The collective Ugandan mind has been focused on politics as if it is the only one that matters. However, many harmful phenomena have been taking place simultaneously.

One of these is the ethnic cleansing of the economy of Uganda often in favour of a small ethnic groups with exogenous roots and, therefore, with no historical, cultural, biological, social, ecological, ethical and moral linkages to the different environments of Uganda. This means having no belonging and identity in Uganda.

The groups are often determined to change the environmental dynamics of Uganda in all its dimensions – ecological-biological, socioeconomic, sociocultural and temporal – in their favour. During the colonial times, the British designed an economy, which excluded the majority blacks, preferring that the black owners of the evolving country just served as a huge labour reserve.

Blacks were excluded from politics, growing of tea and business for a long time. Business and trade in especially crops such as maize, cotton, coffee and simsim were left to Indians, who went on to exclude blacks from the streets of the big towns and small towns at night and allowed them to populate the towns during the day to buy their goods and engage in small businesses such as making pan cakes and selling chicken, eggs, meat mutton and pork as well as vend Asian goods such as clothing.

In the rising industrial town of Jinja, blacks provided the bulk of unskilled labour as whites and Indians provided skilled labour in the various industries. Whites and Asians were engaged in the administration and management of those enterprises.

It was able to constitutionally constitute the group as one of the indigenous groups of Uganda and named it “Banyarwanda”. In the constitution, it is Indigenous group number 20. Although it is ethnically related to the Bahima of Uganda, it was constitutionally recognised as a separate indigenous group from the Bahima. The majority members of the group are Tutsi, originally refugees in Uganda.

The group has used its advantage of having the instruments of power and dominating power in Uganda to systematically institutionalise the ethnic cleansing Uganda’s economy in its favour in every sphere of human life and human endeavour.

The theme of this article is: ‘Ethnic cleansing of the economy of Uganda from 1986 to the present.’

This is a very sensitive topic but it is perhaps the first one to try to explore the ethnic dimension of the economy of Uganda today.

In an article by the then Rubaga North MP Beti Kamya, now the Inspector General of Government (IGG), that was published in the Daily Monitor on January 28 2008, cynically asked whether President Yoweri Museveni (now Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni) has a heart. Kamya warned Ugandans about a looming ethnic cleansing. What a terrible thing! She was blunt and candid. She said that those who will be ethnically cleansed are those she identified as Museveni’s favoured community i.e the Banyarwanda (Semakula Kiwanuka, 2008).

In this article I am not suggesting that ethnic cleansing.is taking place by and in favour of those Ms Kamya said will be ethnically cleansed. Of course, she must have had her mind focused on a long-term possibility. Or eventuality.

What is ethnic cleansing?

Ethnic cleansing is not genocide, which can, biologically-speaking, be reduced to “genetic death”- the death of genes. Genes are the building blocks of all living things. Genocide does not discriminate between all ethnic groups in an affected area. They suffer equally. However, ethnic cleansing targets a particular ethnic group or a few ethnic groups. It can involve one ethnic group targeting one ethnic group genetically extinguishing or other ethnic groups, often violently. These days it can be fulfilled by the use of biological or chemical agents. Often, however, it does happen in armed conflicts as did happen in Rwanda in 1994 when the offshoot of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRA), the all-Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Army) eliminated thousands of Hutus and the Hutu who had been in power under Juvenal Habyarimana, used their Interahamwe para-military groups to eliminate thousands of Tutsis.

Commonly ethnic-cleansing only refers to the expulsion of an ethnic group from a certain area. However, ethnic cleansing has not been defined and is not recognised as a crime under international law; and in reality, the lines between ethnic-cleansing and genocide are often blurred. However, in this article I see ethnic-cleansing and genocide as distinctly different from each other. Unlike genocide, ethnic-cleansing may not involve immediate death.

Death may result as a consequence of ethnic-cleansing perhaps due to the lack of food, hunger, disease or attack by an ethnic-cleansing group as did happen whens the new Tutsi regime in Kigali pursued Hutu refugees in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo and eliminated millions. The assumption here is that an ethnic group or a few ethnic groups can be cleansed out of an economy by a dominant ethnic group in terms of power.

What is ethnic cleansing of an economy?

Let me expound on the concept of ethnic-cleansing of an economy.

