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The Ruwenzori mountains are located in the
southwestern corner of what is modern day Uganda; they straddle
the border of Zaire (recently renamed Congo, its
previous name as a Belgian colony). The Baamba people are
indigenous to the northern part of the Ruwenzoris and call their
homeland Bwamba; the Bakonjo people are indigenous to the southern part and call
their homeland Busongora. For over 80 years now, the Baamba and Bakonjo
peoples have maintained an alliance to resist domination, first, against the
colonial state under British rule and, more recently, against the "nation_state"
of Uganda. The Bakonjo-Baamba "Rwenzururu (Ruwenzori)
Movement" calls for the autonomy of the
mountain region under the control of the people who are indigenous specifically to it.
The legitimacy of the Rwenzururu Movement recently was denounced by Blasio Maate, an ethnic Mukonjo and a district commissioner of the Uganda government, as a "clique of disgruntled people whose goals are to create insecurity and to achieve selfish ends"(The New Vision newspaper, Vol. 7, No. 84, 1992).This comment was addressed to a group of Bakonjo and Baamba elders at a ceremony that further consolidated government control over the latter by swearing in a new district council. Maate asserted that the Rwenzururu Movement "ended" in 1983, when the last king and leader of the movement, Charles Iremangoma, surrendered to the then Ugandan Peoples Congress (UPC) regime. Since then, the state has made efforts to placate the Bakonjo by providing them with a couple of dispensaries, and, in 1976, their first secondary school. Unlike the rest of Uganda, these are the first important signs of social services provisions since independence in 1962. The current relationship between the state and the Bakonjo-Baamba is one of mutual distrust, each side discounting the legitimacy of the other.
To understand the history and politics of the Bakonjo-Baamba movement adequately, we have to elucidate their traditional relationship with their Batoro neighbors to the east. The Batoro had a centralized, aristocratic political system the Kingdom of Toro. They were more pastoral than agricultural and as was characteristic of precolonial Africa, pastoral societies always demanded subservience from predominantly agricultural ones. Interaction between the Batoro and the mountain dwelling Bakonjo-Baamba was rare and often acrimonious. The two groups differed on the basis of language, customs, culture, justice systems, history, and, therefore, identity. The Bakonjo-Baamba had no interest in socially or economically interacting with the Batoro who were prejudiced and had in the past sold the former into slavery with the Arabs.
The logic of British colonialism dictated that the Bakonjo-Baamba be integrated first into the Toro kingdom and then later into the national state structure of Uganda. Initially, the British permitted the Kingdom of Toro to have full politico_legal jurisdiction over the Ruwenzori region and both the Bakonjo and the Baamba peoples. The king of Toro immediately posted Batoro representatives for tax collection and all other administrative responsibilities. Since the British were having trouble gaining complete colonial hegemony over the Kingdom of Bunyoro to the north of Toro, the integration of the Bakonjo and Baamba areas strengthened Toro and transformed it into a colonial buffer used to check the intransigence of Bunyoro.
The Bakonjo launched a rebellion against their subordination to the Omukama (King) of Toro as early as 1919. The protest was put down by the British but not before three Bakonjos were executed by public hanging, thus becoming martyrs to what was to become the Rwenzururu Movement.
By the late 1950s, the Rwenzururu Movement was so strong that in 1961 its main leadersIsaya Mukirane, Yeremiya Kawamara and Petero Mupalya (both the latter being Baamba)along with 18 other Baamba and Bakonjo were elected to the Toro Rukurato (parliament) after prolonged resistance by the Toro kingdom. Despite this historic development, when the Bakonjo-Baamba presented their proposals for the new postcolonial constitution to the Rukurato, they were rejected because they called for separate, individually recognized districts. The Batoro majority on the Toro constitutional committee argued against the proposals on the grounds that "We are all Batoro." The two Bakonjo-Baamba representatives walked out of the committee.
Fourth World Bulletin • October 1992
Copyright © 1996 by the Fourth World Center
Created by Aigis Communications, Ltd