ON MUGANGA, BEING RWANDAN AND UGANDA’S DEMONS OF IDENTITY POLITICS PART 1: THE REALITY OF BEING OF RWANDAN DESCENT

It is true in a way that few care to contemplate, that no people in the East African region have been as persecuted, harangued and vilified like Rwandans and people of Rwandese descent-particularly the Tutsi. Whether in their own country or abroad in search of refuge, they have faced discrimination and anti-Rwandan sentiments that are impossible to appreciate from the outside.

Historical revisionists have tried to come up with alternate realities about and causes of the 1994 genocide, but when you consider that this was not the first time an attempt at ethnically cleansing the Tutsi was made, those arguments fail before they are made. In the 1950s, over 20,000 Tutsi were killed and hundreds of thousands fled into neighbouring countries. Bear in mind that by then, our borders were not as they are now. As an interesting aside, all of present-day Kenya’s Lake Victoria, Kisumu, Turkana, Naivasha and even Masaai Mara were part of the Uganda Protectorate. So technically, all Kenya’s long-distance medals are Uganda’s and don’t get us started on Migingo! Inversely, large parts of south-western Uganda, including Kisoro and Kabale as well as the now much talked bout Kivu region in DRC were actually part of Rwanda.

Anyhow, the point here is that some of today’s talk of Rwandans migrating to Uganda/DRC is in fact a misrepresentation of historical facts. There are people of Rwandese-descent that are both historically and factually as Ugandan as can be and whose ancestors did not necessarily migrate from present-day Rwanda.

Yet the label remains.

Being called a munyarwanda in Uganda often alludes to otherness; an outsider status bestowed on people based solely on their ethnicity and nothing else.  And that’s the part most other Ugandans don’t get. When Ugandans of Rwandese descent complain about being othered, it is not, as some people would have us believe, similar to being called a Mushese, Mudokooli, Mukooko etc. True, the latter terms do hold some sense of ethnic derision, but the Ugandan-ness of those being referred to is never in doubt. Being called a Munyarwanda on the other hand, almost always means having your Ugandan-ness contested, doubted or at the very least put in abeyance until further notice.

And it’s that last bit that gets to the heart of the unease many Rwandese-Ugandans experience each time the question of nationality comes into play. It’s an unease born not just out of a constant exclusion to belonging, but also a lived reality that at any given moment in time, everything you hold dear, including who you think you are, can be snatched away from you by others, based solely on your ethnicity. It is a chip that never leaves one’s shoulders, no matter how hard one tries. I suspect it is the very reason many Rwandans I know will ignore almost everything and anything that is thrown at president Kagame. Because nowhere else in the region, indeed even the world, will a Rwandan or person of Rwandese descent go and feel the weight of their questioned identity lifted off their shoulders.

This is as much a credit to Kagame as it is an indictment to the rest of us. May we all aspire to do better.

In discussing Prof. Muganga’s current predicament, I felt it important to start with this acknowledgement because for many of those defending his suitability for ministerial appointment, his Rwandan identity is at the fore of his woes. And if we want to engage with them and their fears, it is important that we first and foremost, make sure they see that we see, hear and understand them.

But it is important that this story is told properly and completely.

Rwanda and Uganda have a long and well-documented sibling-like rivalry. The historical connectedness described above is what makes it particularly messy. President Kagame was once part of the NRA and head of military intelligence (another interesting anecdote here is that there is no historical record of General Kagame ever retiring from the NRA/UPDF so technically…). The majority of Rwanda’s post-genocide top brass were either born, lived in or have family members in Uganda. Tensions between both countries have ebbed and flowed with such vacillation over the past 40 years, it’s hard to keep up. One day the presidents are wining and dining as the Ntare School old boys they are, the next borders are being closed indefinity, nationals of both countries are being abducted and a cold war is happening. Add to that both countries’ excursions into the DRC, the alleged pillaging they have masterminded and the bloody confrontations they had in Kisangani, and all of a sudden, the question of whether a Ugandan Minister of Internal Affairs is in fact a Rwandan national ceases to be just another attempt to other and exclude an individual based solely on his ethnicity.

In part two, I turn to the specific case of Prof. Muganga’s appointment and the questions we must all ask ourselves.

Written by

Ganzi Isharaza

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