Violence is firmly rooted in Uganda’s politics

By Kalundi Serumaga

It has been gratifying to see how much genuine interest there has been in the matters raised for discussion in my two recent articles published in this newspaper.

These then went on to attract responses from two separate academics. One was titled ‘Buganda dilemma: Reply to Serumaga’ Mr Moses Khisa, which was published on Saturday, August 29, 2020; and the other was “Can ethnicity be delinked from Uganda’s politics?” by Ms Anitah Atwijuka Bwiira, which ran on Friday, September 4 2020.

In reading both responses, I see that both academics insist that I think, through either my conviction or my delusion, that the National Unity Platform (NUP) is a party promoting Ganda nationalism.

In one case, the assertion is that I have been misled in my understanding of NUP, and in the other conversely, because I apparently think it is a right and proper thing for NUP to do.

The immediate problem in both cases is that I said no such things. What is more, I was arguing the very opposite of the readings they have managed to make. My points were simple: that it is standard practice here to stigmatise Baganda politicians by accusing them of wanting to “take over,” whenever they participate in national political projects, or for being “segregationist” when, possibly in reaction to the first accusation, they do not join in with others.

But this is not the real issue. The point was not whether NUP is a Ganda nationalist party or not; it was that it was being accused of being one, simply because some politicians who are Baganda decided to join it. My point was that Baganda politicians should stop being stigmatised in this way, just for being Baganda.

Secondly, that there is nothing wrong with Ganda, or other kind of native ethnic nationalism, and so it should also stop being stigmatised, by confusing it with tribalism, nepotism, or the actions of individual politicians from a given ethnicity.

I also, therefore, offered an explanation between the differences between tribalism, nepotism and ethnic nationalism, pointing out that ethnic nationalism is legitimate and long standing factor of our public life, and does not need a political party to express itself.

But the fact that both these commentators assumed that I was seeing (and endorsing) Ganda nationalism in the NUP is a very important fact in itself.

Their complete failure to understand (by which I do not mean “agree with”) my arguments is not a random outcome. It is an even better illustration of the very points I was trying to make in the initial article, regarding the intellectual crisis of republicanism.

It reminded me of a story involving my then primary school nephew, who had been marked down in his homework, and he accused his father of having guided him badly while he was doing it. The issue was a name. The boy had written “Kizito,” which happens also to be his father’s name, as a requested example of a Christian name.

This was marked as wrong. The boy requested an explanation, as he had been told it was Christian. This is now how my brother found himself at the school seeking audience with the teacher. After all, his reputation was now at stake.

My brother requested the mark be adjusted because Kizito was, in fact, a Christian name. The teacher, a gentleman from the north, was skeptical.

This obliged my brother to offer some historical context. He explained how Catholic saints are made (through doing exceptional work for the faith), and how the 14-year-old convert Kizito became one of the Uganda Martyrs executed in 1886.

This status was conferred by the then Pope in 1969, but because Kizito had not yet been baptised, his native clan name became his saint name, and so any Catholic anywhere in the world, through baptism can take it, just as say, “Livingstone”, or even “Mary” became Christian names in their time.

Big mistake. My brother described to me that as soon as certain words necessary to the explanation (Kabaka, Buganda, Mwanga, totem etc) came out of his mouth, the teacher became increasingly agitated, and began shaking his head vigorously while, protesting “No!....No!…No, No..!”, until my brother simply gave up. The mark stood.

I have had similar experiences. One on occasion, it was a fairly well-known published Ugandan author of Rwandan descent who literally ran from me, hands over her ears and shaking her head, when in the course of our conversation, I happened to mention how “Uganda” is simply the Kiswahili pronunciation of “Buganda” ( as “Unyoro” and “Usoga” also are respectively).

It is an experience many a Muganda , if they wished to, could recount in various “Ugandan” spaces (at work, in school, in boardrooms, in mixed marriages, in political parties), over the decades. So we have to reflect on this, because it is instructive -in two ways- regarding how my simple explanation of two weeks ago, has also been received.

