Ugandan Banyarwanda are legitimate citizens
Ephraim Kamuhangire
Ephraim Kamuhangire
The New Times of January 10-11 and that of the following day, carried two articles about the Ugandan Banyarwanda having visited President Yoweri Museveni at his home in Rwakitura on January 7.
The articles were written by Dr Rwamukwaya and Mr M. Kazungu, respectively. In the articles, Mr Joseph Matsiko and myself were attacked for being self-seekers, hardliners, beggars, politickers and opportunists! Our �crime� was that we smuggled �the begging for political appointments� and the �kisanja� clauses in the memorandum, which was presented to the President during the visit.
Lies and threats are not going to lead us anywhere. We know the source of the two stories and why they are intended to divide the Ugandan Banyarwanda because some of their leaders are not obeying the directives from the powers that be. Let me state it categorically that the bigger part � six pages of the memorandum, which I signed, when frantic attempts we re made by some of our fellow members of the Executive Committee of UMUBANO and external forces to block it, but failed, contained the wishes of more than 700 people who met President Museveni at Rwakitura.
In a seven-page document, the report of the mission to Rwanda is one page. Its inclusion was after the so-called hardliners and self-seekers had strongly advised and persuaded their colleagues from the Rwanda mission to prepare and present a joint memorandum. Had they not co-operated and instead gone ahead and the two groups booked for two appointments and presented two memoranda, it is very probable that our colleagues would have waited indefinitely to deliver the message from Rwanda.
In the circumstances therefore, one can judge as to which of the two groups in the UMUBANO leadership was dependent on the other. We would not wish to wash dirty linen in public. We have let sleeping dogs lie for the sake of continued unity within our cultural association.
I pity Dr Rwamukwaya because in his article he has indeed demonstrated how shallow and distant he is from reality. He boasts of knowing me as an opportunist.
Fortunately I do not know him. I want to inform him and his likes that I owe my job to my qualifications and I have reached where I am through meritorious and moreover accelerated promotions. Mr Matsiko has equally ascended to his present post by his qualifications and meritorious performance.
Rwamukwaya states that he is from a fairly large extended family and relatives and has many friends and colleagues in Kiboga, his home district, and other districts of Uganda. But he does not state their number. Nor does he know that UMUBANO encompasses all the Ugandan Banyarwanda because those relatives and friends of his are not members of UMUBANO.
What kind of person is this Rwamukwaya who does not know that of the 700-plus Ugandan Banyarwanda who went to Rwakitura brought 100 people from Kiboga? I wish to inform him that the people who went to Rwakitura were a fraction of members of UMUBANO countrywide.
There is no need to reveal where others came from because some people somewhere would develop ulcers if they came to know it. All that Dr Rwamukwaya and his likes should know is that the mobilisation capacity of the leadership of UMUBANO is so superb that even more than that number can answer any call so long as it affects them and is well intended.
Rwamukwaya says that he is a political scientist working and living in the USA. We can estimate his age to be 50 years and above because he has known and respects Mr Donat Kananura for three decades and has friends and colleagues whom he has known for forty years. He boasts to be an expert of Ugandan history of the 1960s and 1970s but is blank about the subsequent one of the 1980s and 1990s.
He has not seen any difference with what is happening in Uganda under President Yoweri Museveni because he has �been struck by the sim ilarity in style of successive Ugandan presidents and how they relate to their subjects...how the individuals at the heart of power in Uganda seem to change very
little....�.
Rwamukwaya says this type of repressive leadership in Uganda has kept him in his current �diaspora status�. Yet he says he visits Uganda regularly and because he works and lives in the US it is impossible for him not to know the existence of UMUBANO and how it is inclusive.
Someone is living into exile because the leadership in Uganda since the 1960s is repressive but he is a frequent visitor to Uganda, has many friends in the country whom he has known for more than four decades and because he lives and works in the US, there is no reason why he should not know that UMUBANO exists and is inclusive!
The fact that he does not know the history of Uganda especially that of 1982/1983 when the Ugandan Banyarwanda in southwestern Uganda became refugees in Rwanda makes me believe that this Rwamukwaya is a hoax, whose intentions are to confuse people that because he is based in the US he is �a-know-it-all�. There is no Rwamukwaya based in the US.
The writer is one of those disappointed people annoyed about the visit, and in big numbers, by the Ugandan Banyarwanda to President Museveni.
They, like Bernard Urayeneza who wrote in The New Times of january 17-18 and The Monitor of January 21, are bent on confusing our community through the press.
Funny enough Urayeneza does not know when and why UMUBANO was formed! He should know that the spat between Rwanda and Uganda took place some years after UMUBANO was in force. Lies and press wars will not work. The mission to divide the Ugandan Banyarwanda so that they do not identify Uganda as their country (state) is well known.
However, they should know from now that the true Ugandan Banyarwanda are resolved to pay allegiance to Uganda. Those with divided loyalties like Rwamukwaya should wa it to become dual citizens when and if the Uganda Constitution is amended.
Rwamukwaya�s attempt to equate the Ugandan Banyarwanda with what he calls the Museveni thesis of �stateless persons� falls short of his would-be intellectual ability. I would like to educate him that as a resident of the US, he is �a stateless person� but as a Ugandan Munyarwanda, if indeed he is, Uganda is his state. It is a pity that none of his relatives went to Rwakitura.
In his reaction to the memorundum, which we presented to him, President Museveni educated us on how, during the pre-colonial times, migrant people were incorporated into societies in which they settled and how they were recognised as part of those societies in the long run. Some individuals from those new immigrants could rise to prominence as political leaders and commanders in the state armies. As a student of history, I found that the President was perfectly right in his brief.
I did not know that the Ugandan Banyarwanda should be the only ones who cannot lobby for political appointments because they are a �highly self-respecting community and �it is anti-our culture�.
The writer is Vice-Chairman- Administration/UMUBANOPublished on: Tuesday, 1st February, 2005
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