in the academic world globally,

regionally and in Uganda since the beginning of the 20th century. Number four of the African

Agenda 206360, provides for the de-territorization of Africa which is also in line with

Nkrumah’s philosophy “African union now” on May 24, 1963 at the first Organisation of

African Unity summit at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The East Africa Community summit came up

with vision 2050 in which the members promised to strengthen regional cooperation and de-

territorization of East Africa through adopting an East African passport (East African

Community (EAC), 2015). The constitution of the republic of Uganda emphasizes free

movement/migration and ownership of land in any part of Uganda (Uganda, 2005).

Yet, national citizenship in Uganda has been defined along social groupings that have

erroneously been referred as “tribes”. Otherwise the fragmentation of the country through

terrorization infrastructure initiated by the colonial apparatus have brought serious problems

regarding social cohesion among the people of Uganda, especially those living in the areas

59 Homeland here means the region of origin or ancestral area 60 On july 17, 2016 at its 27th session, the African Union (AU) summit held in Kigali, Rwanda launched the AU boarderless Passport that would replace the nationally issued AU member state. The AU passport bearers would be excepted from having to obtain any visas for all fifty five states in Africa (Mukeredzi, 2016).

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under study. Territorial compartmentalisation has been reflected in the creation of districts and

kingdomisation since the colonial establishment as reflected in the colonial districts, namely

Bunyoro for Banyoro, Toro for Batoro, Buganda province for Baganda, Ankole for Banyankole,

Acholi land for the Acholi and the like.

Due to migrations, people living in the compartmentalised polities /kingdoms/ districts were

so mixed that any one basing on the early anthropologists’ physical descriptive

classifications/categorizations of nationalities in different precolonial nations could no longer

be based on to identify or categorise Ugandans. In Bunyoro for instance, the researcher could

hardly use observation to differentiate the Banyoro and others except snowball. Similarly, in

Buganda, the Bagwila were speaking fluent native language, Luganda with ease and possessed

kiganda names. The Banyankole migrants in Buganda were identified not only through name

nomenclature of Bagwila as opposed to Banyarwanda who were known to the natives as Balalo.

Otherwise migration and intermarriage invalidate the primordial identity groupings of the

African people in Uganda. These mixtures should have been binding forces to national cohesion

and national citizenship. However, as migrations continue, new forms of groupings and with

respective districts, kingdoms and constituencies have been formed on “tribal” lines responding

to migrant – native ideological lines. In Bunyoro, for instance, the constituency of Buyaga West

was formed for migrant Bakiga (Bafuruki), as Buyaga East remained for native Banyoro. While

migration should have been a raw material for national citizenship, Ugandans have inclined

themselves into localised citizenship.

The ethic of continued divisions along constructed identity lines have metamorphized into

violent conflicts. As the colonial apparatus enforced decentralised despotism that led to binary

development in the Ugandan state as argued by Mamdani, the sustainability of the seemingly

ethnic conflicts among the people of Uganda has been explained by elitism that has enforced

differences rather than similar experiences that bring about national cohesion.

The study found out that the role of elitist politics explains the rise of multi-layered citizenship

in the areas under study and Uganda as the whole. In Bunyoro, elites contributed to the

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seemingly “tribal” conflicts starting from the colonial era and extended to the post-colonial

governments and regimes. The colonial administrators appointed and used the Baganda

collaborators to fight the Banyoro in 1890s. These Baganda collaborators or chiefs were

rewarded with land and political positions in Bunyoro in the so-called lost counties (Mutibwa,

2016). This saw the systematic Buganisation in the lost counties in terms of naming, education

instruction and legal language.

Despite the attempts by the Banyoro to regain their regional ethicised/tribalized autonomy as it

was the case elsewhere in the protectorate in the hospice of indirect rule, in a mechanism that

Mamdani has theorized as decentralised despotism, the Banyoro were denied, and remained

under the alien Baganda rule. This created a big scar and shaped the Banyoro attitude towards

other Ugandans in the later years of the resource scarcity, especially the Bakiga. The whole

political environment was politicized by the colonial apparatus/regime when the Banyoro were

supressed as they rose up in the early 1900s. The Baganda colonial administrators were never

returned to Buganda following the Nyangire Abaganda rebellion and planned systematic

depopulation through deportations and killings followed to weaken Bunyoro. This made the

question of the lost counties to remain a point of focus for MBC but was pended in preparation

for independence until the clash between national and local citizenship resurfaced between

Obote and Mutesa over the referendum.

The 1962 independence constitution guided by elitist politicians at hand never resolved the

socio-political and land messes the colonialists had put in place (Magezi, 2015). The political

mess rather remained unresolved and was used as a tool by post-colonial politicians/elites as a

political resource to determine the organisation, execution and the outcomes of the 1964

referendum. Ugandan elites argued that the referendum was Prime Minister Obote’s tool to

destabilise the Kabaka since he was aware that the Banyoro would never vote to be part of

Buganda (Reid, 2017). At this historical juncture the conflict of local and national citizenships

came to be understood as ethnic. The elites looked at the referendum as an excuse for Obote to

undermine the Kabaka and cultivate the ground to gain political resource by creating a good

image for himself among the Banyoro. In agreement with the Realistic Group Conflict Theory

(RGCT), Obote’s thinking was justified because according to the Banyoro, they were under

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foreign rule of the Baganda since the British colonial office had carefully groomed the Baganda

as a main administrative wing of the state and continued depriving the Banyoro’s real political

power and rights to manage their own affairs.

The BMC activities and the political environment for Banyoro calmed down following the 1964

referendum in which, as expected, the Banyoro voted to be part of Bunyoro and not Buganda

(Reid, 2017). From Bunyoro, the elitist ideology shifted the battle field to Buganda and Uganda

as the whole. The Baganda elites under their Kabaka asked Obote to remove his parliament

away from Buganda soil (Karugire S. R., 1996). The republican (nationalists) championed by

Obote blamed the monarchists(nativists), the Mengo establishment for the political disturbances

in Uganda, which culminated into the abolition of kingdoms. National citizenship then

superseded local citizenship, and soon in 1967 kingdoms, starting with Buganda were

abolished. National consciousness triumphed over nativism and the Ugandan state was

controlled under the premises of nationalism and national unity. This period constitutes the

highest level of national consciousness in Uganda.

The success of republicanism encouraged vertical internal migration, intermarriages and

nationalism as opposed to nativism across regions as shown in school going children and songs

of the time. The songs referred to on page 117 of this thesis, called upon all Ugandans to discard

their differences and work hard for national cause. Admission to high schools was deliberate.

It was common for a school goer/student from Ankole (western region) to study from schools

in any other region in the country. RR39, one of the participants from Ankole (western region)

whose experience has modelled him to identify himself as East African, had found his way to

schooling in Tororo (eastern) thereby embracing national citizenship. Related experiences were

in health and politics. In terms of health, the Obote regime established regional sensitive

hospitals responding to nationalism. In the political arena, each region was represented at the

level of national legislation by four members who became national leaders other than nativist

in outlook. The small number of members of parliament and cabinet ministers constituted a

centralised system and reduced chances of entrenching nativist ideology that comes with local

citizenship. Though Obote was blamed for sectarian tendencies by Amin to justify the 1970

coup, on Obote’s return in 1980 in whatever conditions, he first landed in Bushenyi (Ankole)

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not Lango, his home district in the north. However, the forces of nativism sabotaged Obote’s

nationalistic and republican ideology so much so that the Obote II government was

characterized with policies aimed at rewarding the victors in the overthrow of Amin in 1979

(Karugire S., 1980).

The Amin’s regime emphasized the totalitarian ideology and therefore national

citizenship/nationalism was at a forefront comparable to that of Italy and Germany during the

inter-wars period. The 1975 land decree made land in Uganda state owned which reoriented

communities towards Ugandanism above the local citizenship, as reflected in song on page 117

of this thesis. From the song, it is clear that the belongingness and identity depicted the national

outlook in terms of language and culture (Anderson, 2006 & Langlands, 1975). Amin’s

deliberate migration policy, resettlement of people in various parts of Uganda illustrate his

national belongingness strategy for national unity. The Bakiga were supported to migrate to

other regions of Uganda as every Ugandan was free to move and settle in any part of Uganda.

During the period 1971-1979, nativist group mobilizations like MBC or BC, and other related

“tribal” associations were literally non-existent. Moreover, there were no elective positions

that could have awakened flames of nativism compared to Obote II government and the national

resistance movement (NRM) regime.