Firstly, we have reached a point were blind prejudice will trigger educators and intellectuals to the point that facts cannot be allowed to stand, and they may create alternative facts of their own.

In both writers’ responses for instance, it seems that the mere fact that it is a Muganda writing in defence of ethnic nationalism, meant that the actual contents of the article could be ignored, and a wholly new interpretation taken on then argued with based on that fact alone.

Then Ms Anitah Atwijuka Bwiira takes this pathology further, in asserting that Buganda, as well as other first nations, did not exist until colonialism created them. “They are colonial constructs, shaped by colonial institutions, ….. To build a state, colonialists formed political identities, including ethnic ones…,” she said.

Buganda’s role
In 1860, the Arab explorer Snay bin Amir who, writing of the “Sultan of Buganda who resides in the Kibuga” first reported Buganda to the outside world. “Sultan” is a political office, as an Arab would understand a Kabaka, and “Kibuga” means the capital, or administrative seat.

In the same vein, Mr Khisa says: “Serumaga, and other Baganda intelligentsia, may well argue that Buganda’s aspirations and interests cannot be subordinated to the thinking of the wider Uganda. The problem though is that Buganda entered a marriage, whether forced or consented to, for which divorce is nearly impossible.”

It is not clear from where he has met “the thinking of wider Uganda” given that we do have real elections, and the last real consultation on this matter, The 1992 Odoki Commission, found a majority to favour federation.
As for the vexed schoolteacher, the martyrs becoming saints was actually so big an issue that it occasioned the first ever papal visit to Africa in 1969.

How do all these educated minds not know such facts in subjects on which they wish to hold an opinion?
Let us have no doubt, the moment one either insists a people never existed before, or should stop claiming to exist, one is advocating violence against them. And not just simple violence, but measures aimed at eradication of those peoples. This is the extent to which what is essentially a fascist attitude has been normalised and made a respectable facet of republican politics.

This is the thing in common between Mr Khisa, and Ms Bwiira, whose own recommendation for these “colonial constructs” is to “collapse them.”

And once more, it speaks to elite opportunism. If were to accept Ms Bwiira’s Mamdanist argument that ethnicity is a “colonial construct” that, therefore, must be collapsed, then it raises the question of why the state of Uganda itself, which is also a colonial construct, should be protected, and not also “collapsed?” Why is one alleged “colonial construct” “bad”, and yet the thing that allegedly created it, and is an actual colonial construct “good”?

Which all brings us back to the second aspect of this intellectual crisis: violence, as demonstrated by my nephew’s teacher who simply could not mentally process the possibility of a native African identity also being a part of the contemporary world.

In this case, Ms Bwiira cannot mentally process the idea of Africans having home-grown statehood from their own abilities, which can also exist as part of today’s world. And in all cases, they are then educationally programmed to mentally shut down as I have shown either through a violent, emotional reaction, or an insistence on arguing with imaginary points, or denial that the thing they are arguing against even exists, even as they argue with it.

This is a process of persons being wilfully ignorant, and proceeding to use that ignorance as a justification for being violent.

With such a background we are really obliged to examine ourselves. Are we really still providing an education? Or do we have actually educated people? Because the purpose of mission school education seems to have been to create people who can advocate for, and possibly design, policies of oppression and violent erasure in elaborately formulated (“forced marriage; “collapse”) English.

But as I said before, this is not a problem for Buganda only. Buganda is simply the most visible expression of native discomfort with this violent European imposition, which is masked elsewhere because the elites of many other parts of Uganda long accepted to swallow this violent colonial erasure of their actual selves. Their frustration with many elite and ordinary Baganda is that in our refusal to do the same, we keep the issue of native identity on the table, creating guilt, and discomfort. Hence the calls for violence, as we can see even in these worrying responses.

It is one of the reasons that violence, as we have just been seeing in the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party primaries, is so firmly rooted in our practice of politics, because it has been normalised.

What republicans always fail to realise is that the violent culture they advocate will not restrict itself to silencing the native voice: it will end up being used to cancel out each other.