Aldo Leopold (1949) is not only considered the father of wildlife conservation in the USA but also the most significant conservationist of the 20th century. His long-life commitment to Mother Nature reflected a natural spirituality although he had no specific spiritual upbringing. He nonetheless believed that there was a mystical supreme power that guided the Universe, but to him this power was not a personalised God but something that was akin to the laws of nature. His religion therefore flowed from nature (Kiwuka, 2005). Leopold recognised that religion played a role in environmental deterioration. He spoke that conservation was incompatible with what he called Old Testament “Abrahamatic” concept of land…

Linking culture and nature

Culture and Nature enjoy an inextricable link. For a development project of the Bujagali type to be meaningful to the needs and expectations of citizens, it must not shatter the unity between environment, culture and spirituality of a people but must be a means of striking a balance between these human essentials.

There is at the moment a serious threat to the sustainability of the freshwater of the Nile via damming at Dumbbell Island.

It was high time to recall the spiritual link to have sustainable use of water for future generations. Ecological and environmental spirituality are a reality not a farce. To this end, the proponents of Bujagali dam project must have respected the rights of Basoga to nature through their culture and spirituality and thus ensured that their social and environmental rights are not violated in the pursuit of development. This means weaving the culture, spirituality and rights to nature (in this case Bujagali dam) in one spectrum for sustainable development and progress in the 21st century.

Should we do the contrary this can only mean development in the reverse direction, which is de- development – a violation of our creative diversity and a blueprint for perpetual violence well into the future.

We should no longer postpone the understanding and knowledge that cultural values can be and have historically been a tool for preservation, conservation and management of environmental resources. They are, therefore, of relevance and significance to development. They are not an encumbrance to development.

We must inspire everyone to begin thinking seriously about the value of mapping water and other vital resources in indigenous territories and to include serious discussion on the ethics of mapping indigenous knowledge, which is being subjugated to a Western ethnoscience and how sacredness can be a means in conservation and development.

Basoga in water cultural issues

Water cultural issues are also useful for the management of water rights. The indigenous declaration on water can serve as a useful blueprint for integrating ethical, moral and religious concerns in development projects in general and the development process in particular for sustainable development.

In this respect the Basoga have many lessons to offer if their cultural, ethical, moral and spiritual values are not deliberately excluded from development actions in the Nile Basin. NAPE, SBC and other organised civil society were committed to seeing that both the Holistic Vision and the Indigenous Declaration on Water were no longer ignored in development actions in the Nile Basin.

The Uganda  government is likely to continue with bulldozing the construction of dams in total disregard of  sustainable ecology, sustainable environment, sustainable development and environmental justice because it lacks the concept of democratic development, which takes away people’s traditional wisdom, traditions, culture and spirituality in account, preferring mechanistic development, which is committed to sowing the sterile culture of money that international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are committed to proliferating in every part of the world. This way the Uganda government will consciously or unconsciously pursue environmental apartheid and environmental racism in total disregard for environmental justice in Uganda in general and Busoga in particular. Such development is anti-people and adds no value to their lives, particularly their traditions, culture, spirituality and political development in a globalised world. It promotes globalism at the expense of people’s development.

Concluding Remarks

Basoga culture is the oldest of the oldest and rich cultures in Uganda but is being threatened by damming and land grabbing by the people who belong to the nomadic-pastoral human energy system and who secondarily settling anywhere in the country.

Dam building, such as the building of Bujagali, abuses the traditions, culture and spirituality of a people. Bujagali building abused the traditions, culture and spirituality of the Basoga without necessarily delivering development and electricity and without ensuring that the electricity is affordable, not just accessible.

Development that abuses the traditions, cultures and spirituality of a people but instead imposes the sterile culture of money on a people is destructive development. It divides people into haves and have-nots and renders them into a lot that is vulnerable to further impoverishment. Besides, it serves extraneous interests. When people are impoverished, they are likely to lose their land, belonging and resources to foreigners. This is already happening in Busoga. Land and resources are being grabbed by foreigners as the Basoga are being displaced, dispossessed and rendered slaves domestically and externally. Meaningful and effective development is a thing of the past.

