Mountain of moon is now a monument of mourning

What you need to know:

  • This hints at some legal procedures. So, her case, being “sub judice”, the less said about it the better for all concerned. Biira was, however, one of the “lucky” ones. Many others caught in the fracas at the palace, including policemen, royal guards and other workers, were killed or seriously wounded.

Joy Doreen Biira’s fate in Uganda’s Kasese town last week announced to the world the sorry state of affairs in that corner of East Africa, even before the familiar TV news anchor had uttered a word. Biira was among the scores of victims of the violence that engulfed the palace of King (Omusinga) Charles Wesley Mumbere of the Rwenzururu Kingdom.

Mercifully, Biira’s ordeal consisted in an arrest and detention, with the roughing up and terror that usually accompany such events. The young woman, who was visiting her fiancé, has reportedly since been released on bond.

This hints at some legal procedures. So, her case, being “sub judice”, the less said about it the better for all concerned. Biira was, however, one of the “lucky” ones. Many others caught in the fracas at the palace, including policemen, royal guards and other workers, were killed or seriously wounded.

Incidentally, I had never thought of Biira as a Ugandan, let alone as a member of the Rwenzururu community, among whom I have many friends and several close relatives. But following these recent developments, it struck me that Biira is actually a typically Kikhonzo name. Indeed, my friend and academic son, Makerere’s Dr Danson Kahyana, recently published a short narrative, Biira’s Success, recounting the adventures of a young Rwenzururu woman.

I suppose, since Biira is of my children’s age, I assumed, rightly I believe, that she was just like them and the rest of the children we brought up. Our children, like (“granddaughter”) Victoria Rubadiri or Nancy Kacungira, about whom I wrote some time ago, are what we wanted them to be: East Africans with their origins but with no hang-ups about ethnic alliances.

Now, Rwenzururu is the local version of the world-famous snow-capped Mountains of the Moon, the Ruwenzori. In many of our regional languages it is called Rwenzura, the mountain of rains. To us literati, the area is most closely associated with the late drama maestro, John Ruganda, author of Black Mamba, The Burdens and The Floods, among many memorable works.

The Ruwenzori region arguably has the most beautiful scenery on the Ugandan landscape. But it has a long history of social turbulence and conflict, of which the recent clashes between King Mumbere’s people and the Ugandan security forces are the latest manifestation.

The story may be traced back to the early settlement days, when various ethnic and cultural groups were attracted to this unique area. There were the hunter-gatherers (Abambuti) from the nearby Ituri Forest, probably the earliest arrivals.

Then came the agriculturists and eventually the pastoralists. The main ethnic entities, like the Basongora, the Bamba, the Bakhonzo and the Batoro, managed to live for centuries side by side in fairly reasonable mutual tolerance.

But then came the colonial scourge. The greed of the European powers, as is well-known, played havoc with the Rwenzururu communities, as it did elsewhere in Africa. King Leopold of the Belgians, for example, in his rush to seize and exploit as much territory as possible, came to a hurried agreement with the British colonists in what is Uganda today.

This gave the Brits the eastern slopes and foothills of the range and Leopold kept the western slopes as part of his ridiculously-named “Congo Free State”, today’s DRC. Did you ever read Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, a novel beloved by my teacher, Ngugi wa Thiong’o? It not only satirises the whole colonial enterprise but also sadly prophesies the endless suffering this caused and still causes millions of Africans, including last week’s massacre.

One of the outcomes of that arbitrary “sharing”, for example, was that it split the communities on the mountain into two separate nationalities. I am related through marriage to the Ugandan Bakhonzo of Kasese. But there are more Bakhonzo in the DRC than in Uganda.

The colonial border divides us but we cooperate with our relatives on either side. The Bakhonzo in DRC, for example, owe allegiance to the King (Omusinga), based in Kasese. This is the cause of the jitters and suspicions in both countries that the Bakhonzo want to secede and form a state of their own.

These fears are fuelled by memories of the long struggle of the Bakhonzo for their identity rights. For one of the blunders that the British colonists made was to try and “indirectly rule” them through some of their neighbours.

But the enterprise failed miserably, and long before independence the Bakhonzo rose in an armed rebellion against their “indirect rulers”. The British were either unable or unwilling to resolve the conflict and they left it very much in progress when they left in 1962.

I inevitably associate historical events with literary texts.  Many of the poems in the eloquent collection, Men Without Evenings, by David Gill, an English School teacher in the region in the 1960s, allude to that bitter conflict.

Milton Obote never seemed to understand or to care much about the problems in the area. The Rwenzururu conflict remained simmering up to the point when he abolished the kingdoms, after his own deadly confrontation with the Buganda Kingdom. Basically, the Bakhonzo and other communities of the region were left marginalised, and they still feel marginalised.

The NRM government’s “restoration” of cultural leadership was always a risky and controversial project. In the Rwenzururu region, the hope was that the recognition of the popular traditional leadership would heal the wounds of the past. But it has apparently done very little to boost the residents’ confidence and sense of belonging. 

Brutal and lethal armed confrontation and the massacre of scores of people, as well as the crude attempts to silence innocent observers, do not and will not lead anywhere towards a solution. Only level-headed negotiations, based on a thorough understanding of the history of the region and a genuine respect of the wishes of the people, will lead to an acceptable settlement.

Otherwise, the Mountains of the Moon may remain, as they are now, Mountains of moaning and mourning.

 

Prof Bukenya is one of the leading scholars of English and Literature in East [email protected]