Obote I was different from Obote II as occasioned by elite politics that played out in the two

epochs. The colonial elitist parties re-emerged as the nativist politics redirected the political

events of the time and the Buganda factor resurfaced. Local and national citizenships

overlapped as reflected in the 1980 elections. The overlap between feelings of nativism and

nationalism charged Uganda’s political arena as political parties came to be realigned on region

and religion, namely, Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) and Democratic Party (DP). While the

latter became dominant and mainly catholic in Buganda, the former was popular in other

regions especially Lango and dominantly Anglican Christians (Ofcansky, 1996).

The success of Obote in other parts of the country and his unpopularity in the nativist Buganda

made the National Resistance Army (NRA) to mobilise rebel activities in southern Uganda,

Buganda, just a few miles from the capital, Kampala. Localised citizenship created by elites at

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Moshi, took the day during the bush war as reflected in the song:” ....Moyo gwa Moshi....Moyo

gwa Moshi...” (Kahunga, 2014). The forces of local citizenship were ardently determining the

trend of events in Uganda. These forces greatly influenced the National Resistance Army

(NRA) activities that led to their victory in 1986. The NRA regime embarked on building an

independent, integrated, self-sustaining economy based on democracy and devoid of

sectarianism (Kanyeihamba, 2010; Museveni, 2007).

From 1986, the Museveni regime focused on eradicating elitist politics based on nativism to

replace it with a more nationally ideologically oriented political structure based on the ten-point

programme that embraced peace, unity and pan-Africanism (Museveni, 2007). In 1987, anti-

sectarian act was passed to redirect the country towards the national unity agenda. The

weakness for NRA regime was its failure to “walk the talk” of its policies. The movement

system embraced national citizenship above local, which was regarded as sectarian. After all,

the 1981-1986 Bush war was all-inclusive as it had support of a cross-section of different

ethnicities mainly from the western and southern Uganda, and praises for fighters as reflected

in the songs:

…Moto umewaka…Kapeeka, Masaka, Lwamata, Kiboga….. …Abanya-Uganda ka baingi, ababonaboine omu ihamba… …Agawalagana mu nkoola…

…. mwetuliwangula tulibazimbira obusisira……

The success of national citizenship was short-lived as elitist politics regained momentum in the

1990s, and so did the local citizenship become a popular practice of the regime. This started

with restoration of kingdoms from 1993. As reflected in chapter five, the restoration of

kingdoms where they hitherto existed and creation of others where they never existed

complicated the theory and practice of citizenship in the pan-Africanist’s regime. Buganda as

well as Bunyoro and several other kingdoms except Ankole were restored. The restoration of

kingdoms and the privileges they accrued from the central government such as salary, security,

vehicles, land among others motivated other peoples of Uganda to look for ways of accessing

the related privileges. To this end, the period after 1993 saw the mushrooming of new

kingdoms, new social identities and ethnicities asserting themselves to share on the cadaver of

the bush war victors. Indeed, at the time of the constitutional making, every ethnolinguistic

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community that was able to assert itself became an indigenous community moderated by the

politics of numbers and power, as reflected in the constituent assembly committee debates on

citizenship regarding considering the Bahima as an independent indigenous community (Barya,

2000). From Barya’s view, it was clear that an independent indigenous community was not

defined by the number of years the community and its members existed in Uganda as it alleged,

but rather on power and influence of invisible hand of elites. No wonder, some ethnicities that

never existed as per previous censuses like the Nubi, Baruli to mention a few were recognized

indigenous communities of Uganda as of 1926 (Uganda, 2005). It was thus clear that at the

time when the constitution was being made, and the pan-Africanist, Museveni wanted to please

all by opening the country to global politics of democracy, elective politics (Rubongoya, 2007).

Nativism and monarchism took the day in the constitutional debates in preparation for the

national constitution of Uganda in 1994, especially when it came to the question of citizenship

and indigenous communities. For instance, Kibaale district which is geographically at the heart

of Bunyoro Kingdom was not classified under Bunyoro (Uganda, 2005). Similarly, ethnic

communities which had “decreased” from fifty six (56) in 1926 to forty nine (49) in 195961

(Langlands, 1975), had to increase to sixty five (65) in 2014 (Uganda Bureau of Statistics,

2016) and Kibaale (part of the area of study) housed more than 43 ethno-linguistic groups (Kiva

& Zimurinda, 2011).

The provisions for elective politics have worsened the matters since the 1990s. Kagadi district

was created for literary the Bafuruki as well as Buyaga west constituency, while Buyaga East

became exclusively for the native Banyoro. The criteria for those divisions were never

primordially or naturally informed but rather systematically organised depending on its

usefulness to the service of the elite. The 1995 constitution thus, ironically legitimised local

over national citizenship on the pretext of decentralisation process and bringing services near

to the people. Up to the present, the constitution recognises the districts under kingdoms leading

to overlapping citizenships and conflicts. This categorisation of districts has awakened the

seemingly ethnic conflicts in Bunyoro and generally Uganda, and have been exacerbated by

elite politicians. The postcolonial state in Uganda has sustained the decentralised despotism and

utilised the colonial binaries created by the colonial administrators for the benefit of the elites

61 The 1959 census shows that communities like Olopom disappeared (Langlands, 1975, p. 13).

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as it was the case in Nigeria. African elites in Nigeria provincialized the country into hostile

camps that were translated into violent ethnic conflicts, as they manipulated members of the

provinces for wealth and power (Ake, 1996).

In this subsection I have argued that elites in Bunyoro and generally Uganda motivated by

personal gains that is, wealth and power have increased the seemingly ethnic conflicts which

have complicated the theory and practice of citizenship in Uganda. As it was the case in other

African countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Zimbabwe and Rwanda, the role of African

elites has been underlined in the creation of imaginary ethnic communities, thereby

exacerbating group conflicts, whose real cause in line with RGCT lie in the struggle to gain

both wealth and power, thus making the question of contested citizenship recurrent. The

following subsection discusses the underlaying circumstances in which social formations have

shaped the ethnic composition in Uganda focusing on Bunyoro and Buganda.

6.3 Re-discovery of hitherto submerged groups

One of the effects of elitist politics in Uganda was the formation of social groupings and thus

holding local citizenship high. In this aspect, social formations that had been formerly

suppressed have since 1950s remerged and asserted themselves to claim space for identity. This

rediscovery has challenged the colonial structures that had fractured the society into “tribal”

groupings (Spear, 2003). Some new groups have been formed while others that had hitherto

been present, have re-emerged with self-discovery, there by forming different fragmentations

reconfigured into new identities in form of new districts and new kingdoms. The pre-colonial

Bakooki, Bakenyi, Banyala, Basese and Baganda that had been amalgamated into Baganda by

colonial establishment, have re-emerged with new claims of subnational citizenships. Two

incidences that have taken place in Bunyoro and Buganda can illustrate these new claims: the

so-called ethnic violence in Kibaale, western Uganda in 2003 and the aborted Kabaka’s visits

to Bugerere/ Banyala in 2009. Using these two regroupings, I reject the common understanding

that conflicts are primordially ethnic motivated and rather assert that ethnic conflicts are

instrumentalised by the individuals and groups competing for political and economic resources

under the augury of social resource. Hence, the seemingly ethnic conflicts between the native

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Banyoro and the Bafuruki are a theoretical and contextual crisis between the national and social

citizenships that had been conflicting since the colonial establishment.

Bunyoro has been a centre of seemingly inter-ethnic conflicts, whose population composition

has been heterogeneous like many other regions in Uganda. However, the migration and

settlement of the Bakiga in Bunyoro has been a distinct one, mainly because the Bakiga

settlement was encouraged by first, the colonial state and second, Omukama Sir Tito Winy IV.

Winy encouraged the colonial government to resettle the Bakiga in Bunyoro. On 17th June 1955,

Tito Winy IV wrote to the provincial commissioner in Fort Portal requesting for Bakiga to be

resettled in Bunyoro, he encouraged the commissioner that Bunyoro had the capacity to host

the Bakiga.

From the Omukama’s letter (see figure 8), the question of Ugandaniness more than

Banyoroness rises. The letter suggests that three main elements: For the Omukama Tito Winy

encouraging Bakiga migration into Bunyoro indicates that he looked at Uganda and Ugandaness

more than Bunyoroness for Banyoro.

Secondly, it was possible that Winy was helping the colonial state in their resettlement project

of Bakiga in a more fertile and abundant land in Uganda. Thirdly, the Omukama seemed to had

realised his obligations as part of the Uganda protectorate to freely accept the subjects of the

Queen from any region of the protectorate as stated in the London gazette:

It is hereby notified, for public information that under and by

virtue of the agreement concluded on the 29th May, 1893

between the late Sir Portal and Mwanga, King of Uganda, the

country of that ruler is placed under protectorate of Her Majesty

the Queen. This protectorate comprises the territory known as

Uganda proper, bounded by the territories known as Usoga,

Unyoro, Ankole and Koki” (London Gazette of Tuesday, June

19th, 1894).

