By Arinaitwe Rugyendo
KAMPALA/UGANDA: The deepening fragmentation of Uganda into kingdoms and districts, is a key cause of the 2016 conflict between the Central Government and the Rwenzururu Kingdom, a new study has revealed.
In the ground-breaking study seen by Research Finds News titled: “The Deepening Politics of Fragmentation in Uganda: Understanding Violence in the Rwenzori Region,” two Ugandan Political Science scholars, Dr. Moses Khisa and Dr. Sabastiano Rwengabo, make the conclusion that the clash between the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces and the kingdom guards was “the climax to a puzzling wave of violence that was then unfolding in the Rwenzori Region and the unintended consequence of the deepening politics of fragmentation, which takes two forms: “kingdomization” and “districtization.”
The scholars recommend after their findings that the Ugandan state should; “Stop, even reverse, creation of more districts and other counterproductive local government entities, stop and reverse the creation of more kingdoms, chiefdoms, and other traditional authority structures and engage a dialogue between central state elite and traditional authority elite.”
The study has been published in the prestigious African Studies Review Journal of Cambridge University Press, Volume 65 - Issue 4.
The Attack:
Their study was motivated by the November 20-17, 2016 attack by combined forces of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (PDF) and Uganda Police Force (UPF), on the structures and personnel of the Rwenzururu Kingdom in Kasese Municipality.
It resulted in the arrest and subsequent detention of Omusinga Charles Wesley Mumbere-Iremangoma, of the Obusinga bwa Rwenzururu (The Kingdom of Rwenzururu), and other kingdom officials, on treason and other charges.
This incident also occurred 50 years after the 1966 attack on the palace of the Obwa-Kabaka bwa Buganda (Kingdom of Buganda) by the then-government forces, indicating the historical recurrence of violent confrontations between the Central State and subnational (especially traditional) authority structures.
During the Kasese incident, the Uganda government accused the Rwenzururu kingdom of breeding the violence, alleging that its palace hosted treasonable conspirators and an armed militia. Kingdom officials and local politicians denied the treason charges and blamed the government for the worsening insecurity in the region, whose political-administrative districts—Ntoroko, Bundibugyo, Kabarole, Kamwenge, Kyegegwa, Kyenjojo, and Kasese, with an estimated three million people—variously suffered bouts of insecurity during this period.
According to the study, the scholars’ objectives from which their conclusions were made, were:
1) To examine the ways in which strategies of control used by central-state elites feed subnational power contestations and social tensions that build up into violence.
2) To explain the violent encounters between the Central State and the sub-national authority structure of Rwenzururu.
3) To underscore the possible role of local political fragmentation in fueling civil violence involving state and non-state structures.
4) To lay the foundation for further understanding of Uganda’s evolving violent encounters, especially in the Rwenzori Region since 2012.
Methodology:
The authors used a combination of informal field interviews, the authors’ close knowledge of Uganda’s broader national political landscape, and secondary sources including news reports.
Drawing on these sources to reconstruct empirical narratives and theoretical insights that support a growing body of literature on the politics of violence in the Rwenzori region, the study has potentially opened avenues for thinking about future in-depth research and policy measures on the region’s peace and security landscape.
For instance, the authors looked at the controversies surrounding the contestations in three kingdom entities that presently constitute the Rwenzori Region: Obukama bwa Tooro, Obusinga bwa Rwenzururu, and Obudingiya bwa Bwamba.
“While the 2016 attack occurred on the Rwenzururu palace, it represented the climax of a wider phenomenon of violence across the region. The Rwenzururu and Bwamba are recent kingdom creations. Within these kingdoms, new district and sub-district local governments were created, some controversially,” the authors observe.
They add that: “It is the political motives behind the creation of new kingdoms and districts, how these considerations have affected intra-society and state-society relations, and how they, in turn, have led to waves of low-scale violence, culminating in the November 2016 deadly attack on the Rwenzururu kingdom palace in the town of Kasese.”
Findings:
The study presents important findings that Research Finds News believes bear something to communicate to policymakers and implementers, specialists in violence, subnational authority structures, researchers, peacebuilding and conflict-resolution practitioners, and the Ugandan citizenry. They hold vital insights into how to forestall future sub-national conflicts.
First: The authors found out that the fragmentation of Uganda into small kingdoms and districts, while desirable by central-state elites, is counterproductive for nation-building, domestic peace, and subnational coexistence between different social groups.
Second: The authors discovered that this form of fragmentation weakens subnational challenges to central-state authority, which helps to sow seeds of violent encounters within a polity.
Third: Districtisation, Kingdomisation, and other forms of fragmentary politics in Uganda gnaw at the marrow of peace and security and should be reversed.
Fourth: The 1966 and 2016 incidences, while half-century apart, show similar failures: the failure of elite consensus between state and traditional leaders on the fundamental imperatives of exercising power and authority in a fractured polity.
Fifth: The authors discovered that the more Uganda fragments, the more it raptures the micro-foundations of peaceful coexistence between social groups within the polity.
For more on this study, please visit this link: https://bit.ly/3XblGe9
Captions: 1- A Ugandan soldier guards the remains of the destroyed palace of Charles Wesley Mumbere, king of the Rwenzururu, after Uganda security forces stormed the compound in Kasese town, western Uganda on November 27. [Photo/ James Akena/Reuters].
Notes of the Authors:
Dr. Rwengabo Rutashoboroka
Dr. Rwengabo is a Ugandan Political Scientist and Independent Consultant, in Fragility and Resilience Assessments, Political Economy Analyses, Institutional Capacity Building, Leadership Training, and Governance. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he was a Research Scholar, President’s Graduate Fellow, and Graduate Teacher, from 2010–2014. His academic research covers areas of International Politics and Security, Regionalism, Civil-Military Relations (CMR), Post-Conflict Transformation, and Democratization. He is interested in the philosophical and practical challenges of strategic transformation and transformational leadership, especially in/on Africa. One of Dr. Rwengabo’s latest research products is a Book on Security Cooperation in the East African Community (Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 2018).
Dr. Dr. Moses Khisa
Dr. Khisa is an Associate Professor (with tenure) of Political Science (with a joint appointment in Africana Studies), at North Carolina State University. - Research Associate, Centre for Basic Research, Kampala-Uganda. His Teaching and Research Interests include Comparative Politics and International Political Economy with a focus on Africa. His Current Projects include Autocratization in Uganda, Political Settlements and Revenue Bargains in Africa, and Coalition Politics and Institutional Transformation in Africa. His recent publications include two books: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in Africa (Co-edited with Christopher Day) and Africa’s New Global Politics (with Rita Kiki Edozie)
