As you read this article, many towns may have fallen into the hands of Rwanda-backed Tutsi rebels March 23 Movement (M23) rebels. The rebels have declared intention to capture Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo capital and oust President Felix Tshisekedi.

While the world, fed on one-sided news the hapless United Nations Security Council, believes that the war in eastern Congo is about the vast resources that feed the military and technological industries around the world, little attention is given to Rwanda President – a Tutsi – and Uganda President Yoweri Museveni’s – another Tutsi or Mnyamulenge cast as Ankole – quest for restoration of the ancient Chwezi empire in the Great lakes Region. The two come from a bloodline that believes they are the anointed race o lord over others.

In this article, I will take the Banyarwanda in Uganda to be Tutsi, who are part of a group of people in the Great Lakes region called the Tutsi or Batutsi. They include the Rwandese Tutsi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) called Banyamulenge because they occupy an area in DRC called Mulenge; and the Tutsi of Burundi.

Whether they are in Uganda, Rwanda, DRC or Burundi, they take themselves as one and the same with the same interest: survival as a small group in a sea of indigenous Bantu and Nilotic groups. To survive in modern times they must capture every civic space, conquer the natives, exclude them from resources, divide them, make laws that create fear in them and prevent them from organising themselves politically and effectively. They control the electoral process in their favour, subordinate the civil to the military and rule them with an iron hand. They are related to the Hima of Uganda because they belong to the same stock of humans that originated from somewhere in Ethiopia and arrived in Bunyoro with their long-horned cattle.

During their times in Bunyoro the natives called them Bahuma because when they sang, they hummed like a bee. The Chwezi culture is associated with both Tutsi and the Hima. While the Chwezi were said to have mysteriously disappeared, an increasingly influencial school of thought holds that the Chwezi did not disappear but are today largely represented in the Great Lakes Region by Tutsi and Hima in Uganda, the Tutsi of Rwanda and the Tutsi of Burundi.

However, Simon Mulongo, a former Ugandan legislator and now an ambassador cited by Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2024) believes the Chwezi disappeared through assimilation. He does not entertain the idea that the Chwezi ended up as the Hima of Ankore and the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi as Reid (2002) and Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2024) suggest. 

There were no people called Tutsi or Hima anywhere in Uganda or the Great Lakes Region until about 500 hundred years ago just as there were no people called Boers in South Africa until about 500 years ago. Some scholars have drawn connections between the Rwandese Tutsi,  Burundian Tutsi and the Maasai of Kenya and the Oromo of Ethiopia, the descendants of the Biblical Ham, and even the ancient Egyptians (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2024).  Ham (no relation!) was the youngest son of the Biblical patriarch Noah. When Ham saw his father drunk and naked, Noah felt so humiliated that he put a curse on Ham’s son, Canaan, condemning his descendants to perpetual slavery. Here is the moment, as told in Genesis 9:24-25 (New King James Version).

The Tutsi of Uganda, however, have made this story a myth since it is they that are the masters while everybody else is a slave in Uganda – whether one is a farmer, teacher, professor or civil servant. They have turned themselves almost into royal rulers, have armed themselves to the teeth and converted themselves into warriors, consuming enormous wealth of the indigenous people in wars and emoluments while casting themselves as wealth creators. They have created Operation Wealth Creation (OWC), which consumes a huge slice of the national budget but most of the money ends up in the pockets of those in the deep state or those who belong to the Chwezi-Cushite, but have adopted the names of the localsor natives.

So, the money flows in the new Chwezi Dynasty of the new Uganda Kingdom. If the Chwezi of today create wealth for themselves they do so through primitive accumulation of wealth, which I called the new imperialism in one of my articles. There is nothing like indigenous Bachwezi rulers or indigenous BaChwezi settlers as the Kitara Foundation for Regional Tourism (2021, 2022) wants us to believe. Meanwhile, many children and grandchildren of the indigenous communities of Uganda that were recognised by the Uganda Constitution 1962 and the Uganda Constitution 1967 and are recognised by the Uganda Constitution 1995, are exported into external slavery or retained in domestic slavery. This is distorting the indigenous communities traditionally, culturally and spiritually.

Many Basoga children and grandchildren have become slaves especially in the Middle East (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2024) yet Busoga is much richer than the Democratic Republic of Congo in terms of gold and rare earth mineral deposits. By indentation of the value of these minerals that lie in the bosom of Earth, it is no exaggeration that Busoga may be richer than the United States of America if the $17 trillion value of its gold deposits is accurate and the World Bank estimate of US net value at $18 trillion is accurate too.

If government wanted to develop Busoga – and Uganda by extension – using its mineral wealth, enormous hydropower resources and enormous solar energy to power its economy, no son and daughter of Busoga would be a slave in Uganda or the Middle East. Apparently, the government and its institutions are dominated by people in the Tutsi and Hima, but more in terms of the Tutsi ethnicity. One would say there is really no difference between the Tutsi and the Hima, but there is evidence to suggest that in terms governance and access to resources and opportunities the Tutsis outdo the Hima.