Thus, Omukama seemed to have embraced national citizenship on humanitarian grounds of

Ubuntu ideology that had earlier existed in African civilization (Kasozi F. M., 2011). The

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Omukama’s letter widened the link between the Banyoro and the Bakiga interactions in relation

to the tasks done during the process of settled. The Bakiga who had been invited as labourers

of Banyoro62 were becoming economically and socially powerful to the extent of threatening

the political power of the native Banyoro.

The story of the Banyoro and Bunyoro is an interesting one, in terms of its peopling and later

its population composition. It comprised of the Banyoro, Bafumbira, Bakiga, Bakonjo, Bamba

and Baganda. The study area was comprised of the lost counties as known from the colonial

history of Uganda. These “lost counties”63 had been seized from Bunyoro in 1890s during the

Anglo-Banyoro wars of conquest in which the Baganda collaborators fought for the British.

The lost counties were then given to Buganda as gifts from the British government (Gupta,

1983). This meant that the migration of the Baganda into these areas was both nationally and

socially motivated, and instrumentalised by the need for resources by both the colonial state

and the Baganda “sub-imperialists” since these were productive areas of rich cash crops

particularly coffee production. No wonder, as argued by Gupta, it is these areas that “became

one of the major points of their tribal disagreement” (Gupta, 1983:38). Yet, migration started a

long history of suspicious approach of the native Banyoro towards new settlers, the Baganda.

According to the Banyoro natives that participated in this study, the suspicious approach which

to the Bakiga and other communities as aliens started from their experience with the Baganda

during the early days of the colonial rule.

The native Banyoro argued that the major economic asset, at least for every socio-economic

organisation of an African society of the time, land, was withdrawn and transferred to Baganda.

As a consequence, the Banyoro experienced a ‘misfortune’ of aliens/ migrants who became

“sub-imperialists”, as they labelled Baganda in the early days of colonialism. According to the

elders, the Banyoro spirit of resistance that guided them to fight against the Baganda in 1896 to

1960s was resurrected in 2000s to fight against the Bafuruki in the post-election conflicts. This

finding is consistent with Niwabiine’s that the Baganda chiefs subjected terror on the

62 Banyoro epistemologically means chief 63 The area east and northeast of Bunyoro comprised of six Bunyoro counties occupying an area of over six thousand square miles that was rewarded to Buganda in 1896 for fighting and defeating Omukama Kabalega. This area came to be known as the lost counties.

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indigenous Banyoro and all forms of torture were used to enforce their rule, which inculcated

a lot of hatred for Baganda by the Banyoro. Some of the respondents in Kibaale were in

agreement with those of Kagadi that Runyoro language was banned in schools, churches, courts

of law and all other official places. According to them, admissions to educational institutions

of learning was denied to the Banyoro children except if one became a “Muganda” through

naming and language usage. An individual becoming a Muganda meant giving up his or her

identity markers especially language, customs or cultural norms and surnaming. Thus, since

the post Kabalega period up 1960s, there was a systematic Bugandanisation of Bunyoro. Child

naming was dependant on Kiganda clan system and so Banyoro were given names like

Sekitoleko, of Nkima clan in kiganda system of identifying ancestry. In churches, child naming

did not depend on the saint’s name or Christian naming system, but Kiganda name. Whoever

did not have a Kiganda related name, the child missed baptism. To avoid missing baptism which

was not only moral obligation, but a sin more than civil disobedience, the Banyoro parents took

their children before the clergy in their respective faith and were baptised kiganda names.

The inclusiveness nature of the Baganda in relation to the power of numbers has always

determined their attitude towards others. Stories from the migrant labourers reveal that the

Baganda are only hospitable when the “visitor” is willing to be assimilated, but are never

accommodative nor tolerant because the virtue of tolerance presumed fair treatment of others

without conditionalities. Meanwhile, in the lost counties, the Banyoro clan system was

destroyed in favour of the Baganda system. In protest against the described terror in 1907, the

Banyoro resisted the Baganda chiefs and their overlord in what they termed as Nyangire

resistance. Whereas this resistance was seriously frustrated and participants punished, the spirit

of “refusal” remained alive. Indeed in 1921, the Banyoro in the lost counties formed what

Karugire termed as the first political party, the Banyoro Committee that was gradually expanded

into Mubende Banyoro Committee which had been at the helm of the struggle to preserve

Banyoro culture and dignity. The Committee consequently took up passive and peaceful

demonstrations in demand for the lost counties. But our intension here is not to retell the

organisation of the Committee, rather to underline the mobilizational force that determined its

formation, membership and its influence in the future relations between the Banyoro and the

“others”. The MBC organised many meetings and wrote petitions challenging the colonial

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boundaries of Buganda and Bunyoro. At the eve of Uganda’s independence, during the period

1956-1961, the Banyoro delegates engaged with the Governor of Uganda and Mengo

establishment over the return of the lost counties. Even though the delegations did not yield

much, the Banyoro warned that as long as the question of the lost counties was not answered or

resolved, trouble was awaiting the post-colonial government. The complex question of

citizenship in Bunyoro raising from the nativistic nature of the Banyoro on one hand and

assimilative character of the Baganda on the other, entered the post-colonial era with a more

complexity nature of citizenship in the new Republic of Uganda.

The post-independence referendum was held in 1964 in which Buyaga and Bugangaizi were

handed back to Bunyoro (Currently 2020, Kibaale district), and the 1995 Constitution which

categorized Kibaale District outside Banyoro territory despite being geographically at the heart

of Bunyoro, signalled a bigger trouble of the inconsistence between national and local

citizenships. Thus, like the colonial state, the post-colonial states have failed or refused to fully

conceptualise the interests of different ethno-linguistic groupings that have mobilised local

rather than national identity. Consequently, many researches on Bunyoro by researchers like

Magezi, 2015; Mirima, 2003; Ssentongo, 2015; Niwabiine, 2003; Baligira, 2020; and Karungi,

2004 argue that the land question has been a contagious issue to which colonial and post-

colonial governments have not addressed. They further argue that ethnic conflicts in the area

have exploded due to land question posed by the migrants, Bafuruki. However, these writers

forget that the Bafuruki and the natives had been living together amicably and interacting

without hostilities.

Even when the Bakiga migration into Bunyoro reached the highest peak in the 1950s with over

fifty families migrating to from Kigezi to Bunyoro daily, the Banyoro remained peaceful. It

was only in the 1990s, so many decades following major migration waves of the Bakiga

migration to Bunyoro, that the seemingly ethnic conflicts broke out in the area and especially

during and after local council elections. This study has established that while the land issue has

been fronted as a major cause of instability in the region, it was rather the failure of the

government to comprehend the political, and socio-economic dynamics of the area and beyond,

and to understand the historical realities of migration and nativism. The study has found out

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that the elites/politicians have sustained and promoted migrational and nativist explanation

responding to RGCT because the imaginary groups were very important for the elite in power

struggles and achievement of socio-economic resources. I complement Munini Mulera’s

argument that the seemingly ethnic conflicts between the Banyoro and Bafuruki is beyond

ethnic and land conflicts since many Bakiga had migrated to Kibaale so many years earlier and

were living harmoniously with other ethnicities enjoying opportunities of new life. As one of

the respondents, Mwambutsya Ndebesa asserts, “it is the post-colonial governments that

inherited the systemized divide and rule through many elective positions of the country”64.

National leaders like members of parliament (MPs) have reached the extent of forming

ethnically based caucuses, divisions on regional and “tribal” bases related to colonial apparatus

as it was the case in Rwanda at the eve of the 1994 Genocide, which Mamdani has theorized as

decentralised despotism.

To further reject ethnicity and land as the major motivations for ethnic conflicts in Bunyoro in

1990s, Munini refers to his old friend and his aunt, Miss Juliana. According to Munini, Miss

Juliana owned a lot of property and had migrated to Kibaale following the death of her husband.

The widowed aunt migrated to Kibaale in search of opportunities and new with her children

over forty years ago (Mulera, 2003). Mulera rightly wonders how an incident of forty years can

be understood as ethnic conflict over land between the Banyoro and the Bakiga. Otherwise he

had had very little about his cousin Brengle and his family with the exception of occasional

reports about them together with other Bakiga migrants working hard and turning Bunyoro’s

swamps and bushes into farms with abundant yields. What is further interesting in Mulera’s

writing is that his encounter with his aunt Juliana in Kampala in 1980, “she was healthy, spoke

a language that was a cross between Rukiga and Runyoro.” (Mulera, 2003: 12). Indeed, she had

acquired a new home and Kigezi was some sort of a foreign land. He further asserts that as it

was the norm, she invited him to join them in Bunyoro. Apparently, generations had passed

since Juliana and her children moved to Bunyoro and had become Banyakitara with little

connections to Kigezi. In other words, the Banyoro and Bakiga had embraced national

citizenship through migrations, interactions and intermarriages for more than four generations

64 In an interview held on 7th October 2020 in Kampala with Mwambutsya, blaming so many elective positions as an engine to ethnic awakening leading to ethnic conflicts.