Ethnic cleansing of an economy typically refers to policies or practices that a dominant ethnic group in power employs to systematically disadvantage or exclude another ethnic group or other ethnic groups from economic opportunities, business resources or benefits. This can manifest in various ways, such as:

• Discriminatory laws or policies: Laws or regulations that unfairly target specific ethnic groups, limiting their access to education, employment, or business opportunities.
• Unequal access to resources: Unequal distribution of resources, such as funding, land, or infrastructure that disproportionately affects certain ethnic groups.
• Exclusionary business practices: Businesses or industries that exclude or discriminate against certain ethnic groups in hiring, promotion or contracting practices.
• Cultural erasure: Efforts to suppress or erase the cultural identity, practices or traditions of specific ethnic groups, which can have economic implications.
• Unequal participation in business where by one ethnic group to the detriment of another ethnic group or other ethnic groups.
• Unequal access to opportunities to education, health and employment where by only one ethnic group unfairly gets quality health and employment and is assured of education at all levels of the education system. This is what I once referred to as apartheid-like governance.

Thus, the consequences of ethnic cleansing of an economy can be severe, including:

• Economic inequality: Widening economic disparities between different ethnic groups.
• Limited opportunities: Reduced access to education, employment, and business opportunities for marginalized groups.
• Social unrest: Increased tensions and conflict between ethnic groups.
• Human capital flight: Brain drain and loss of skilled workers from affected groups.

Despondency: Low spirits from loss of hope or courage;

Drug addiction among especially the youth

Rising and widening wave of impoverishment

Growth in homosexuality industry

Rising and widening wave of criminality, including human and human organi trafficking, and drug-trafficking.

• Addressing ethnic cleansing of an economy requires:
  
  Inclusive policies: Developing and implementing policies that promote equal access to resources and opportunities.
• Diversity and inclusion initiatives: Encouraging diversity and inclusion in business and education.
• Cultural preservation: Supporting and preserving cultural diversity and promoting intercultural understanding.
• Accountability and transparency: Holding individuals and institutions accountable for discriminatory practices and promoting transparency in economic decision-making.

By working together to address these issues, we can promote more inclusive and equitable economic systems. 

The purpose of my article to spark a meaningful conversation or raise awareness about the subject of ethnic-cleansing of the Ugandan economy. I am seeking to evoke emotions, thoughts and possibly action from all your readers. Later will be too late. Ethnic cleansing of the Uganda economy is real.

By extension, I want to use my article to contribute to building an open society where fear is minimized and critical thinking is encouraged can lead to:

• Increased transparency and accountability.
• More informed decision-making.
• Greater empathy and understanding among diverse ethnic groups and other groups in Uganda
• Innovation and progress through open discussion.

We must all share the vision for a Ugandan society that values open discussion, critical thinking, critical analysis, alternative analysis and empathy. By promoting these values, we can build a more inclusive and progressive Ugandan society that is for all of us but not a few. Embracing open discussion, critical thinking, critical analysis, alternative analysis and empathy can lead to a more informed and compassionate society. Our academics must follow up this submission further.

Ethnic cleansing of the Uganda economy

In particular I want to use this article to fostering a sociopolitical environment where ideas can be shared freely towards creating a more just and equitable society. It is sad that one of the first things the National Resistance Movement did to the detriment of the Ugandan society was to “kill” the debating culture not only in the education system but also in the total society of the country. Many things pass by without meaningful and adequate debate.

Many things pass as secrets of the dominant ethnic group in power, which also introduced the Sectarianism law to prevent people of other ethnicities publicly questioning anything politically, academically or intellectually. This way very many anti-Uganda and anti-people things have been done in the interest of one ethnic group. One of thse has been destroying the belonging and identities of indigenous groups countrywide in favour of the dominant ethnic group in power.

In this article I will use the business world to show how far ethnic-cleansing of the economy of Uganda has gone, to perfect apartheid like governance in Uganda for the benefit of one ethnic group. This is not unlike what happened in apartheid South Africa from 1948 when seeds of apartheid started to be sown to 1992 when steps to have political power passed into the hands of the black people, ethnically-cleansed out of the country’s economy from 1948, began to crystallise.

Uganda’s post-coloniality continues to be haunted by the colonial logic of ethnicity. This logic has mapped the country’s post-colonial political landscape as a terrain on which spirals of ethnicity-based conflicts and violence are the norm. Because colonial ethnic spatial demarcations were also unequally governed, the question of ethnic inequality was necessarily implanted into the post-colonial political landscape. Many came to define Uganda’s post-colonial politics as one of ‘ethnic balancing'(Banjwa, 2022).

During the Obote I regime Africanising the Uganda economy meant ‘de-whitening’ and de-‘Indianizing’ the Uganda economy. Industries were nationalised and African mangers appointed to manage them. Schools too were Africanised with African headmasters appointed to administer and manage them. For example, by the time I joined Busoga College Mwiri in 1986, the first African headmaster was Dan Okunga. However, the teaching staff was still heavily white. Although Dan Okunga was succeeded by a black headmaster, Y.Y. Okot. This was succeeded by a white man, Bary Taylor, in 1971 as Acting Headmaster after he (Y.Y. Okot) was assaulted by Amin’s soldiers in the full view of all the students. The spectacle has refused to disappear from my mind.

