KIBAALE: A political conflict that needs a moral solution

Jun 10, 2003

KIBAALE is not an ordinary district. It is the history of the Lost Counties.

Kibaale is not an ordinary district. It is the history of the Lost Counties. According to the First Schedule of the 1995 Constitution, Kibaale District is not part of Bunyoro Kingdom. And yet Kibaale was curved from Hoima District that remains part of Bunyoro Kingdom.
The history of the Lost Counties and therefore of Kibaale, is a complicated one and embedded in our colonial heritage. The Kingdom of Bunyoro under Omukama Kabalega resisted British colonialism. Buganda Kingdom assisted the British colonialists to defeat Kabalega. And for this, Buganda was rewarded the two counties of Buyaga and Bugangaizi, which were annexed to the Buganda Kingdom. The Banyoro, however, claim they were six counties that were originally part of Bunyoro Kingdom.
In 1918, a pressure group called Mubende Banyoro Committee (MBC) was established with the purpose of lobbying for the return of the Lost Counties to Bunyoro Kingdom. The activism of MBC was instructive in the 1964 referendum in which the people living in the Lost Counties voted to be administered by Bunyoro Kingdom.
It should be noted that the holding of this referendum sparked off the first disagreement between President Frederick Mutesa II (who was also kabaka of Buganda) and Prime Minister Milton Obote that was to culminate into the Buganda Crisis of 1966.
The formation of Kibaale District constituting the lost counties in 1991 was seen as an attempt by the government to resolve (or dissolve) one of the legacies of our colonial heritage that has always been referred to as a historical injustice to Banyoro.
One of the reasons for which the people from the lost counties sought to return to Bunyoro was the assumption that the land belonging to Baganda would automatically revert to Banyoro. It was not to be.
While the Lost Counties were administratively returned to Bunyoro, the Baganda landlords remained bona fide owners of tracts of land given to them by the colonial government. And the Banyoro remained squatters on those lands.
Enter the Bakiga. The settlement of Bakiga in Bunyoro dates as way back as 1972 when a settlement scheme was established in Rutete, Buyaga County. In 1993, government created Kisiita Settlement Scheme in Bugangaizi to settle 15,000 Bakiga who had been evicted from Mpokya Forest Reserves in Kabarole District.
The recent incident in which the Bakiga killed two children and a woman took place when the District Land Board attempted to distribute a section of public land to an exclusive group of Banyoro. The Bakiga felt insecure and reacted by disrupting the distribution exercise. Since most Banyoro in Kibaale are squatters, the general feeling is that they should take priority in sharing public land, or if possible, they should take all the public land.
To make matters worse, the Bakiga in settlement schemes have been processing certificates of ownership of the pieces of land they live on, while the Banyoro have to wait until government compensates the Baganda absentee landlords. Government has said that the compensation of the absentee landlords will begin in the next financial year.
However, the indigenous Banyoro think there is as a systematic ploy by the Bakiga to settle all over Kibaale and take over economic and political control of the district.
Banyoro opinion leaders accuse politicians in Kigezi of buying people off their small holding lands in Kabale and sending them to Kibaale where they get free land. But an ISO operative in Kabale told this writer that there are no cases of politicians buying people off their land.
“If it was true, our organisation would have known about it. The only thing we know is that a reasonable number of people is leaving Kabale district to go and work as labourers in the tea estates in Kabarole district,” he said.
Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, the Minister for Internal Affairs (himself a Mukiga) also denied the accusation levelled against Kigezi politicians. He said that the accusations were just imagined.
Mr. Sebastian Sekitoleko who was Kibaale District Chairman during the 1993 settlement of the Bakiga in Kibaale, told this writer that the Banyoro have a fear that the influx of Bakiga to the district, would compound an already complicated land problem.
“I am the one who invited the Bakiga who had just been evicted from Mpokya Forest Reserve to settle in Kibaale. We allocated each family 12 acres of land. But in about six months, the families we allocated had invited five more families to settle on the twelve acres. We were told that some people in Kigezi were even selling their small land holdings to come and settle in Kibaale. This is disturbing,” said Sekitoleko.
Sekitoleko added: “These people (Bakiga) have also encroached on land that was not allocated to them in the settlement programme. They have encroached on forest reserves and wetlands. What the Banyoro want is a systematic resettlement policy whose guidelines and rules would be clear to all and sundry”.
On a settlement policy, Sekitoleko was echoing the views of Banyoro elders. In a press release signed by Byenkya Kagoro, the Prime Minister of Bunyoro Kitara Kingdom, Banyoro elders called on the central government to enact a law that will regulate internal migrations.
They said that there was a need to regulate the movement of people within Uganda, while considering the fundamental cultural differences and diversities among Ugandans.
Commenting on the issue, a Mukiga lawyer who sought anonymity, said that there is need for the government to commit itself to resolve the land problems in Kibaale.
“Although the problem in Kibaale is political, it needs a moral solution. Government would have to appreciate the legitimate case of the indigenous Banyoro and yet balance it with the need for resettlement of the Bakiga,” said the lawyer.
All in all, the problem in Kibaale represents the challenge of nationhood in many African countries where nationality and citizenship is still influenced by nativism. It is an irony that a Ugandan who leaves his or her native district becomes a foreigner in a neighbouring district where he or she may not be allowed to participate in politics from a position of leadership. Ends

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