The distinguishing characteristics of the Tutsi people are: militarism, love for power and domination of others, love for wealth and the perennial pursuit and defence of their interests, especially survival as a group at the expense of other non-cattle cultures or peoples.

When they settled in Bunyoro with their long-horned cattle, they grabbed the instruments of power and established their own dynasty and kingdom called Kitara, which extended too many parts of the Great Lakes Region. In modern times they have promoted a language called Runyakitara to link the areas of Ankole, Bunyoro and Toro but really the aim is to reinvent Kinyarwanda as a mighty language in Uganda spoken by the Banyarwanda and Hima of Uganda and in Rwanda, Burundi and Mulenge in DRC.

Language is a powerful vehicle of cultural survival and influence of any group of people. Indeed, as Kitara Kingdom dynasty before the Luo overrun it and replaced it with the Luo Babito Dynasty as Bunyoro Kitara, the Chwezi exerted a lot of influence on the peoples of the Great Lakes Region, including my own people – the Soga – in terms of traditions, culture, spirituality and economic, technological, social and political development. They got absorbed in the clans and cultures of the peoples they came across and even intermarried with them.

There has been enormous intermarriage between Basoga and the Tutsis on the one hand and between  Baganda and Tutsis on the other, thereby diluting the genetic constitution of the populations of Basoga  and Baganda. It is not surprising that when President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, the longest ruling in post- independence Uganda, wanted to launch his rebellions, he chose Luwero of Buganda and Mayuge of Busoga, which had large populations of Rwandese Tutsis. Intermarriages are continuing. It is said that every big person in Uganda is either likely to be given a Rwandese girl to marry or chooses one to marry.  Of course, they don’t know that they are introducing negative impact on the traditions and culture of their clans (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2024).

Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2024) wrote that the Chwezi group is integral to the wide group of the linguistically interconnected Cushites scattered in many countries of the Great Lakes Region and the Nile Basin, which President Tibuhaburwa Museveni was politically determined to weave together as East African Community (EAC) in a manner that suggested a construction of an Empire wider than the Bunyoro-Kitara (excluding Malawi and Zambia, which were part of the Kitara Kingdom created by the Chwezi). This, Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2024), was reminiscent of how the British colonialists wove 15 traditional nations to form The Protectorate of Uganda (1894-1962), the Common Wealth Realm of Uganda (1962-1963) and Uganda (1963 to present).

Uganda has been ruled by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni since 1986 like a kraal or mega-Kingdom, nearly four decades.  He has been able to do this by abolishing the Obugabe of Ankore and reducing the former kingdoms of Buganda, Bunyoro and Toro and the former semi-federal state of Busoga, to mere cultural institutions without political power, and deviating the minds of people in those areas from thinking about power at the centre (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2024). He even created similar institutions where they were not before so that the population diverted most of its political time to those entities.

As if that was not enough, to disempower and depoliticise the population, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni bantustanised the country through creating numerous districts, constituencies, subcounties, parishes and villages out of the indigenous areas recognised by the 1962 Uganda Constitution. This way he generated politicians that would just say yes to whatever he wanted (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2024). Finally, he turned Uganda into Africa’s greatest haven for cross-border refugees, knowing fully well that most of the refugees would come from areas, which had nomadic pastoralism as the major socio-economic system, such as Rwanda, Burundi, DRC (Mulenge), Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

There are now fears that the surviving Chwezi of Uganda, Rwanda and Mulenge have for long wanted to revive the supremacy of the Kitara dynasty and Chwezi culture over all the indigenous cultures and peoples of the Great Lakes Region. Those fears are growing and spreading throughout the region by the day. The fears are growing and spreading especially because of the militaristic stance of the Tutsis of Uganda and Rwanda and the active involvement of the governments of the two countries in the Rwandese Banyamulenge uprising in the Goma area of Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Everywhere in the world, the general belief is that the M23 rebellion in the DRC is fanned and strongly supported by the governments and militaries of Rwanda and Uganda, and that the goal is to create a new country in the Great Lakes Region consisting of Mulenge (eastern DRC), Rwanda and Uganda. When, and if, that happens then we shall not hear of Rwanda, Uganda and Eastern DRC the same way we did not hear of Tanganyika and Zanzibar as separate countries when the two countries coalesced to form a new country called Tanzania. What all this suggests is that the economies and resources of Uganda and Rwanda are mobilised for war in Eastern Congo to finally achieve this goal. Some critics maintain that

Therefore, there is a real danger in constitutionally-creating an indigenous group in Uganda, which the now dominant Tutsi rulers did when they inserted Banyarwanda in the Uganda Constitution 1995 that they made. The reason why there is a real danger in constitutionally- creating an indigenous group in Uganda is that virtually all Banyarwanda all over the Great Lakes region are constitutionally-admissible in Uganda. They can access opportunities such as jobs, citizenship, dual citizenship, nationality and sovereignty of Uganda as much as the members of the indigenous groups of at independence on 9th October 1962 can.