The word “effect” has been defined as a change that results when something is done or happens: an event, condition or state of affairs that is produced by a cause. The Chwezi effect is real. It has caused a lot of changes in Busoga in particular and Uganda in general: institutionalised poverty, decadent education and health sectors, debilitating policies on everything conceivable, land grabbing, environmental decay and collapse, collapsed agricultural sector, internal refugee malaise, militarisation of everything conceivable, deradicalisation of society, deintellectualisation of intellectuals, institutionalisation of corruption, apartheid-like development, de-citizenisation of the indigenes in favour of foreigners, oppressive laws reminiscent of those that obtained during the manifestation of the oppressive Tutsi State during Belgian colonialism in Rwanda and structural violence, et cetera. The list is long but all geared towards building Chwezi neo-supremacy.

Structural violence has dictated that every time there is a presidential election both in Rwanda and Uganda, which are under Tutsi hegemony, both violence and political oppression escalate months before the elections. At least in Uganda we are used to abductions, arrests and long ordeals of politicians in prisons and courts of law, including martial courts. Demonstration, although permitted by law are outlawed just by word of mouth, as we witnessed recently when the youth came out to demand the resignation of the speaker of parliament, Anita Among for presiding over mushrooming corruption in Parliament.

If the Chwezi did not significantly influence the traditions, culture, spirituality and political development of the Basoga in the past, they (i.e, the present-day Tutsi, present-day Hima, present-day Tutsi in Rwanda with roots in Uganda, present-day Banyamulenge, some Burundian Tutsis) are likely to do so through a diversity of avenues, including: land grabbing, destruction of sacred places, destruction of biocultural landscape, destruction of traditional agroecological systems, policies and laws promoting dispossession and displacement of whole cultural groups and/or communities, culturally and spiritually unconscious educational strategies, destruction of traditional fishing, sand-mining, mining of minerals on the biocultural landscape, and programmes favourable to the sterile culture of money, such as Myooga, Parish development model, Operation Wealth Creation which promote individualism instead of the community or cultural groups, refugee preferences and settlement as well as corruption of different types, to name but a few.

There is no doubt that the global conversion into and praise of Uganda as the most hospitable to refugees, mostly from Rwanda and the Mulenge area of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has grossly impacted, and will continue to grossly impact, Busoga in particular and Uganda in general socially, politically, economically, ecologically, culturally, spiritually, ethically, morally, environmentally and in terms of international relations (e.g., Monitor, 2017). In Busoga, people of Tutsi origin and ethnicity have grabbed land in many locations mainly because its mineral wealth.

If there was British colonial imperialism and Buganda subimperialism because of its wealth, there is now Tutsi imperialism expanding over Busoga because of the same reason, helped by the fact that the group dominates power in Uganda.

Environmental racism and environmental injustice during the new Chwezi-Cushite dynasty are jointly destroying traditions, culture, and spirituality not only in Busoga but in al the traditional nations that the British colonialists wove together to form Uganda. 

At 75 I am compelled to record precisely what I have perceived in the hope that there will be a rethinking of “Which Way Uganda?” 62 years since the British colonialists granted political independence to the country. Although I have focused on the Chwezi effect on the traditions, culture, spirituality and political development of Busoga. What I have written about Busoga can as well be extended to apply to all the 15 traditional nations and all indigenes in the country. I have included an extensive list of readings so that if the reader is interested, he or she can expand his or her knowledge and critique this treatise with adequate knowledge. I hope it will create new inquiries on Busoga and Uganda, with the most important effect highlighted herein, and cause us to rethink our traditional hospitality.

