Museveni’s bread and bullets for Rwenzori fighters

Bullet and bread strategy

But Museveni appears to be using a bullet and bread strategy. Even as he sits in hotel conference rooms with the Bakonzo leaders and talks of supplying water, schools, and health facilities in Bughendera, Kasese has recently been a battleground between security operatives and traditional royal guards of Obusinga.

The UPDF has launched a major security offensive in the Rwenzori Mountains against suspected attackers hiding there. Top on this list are the people who were granted amnesty in the July 2014 Rwenzori attacks. The police and the army, just like they did after 2014 attacks, are targeting particular individuals in cordon and search operations. But the deployment in the mountains of the Bakonzo is being seen as one sided. Many commentators say the government should handle the Bamba attackers with the same firm hand as the Bakonzo.

In Bundibugyo also, as Museveni was meeting the leaders there, two parallel operations connected to the killings were taking place in the area.

In the first case, soldiers of the Uganda army; UPDF, were continuing with their `cordon and search’ operation to net people suspected to be the causers of insecurity. At least 80 people arrested. According to the Bundibugyo Resident District Commissioner (RDC) Geoffrey Mucunguzi, however, 60 of them were soon released.

In the other operation, the Grade One Magistrate’s court in Bundibugyo was holding a trial of 13 suspects in the attacks. They were all remanded.

Looking at all these events, one observer commented on what could easily be missed. Nearly all the people the army rounded up were from one ethnic group; the Bakonzo. All the 13 people remanded to prison over the attacks were also Bakonzo. Why were the Bakonzo the only ones being rounded up in this multiethnic region? When the attacks first happened, IGP Kayihura rushed to Bundibugyo and was seen addressing the people in Bwamba armed with arrows and bows. He did not order them to surrender their arrows. In a recent operation led by Rwenzori Regional Police Commander Denis Namuwoza people in the mountains who were found with more than two machetes were arrested and he arrested 150 of them. How about those with bows and arrows?

Museveni faces a challenge in answering this question objectively because he has not been an innocent bystander.  Soon after the meetings, he recalled the Bamba king (Omudhingiya) Martin Kamya back into the army where he is a lieutenant colonel and promptly sent him on a study sabbatical abroad. The ploy has been used before, on the Bakonzo king, Wesley Mumbere, who was in the 1980s sent to study in the US and ended up working as a nurse-aide. But the pseudo-exile did not resolve the conflict. Faced with an unending armed rebellion by the so-called Allied Democratic Front (ADF) who recruited heavily from the Bakonzo people in the Rwenzori Mountains bordering the DR Congo, Museveni cut a deal with Mumbere which saw him re-installed as king in 2009. It now appears that was a patch-up job rather than the solution. It also means Museveni needs to try out something new. That will not be easy. The region has erupted in conflict every year since 2004. The cattle keeping Basongora are often conflicting with the Bakonzo cultivators leaving some dead.  But the current clashes have already claimed over 30 people and are far from over. They also appear to be more complex, with roots beyond ethnicity and stretching into the fight between Museveni’s ruling party NRM and a growing opposition, fight over land, feelings of socio-economic marginalisation, and a clash of egos. During the campaigns some candidates claimed endorsement from the Bwamba cultural institution and the clashes are being seen as targeting Bakonzo who, allegedly, voted for candidates that were not backed by the Obudhingiya (Bamba kingdom). One the defining tensions of the conflict is how the Uganda army and police have been sucked into the conflict.

When meeting with the Bwamba county leaders, Museveni reported asked them why they did not extend social services like electricity and government secondary to the mountain people; the Bakonzo. He also asked the LC 5 chairman for Bundibugyo to explain why jobs at the district seem to go to one ethnic group. An explanation by the Minister of State for Primary Education, Kamanda Batalingaya, failed to satisfy the President.  He ordered the leader to give him a written report detailing distribution of jobs and social services in the district. One of the points of contention is clean water. The district uses gravity water supply. However, although water is tapped from the mountains, the mountain people are not supplied this water.

When the regional police officer Denis Namuwoza spoke, he reportedly told the president some truths the local leaders might have preferred not to delve into. According to him, the fight is over land.

Apparently, although the Bakonzo historically lived in the mountains, changing economic activity has pushed them into the lowlands. According to former Bundibugyo LC 5 vice chairman, Godfrey Mbalibulha, the Bakonzo legally bought land off the Bamba and Babwisi and planted cocoa, which quickly became the main cash crop in Bundibugyo. The income disparity created tension and fights erupt regularly. Sometimes the cause is petty theft of cocoa beans which has taken on an ethnic inflection.

Some of the reasons for the attacks are petty, like refusal to grant a football playground to one group of youths and they think the denial is ethnically motivated and take matters in their own hands.

The result, however, is that some Bakonzo who had legally bought land in lowlands like Ntotoro, Bunyaruta, and Kirumya have had to flee and leave their property behind.

Museveni’s meetings with local leaders are being praised. Many say they enabled him get firsthand information on what is happening on the ground and clear misconceptions.  In Kasese, a statement from his office said, he urged them to avoid preaching sectarianism and dividing people on sectarian lines.

“Like I promised before, the government will do everything to ensure full stability and security ensues in the Rwenzori sub-region,” he said.

Christopher Kibanzanga, who was an FDC official and recently switched to NRM, also thinks leaders in the Rwenzori region have not played their role aptly.

“The conflict in Rwenzori shows that leaders have failed in uniting people,” he told The Independent, “As leaders we should encourage our people to co-exist peacefully so that they can develop themselves.” Sweet words that could, if heeded, end the bitter conflicts.