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of living together. Indeed, many Bakiga had married native Banyoro and had produced children

and their grandchildren would not easily identify with Kigezi. During my field research in

Bunyoro, it was snowballing that helped in identifying the Bakiga migrants and Banyoro

natives; because of intermarriages and mixture of cultures and customs, one could hardly tell

or identify a pure native or migrant. I, therefore, agree with Mulera that the meaning of an

election for Local Council Five (LC5) Chair of Fred Ruremera was not only the support of the

Bakiga but also of the Banyoro and other groups, and the major denominator in the 2003 post-

election conflicts in Kibaale was more than just land but a government issue well embedded in

the theoretical and practical conflict between national and local citizenship.

Mulera’s main argument is that land was part of the problem, it was not the cause of the tensions

in Bunyoro. Issues had been narrowed to ethnic loyalties leading many writers that include

Ssentongo and Niwabiine to see the second and the third-generation residents of the area as

“others” hence the reference to Bakiga migrants in Kibaale. From the analogy of his aunt,

Mulera like the majority of the participants in Bunyoro claim that the national leaders

especially MPs, who should be the vanguards of national unity in an effort to diffuse the

dangerous situations based on social explanation, are instead instrumentalising them for

political and economic resources. The consequences of the re-invented social identities have

escalated violence that has affected the entire Uganda, the African continent and the world over.

Several cases of instrumentalised ethnic conflicts can be cited in Uganda, and its neighbours.

For instance, in 1993 conflicts broke out in Tororo between Jopadhola and Itesots over the

division of the district, in Moroto between the Tepeth and Matheniko due to cattle raiding, and

in Arua between the Aringa Uzu over tender award (Onzima, 1998). As it was with the case in

Congo when the Hema fought with allied fighters of Lendu and Ngiti in Bunia leading to

migration of people between 25,000 and 30,000 DRC citizens crossing over to Rwebisengo in

Bundibugyo and about the same number into Nebbi district, other African countries such as

South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria and Ethiopia have experienced the seemingly ethnic conflicts

with untold effects (AFP, 2003).

Responding to Mulera, Henry Ford Mirima and his MBC thinking in the same line with the

Kiyonga Parliamentary Probe Committee (KPPC) have blamed the continued migration of the

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Bakiga into Kibaale as precursor to ethnic conflicts in the region (Miirima, 2003). Mirima and

KPPC’s argument that the Bakiga migration into Kibaale was “illegal” and responsible for

“extrajudicial” activities in the post-election Kibaale was ahistorical. While Mirima blames the

government to have closed its eyes on illegal migration of Bakiga in Kibaale district is indeed

unrealistic. Migration of the Bakiga is not a 2000s phenomenon as explained in Chapter Four

of this thesis and in the previous paragraph. The question of illegality as raised, is not

constitutional since the 1995 Constitution allows settlement in any part of Uganda, and

international statutes to which Uganda is the signatory allows free movement and settlement of

citizens. The Bakiga being blamed for extrajudicial activities is not only xenophobic but also

nativist.

The government and Museveni should be blamed on grounds of creating a fractured nation-

state based on very many political resources as reflected in Mulera and Mirima’s arguments

(Wamboka, 2003). The arguments outstretched by the two writers, and the questions posed by

Mulera explain the occurrence of the conflict as “tribal/ethnic” but used as political resource.

But these conflicts were taking place in certain space provided for in the historical progression.

it was the theory and practice of national and local citizenship dependant on the interests and

perceptions of the actors: Ugandan state, natives and migrants that have, according to RGCT,

led to the seemingly ethnic conflicts in Bunyoro. The interests of the actors namely natives,

Uganda state, and migrants have not changed since 1894 and even after independence.

As it was the case with the colonial state, the governments in the post-colonial Uganda view

Uganda as one entity and all Ugandans as Bannansi, citizens of Uganda with disruption by the

resource factor. Other actors have too been instrumentally as opposed to primordial explanation,

influenced by resource element to relate to each other throughout the historical agency of group

formation/ social formations as explained by Muzafer’ theory of RGCT. Thus, during the

colonial era, the Baganda saw themselves as separate and superior, and so described “others”

as such bapakasi, bagwila, serwajja okwota, basenze and other noncultures described in

Chapter Five of this thesis. Migrants in Buganda too, regarded themselves as different and

separate as target workers as they lived in exclusive neighbourhoods. To the Banyoro, who

distinguished themselves as landlords or chiefs in actual meaning of Munyoro looked at the

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Bakiga as their labourers, the Bapakasi. The attitude changed in the post-colonial era. The

minds and interests of the Baganda, Ugandan government, the Banyoro and migrants in the

areas under study expanded in meaning and attitudes towards each other.

In Buganda, there has been negligible change in meaning and attitudes towards migrants, in

fact tending to no change. The native Baganda have asserted themselves as different and

superior. The Baganda run and operate parallel government since 1993, have had prejudicial

naming of Banyankole settlers as bannamawanga (foreigners). The perception and attitudes of

the migrants have also informed their life styles in Buganda. It was not until the 1990s when

the career migrants in Buganda started serious plans of settlement in Buganda. Otherwise the

migrants in Buganda, just like the migrant labourers, remained itinerant, having one leg on the

workplace and another in their area of origin. These illustrated punches commonly referred to

as ethnic conflicts in academic discourses are symptoms of the conflict between national and

subnational or local citizenship that is related with the colonial and terrorization of the Ugandan

societies.

The Uganda state has too, been moved by the forces of nativism and nationalism dictated upon

by the resource factor. The post-colonial Ugandan state has maintained the inherited tribalized

polities designed to preserve the political resource. During the period 1962-1966, the state

aimed at establishing and maintaining a national citizenship. There was thus a deliberate effort

taken by Obote I government to stress nationalism and pan Africanism amidst forces of

Buganda nativism. From the start, as Buganda declared and recognized her Independence Day

as 8th October 1962, a day before Uganda’s national Independence Day. As the state

implemented nationalisation and the referendum for the lost counties, Buganda rejected the

same, which led to the abrogation of the independence constitution and declaring of Uganda a

republic. The abolition of kingdoms, following the pigeon hole constitution in 1967, were

attempts at the attainment of national citizenship that had been frustrated by forces of social

citizenship inherited from the colonial era. The colonial state had adopted the system of

deportation to supress the flames of nativism as it was the case in 1954-1955, the post-colonial

state under Obote had also “deported’’ the Kabaka in 1966 amidst contestations and demands

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to remove the national parliament off the Buganda soil followed what has been termed as the

Kabaka crisis.

President Obote’s overthrow by Amin in 1971 was closely associated with the Baganda

nativism. The Amin regime operated in a complete nationalisation and the highest peak on

national citizenship in practice except in the army and ministerial positions. He maintained the

abolishment of kingdoms, encouraged horizontal and vertical migration across the country.

There were no elective positions that could provoke nativist feelings yet his appointments were

balanced across regions. There was thus hardly any tribal claims or terrorization of some kind.

The national agenda for Amin’s Uganda aimed at ‘Uganda first’.

The Obote II government was marred by religious and revival of economic resources aimed at

capturing majority. By 1985, the forces of nativism were at fifty-fifty with forces of

nationalism. Presidency was determined by tribally defined regions and religions. The

Museveni regime was ideologically guided by pan Africanism since the days of FRELIMO and

was determined at rising the flag of national citizenship to the higher levels beyond national to

regional and African union. After taking overpower in January 1986, the Anti-sectarian Act

was passed in 1987 to minimise cases of “tribalism’’ that had been responsible for sectarianism,

religionism and discrimination of all sorts. But the Bush War had the support of the Baganda

that had to be rewarded with the political resource, as reflected in the move for the restoration

in 1993 of Buganda Kingdom and ministerial positions.

The restoration of Kingdoms started a new journey of kingdomisation of the country and rising

flames of nativism in Uganda. Some kingdoms have been restored, while others created in form

of tribal based districts. This proliferation of the country in administrative parts, representation

and decentralisation processes came with many administrative elective positions, which I argue

have ignited flames of nativism, and has made the citizenship of Uganda fluid. Up to 1995, the

number of ministerial posts, with the exception of President Obote, reflect localised citizenship

par excellence as leaders tend to favour the regions of their origin as summarised in the table

below.

