Massacre in Kasese, and what we can learn from the 1966 Buganda crisis

Hours before the slaughter in Kasese at the weekend, in which some reports allege that as many as 95 people could have been killed in clashes between security forces and Rwenzururu King Mumbere’s guards, President Yoweri Museveni had just published an article on the meaning of foul-mouthed Donald Trump’s victory in the US election.

At one point, he wrote that: “Many of the [African] stooges or foreign oppressors spend a lot of time looking for foreign sponsors, rather than looking for ways of how to reconcile with their own people” (emphasis mine).

Whether, as the government says, it was the king’s royal guards who attacked the security forces first, or as Rwenzururu activists say, it was a premeditated “massacre” against the king’s palace staff, it was a dramatic and tragic failure of the local reconciliation process that Museveni wrote of.

The photographs of piled up bodies of half-naked men, who seemed to have been killed execution-style, conjured up shocking scenes from some medieval slaughter, or the closing battle in the Season 6 finale of Game of Thrones.

For capturing some of that madness for posterity, journalist Joy Doreen Biira, was arrested and faces charges of “abetting terrorism”! Beyond the decades-old grievances with the politics of successive central governments in Uganda that have driven these conflicts in the Rwenzori region, something more disturbing is going on.

Mumbere is a king who, much like the rest of the “monarchs” in Uganda, got his kingdom back partly through the calculation that the would be vessel for channelling support to President Museveni.

These kingdoms are not financially autonomous, still dependent on the State for largesse and upkeep. Even in the face of sharp disagreements, it is hard to imagine that communication would have broken down so much that the weekend slaughter couldn’t have been prevented. The fact that there was a breakdown, therefore raises the question of how we got here. For decades now in Uganda, the preference has been to privilege violence. Ugandans who have chosen peaceful, non-violent – and played by the book – have been swatted away, beaten down, jailed, or even killed.

But those who took up arms quickly got an olive branch, and patronage. Without well-developed mechanisms to solve the political grievances that lead to violence, there was always a risk that psychopaths like the Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony, who could not be won over by the usual blandishments and groceries would come along, and tip the cart. And that is exactly what happened. In its early years, the ruling NRM had many people who had the skills and understanding of how to do political conflict resolution.

But they fell by the roadside, because it is not a neutral activity. If there are adept political deal makers in a government, and the regime relies on them, it has to give them power to do deals, and accept that they will share in some of the glory. That glory in turn becomes political capital that they can leverage. Invariably, it means sharing a bit of power with the big man. Not surprisingly, that road was quickly closed.

Today, as the FDC people know better than anyone else, even an election in Uganda is a war. It would seem then that all claimants on the centre, are being driven to extremes. In 2009, a similar confrontation nearly developed between Buganda Kingdom and the government. It was averted not because there was an institutional safeguard, but in large part because of geography – Buganda is too central – and also Kabaka Ronald Mutebi had calm enough nerves not be pushed over the cliff by humiliation.

He learnt his lesson well, and has since pushed changes in the Lukiiko (parliament) and his cabinet, which have elevated moderates and sidelined hotheads. Not many men with some power easily understand that you don’t get to fight the next battle if you are dead.

King Mumbere, it would seem, doesn’t have the wits for this kind of long game – and thus either has lieutenants who didn’t weigh the risks of going on the offensive, or didn’t know how to surrender quickly or flee to avoid a bloodbath if it were the government forces that set upon the royal guards.

Whatever mistakes were made, we are where we are now. There were those scenes of fires burning in Mumbere’s palace. They are familiar. We first saw them in 1966, with Milton Obote and Gen Idi Amin standing over on a hill, looking at the Lubiri palace after it was attacked.

If that 1966 crisis taught us anything, it is that a people always outlast a regime. But our history also teaches us that wise men and women should not wait to find out what happens at that point. They prevent it.

Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3