{UAH} Where did the notions of "Tribe" and "Nation" in Uganda come from?

Uganda is at a crossroads and everyone is busy promoting their pet projects including 15 nations. This is the time when we should examine carefully what we are talking about. By questioning the validity of some of these concepts, some friends of mine are expressing disappointment. To be friends or colleagues we don't have to agree on everything all the time. Sometimes positions change or are modified on the basis fresh information.

Recently, I was quizzed to give my tribe but I gave my clan. When they insisted on a tribe I gave them information based on colonial designation that grouped various clans of Kigezi into three so-called tribes of Bakiga, Banyarwanda and Bahororo the latter subdivided into Nilotic Batutsi/ Bahororo and Bantu Bairu/Bahororo) for administrative convenience. It was hoped these tribes would eventually form a nation. The people of Bufumbira renamed themselves Bafumbira. I have done some research on 'tribes' and 'nations' and here is what I have found.

"In pretending to rule through local sovereigns, the British imported the Indian model of imperial rule to Africa. As in the Raj, British officials claimed to govern through African institutions of authority rather than ruling directly. This made the 'tribe' the basis of imperial administration. Confused by the range of fluid and often overlapping ethnicities of pre-conquest Africa, British officials concluded that Africa lived in unchanging tribal societies. In the imperial imagination, tribe was a lower form of political and social organization that, with proper paternal guidance, might one day evolve into a nation. … Working in the service of colonial governments, anthropologists mapped tribal languages, social institutions and customary laws to fashion the tools of imperial administration for district officers. The African tribe was thus a useful fiction to update the venerable imperial strategy of co-opting local institutions of authority. …

"However, British officials actually knew very little about the local institutions and customs they claimed to protect. Their ignorance created opportunities for ambitious individuals to convince imperial officials and ethnographers to make them chiefs with the vested authority to define tribal customs that became the basis of imperial administration. As John Iliffe famously noted 'Europeans believed Africans belonged to tribes; Africans built tribes to belong to", and the origins of the Mikijenda, Kalenjin, Luhya and other contemporary Kenyan 'tribes' date from the imperial era" (Timothy. H. Parsons 2010). The same can be said of Uganda tribes and nations. These are colonial notions that left out clans upon which Uganda communities are built.

Eric