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Obote from

northern region

1962-1971 and

1980-1985

Amin from

Northern Region

1971-1979

Binaisa and Lule

from Buganda

1979-1980

Museveni from

Western region

1986-present

Eastern Region 23 11 06 51

Western Region 23 05 05 70

Northern Region 21 23 06 43

Buganda Region 15 10 10 65

Total 82 49 27 229

Figure 13: Distribution of ministerial positions across post independent Uganda

Source: Adapted from https://www.observer.ug/news-headlines/13623-west-buganda-dominate-in-ministers-since-independence

Therefore, the conflicts that erupted in the country starting from 1993 with the restoration of

kingdoms, and climaxed in the late 1990s with the creation of kingdoms inform of tribal-based

districts, turned violent in 2000s. Since the 1990s nativist forces based on social citizenship

have overpowered forces of nationalism and national citizenship.

The migrant communities or migrants, on their part, have responded in line with natives and

the state. Where the state went nativist so were the migrants and a conflictual relationship with

natives. The interests and minds of the migrants based on the Bafuruki in Bunyoro and former

migrant labourers and career migrants in Buganda have been situational. For instance, in the

case of the eastern part of Uganda, a prominent politician Aggrey Awori shares the same

homestead with his relative but a Kenyan prominent politician Moody Awori. These two

brothers belong to different nationalities yet belonging to the same local identity, in fact the

same family. Similar cases can be cited in western Uganda where the Bafumbira of Uganda

have their counterparts in Rwanda just the way the Bakonjo have theirs in Congo. Yet, the

Bakiga in Bunyoro are different from the Banyoro as it was the case with the Baganda and

Banyankole migrants in Buganda during the colonial era. What is important to note here is that

despite these territorial boundaries, the studied communities still enjoy their identity indicators

159

so much so that the territorial boundaries do not infer to social boundaries. I claim that national

citizenship can be achieved first, by recognition of the local identities or local citizenships and

eventually cultural integration into a nation-state, Uganda at the national level.

The colonial state guided by various factors, other than identity and cultural cohesion,

appropriated the existing simple ethnic differences to perforate the African societies. The post-

colonial nation-states were faced with a lot of inabilities, inherited a divided society built on

the same premises of economic and political considerations other than histo-cultural narratives

(Davidson, 1992 & Cooper, 1994). Consequently, as it was the case with the colonial state, the

post-colonial African state has not changed in practice. The colonial districts based on ethno-

linguistic polities such Bunyoro, Ankole, Busoga for Banyoro, Banyankole, Basoga

respectively have since metamorphized into smaller administrative units based on the

associational, ‘tribal’ considerations. Some of such administrative units have been named after

their former settlements such as Mpefu in Kagadi because they are largely inhabited by the

Bakiga migrants just as it is the Chinese cities or the British founded cities like New York, New

Jersey to mention a few.

Onset of the colonial rule in Uganda up to the 1990s, local citizenship has taken precedent. To

illustrate the assertion, in Bunyoro and Buganda ethnic skirmishes have been common. The

Banyoro natives have asserted themselves as superior and autochthons of the area, the Bafuruki

have maintained their attitude as nationals as they have owned land, permanently migrated with

their families for a new area in the republic of Uganda. Interestingly, as earlier noted, based on

situations, the Bafuruki have to a larger extent, remained with their ethnolinguistic beliefs. The

intervention of the post-colonial regimes, especially during elections has provided a strong

force for the burning flames of nativism that have ended into violent conflicts.

At least it should not have been the 1986 government that came up with the Anti-sectarianism

Act in 1987 and later the 1995 Constitution, to suggest and enforce the stepping down of the

democratically elected, Ruremera from the Chairmanship of Kibaale District in 2003 and

ringfencing of 99% of the electoral positions to the native Banyoro. This, and other historical

conjectures discussed have left Uganda as a nation-state in the dilemma of the conflict between

160

local and national citizenships. More ethnic aligned violent conflicts have occurred and are yet

to occur and are always appropriated as social resources by the politicians to achieve political

and economic resources through evoking historical rights. Consequently, for a century, the

Ugandan state has not achieved national identity and has been characterized by ethnic conflicts

that were new to Africans.

Precolonial societies in the Greatlakes region, through their long-held narratives of nationalism,

myths, mythologies and legends formed and maintained interdependent states based on social

cohesion. While there existed some skirmishes of conflicts emanating from territorial

expansions and counter expansion, African societies were generally sufficient and peaceful thus

nullifying the RGCT. What had been seen as archenemies by colonialists as it was the case with

Bunyoro and Buganda, has been refuted by the existence of not only the cordial relationship

exhibited through precolonial trade, but also their respective rulers’ relationships throughout

the colonial period. In line with realistic group conflict theory, the colonial government

extended the ethno-linguistic margins into tribes to enforce selfish interests, the post-colonial

states appropriated the tribes, to enforce their selfish interests too, to achieve socio- economic

and political resources.

Though Tusabe (2015) and other writers suggest that unlearning the traditional narratives would

bring about social cohesion at national level, ironically, precolonial African states coexisted

peacefully save for a few skirmishes over territorial expansion or hunting grounds. Ethnic

related violent conflicts were very rare but became common in the colonial period when the

simple interstate conflicts turned into genocide. The first one being in Namibia by Germans in

1902, and Rwanda Genocide in 1994, both of which related to colonial establishment.

It is thus, the failure of the state at different progressions since colonialism, that ethnic related

violent conflicts of 21st century have re-emerged. While some scholars like Kiwanuka (1971)

have traced ethnically related violent conflicts from precolonial migration histories and

literature manipulated by euro-centric writers that classified Ugandans as such: Nilotic,

Hamites, River-lake Nilotics and the like which are highly detached from communities, vividly

indicate lack of historical base among the communities themselves hence rendering the

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categorization ahistorical. I have thus emphasized that precolonial such communities, states or

societies lived amicably and self-sufficiently though they engaged in expansionistic wars in the

processes of the peopling of Uganda. Through migration histories we learn that people formed

sufficient, strong and interdependent states only to be destabilized by colonialism in along

processes of tribalization since 1921 ( McKnight (1996), Anderson ( 2006) and Mbembe

(2002)). The process of tribalization, as political apparatus employed by the colonial elite to

enforce the colonial project of power sustainability and exploitation, has been metamorphized

into ethnic binaries in form of state managed ethnic and tribal conflict in the post-colonial states.

The ethnic divisions as a form of divide and rule mechanism of the British administration was

a very important vehicle of proliferation of Ugandans for larger political ends. Therefore, to the

elites in the postcolonial Uganda, ethnically motivated administrative units, associations and

kingdoms in form of not only creation of new districts but also groups of people mobilizing

themselves and forming and reforming tribes have been rampant.

From the study, migration and settlement of migrants in Buganda and Bafuruki in Bunyoro in

the context Uganda nation-state, there sprout several levels of citizenship. As members of a

social group started laying claims on their own identity depending on territoriality, others were

laying claims over privileges and rights of belonging to such social formations. As pointed out

by Gupta, 1983, the study indicates that colonialism in Uganda brought about tribal conflicts,

as he argues:

Africans of Uganda are divided into four linguistic groups. The

whole population is split into 31 ethnic units or tribes, each with

its own culture, dialect and geographical area. Despite a strong

nationalist movement in Uganda, these units remain split. This is

due to a concerted attempt by the British colonialism which never

permitted development of national consciousness. they provided

enough breeding grounds to the germs of tribalistic pride,

chauvinism and sentimental attachment (Gupta, 1983:40).

Migration reinforced the ethnic divides based on “tribes”. The migration of the Bapakasi into

Buganda was motivated by new necessities which were never competitive to their hosts, native

162

Baganda. The none competitiveness or nonconflictual relationship between the migrant

Banyankole and native Baganda during the period up to 1960s, can be justified by differences

in their needs as theorized by Muzafer. The migrants needed cash while the hosts needed labour

power while in Bunyoro the Bafuruki and the native Banyoro had since 1990s similar needs:

land, labour and political resource which explains their conflictual relationship.

6.4 Chapter Summary

In this chapter, I have argued that in Uganda there are two types of citizenships: local and

national. National citizenship is essential for peaceful coexistence in the context of the

pluralistic society. I have noted a serious conflict between the two kinds of citizenships in theory

and practice in the country. Due to inconsistences in the democratization process, and evolving

nature of the society, citizenship has been multi-layered and elastic or fluid relating to the new

needs. Hence, citizenship has taken on other forms: national, regional, continental and global

citizenships. The clamour for balkanization has characterized the 21st century debates among

politicians and academicians pointing to economic, political and social or cultural resources

amidst the challenge of conceptual contradictions within the theory and practice of citizenship.

