Photo: Road to Kahondo ka Byamarembo, January 22, 2017
The districts of Kabale, Rubanda and Rukiga constitute an area that was known as Bushengyera before the advent of British colonial rule. Whereas bits of Rukiga and Ndorwa were part of the Kingdom of Mpororo, most of Bushengyera has never had any sustained hereditary chieftaincy or kingdom. Its people, mostly Abakiga and new immigrants such as Abakonjo ba Kahondo, enjoyed a rugged individualism that was incompatible with subservience to fellow adults.
This changed when colonial rule forced them into submission to centralized power after the formal designation of Kigyezi as a district in 1911. The early years were very difficult, with some heroic resistance struggles, mixed with lawlessness that earned Abakiga an unfair characterization as unruly and ungovernable. The historical record shows that Abakiga eventually joined the other ethnic communities in a union that co-existed in colonial Kigyezi, within the Uganda Protectorate. Abahororo, Abakiga, and Abanyarwanda, and the minority groups within Kigyezi forged a union, led by men and women that had a shared vision for development of what was a rather poor part of the Uganda Protectorate.
This shared vision was constantly undermined by the antagonistic politics that consumed the last years of British rule and the transition to Uganda’s independence. The people of Bushengyera, divided by the religious conflicts between Native Anglicans and Roman Catholics, excelled in meaningless wars that threatened to derail their hopes for socio-economic progress. However, they were led by men and women who valued formal education enough to set aside their religious and political differences in their pursuit of a common good. The results of their actions are evident more than half-a-century later.
The transformative impact of Kilembe mine workers’ remittances to Kigyezi District is a classic example of a positive outcome that follows union of purpose and action. That money provided bursaries for many Banyakigyezi boys and girls whose parents were not in position to finance their education in the 1960s and early seventies. The visionary leaders of Kigyezi at the time subscribed to an unwritten policy that no child would be left behind on account of financial constraints.
I know the passion and transparency with which those leaders implemented that policy. As Speaker of Kigyezi District Council (1967-71), my father was an ex-officio member of the District Education Committee. That committee decided who qualified for the precious bursaries, basing the awards on a combination of merit and need. I remember my father and his senior administration colleagues - John Bitunguramye, the secretary general, Karisiti Semiriho, the district treasurer, Eriya Mbareeba, the administrative secretary, and Y. K. Buregyeya, the assistant administrative secretary - huddled over reams of documents in our living room at Ndorwa, Kabaare, shortlisting students for consideration by the committee.
We naturally eavesdropped while serving them tea, carrying ourselves as though oblivious to the content of their discussions. Years later, I learnt from my father and some of those gentlemen, that they were driven by a desire to be fair, and to be seen to have been fair. They always sought confirmation of the candidates’ needy status from their local chiefs before awarding the bursaries. No doubt they did not please everyone. I occasionally overheard conversations about people that had complained that they had been denied bursaries. My father explained that the limited funds could only stretch so far.
He would often refer to the bursary scheme as one his happiest experiences in government. Having been orphaned young and having been helped through school by the kindness of people to whom he was not biologically related, my father was always sensitive to the needs and struggles of the poor. That was a trait he shared with many of his peers, for most had shed goatskins and shepherds’ sticks in exchange for cotton clothes and pencils that changed their personal and family lives.
I smile with deep gratitude and pride that, to my knowledge, the entire process was very transparent and fair. Not a single child of my father was awarded one of those bursaries. I am almost certain that the children of the other committee members and other government officials were automatically disqualified. We did not qualify for two main reasons. First, my father, though financially walking a very tightrope given his large extended family, was a salaried employee of the government. Furthermore, my mother was a small-scale commercial vegetable farmer whose income took care of our needs. Second, theirs was a generation that tried to avoid conflict of interest, perhaps the fruit of the East African Christian Revival Movement, and the influence of their years in the British colonial civil service.