Eventually the school system was ethnically-cleansed of white teachers and Indian students because, in 1972, President Idi Amin expelled Indians businessmen, teachers and lecturers from Uganda in what he called economic war. He gave the Asian businessmen who came to be called Mafuta Mingi – Black people with a lot of money, which they had not worked for. It was ethnic-cleansing of the economy of Uganda and its population with the Mafuta Mingi and other small scale business people.

The ethnic-cleansing of the Uganda economy by the expulsion of Indians from Uganda, significantly harmed the Ugandan economy. While Amin claimed to be returning economic control to Ugandans, the forced departure of the Indian community, who owned 90 per cent of the country’s businesses and accounted for 90 per cent of tax revenue was indeed a case of ethnic-cleansing of the economy. It crippled the industrial sector and led to a sharp decline in real salaries and wages. 

It painted the whole of East Africa, renowned globally for its hospitality, in an extremely bad light. It was a throwback to the bad old days when Idi Amin expelled Ugandans of Asian origin under the frivolous claim of “Africanising” the Ugandan economy. The abiding lesson from that era is that the economy promptly collapsed.

Following the fall of Idi Amin and the Uganda National Liberation Front Governments of Yusuf Kironde Lule and Godfrey Binaisa in 1980, the Apollo Milton Obote II regime embarked on reviving the Uganda economy in what it called reconstruction and rehabilitation of the economy. It was not easy for the regime because many rebel groups entered the bush to combat its rule through the barrel of the gun. Many economic installations, particularly banks, cooperative unions, cooperative societies and the industries of Jinja were targeted and disabled by the rebels. It became difficult for the regime to concentrate on the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the economy, including the infrastructure, destroyed during the Amin reign by Obote’s and Yoweri Museveni’ seven-year long rebellion against the regime.

The most effective rebel group turned out to be President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s own National Resistance Movement’s National Resistance Army (NRA). This eventually toppled the Tito Okelo-Basilio Okello military Junta, which had toppled the Obote II regime. President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s NRM/A captured the instruments of power on 25th January 1986 it began the business of governing Uganda. During his swearing as President, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni said his was not a mere change of guards but a fundamental change.

Initially, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni experimented with barter trade for 18 months, but this failed miserably, and he turned to World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help him rebuild the economy of Uganda, in which his rebel army had a big role to play in its destruction. He accepted the World Bank and IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) characterised by human resource retrenchment, ostensibly to build a small, efficient workforce; economic liberalisation and privatisation based on the falsehood that public management of the economy had failed.

Later, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni said privatisation had failed and wished he had not accepted teh advice of the World Bank and IMF. However, there is no evidence to show that he abandoned economic liberalisation and privatisation of the economy. Over the economy the Uganda economy has become re-ethnicised by Indians and to a certain extent Chinese and people of Tutsi-Hima extraction in the fashion of ethnic cleansing of the economy of other ethnicities of Uganda. One school of thought argues that what is happening in the Uganda economy under extreme impoverishment of citizens of the natural indigenous groups spells a dangerous socioeconomic path for the country. Already the gap between the rich and the poor is frighteningly wide.

In particular I want to use this article to fostering a sociopolitical environment where ideas can be shared freely towards creating a more just and equitable society. It is sad that one of the first things the National Resistance Movement did to the detriment of the Ugandan society was to “kill” the debating culture not only in the education system but also in the total society of the country. Many things pass by without meaningful and adequate debate. Many pass as secrets of the dominant ethnic group in power, which also introduced the Sectarianism law to prevent people of other ethnicities publicly questioning anything politically, academically or intellectually. This way very many anti-Uganda and anti-people things have been done in the interest of one ethnic group. One of thse has been destroying the belonging and identities of indigenous groups countrywide in favour of the dominant ethnic group in power.

Farhana Dawood, 2016) wrote: “Drop by an upmarket hotel, cafe or restaurant in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and the chances are the owner will be an Asian from the Indian subcontinent The richest person in Uganda and East Africa to day is Sudhir Rupellaria, a Ugandan Asian. worth an estimated $800m. However, the Banyarwanda also now own a big slice of the Ugandan economy. Branstetter (1996) wrote that Banyarwanda were accused of trying to cheat the Ugandans out of the fruits of their victory and demands to ‘cleanse’ the Ugandan Army of Rwandans were sounded.

In one short, Ethnic-cleansing of the economy of Uganda is ongoing. It is a dangerous trend.

For God and my country.

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).