National values must be emphasized over the prefoliation of the citizens in form of districts,

regionally ethnically mobilised caucuses, creation of ministries in the pretext of affirmative

action. A deliberate policy to encourage internal migrations, settlement of people and provision

of equal opportunities, national symbols and emphasis on public histories enhance national

citizenship.

Drawing from Bangura, the African philosophy of Ubuntology as the basis for pan Africanism

and recognition of an individual as part of a bigger humanity, forms of localized tendencies,

individualism, monetized politics, politicking, and all forms of violence are avoided. Given the

fact that Uganda was a product of migration and intermarriages, there is no pure tribe in Uganda

(Jørgensen, 1981). This should be utilized to minimize flames of nativism and enhance national

citizenship based on the commonalities in the Ugandan cultural norms and national agenda in

the context of the global citizenship, as argued by Mbembe (2002):

No African is a foreigner in Africa! No African is a migrant in Africa!

Africa is where we all belong, notwithstanding the foolishness of our

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boundaries. No amount of national-chauvinism will erase this. No

amount of deportations will erase this. Instead of spilling black blood on

no other than Pixley ka Seme Avenue (!), we should all be making sure

that we rebuild this Continent and bring to an end a long and painful

history — that which, for too long, has dictated that to be black (it does

not matter where or when), is a liability (Mbembe, 2002)

From the field work study in Buganda, the Banyankole who migrated to Buganda with their

wives lost their individual and family identity. This loss in terms of ancestry and adoption to

new socially constructed identities based on survival mechanisms. It was common to find a title

deed or placard in the living room indicating that for the children and grandchildren, the clan

and the totem of the native Baganda system. It was common to identify themselves as Baganda

in everyday and public life but when together they identified themselves as Banyankole as they

spoke their mother tongue.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

7.1 Introduction

This study set out to: explain why there was largescale migrations between the southwestern

region and Buganda and Bunyoro regions in the period 1894 – 1995, explore the interactions

among the migrants and natives in Uganda during the period, 1894-1995 and examine the

implications of migrancy and nativism on citizenship consciousness in Uganda during the

period 1894-1995.

7.2 Thesis Summary and Conclusion

In the follow-up to objective number one, this study established that in the regions southern,

western and southwestern Uganda during the period 1894-1995, there was constant migration

of people within and across regions. The study established that there were three mainstream

migration patterns across the three regions. These migration patterns were: first, migrant labour

from southwestern region into southern region- Buganda during the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and

1950s. This involved Bakiga, Banyankole and Banyarwanda. Second, the Bakiga migration out

of Kigezi into Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro beginning in the 1940s extending into the 1990s, and

the third, Banyankole-Bakiga migration into Buganda-Kampala, Entebbe, and Wakiso in

response to the opportunities offered the Uganda modern state in civil service and political

offices. The motives for these migrations varied across period understudy. These motives were

nevertheless related to economic needs and human welfare. These motives were in line with

what Ndlovu Goshen (2009), Schapera (1947), Berg (1965), Cohen (1984) and Gulliver (1955)

in South Africa, Bechuanaland, West Africa, South America and Tanganyika respectively, and

fitted well in pull-push theory advanced by Lee.

The labour migration of the 1920s-1960s into Buganda has been widely written about by

Rutabajuuka (1996), Richards (1954), Powesland (1954) and Asiimwe (2002). The reasons for

migration were established as money nexus, need for money to purchase manufactured goods

and payment of government taxes and securing resources for payment of Bride price and

165

establishment of a family. These were consistent with the earlier studies of Jørgensen (1981)

Mamdani (1999) and Rutabajuuka (1996). This study however, established that the nature of

work and various experiences of migrant labourers from Ankole and Kigezi cultivated an

opinion of nativism both among the Baganda – host community and among the migrants

themselves. The host communities described the migrants in discriminatory terms, while the

migrants described their hosts as unreliable and untruthful.

The causes the Bakiga migration into North-Kigezi, Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro were related to

land pressure amidst the general colonial economic policy of encouraging cash crop growing.

It involved individual and family initiatives as well as Bakiga leaders and colonial

government‘s initiatives. The coordination by the Protectorate Government and cooperation

by the Bakiga, Banyankole, Batoro and Banyoro leaders had been reflected in the works of

Ngologoza (1998), Ngologoza (1972) and Carswell (2007). However, the organisation of the

migrant experiences from departure through settlement and the impact of migration in Bunyoro

is the contribution of this work.

Unlike in Buganda where migrant labour created nativist reaction, the migration of the Bakiga

into Bunyoro did not cause controversy until 1990s when conflicts between the native Banyoro

and the Bakiga emerged. The emergence of the violent conflicts were related with politicising

of the electoral processes, ethnicising decentralisation, land scarcity occasioned by continued

migration of the Bakiga. These interactions of the migrants and natives fitted very well in the

Realist Group Conflict Theory (RGCT) advanced by Muzafer Sherif in 1960s.

The migration of the Bakiga and Banyankole into Buganda in the 1960s and 1970s was

occasioned by the opportunities offered by the independent state of Uganda especially in the

civil service. Most of the migrants in this category had originally came to school at Makerere

University or Institute of Teacher Education Kyambogo (ITEK). They were lured by

opportunities of career and employment in Kampala-Buganda to stay and then brought a long

other family members to expand the network. This study has made a contribution in this aspect:

career migration. This wave of migration was not isolated. It involved other communities from

other areas of Uganda.

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Citizenship in Uganda has historically evolved and been moderated by migrancy. Since the

formation of states and in the precolonial era, citizenship was about the process of integration

of people regardless of ethnic ties through assimilation of the migrants. This claim is based on

practices earlier discussed in the previous chapters. The friendship that was made with migrants

was concluded with blood pacts and so blood brotherhood was taken seriously. It was believed

that in case one denied a brother something to drink, the calabash would bust. The traditional

concept of integration cut across all societies, it was not surprising for the Langi to be the rulers

in Bunyoro or the Bamasaba to be rulers in Buganda. Intermarriage was highly encouraged as

a mechanism of absorption. Numbers were very important as commonly expressed in the

universality acceptance of all people in communities, for instance Gwangga mujje among the

Baganda and amahanga mwije among the Bakiga and Banyankole. Aman who impregnated

someone’s wife was never excommunicated nor the bustard child dismissed, rather was

included and taken as a member of the society. Indeed, among the pages of the Kabaka of

Buganda who were murdered in 1886, were among them, non Baganda. Citizenship was driven

by the logic of expansion of the kingdom, where it existed as such or chiefdom in ‘stateless’

societies.

Territorialisation was enhanced by the British colonialists through their policy of indigeneity

which disrupted the process of integration in Uganda. First, in Bunyoro in 1889 when they used

the Baganda against the Banyoro in Bunyoro, and a Muganda, Kakungulu in in Busoga in early

1900s (Twaddle, 1993). The districts were created and premised on the tribalization of Uganda.

Starting with 1900, a systematic process of codification and commodification abruptly and

greatly altered the normal communal African social systems. A migrant who was seen as a

musajja wa Kabaka with kibanja obtained freely, or by gift or sale from a mutaka, became

omugwila which explains the recurrent conflicts in the late 1920s as explained by itinerant

nature of migrants having one leg in Buganda and the other in the area of origin, and throughout

the post-colonial era. This fact explains the behaviour of migrants owning and managing two

homes within the context of the colonial African industrialisation and urbanisation structure.

The limited industrialization that emerged in East Africa during the colonial period was dictated

by the need of British capital and was aimed at protecting British industrial goods from lower-

167

cost foreign manufactures especially from Japan. This type of industrialisation led to wage

employment and industries which were located in the core cities. Increased dependent

industrialization in form of import-substitution led to easing of restrictions on mobility of

Africans they were hitherto rigid (Mamdani, 2017). The easing migration restrictions led to

outpouring of thousands of career migrants who contributed significantly towards making

Kampala, Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi among the fastest growing cities of the world.

During the colonial period, urban policy was aimed at creating healthy areas for Europeans

insulating them from competition from Asian traders and merchants. Asian had been favoured

in the commercial sphere at the expense of Africans. African urbanisation was ignored

throughout the colonial period. Asians were confined to special residential areas in the larger

towns and to “gazetted” townships elsewhere. Though African urban needs were ignored,

African population outnumbered all other races in every city and town in colonial East Africa

from beginning of the colonial period. A combination of factors led African to settle in what

were known as “peri-urban” settlements, areas that emerged around the larger cities

characterized by rural-urban mixture social and cultural life. This rural-urban mix has remained

a feature of African urban dwellers who also maintain a home in rural area.