Experience since 1986 has shown that ethnicity has been central to accessing these resources, national identity card and passport. Many Ugandans either do not have national IDs or have expired IDs, and, therefore cannot easily travel in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, but others categorised in the Uganda Constitution 1995 can because most likely they have valid IDs and valid passports. This means most Ugandans now live in a closed society doing only what the rulers want them to do.

Besides, the Banyarwanda of Uganda and elsewhere are interconnected by the Uganda Constitution 1995. Indeed, the constitution, despite the statement that all power belongs to the people, disempowers Ugandans and empowers foreigners. By putting all resources of Uganda, especially those belowground, in the hands of the president of Uganda, the Constitution of Uganda 1995 prepares all resources to be taken away from the citizens of Uganda by foreigners now casting themselves as Ugandans and those connected to them in the Great Lakes region. This could be regarded as a theory but it is now very possible for it to be practical. Only time will judge it right or false.

Recently, the president of Uganda signed an executive order granting mass citizenship to Banyarwanda. Indians have also demanded to be made citizens of Uganda, and the president said he did not have any problem with that. Indians who controlled the Uganda economy in the colonial and immediate post-colonial times control the economy today. The Chinese are also getting more and more involved in the economy and could also demand to be citizens. If the citizenship is constitutionally granted Uganda can end up being completely in the hands of foreigners to the detriment of indigenous Ugandans. The full consequences of this to Uganda and Ugandans will be revealed by time.

For God and many 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).

Further reading

Basajjabaka, Abubaker (2023). Cultural Dynamics, identity struggles in Busoga: From Resemblance to Suppression. The Observer, November 1 2023. https://www.observer.ug/viewpoint/79632-cultural-dynamics-identity-struggles-in-busoga-from-resemblance-to-suppression Visited on 8 August 2024 at 10.13 am

Bwindigorilla (2024). Bachwezi Empire of Kitara: Who were the Bachwezi? Bachwezi, Uganda. Bwindi

Forest. https://www.bwindiugandagorillatrekking.com/tag/origin-of

bachwezi/#:~:text=According%20to%20history%2C%20it%20is,Mugyenyi%20around%201000AD%20t

o%2015000ad Visited on 9 August 2024 at 12.59 pm.

Joshua Project (2024). Batutsi, Tutsi in Uganda. Joshua Project.

https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/15663/UG Visited on 15 August, 20024 at 12.38 pm EAT.

Kitara Foundation for Regional Tourism (2021).The Indigenous Bacwezi Rulers, Fighters and Wealth

Creators KFRT, November 23 2023 https://kitararcc.com/2021/11/23/the-indigenous-bacwezi-rulers

fighters-and-wealth-creators-2/ Visited on 15 August 2024.

Kitara Foundation for Regional Tourism (2022). Bachwezi as the Indigenous Settlers, Great Warriors

and Wealth Creators in Africa. KFRT, January 26 2022. https://kitararcc.com/2022/01/26/bacwezi-as

the-indigenous-settlers-great-worriors-and-wealth-creators/ Visited on 15 August at 16:43 pm EAT.

Monitor (2017). The coming of Rwandan Refugees and Why Ugandans Turned Against Them. Monitor,

April 22 2017. https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/magazines/people-power/the-coming-of-rwandan

refugees-and-why-ugandans-turned-against-them-1697818 Visited on 14 August 2024 at 12:46 pm

EAT.

Nabumati, Enid Karen (2023). The Collapse of the Chwezi Empire. Bunyoro-Kitara

https://bunyorokitarakingdom.org/the-collapse-of-the-chwezi-empire/ Visited on 9th August 2924 at

13.30 pm

Orville Boyd Jenkins (2011). Tutsi and Chwezi: History and Prehistory.

http://orvillejenkins.com/peoples/tutsihistoryandprehistory.html Visited on 11 August 2024 at 18.22 pm

EAT

Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2024). Chwezi-Cushite Effect on the Traditions, Culture, Spirituality and Political Development of the Basoga, Uganda. 17 8 2024. Unpublished.

Young, Sarah P. (2019). “The Cwezi: Ancient Race of Mystical People and the Modern-Day Cwezi Cult

Accused of Black Magic,” Ancient Origins Reconstructing the Story of Humanity’s Past, July 1, 2019,

[https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-africa/cwezi-cult-

0012220#google_vignette.](https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-africa/cwezi-cult-

0012220%23google_vignette.)