By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
“Currently 30 African countries are either producers or hosts to refugees and displaced people. In many cases about 1/3 of the estimated world refugee population of 20 million are African. Displaced populations that do not cross borders (internally displaced) are more numerous than refugees. Since there is no special agency with a clear mandate for assistance and protection of the internally displaced , the numbers are roughly estimated”.
Ssewakiryanga, R. (1996). A Conspiracy of Silence. In: National Analyst 12 November – 5 December 1996: 12-13.
The refugee malaise has clogged the World stage for a long time. Most people who migrated to New Zealand, Australia and the Americas were refugees, who subdued the indigenous people and took the reigns of power and land in those areas.
Notable refugees who became central to global and national socio-politics in their countries of refuge include: Adolf Hitler who came from Austria and became German ruler and tyrant who plunged the World into a global war. Albert Einstein who fled German and became an American citizen, and ultimately innovated the Atomic Bomb that crushed Japanese militarism.
Kenneth Kaunda, a son of a refugee from Malawi, led Zambia to independence and became its President. His humanism was of great influence on the African and global stage, Henry Kissinger, a Germany refugee, became a powerful Secretary of State of the United States of America during the ill-fated reign of President Richard Nixon.
Madeleine Albright, a Czech refugee, became the first woman Secretary General in the United States of America during the reign of President Bill Clinton. Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan refugee, became President of the United States of America in 2009 and ruled until 2017.
Tibuhaburwa Museveni, son of a Munyamulenge refugee from Goma, Kivu Province of present day DRC, and who ended up settling in Karagwe, Tanzania, became President of Uganda in 1986 after waging a guerilla war in Luwero in which so many refugees, including Paul Kagame and Fred Rwigyema participated, formed Rwandese Patriotic Front, which captured the reigns of power in Kigali, Rwanda in 1994.
Let me concentrate on the refuge malaise in Uganda, with a view to pinpointing how Rwandan refugees ended up capturing the instruments of power in their country of refuge, and influencing the process of Constitution-making, insertion of Banyarwanda in the Uganda Constitution 1995 as the 56th indigenous group of Uganda, and manipulating Dual Citizenship, which has ended up benefitting them most, with many so-called dual citizens accessing citizenship, nationality and jobs in the country at the expense of bona fide Ugandans.
Before I touch on the influence of refugees in Uganda of the late 20th Century and early 21st Century in all spheres of human endeavor, I think and believe it will be useful to recite a story I got from two Tutsi academic friends at the University of Bujumbura in 2001, when Makerere University’s Faculty of Law sent me to Bujumbura, Burundi to represent it at a Workshop on the Horn of Africa.
At first I thought they were kidnapping me when they told me to enter their car. Indeed I asked them if that is not what they were doing. They almost in unison told me that they were taking me to the shore of Lake Tanganyika to show me where the parents of President Museveni originated from with the President as a toddler. When we reached the shore of Lake Tanganyika, they made sure our backs were against Rwanda.
Then they said, “Behind our backs is Rwanda. On our left you can see mountains in the foreground, where a guerilla war is raging. Those mountains are in Burundi. On our right in the foreground are mountains of North Kivu Province of Zaire (now DRC). At the foot of those mountains is the capital Goma at the Northern Shore of Lake Kivu next to the Rwandan City of Gisenyi.
It is that Goma area that the parents of your President originated from , entered Gisenyi and then made it to your country Uganda. Your President was a toddler when they arrived in Rwanda. That area they came from is dominated by people of Tutsi extraction like us but called Banyamulenge. So tell your Ugandans when you go back”. I believed them.
So then the man who led the bush war against the regime of Obote in the 1980s, Tibuhaburwa Museveni, had no roots in Uganda, although in his book, the Mustard Seed, he said he was born somewhere in the Savannas of Ankole. That he was not rooted in Uganda could explain why Milton Obote was uncomfortable with allying with his Front for National Salvation ( FRONASA), which was infested with numerous Rwandese and Banyamulenge elements, to oust Idi Amin.
Even in the 1960s Obote did not want the Rwandese refugees to attack Rwanda from Uganda and made sure they were confined to refugee camps in Western Uganda, although once or twice, they broke out to fight the Rwandese Government, but were contained by the Obote regime.
In the 1980s some Minister, Dr. Patrick Rubaihayo, wanted to expel the Rwandese refugees from Uganda but he was constrained by Obote. Little did Obote know that even if he was elected, albeit controversially, FRONASA elements were organizing to reject the results and use rigging as a pretext to carry out an insurgency against his regime.
And for five years this is what happened, successfully leading to the fall of Obote, and Tito Okello who overthrew him, paving the way for President Tibuhaburwa Museveni to take the reigns of power.
It was not surprising, therefore, that many refugees held important position in the NRM regime government and in some critical Institutions. For example, the leader of the Rwandese refugee contingent in NRM/A, which soon emerged as Rwandese Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A), Fred Rwigyema, became President Museveni’s State Minister for Defense, while Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda since 2000, following the overthrow of Juvenal Habyarimana’s Government in Kigali, was Director of intelligence in Kampala.
An OB of mine at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Dr. Ronald Kaberuka, was strategically stationed in the Bank of Uganda, later becoming Minister of Finance in Rwanda and then Executive Director of the African Development Bank. They are many others who became this or that, who for lack of space, I will not record in this write up.
So, for Uganda, the consequence of the refugee malaise is that the instruments of power and many public and military/police service positions were/have been consummated by refugees. I need not over-emphasize the fact that the the genetic pool of our country has been greatly polluted by the genes of Rwandese through intermarriages with indigenous Ugandans with dire Consequences for our cultural integrity and survival.
It should worry Ugandans that our country is the greatest concentration of refugees in Africa.. By 30th November 2021, Uganda was hosting 1.5 million refugees, thereby becoming the undisputable greatest refuge for people from elsewhere running away from socio-political collapse in their countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It is not difficult to explain why. The main refugee sources have been Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Many are not in refugee camps and mix freely with Ugandans, are treated better than the citizens, access land for economic activities, and may get jobs that would otherwise be occupied by Ugandans.
Do not be surprised to see refugees controlling public affairs, in every sphere of human endeavor, even serving as local council chairmen and members, well into the future unless Ugandans unite against it. There is already talk of a hereditary Presidency whereby some people, who may even be refugees, are united in pushing for the reigns of power in Uganda passing on from President Tibuhaburwa Museveni to his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who definitely has his birth place outside Uganda.
Meanwhile it holds a lot of credence when the President of Uganda says most of his relatives are in Tanzania. The reason is that when the man said to be his rightful father, Kayibanda, arrived in Uganda with his wife and son, he preferred not to stay in Uganda.
He left his wife and son with his brother , Amos Kaguta, who had arrived in Uganda much earlier, and proceeded to Karagwe Tanzania. He must have married and produced children who also produced children. Our Uganda President attaches a lot of genealogical and historical importance to Karagwe. Indeed we know that he has built some state-of-the-art schools in Karagwe, definitely for the ones he admits are his relatives, to benefit well into the future.
Finally, let me remark that refugees could be absorbed and become citizens in their countries of refuge and attain nationality. It becomes dangerous if refugees become citizens and Nationals but then discriminate against the indigenous citizens they found in their countries of refuge.
This is what happened in South Africa, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and could as well be happening in Uganda. Many indigenous Ugandans have had their land grabbed from them, and many of the grabbers are former refugees either in power or connected to power and some are helped to grab land by the regime in power. Uganda now boasts of the biggest number of internally displaced people in Africa South of the Sahara.
For God and My Country
The Writer Is a Ugandan Scientist And Environmentalist
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