The study has found out that elites in the post-colonial Uganda worsened interethnic divisions

through evoking migration stories to justify differences among the ethnic groups. Due to the

divisions, the feeling and ideology of natives has always surpassed that of nationhood and

national unity hence making the citizenship question in Uganda recurrent (Musoke, 1999). I

thus propose electoral processes and elected leaders on the administrative units that encourage

nationhood and national unity, as opposed local citizenship. Kingdoms were formerly nations,

they were amalgamated and crafted them into one entity called Uganda 1894. The existence of

different imaginary nationalities and nations in one nation with related competitive interests

makes it difficult to achieve national unity. Migration and intermarriages should be encouraged

to bridge the imaginary differences among the people of Uganda.

168

7.3 Areas for Further Research

The study focuses on the Bakiga migrants and not Banyarwanda from Kigezi. The

Banyarwanda of Kigezi constituted 1.76 percent of Uganda’s population as per 1959 national

census and could have migrated with the Bakiga or on their own. Other groups of the

Banyarwanda were encountered in Mukono during my field study and were even reported on

by Richards to have been assimilated into Baganda by 1954, yet I would hear groups of people

speaking “Kinyarwanda” during my field studies especially in the evenings. The 2014 national

census report shows that the Banyarwanda were 524,096 and were identified as one of the 56

indigenous communities of Uganda as at 1926. The puzzle of whether the Banyarwanda are

indigenous groups or citizens of Uganda or refugees in Uganda, given the existence of a nation-

state called republic of Rwanda becomes more of a research than existential problem, which

should be interrogated by future researchers on citizenship in Uganda.

One of the major triggers to Bakiga migration identified by this study is wattle bark industry

since 1921. It was established that wattle trees led land degradation, decline in food production

and exerted pressure on land. The industry was found to a major force that determined the

Kigezi district into the world capitalism. Further study into the wattle industry is required as a

major export crop that dictated economic life of the Bakiga after the second world war.

Particularly on Bunyoro, this study focused on Bakiga migrants from Kigezi to Bunyoro by

establishing various dynamics of the migratory patterns. However, the study did not cover

refugees or migrants that were forcefully evicted from Mpokya forest reserve to Ruteete and

Kasiita camps or generally, encampage. Some of them have since then escaped, bought land in

Buyaga (Baligira, 2020). Studies on encampage and citizenship puzzles are essential to address

the puzzle of citizenship contestations that have been responsible for violent conflicts in

“internetizens” that are no longer restricted by boundaries nor territorised belongings.

While this study has proposed theoretical notions: migrancy, nativism and citizenship that can

help in illuminating the complex relationship between natives, migrants and citizens in Uganda

with empirical data from the study areas, there is a need to test their applicability.

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Major events in the migration of history of the Bakiga and Banyankole

1. 1894 Uganda declared a British protectorate

2. 1900 Buganda agreement and introduction poll tax

3. 1904 introduction of cotton as a commercial crop in Buganda and discouraging it in

the labour reserves

4. 1920s Beginning of migrant labour phenomenon

5. 1950s first Bakiga migration into Bunyoro

6. 1962 Uganda’s independence

7. 1963 Banning of Bakiga migration into Ankole

8. 1967 Obote abolishes kingdoms

9. 1969 second wave of Bakiga migrants

10. 1975 land reform – Decree land was centralised

11. 1980 third wave of migrants/land acquires very high value

12. 1980s starting to infilling of Bakiga places where they bought

13. 1986 Museveni rises to power

14. 1987 Anti-sectarian Act

15. 1990s Decentralization process and establishment of willing seller and willing buyer,

land become expensive and difficult of find.

16. 1995 The Bakiga increase in Bunyoro especially due to earlier eviction from Toro

17. 1995 Promulgation of the Constitution of republic of Uganda

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187

APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Interview Guides for the Key Participants

o BACKGROUND INFORMATION A) Name (Optional) …………………………………………………………... B) Age…………………………………………………………………………... C) Area of residence: County/Gombolola……………………………………… D) Area of origin: County/Gombolola…………………….……………………. E) Nationality………………………………………….…………………….…. F) Day and Date of the interview ……………………………………………… G) Place of interview………………………………………….…………………

o INTERVIEW GUIDE FOR THE FIRST CATEGORY OF PARTICIPANTS

i) For migrants (60 years and above) in western Uganda 1. In which year did you come here? 2. Why did you shift to this place? 3. Do you own land? How did you acquire it? 4. How did you know that there was land here? 5. How did you know there was work here? 6. When you arrived here, what problems did you experience, here in this homeland? 7. Of the two regions, which one do you call “home” and why?

ii) For natives (60 years and above) in western Uganda 1. In which year did you start experience the influx of people from other areas? 2. Where were they coming from? 3. Why did you accept them in your area? 4. How have you interacted with them since their arrival? 5. Did you interact/ welcome them as “Ugandans or as “Bafuruki”? 6. What challenges have you faced while living or interacting with them? 7. How did you try to solve them? 8. How do you feel about the Bafuruki? 9. Which activities did they engaged on and after their arrival? 10. Is their stay a loss or gain? Why?

iii) For the returnees from Buganda 1. In which year did you travel to Buganda?

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2. Why did you have to travel that long distance and far away land? How many times did you travel?

3. What problems did you encounter on that journey, and during your stay? 4. How long did you stay in Buganda? 5. What kind of job were you doing? 6. Can you say your journey was gainful or a loss? Why? 7. Are there people that you travelled with who settled in Buganda? Why do you think

they settled and for you, not? iv) For those who stayed in Buganda

1. In which year did you travel to Buganda? 2. How many times did you travel to and fro before settling? 3. For what reasons did you travel? 4. What problems did you encounter when you first travelled/ how did you go

about them? 5. Which region did you come from? 6. How often do you go back “home” and for what? 7. Where in Buganda have you settled? 8. Why did you settle here, not “home”? 9. Do you have a home/house at “home”? 10. Why do you have to keep two “homes”? 11. Do you own land here in your new home? 12. How did you acquire the land?

v) For natives in Buganda

1. Are you aware there are waves of migrants in Buganda? If yes, where did they come from?

2. What is the native word(s) used to describe people from other regions? Specify if they are different at different points in time.

3. In which year did you start experiencing the influx of people from other areas? 4. Why did you accept them in your area? 5. How have you interacted with them since their arrival? 6. Did you interact/ welcome them as Ugandans or as foreigners? 7. What challenges have you faced while living or interacting with them? 8. How did you try to solve them? 9. How do you feel about the migrants from other regions of the country? 10. Which activities did they engaged on and after their arrival? 11. Is their stay with you a loss or gain? Why?

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o INTERVIEW GUIDE FOR THE SECOND CATEGORY OF PARTICIPANTS i) About western Uganda

a. What do you know about migration in Uganda and in your area? b. What is the genesis of the term “Bafuruki”? c. In your opinion, what is citizenship? d. a) Did the natives welcome the Bafuruki as “Ugandans” or as “Aliens”? Briefly

explain your answer. e. Do you think the “Bafuruki” migrated to “Uganda “or to an “alien land”? f. Why do you think the “Bafuruki” migrated to Bunyoro? g. What was the impact of their migration on the state and citizenship? h. What is your opinion on the relationship between the “Bafuruki” and the natives.

Have you noticed any change in attitudes over the years?

ii) About southern Uganda 1. Why have people continued to migrate from their ancestral areas to Buganda? 2. Describe how natives feel towards other identities in this region. 3. From your experience, what is the term that best describe people from other regions

to Buganda? 4. What is citizenship in the context of Uganda? 5. Are there any noticeable conflicts that have taken place between the migrants and

natives? Explain your answer. 6. How did the regime/ Ugandan state address the identified conflicts? 7. What is your opinion on the relationship between the migrants and natives. Have

you noticed any change in attitudes over the years? 8. Any other comments about this study?

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Appendix 2: Written Document/Archival Analysis Schedule

1. Type of document to analyse

• Statistical report • Minutes of meetings • Committee report • Memorandum • Court document • Speech • News letter • Associations’ bye-laws • Constitutions • Police reports • Letters • Others as will be specified

2. The Date when and the place where the researcher read the document...................... 3. The author and the title of the document............................ Date/ year when it was

written......................................................... the position/title/designation of the writer................................................................................................... Intended audience and intentions of the writer..........................................................

4. Characteristics of the document e.g. stamp signature/thump print, people in attendance list......................................................................................................

5. The central tenets in the document................................................................ • Interesting ideas expressed........................................ • Emerging themes, personalities, evidence and techniques used in writing the

document 6. What was found from the document, and supporting evidence...................... 7. Reference to a person or alternative document or an episode that can help in

understanding of the subject better....................................................

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Appendix 3: Audio-Visual Sound Recording Worksheet

1. Preparation for listening

i) Whose voice am going to listen to? ……………………….. ii) When was it recorded? …………………….. Who recorded it ………... iii) Where was it recorded from? ……………………. iv) Why was it recorded?................................... v) Language used in recording …………. vi) For whom was the voice recorded…………...