The wisdom of Aldo Leopold and the Nile

It is prudent at this juncture to introduce the wisdom of Aldo Leopold (1949). Leopold is not only considered the father of wildlife conservation in the USA but also the most significant conservationist of the 20th century. His long-life commitment to Mother Nature reflected a natural spirituality although he had no specific spiritual upbringing. He nonetheless believed that there was a mystical supreme power that guided the Universe, but to him this power was not a personalised God but something that was akin to the laws of nature. His religion therefore flowed from nature (Kiwuka, 2005).

Leopold recognised that religion played a role in environmental deterioration. He spoke that conservation was incompatible with what he called Old Testament “Abrahamatic” concept of land, adding:

“We abuse land because we regard it as a community belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong we may begin to use it with love and respect”.

Leopold innovated his idea of “Land Ethic”, which he said commands us “to examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right as well as is economically expedient. He added: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (Leopold, 1949). It is possible that Leopold would have used the term “sustainability” but it had not been coined. However, it is clear that he understood it long before it was coined (Grossman, 2002).

Clearly what is happening to the World’s big rivers and what is planned to happen to the River Nile is anti Leopold’s Land Ethic. He understood the impacts of engineering schemes on rivers when he stated:

“Mechanised man, having rebuilt the landscape, is now rebuilding the waters. The sober citizen who would never submit his watch or his motor to amateur tampering freely submits his lakes to draining, filling, dredging, pollutions, stabilizations, mosquito control, algae control, swimmers itch control and the planting of any fish able to swim. So it is with rivers, also. We constrict them with levees and dams and then flush them with dredging, channelization, and the floods and silt of bad farming…Thus men too wise to tolerate hasty tinkering with our political constitution accept without a qualm the most radical amendments to our biotic constitution” (Leopold, 1949). Expressing his dismay with the divergences of professions in their attitude to nature, Leopold wrote:

“The engineer has respect for mechanical wisdom because he created it. He has disrespect for ecological wisdom, not because he is contemptuous of it, but because he is unaware of it. We have in short two professions [the mechanical and ecological] whose responsibilities for land use overlap much, but whose respective zones of awareness overlap only a little”.

This then explains the gulf between engineers and ecological environmentalists and the conflicts thereof in every new dam project. In Bujagali project, for example, it may have been appearing as if the conflict over Bujagali Falls is between NAPE or SBC and the politicians and bureaucrats in Kampala and those at the World Bank in Washington, but in reality it has been between the former and the engineers behind the latter.

So, then what would be the advice of Leopold to the proponents of Bujagali dam was he to be alive today?

Grossman (2002) has correctly read Leopold’s mind and detected that he (Leopold) wishes to intervene with timely guidance. Leopold urges caution and conservatism to ensure that the dam scheme will have no net negative impacts and that the traditional and indigenous users of the falls and the Nile are respected. He cautions that the feature -the full flow itself, an irregular flow pattern, a floodplain -should always be retained unless its loss can be proved [beyond reasonable doubt] to be immaterial or ultimately beneficial (unlikely in most cases). He urges that all the costs (environmental, ecological, social, cultural, ethical, political, spiritual, moral, human rights, food security, health, et cetera) of the project be included and weighed against the benefits both of modification and also of retaining the undisturbed system. He explains that sustainability means that you can continue to indefinitely reap a benefit only if it is without deterioration of the resource. This according to him is what sustainable management and, by extension, sustainable development means.

Leopold adds thus:

“Forget about rushing to erect Bujagali dam or any other dams. Seriously consider alternative renewable energies. Establish ‘a level playing field’ and extend subsidies to these renewable technologies the same way you have been doing to hydropower. Invest urgently in restoring the natural systems that have been lost to damming (i.e. undam River Nile) such as Owen Falls, Rippon Falls and Lake Victoria whose water levels have in the last few months fallen drastically following the commissioning of Kiira dam in 2002. Reconnect the floodplains. Note that many of the modifications that have been made or are planned to be made to the River Nile serve sectional interests and you know it. Why should we in the 21st century continue to allow sectional interests to benefit at the expense of everyone else?

