{UAH} WHAT IS SPLITTING MUSEVENI’S BANYARWANDA ???

Written by CHANGE OF GUARDS

 "……if you know you are a Munyarwanda and you don't want to be talked about, go back to your country.  If you want to go to court, go.  They are not Ugandans…. should I get a pen and write him names of Banyarwanda with national IDs?  They want to make Uganda a Tutsi dynasty."

      Hajji Abdul Nadduli – The Messenger.

Banyarwanda is a local name given to the people of Rwanda who are also known as Rwandans in English.  Like is the case with several countries in the Great Lakes Region, Banyarwanda migrated and continue to migrate and settle in Uganda.  While countries like Burundi, Tanzania and DRC have a sizeable number of Banyarwanda, they are not identified as such. They have instead adopted the respective local ethnic identities of those countries.  Even then, Tanzania often expels what it terms as illegal Banyarwanda immigrants who end up entering Uganda where Museveni accords them special reception.  Though the Banyarwanda of DRC call themselves Banyamulenge, Congolese identify them as Banyarwanda.

Immediately after he took power in 1986, Museveni hastily enacted an Anti- sectarian Law purposely designed to gag anyone who would dare point a finger at his preferential treatment of the Banyarwanda.  He had gone ahead to decree that all one needed to assume the Ugandan citizenship was proof of five years residency in Uganda. The earlier law required proof of ancestry where one's grandparents ought to have been born in what was later to become Uganda prior to 1901.  When citizens widely complained that his said decree was designed to grant blanket citizenship to the Banyarwanda, he tactfully withdrew it.  This development did not go well with the Banyarwanda, more especially those in the military who opted to speed up their plans to return to Rwanda by force in October 1990.  What is clear is that initially, Museveni was opposed to the return of Banyarwanda to Rwanda but had instead preferred to naturalize them in Uganda. That is why, even as the Banyarwanda were set to massively return to Rwanda after their RPF captured power in 1994, Museveni was busy planting in the 1995 Constitution the Banyarwanda as one of the indigenous ethnic groups of Uganda.

In Uganda, there are three types of Banyarwanda. The first group is of the Banyarwanda of Kisoro who were added to  what came to be Uganda by the Helgoland Treaty between the colonial Britain and Germany in 1918.  Consequently, the 1921 census report identified them as Banyarwanda and they were identified as such throughout the colonial era.  That is why the British Colonialists rightly deported the terrorists John Kale (father of Gen. Kalekyezi) to Rwanda-Urundi in the late 1950s. They have since adopted the name Bafumbira and to shed off their Rwandan identity, they did not only adopt the name Bafumbira but they devised the strategy of relocating and resettling in regions far away from Kisoro.  The second category is of Banyarwanda who don't want to be publicly identified as such and prefer hiding under the local Bakiga, Banyankole and Baganda ethnic identities. However, for sinister motives, they clandestinely guard and promote their Banyarwanda identify amongst themselves.  The third category is of those very few Banyarwanda who publicly identify themselves as Banyarwanda.  It is this last category that is now pushing for change of name from Banyarwanda to Abavandimwe (Brethren) and is erroneously putting the figure of Banyarwanda in Uganda at a mere quarter of a million people.

All along, the Banyarwanda in Uganda were organized under their umbrella organisation, Ugandan Banyarwanda Cultural Development Association, UMUBANO, that is headed by Prof. Eric Kyamuhangire who also doubles as Museveni's Senior Advisor on Culture.  In July 2002, a group of 30 members of UBUBANO elders petitioned Museveni over alleged persecution of Banyarwanda by security agencies.  In April 2008, in its annual general assembly at Lugogo, the UMUBANO expressed growing concern over alleged denial of public service jobs, passports and other public services to Banyarwanda.

In 2009, the Citizenship and Immigration Control Act was amended to align it with Museveni's constitutional provision that had granted citizenship by birth to Banyarwanda whose parents or grandparents had lived in Uganda since February 1926.  In 2010, a group of Banyarwanda who had lived in Uganda since 1985 petitioned the Constitutional Court over acquisition of citizenship, citing Museveni's constitutional provisions that allowed anyone who had voluntarily migrated to and lived in Uganda for the last 20 years, eligibility for citizenship.  In 2012, Museveni and Kagame met the top leadership of UMUBANO at State House in Entebbe.  The meeting was meant to iron out leadership wrangles between the two camps led by Eric Kyamuhangire and Donat Kananura.  The latter was being accused of paying allegiance to Rwanda's Kagame, in particular, while the former was obviously allied to Museveni.  When the then Minister of Internal Affairs, Rose Akol, pointed out the massive holding of Ugandan IDs by Rwandans, she was sacked straight away.  The opposition has repeatedly accused Museveni of bringing in Rwandans for voting during elections.

As Museveni scrambled for the preservation of the Banyarwanda as an ethic group in Uganda, little did he know that at one time he would be struggling over the kingship of the Banyarwanda.  The Banyarwanda of Uganda regard Museveni as their King while those who profess their loyalty to Rwanda and Kagame are branded Rwandan spies and subjected to persecution. Museveni has found the Banyarwanda community in Uganda a major source of human resource for his scheme of destablizing Kigali. This partly accounts for the diplomatic fallout between Kigali and Kampala.  Museveni wants to secure the allegiance of all the Banyarwanda (including those in Rwanda, DRC and Tanzania) to himself but Rwanda, and Kagame in particular, are opposed to Museveni's scheme.  It is against this background that a small splinter group of Banyarwanda is now resurfacing with demands of changing their name to ABAVANDIMWE.  They claim that the name Banyarwanda is often confused with Rwandan nationals and that for them, as citizens of Uganda, they are denied social services including passports and National IDs. The mainstream Banyarwanda group of UMUBANO has come out to dismiss the claims by the ABAVANDIMWE.  Obviously, the split is linked to the ongoing Kigali – Kampala diplomatic fallout.  Otherwise, the issue of discrimination doesn't hold because it's public knowledge that Banyarwanda are the top beneficiaries of the Museveni regime.

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Rehema
Patriot in Kampala,East Africa:Assalamu Alaikum

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