It was especially remarkable that this happened at a time of Abanyama and Ababoga, two political factions of the ruling Uganda People’s Congress in Kigyezi, whose combustible relationships were always on the brink of eruption. Abanyama were aligned with John Wycliffe Lwamafa, a cabinet minister in the central government. I knew him very well, for he was a family friend. Ababoga were aligned with John Bikangaga, the Rutakirwa Engabo ya Kigyezi (Constitutional Head) from 1964 to 1967, who went on to serve as Chairman of the National Housing and Construction Corporation and, later, Chairman of the Uganda Public Service Commission. I knew him very well, for he too was a family friend. Both men were very good people, classic gentlemen that came of age in the early years of colonial Kigyezi.
The story of Abanyama and Ababoga is definitively told by Charles Kabuga in his autobiography and in his chapter in “A History of Kigezi in Southwest Uganda, edited by Donald Denoon (1972).” Kabuga’s account is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the futility of factional, emotions-driven politics that is devoid of ideological differences. Sixty years after that dangerous rift, one still struggles to understand what, besides egos and excitement, the fight was about.
Most of the fighters in that sordid episode have died. Hardly anyone left their personal account of what drove them into the madness. The two principals – Bikangaga and Lwamafa - graciously acknowledged to me that they regretted having been associated with the factional fight. “We failed you,” Lwamafa told me in December 1987, the last time that I spent precious time with him in Kampala. The “you” he was referring to were the young people of Kigyezi, for whom much more could have been achieved had the foolish and destructive cleavages along religious and partisan lines not consumed the adults’ emotions and time. Bikangaga expressed similar sentiments and spent the rest of his life working to be the uniter and voice of reason among Banyakigyezi. Sadly, neither gentleman left a published written account of his life for posterity.
Today’s political representatives and leaders have something to learn from the men and women who held our very fragile country together in the first decade of independence. They had the capacity to separate their tough political contests from the common interest. Factions across the country and within the main national political parties did not trump our shared priorities, especially health care and education. Politicians across the divide protected these things for all of us.
My father was a Muboga, yet he went to great lengths to ensure that the sons and daughters of Abanyama continued their education with the help of the Kigyezi bursaries. It was a spirit that he shared with colleagues, some of whom were Abanyama, driven by the simple idea that common interests must transcend narrow personal and factional ones. To them, Abanyakigyezi, competing on a national stage for the limited education and professional opportunities in the newly independent country, owed each other a loyalty that could not be dimmed by petty politics and personal greed.
Interestingly, our education was everybody else’s business. My father’s friends, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, Abanyama or Ababoga, Abahororo, Abakiga or Abanyarwanda (for that is how we called the people of Bufumbira), were genuinely keen to know that I was not wasting my parents’ money in my high school in a distant land. “Make us proud,” some would urge me, for they believed that I was part of their collective investment.
Likewise, parents of my high school peers from other parts of Uganda talked to me as though I was their own son, keen to know about my progress, sharing words of encouragement. To them, I was a Ugandan kid. I was their own. I was their future.
The future of Kigyezi will be determined by the attitudes and actions of today’s adults, especially the leaders, representatives and opinion leaders of our community. That future calls upon us to abandon personality cultism and embrace shared visions, common interests, and action plans, all anchored by principled adherence to evidence-based development strategies.
When it comes to Kigyezi, we should be neither Catholic, nor Protestant; neither Abakiga, nor Abafumbira; neither Abahororo, nor Abanyarwanda; neither Abatwa, nor Abanyabutumbi; neither NRM, nor Opposition; and neither male, nor female. We are all Banyakigyezi, walking in the footsteps of Ngorogoza and Rukeribuga, Barisigara and Bazanyamaso, Katabaazi and Kabagambe, Mulera and Bitunguramye, Mpambara and Semiriho, Buregyeya and Karekaho, Lwamafa and Bikangaga, Kivengere and Halem’Imana. We can build on their positive legacy, even as we learn from their mistakes. We must.
© Muniini K. Mulera