2. The course of Listening i) What type of recording is it?

a) Committee meeting b) Court argument c) Village meeting d) Speech (whose speech? And what type?) e) Testimony f) Interview g) Any other

ii) What are the gestures/ tone of the speaker in the recording suggest? iii) What are the unique elements expressed in the recording?

a) Back ground sound b) Commentary c) Narration

3. After listening to the recording

i) What insights/ important elements have I identified about migration in Uganda?

ii) How do migrants relate with the natives in Uganda? iii) What determines the nature of the relationship between migrants and natives?

iv) How does the relationship identified imply on citizenship consciousness? v) Evidence in the recording to ascertain the purpose and the audience intended for the message

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Appendix 4: Transport arrangements for the Bakiga Migrants

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Appendix 5: Project Information Sheet

Research Project Title: A History the implication Migrancy, Nativism, and Citizenship in Uganda, 1894 -1995: A case of southern and western Uganda Dear Participant, You are kindly requested to take part in this research project, it is, however, important that you understand why the research is being done and what it will entail. Kindly take the time to read the following information carefully.

i) Purpose of the Project: This is a purely academic research project (PhD).

ii) You have been chosen because of your experience, knowledge, and ability in this research area. The interview is likely to take 45 minutes but you reserve the right to withdraw at any point/step.

iii) Possible risks of taking part: Participating in the research is anticipated that it may

cause you some emotional harm or distress/discomfort based on your status as a migrant.

iv) Possible benefits of taking part. The findings will be shared by other researchers in

academic fora. While there are no immediate benefits to be accrued.

v) Confidentiality. All the information that will be collected from you during the research will be kept strictly confidential. You/your institution will not be identified in any reports or publications unless you request me to do so or with your permission.

vi) Data collected from you will be shared in an anonymized form to allow reuse by

other researchers unless you permit or request me to use or identify your real name.

vii) You will be recorded with your consent. But if you feel uncomfortable being recorded, I will take notes to which you are free to read in case you wish so. The purpose of voice recording is to help in proper management and utilization of time.

viii) This project has been ethically approved by Makerere University School of Social

Sciences Research Ethics Committee (MAKSSREC) and the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST).

ix) Should you require any further information, clarification, guidance, displeasure or

comment about this project, do not hesitate to contact the following persons or

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directly The Head, Department of History Makerere University P.O Box 7062 Kampala.

Name Title Telephone

contact Email address

Tunanukye Nicholas

Principal researcher

0772015755 ntunanukye@gmail.com

Dr. Simon Peter Rutabajuuka

Project Supervisor

0758152720 petersimonr@gmail.com

Dr. Deo Nzarwa Katono

Project Supervisor

0772466457 deon.katono@gmai.com

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Appendix 6: Consent Form (Detailed informed consent forms are attached including the

translated versions)

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202

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Appendix 7: A Sketch Map of The Bantu and Luo Migration Patterns into Uganda 1800

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Appendix 8: Routes and destinations of migrant labourers in Uganda, 1931-1959

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Appendix 9: Risk Management Plan

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Appendix 10: Research clearance from National Council for Science and Technology

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Appendix 11: Introduction Letter from Department of History, Archaeology and Heritage

Studies, Makerere University

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Appendix 12: Places related with Bakiga Migrants in Western and Southern Uganda

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Appendix 13: Migration Waves in Uganda, 1984-1995

Source: Langlands, 1975: 18; Natives of Buganda

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Appendix 14: Migration Patterns in Uganda since 1962

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Appendix 15: List of Participants

S/No Pseudo

Name

Respondent’s Name Age Date of

Interview

Area of Interview

1. RR1 David Bashangirwe 70 07/01/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

2. RR2 Fred Gonjebwa 68 07/01/2020 Magoogo,

Bamunanika

3. RR3 Kiggundu Joseph 78 30/01/2020 Kalagi, Kyampisi

4. RR4 Ms. Kayaga Ruth 84 01/02/2020 Kyabakadde

5. RR5 Ms Mary Kyompaire

Ssekabira

67 30/01/2020 Kyampisi,

Kyaggwe

6. RR6 Ssalongo Matiya Mawanda 73 29/01/2020 Kakoora, Kyampisi

Kyaggwe

7. RR7 Muhammed Kiiza 65 29/01/2020 Kakoora, Kyampisi

Kyaggwe

8. RR8 Mulumba Fred 72 31/01/2020 Kyabakadde

9. RR9 Ms. Naigaga Rose 60 30/01/2020 Kakoora, Kyampisi

Kyaggwe

10. RR10 Ndawula Mugerwa

Zaverio

60 31/01/2020 Kyabakadde

11. RR11 Ms. Pasikali Ninani 65 07/02/2020 Nalweweta

12. RR12 Ssalongo Kalule Stephen 60 29/01/2020 Kakoora, Kyampisi

Kyaggwe

13. RR13 Ssembogo

Kusigalawokuzirinda

83 29/01/2020 Kakoora, Kyampisi

Kyaggwe

14. RR14 Bahume Bonaventule 75 31/07/2021 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

15. RR15 Dickson Kangave 82 28/07/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

215

16. RR16 Ms. Lubega Diliane 60 31/07/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

17. RR17 Ms Joseph Ssali 60 31/07/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

18. RR18 Ssegilinya William 62 30/07/2020 Bbuto A

Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

19. RR19 Yiga Charles 60 28/07/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

20. RR2O Ms. Nakumbi Florence 68 29/07/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

21. RR21 Nalongo Ssajjabi 80 31/07/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

22. RR22 Ssebyala Abdul 60 28/07/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

23. RR23 Babigamba Sabit Patrick 70 08/07/2020 Kagadi

24. RR24 Ms. Namukasa Tepista 72 09/07/2020 Kagadi

25. RR25 Ms. Nantume Frolence 78 09/07/2020 Kagadi

26. RR26 Bindeba S 88 07/07/2020 Kagadi

27. RR27 Gastone Ndyanabangi 82 09/07/2020 Kagadi

28. RR28 Patrisio Tibamwenda 76 09/07/2020 Kagadi

29. RR29 Ms. Boniconsira Kyarimpa 75 09/07/2020 Kagadi

30. RR30 Rwomuhanda Banada 72 10/07/2020 Kagadi

31. RR31 Kahwa Lewo 73 10/07/2020 Kagadi

32. RR32 David Besigye 68 10/07/2020 Kagadi

33. RR33 G.W. Sebazungu 70 10/07/2020 Kagadi

34. RR34 Kyeyune Desteo 80 10/07/2020 Kagadi

35. RR35 Ms Kugonza Beatrice 77 09/07/2020 Kagadi

36. RR36 Edward Mugerwa 40 13/02/2020 ACAO, Kagadi

37. RR37 Gafabusa Deo 60 14/02/2020 Kagadi

216

38. RR38 Baguma Isoke 14/02/2020 Kagadi

39. RR39

Mwambutsya Ndebesa 65 07/10/2020 Kampala

40. RR40 Ssenyonga Gabriel 77 08/10/2020 Kagadi

41. RR41 Bindeba Sylivester 81 09/07/2020 Kagadi

42. RR42 Mutumba John 65 08/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

43. RR43 Jeremiah Kayemba 80 07/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

44. RR44 Mpoza Pasikali 72 07/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

45. RR45 Kakooza Alozinus 74 07/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

46. RR46 Musoke Edward 64 08/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

47. RR47 Sempa Christopher 64 07/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

48. RR48 Kirongozi Falasiko 89 08/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

49. RR49 Thomas Kayensanga 75 07/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

50. RR50 Kironde Robert 79 07/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

51. RR51 Ms. Kyeyune Costance 82 30/01/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

52. RR52 Ms. Nayiza Norah 80 31/01/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

53. RR53 Nankabirwa M 75 29.01.2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

217

54. RR54 Kirizostom Kiggundu 83 08/02/2020 Nalweweta,

Bamunanika

55. RR55 Abel Busya 89 06.08.2020 Bitereko,Mitooma

56. RR56 F. Kakooko 98 06.08.2020 Kyankukwe,

Mitooma

57. RR57 Mataze Eryesafu 78 07.08.2020 Rutiward1,

Kashenshero TC

58. RR58 SK. Dagarasi 85 07.08.2020 Ruhinda

59. RR59 Karitundu Yorokamu 80 07.08.2020 Rubiingo, Ruhinda

60. RR60 Kazingo Maritazare 77 07.08.2020 Mitooma, Ruhinda

61. RR61 Ms.Kibakiza 83 06.08.2020 Mitooma, Ruhinda