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The gods love Kanyandahi and Agago; they should be afraid (Part 2)

Author, Charles Onyango Obbo. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- "My hometown of Tororo, once densely populated, has worn and tired soils. This means no one is about to kill us over it, so we can sleep peacefully on. those ends.”
Last week in “Why Mwenda will cry while Kabushenga is laughing (Part I)”, we looked at how domestic politics, and competition over resources like water and land, sometimes inform the government’s geopolitical posture and even use of force abroad – whether consciously or unconsciously.
In that context, sections of the Ugandan military leadership have recently taken to romanticising the Chwezi dynasty. After a good run, the Chwezi empire was ultimately defeated by the Luo led by Isingoma Rukiidi Mpuga around 1500 CE.
The Chwezi applause has necessitated some diplomatic contortions, like the celebration of Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army founder late Maj Gen Fred Rwigyema, who was also a decorated officer in the NRA, at the same time as Kampala remains in a long standoff with the current RPF government in Kigali.
A knowledgeable Ugandan scholar of our history is intrigued by the Chwezi fascination and tells me it’s real attraction could be in the fact that the dynasty was defeated by the Luo. That element, he says, subtly makes the point that modern Buganda was founded by the Luo, and those who currently claim it is their “Ebyaffe” are usurpers.
“It would be a mistake to see the Chwezi thing as an attempt by the house of Kaguta to seize history and establish itself as the successor of the dynasty. One of the things it does say is “hey, none of us are the original folks on this land, so let us not get hot over it’”, he says.
We have been brought to this point by several factors that have happened to land in Uganda, and Buganda in particular. Migrations and population growth have continued to swell the number of Ugandans living in Buganda. Secondly, most of the Ugandan economy has remained centred disproportionately in Buganda. It has made Buganda an ever more valuable market, and the exploitation of nature to feed and house it has trashed the environment, depleting water resources and gobbling up lots of lands, which has made what remains ridiculously valuable.
The current push to dismantle the mailo land regime is politics in the service of a liberal market demand to redistribute land in Buganda very differently.
The new generation investment in farming, that we see at my friend Robert Kabushenga’s farm in Rgyeyo is partly a response to the sharp appreciation of the Buganda market, and the technology choices he has made in especially water, speak to the real crisis that the same land is in.
That is why last week, I argued that by the end of this century Kabushenga’s great-great-grandchildren might be living in a palatial home there, while the good man Andrew Mwenda’s more lush and water-rich Kanyandahi will be in the hands of new economic forces, some of them possibly even predatory. The problem Mwenda faces in Kanyandahi is that he has too much of a good thing.
In part of the wider Tooro that is littered with a world-beating number of lakes, Kanyandahi and the areas around are unusual in that they are not littered with villages like in some other parts of Uganda. So you have these beautiful rolling hills and fertile lands, and their lakes, with well-appointed homes sitting almost alone on many of them.
What many Ugandans might not know, is that the crater lake region has easily the most expensive land outside Kampala in the country. It is clear what is coming next.
The Uganda People’s Defence Forces recently went into the Democratic Republic of Congo to pursue the Islamic State-linked Allied Democratic Forces, blamed for the recent spate of deadly suicide bombs in Kampala.
But the ADF is merely a backdrop to an Uganda economic play to corner the lucrative DRC market, evident in the announcement first made more than two years ago for Uganda to build roads in eastern DRC.
Add to that the oil pipeline snaking from the Albertine to the Tanzanian port of Tanga, the premium of Mwenda’s backyard will be so high in the next few years, if his grandchildren don’t sell, they will be driven out by force.
The whole militarised approach toward the oil exploration, the auxiliary actions in DRC against ADF, and earlier the brutal takedown on the Rwenzuru Kingdom have established the terms in which the precious economic assets in places like Kanyandahi will be obtained.
And so it will be in the northern sub-region, but we don’t have space for that. Agago in northern Uganda was recently described by someone as “perhaps the last place in Uganda where the gods of heaven meet Earth”. That is how breathtaking and strangely beautiful it is. And that too is its Kanyandahi problem.
My hometown of Tororo, once densely populated, has worn and tired soils. This means no one is about to kill us over it, so we can sleep peacefully on those ends.
Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3