Above all, says Grossman (2002), Leopold is not taking any sides except the side of wise use of the Nile which preserves the cultural, spiritual, ecological, social, moral, psychological, ethical and intellectual integration of the Basoga with Bujagali Falls and hence their identity and integrity in the landscape as a distinct indigenous people. Otherwise Bujagali dam will be nothing but ethnocide against the Basoga ((Oweyegha-Afunaduula, et. al, 2005).

Basoga, ancestral wisdom and environmental racism

Environmental apartheid is a manifestation of the more general phenomenon of environmental racism, which we define as Bullard (2001) did: “any policy, practice or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups or communities based on race or colour.”

Environmental racism, then, is a critical term that highlights environmental framings that disproportionally negatively affect people of colour (Dickinson, 2012) and advantage whites (Bullard, 2001). Environmental apartheid and environmental racism imply absence of environmental justice. People are pressed to the margins of nature where the ecology is unfriendly and hardly enjoy ecological health.

Isaac Afunaduula and Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2005) in their paper “The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Uganda” advance the view that environment, culture and spirituality, at least in the case of the indigenous group called Basoga, is intricately interrelated, interdependent and interconnected and that the three tend to seek and nurture positive synergy where this status quo is respected. They argue that the struggle for environmental justice must seek to retain the unity between these aspects of nature. They conclude that future development in the Nile Basin must respect the environmental, cultural and spiritual endowment of the Basoga, without which it is impossible to speak of true development. To the Basoga this is environmental justice or sustainable development indeed.

In his article published in The Kampala Post (2023) and titled “Does Environmental Justice Matter Anymore in Uganda?”, Oweyegha-Afunaduula writes: Today in Uganda it is hard to submit that sustainable development is taking place. For many lifestyles and feeling of well-being have plummeted. Only a few can say they are enjoying better lifestyles and feel well-being. The majority cannot get quality healthcare and now depend on our diminishing nature to satisfy their health needs.

On the other hand, as government pursues economic growth and the money economy, natural resources and ecosystems on which we and future generations depend for survival are being destroyed. Ecological integrity and environmental integrity are being eroded. In the process the environmental security and environmental justice of people, communities and other beings are being mercilessly eroded. The future environmental survival of humans and other being is in jeopardy.

The Basoga do belong, have rights and desire to share their ancestral wisdom with other decision-makers They have for centuries had cultural interaction with the River Nile at close range and by remote-sensing and, therefore, serve as a ready traditional data base for international cooperation to ensure that it survives well into the future as a provider of multiple functions (of water).

Unfortunately, the Basoga were and still are a threatened and endangered people due to the human technoarrogance and socio-cultural ignorance of the leaders, who were determined to implement the corporate and political interest to build Bujagali dam more as a potent symbol of both patriotic pride and the conquest of nature by human ingenuity, and a political and corporate choice to implement the amorphous concept of creating capitalist wealth in Uganda or as a monument of political] power, glory and domination of Basoga in particular and Uganda in general, by the personalised rule of General Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. This is erroneously baptized “popular democracy”.

One growing school of thought in Busoga in particular and Uganda in general holds that Bujagali dam is graduating as a tool of ethnocide, a form of environmental racism and a perversion of constitutionalism rather than a strategy in real development or sustainable development.

Unless environmental justice is put on the national and global political agenda, proponents of dams will continue to float lies that the silent, environmentally, culturally and spiritually tortured and discriminated against poor will continue to be misrepresented in development and to be taken as objects to be “developed”. What matters now is to integrate the principles of environmental justice in governance of any kind-political, environmental or development, to name but a few. The cultural and spiritual dimensions of such governance are critical to sustainable development.

