Human beings (Homo sapiens), like elephant, lion, zebra and natural plants, constitute a natural entity on the biocultural landscape. Different indigenous groups of human beings are separated from each other ecologically, environmentally, culturally, socially, ethically and morally.
Consequently, different groups of human beings tend to have characteristic belonging and identity within the pertinent bio-cultural landscapes. When this is the case, we talk of groups of human beings as “indigenous” to the various biocultural landscapes. They belong to different indigenous groups. The people are called indigenes.
According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, the word indigenous means “belonging to a particular place rather than coming to it from somewhere else”. Therefore, immigrants, however long they have stayed in country, do not qualify to be called indigenes.
Thus, an indigene is one who is indigenous to a particular place in the biocultural landscape and whose identity has been shaped by the pertinent environment for a long period of time. The indigene practices a defining culture in relation to the land in terms of crops grown, traditional energy system, burial, sacredness, extended family system, ecology, sociality, etc.
People from elsewhere will try hard to destroy the culture, particularly the relationship to land, so that they either displace the indigenes, scatter them or dominate them in such a way that they can no longer practice their culture. This is happening among the Bantu and Luo areas, where people who belong to the nomadic-pastoral human energy system are grabbing land and introducing their mobile migratory culture in biocultural landscapes foreign to them.
Those of their kind in power are introducing schemes that are definitely destroying the time-tested biocultural landscapes and ethicomoral characteristics in favour of the sterile money culture.
According to the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, which commenced on 8 October 1995, the Third Schedule, Article 10 (a) of Uganda’s indigenous communities as at 1st February, 1926, Banyarwanda (Tutsi) who either came to Uganda as labourers or as refugees, are included among the indigenous groups of Uganda.
Bahehe and Nubi (Nubians) are indigenous. (Full list at the end of this piece). Until the emergence of the 1995 Constitution, I knew that the Tutsi, Hehe and Nubians in Uganda were refugees in Uganda who settled in the country where the biocultural landscape had indigenous groups that belonged to it with befitting identities.
I had worked in Ruaha National Park in southern Tanzania and came to know that the Hehe were the natives that were indigenous to the Iringa region of southern Tanzania.
Therefore, the Tutsi, Hehe and Nubians were artificial politically and constitutionally-created indigenous groups of Uganda and, therefore, alien to the biocultural landscape of the country. They lack long-term historical, ecological, environmental, ethical cultural and moral attachment to land in Uganda.
The Bahima were politically and constitutionally eliminated from the Ankole biocultural landscape and integrated into the Banyankore indigenous group dominated the Bairu, thereby both polluting and distorting it. Before, the Bahima were rulers of the Bairu and the Bairu were slaves of the Bahima.
However, when President Tibuhaburwa Museveni captured the instruments of power through the barrel of the gun, the first thing he did was to destroy the pride of the Bahima, which was exacerbated by their continued attachment to the Kingdom of Ankole and its Obugabe, abolished by Apollo Milton Obote in the 1966 and 1967 Constitutions.
While the National Resistance Movement/National Resistance Army (NRM/A) regime of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni constitutionally introduced what it called cultural institutions in the Uganda Constitution 1995, whose making was chaired by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni himself, for Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro and Busoga, he declined to do the same for Ankole.
He said he was Ssabagabe, akin to King of Kings. Ultimately, therefore, he obliterated Bahima as a group by integrating it into what he cast as an indigenous group of human beings called Banyankore, which is a deception. There is no natural group called Banyankore consisting of Bahima and Basiru.
Putting Bahima and Bairu together is disorganisation of the biocultural landscape of Ankole intended to destroy the historical cultural evolution of the Bairu. It could be that the strategy was to revive the historical domination of the Bairu by the Hima. Since the Hima are related to the Tutsi, when it comes to opportunities, the Hima have got them at the expense of the Bairu under the guise that Banyankore are accessing them.
Or else, the strategy was to create a grazing corridor with Ankole constituting a large portion of it. Thus, discrimination within the “Banyankore indigenous group” is easily achieved, widening the gap between the Hima and Bairu.
What, therefore, the Uganda Constitution 1995 wanted to do in Ankole was probably to completely dominate the biocultural landscape of the area in everyway as Hima-Tutsi. If the Bairu had successfully combated discrimination in Ankole, they need to re-strategise to combat discrimination designed from the centre rather than the periphery. We need concrete sociological studies of the new scenario in Ankole and to test the theories advanced herein.
What is true is that indigenous groups are natural while constitutionally created indigenous groups are artificial and are destined to be rejected in future by the owners of the biocultural landscapes whose biology, ecology, ethics and morality in relation to the land were shaped over thousands of years. It is dangerous for people who came in from elsewhere to seek to make indigenous people foreigners of their biocultural landscape and destroy their belonging and identities for their own interests, such as owning both the land and its above-ground and belowground resources at the expense of the indigenes.
This is creating a disaster waiting to happen. If the indigenes wake up to their new reality, anything can happen. Already many indigenes have realised that they have been reduced to slaves within their country while their children and grandchildren are being sent into modern slavery in the Middle East while government is exploiting them in terms of overtaxation.
In summary, indigenous groups cannot be politically and constitutionally engineered, but can be given political and constitutional recognition and rights. Many constitutions worldwide include special provisions for indigenous communities, granting them specific rights and acknowledging their traditional-political structures and customary laws. In the case of an indigenous group called Banyarwanda, it has no historical, ecological, environmental, cultural, ethical and moral attachment to any place in Uganda. It was simply politically and constitutionally engineered and imposed on the biocultural landscape of Uganda.
This is potentially a source of violence in Uganda in future. Already, land grabbing in Uganda is mainly being done by people belonging to the artificial indigenous group. However, it was important to constitutionalise the natural indigenous groups of Uganda (e.g., Katharina Holzinger, et.al., 2018).
Banyarwanda might be a minority ethnic group in Uganda but it is not an indigenous group. Calling it an indigenous group is deception with dire consequences. It is important to revise the constitution to include all the natural indigenous groups such as the Benet/Mosopishek, Bakingwe, Bagabo, Maragoli, Haya, Basese, Bagaya and Meru (Minority Rights Group, 2023) rather than indigenise foreign groups.
The Indigenous Group of Uganda.
1. Acholi 2. Aliba 3. Alur 4. Aringa 5. Bamba 6. Babukusu 7. Babwisi 8. Bafumbira 9. Baganda 10. Bagisu 11. Bagungu 12. Bagwe 13. Bagwere 14. Bahehe 15. Bahororo 16. Bakenyi 17. Bakiga 18. Bakonzo 19. Banyabindi 20. Banyabutumbi 21. Banyankore 22. Banyara 23. Banyaruguru 24. Banyarwanda 25. Banyole 26. Banyoro 27. Baruli 28. Barundi 29. Basamia 30. Basoga 31. Basongora 32. Batagwenda 33. Batoro 34. Batuku 35. Batwa 36. Chope37. Dodoth 38. Ethur 39. Gimara 40. Ik (Teuso) 41. Iteso 42. Jie 43. Jonam 44. Jopadhola 45. Kakwa 46. Karimojong 47. Kebu (Okebu) 48. Kuku 49. Kumam 50. Langi 51. Lendu 52. Lugbara 53. Madi 54. Mening 55. Mvuba 56. Napore 57. Ngikuito 58. Nubi 59. Nyangia 60. Pokot 61. Reli 62. Sabiny 63. Shana 64. So (Tepeth) 65. Vonoma [Third Schedule amended by section 48 of Act 11 of 2005].
For God and My Country.
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