The Basoga belong, have rights (ecological, cultural, environmental, spiritual) and desire to share their ancestral wisdom with other decision-makers (Oweyegha- Afunaduula, et. al., 2005). They have for centuries had cultural and spiritual interaction with the River Nile at close range and by remote-sensing. They are great friends of the Nile who unfortunately have been ignored in the Bujagali dam process in which the migrant populations occupying the areas around the proposed dam site and the institution of Kyabazinga have been raised to represent their (Basoga) cultural and spiritual rights while the clan cultural and spiritual leaders have been marginalised and completely ignored in the Bujagali dam decision-making equation. This human and techno-arrogance threatens the very existence and survival of both the Basoga and the Nile.

The Basoga can serve as a ready traditional data base for international cooperation to ensure that the Nile and their (Basoga) culture and spirituality survive well into the future as a unity and provider of multiple functions (of water). This, however, is only possible if their psycho-social, cultural and spiritual values are recognised as critical aspects of the bio-cultural diversity in the Nile Basin and, therefore, essential resources in the sustainable management of the basin.

There can be no real environmental justice in the basin without deliberate recognition of the Basoga this way. The cultural and spiritual dimensions of environmental justice are, therefore, not impediments but parts of holistic development at the centre of which must be the people as the first critical resource in such development. Excluding the Basoga from development by constructing Bujagali dam, thereby damming their human rights, culture, spirituality and future is nothing short of ethnocide (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, et. al. 2005). For wisdom we can only call forth Aldo Leopold from his grave. His guidance on the matter is timely.

Busoga like many other parts of Uganda, is suffering enormous environmental damage under renewed Chwezi-Cushite dynasty of the 21st century.in Uganda. While indigenous Ugandans have been chased from lakes and swamps by the power and authority of the Chwezi-Cushites, Indians and Chinese have been allowed to establish pollution-rich factories in what are called industrial parks  As if that is not enough, what is called National Environmental Management Authority(NEMA) is being used to remove ordinary Ugandans from the swamps while allowing foreigners and those connected to power to establish residences and factories in the swamps. Frequently those establishing factories and residences in swamps are removing soil and rocks from hills, thereby increasing the risk of floods and landslides in Uganda in general and Busoga in particular. Others are reclaiming the shores of Lake Victoria or mining sand and minerals such as platinum and the government and NEMA have chosen both silence and inaction. Some big hotels such as Munyonyo, have reclaimed the shores of Lake Victoria. Environmental injustice and, for that matter, environmental injustice, have never been so pronounced as during the Chwezi-Cushite dynasty of the 21st Century.

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). They saw their innovation as a new opportunity to demystify disciplinary education and open up academia and society to new, interlinked knowledge and solutions to complex or wicked problems that disciplinary education cannot solve. To this end, the CCTAA promotes linking of knowledge through the knowledge production systems of Interdisciplinarity,

Crossdisciplinarity, Transdisciplinarity and Extradisciplinarity (or non-disciplinarity), which allow for multistakeholder team knowledge production instead of individualised knowledge production, which glorifies individual knowledge production, achievement and glorification.

The issue of alternative analysis towards deconstruction and reconstruction of knowledge is taken seriously at the CCTAA. Most recorded knowledge needs deconstruction and reconstruction within the context of new and different knowledge production systems listed here in. Therefore, instead of disciplinary academics, scholars or professionals, we can begin to produce new ones. We can, for example have professors of interdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity or non-disciplinarity. Besides, academics, scholars and/or professionals, civil servants, researchers, etc can choose to reorient themselves via the CCTAA and become enhanced learners via the new and different knowledge systems.

It is attitudinal change to thinking, reasoning and practice in knowledge production and use towards solving simple and complex problems! We are all learning beings, and by virtue of the construction of our brains we are supposed to continuously learn and to be good at thinking correctly and reasoning effectively.  As learners who can engage in critical thinking and alternative analysis, we become more open to change and alternatives to development, transformation and progress of society, embrace change, imagine possibilities, learn through the activity of experience, and rejuvenate ourselves and ourselves continuously. The CCTAA is committed to enabling this to happen. It does not abhor resistance but creates opportunities for meaningful resistance that opens opportunities for all.