Development that abuses 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.

Relevance of Gaia to Long-term Survival and the Environmental Justice of the Basoga

James Lovelock (1992) idea of “gaia” (i.e, life preserving interconnections of Mother Earth, holistic science, planetary physiography and social responsibility), which was innovated long after Aldo Leopold’s work, should be a worthwhile entrenchment of his (Leopold’s) guidance in the quest for respect of our interdependence and interconnectedness with all natural systems that we can only assault at our own long-term peril.

Lovelock believes Gaia is a form of planetary medicine similar to the folk medicine of the pre-scientific era [such as that of the Basoga].

O’riordan (1995) has written thus: “Keeping a healthy Planet with an equitable climate is as complicated as maintaining a healthy body from disease. The Gaian idea is to design a mode of existence to let the earth live in a healthy fashion -where possible, to let nature be the guide and the gyroscope of homeostasis. To ignore Gaia may mean that humans will have to live for ever in a form of environmental conscription -looking after the Planet as if it were on a kidney machine -functioning, but always circumscribed…. Gaia means keeping a planetary healthy life…”

For that matter, building dams to pursue the illusion of monetary richness or conquest of nature is conquering us instead, not nature. This is a warning. Government has said Nalubaale dam will be decommissioned in 15 years’ time. At the moment, Ugandans have never been any poorer (in terms of incomes) since independence and income poverty is on the rise, which means its (Nalubaale’s) 50-year existence has not helped us to fight poverty of the broad masses of our people.

Neither can we boast that through Nalubaale we have been able to conquer nature since the dam has ended up being a white elephant and now has developed cracks turning it into a disaster waiting to happen unless it is judiciously and quickly removed. However, removing a dam is more expensive than building a new one.

The proposal in the discredited AES Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), preserved and updated by a foreign Uganda government consultant, Scott Wilson Piesold, that the cultural and spiritual site at Bujagali could be translocated by humans to another site caused a lot of concern among the clans of Busoga because it is a big lie. They were even more concerned because those who pursued Bujagali dam project did not want to recognise that the Basoga clans existed and that they must have been genuinely consulted or allowed to participate fully in the Bujagali dam decision-making process. They hated to hear that their spiritual and cultural interests were being dealt with by the erroneous reference to the largely cosmopolitan migrant population that settled in the once tsetse fly infested area around the banks of River Nile.

When, therefore, government and its accomplices said that the spiritual and cultural issues of the Basoga had been resolved, they never provided evidence of consent by the clans of Busoga because they had never sought this consent from clan leaders. This was a blind spot in the Bujagali dam decision-making process, which seriously challenged its legitimacy.

It is, therefore, important to record that unless environmental justice was put on the national and global political agenda, proponents of dams would continue to float lies that the silent, environmentally, culturally and spiritually tortured and discriminated against poor needy would continue to be misrepresented in development and to be taken as objects to be “developed”.

What mattered was to integrate the principles of environmental justices in governance of any kind – political, environmental or development, to name but a few. The principles of environmental justice, which should have been respected, pursued and implemented in environment and development in the Bujagali dam, are:

• Affirm the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity, integrity and interdependence of all species as well as the right to be free from cultural, ecological, spiritual and environmental destruction and imperialism
• Stress the unity between culture, environment, spirituality and conservation
• Demand that law and public policy making be based on mutual respect and justice for all people free from any form of discrimination or bias
• Mandate the right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and renewable resources in the interest of a sustainable Planet Earth for humans and other occupants -living and non-living.

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 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 by a Western ethnoscience and how sacredness can be a means in conservation and development.

Basoga water and 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 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 dam, abuses the traditions, culture and spirituality of a people. Bujagali dam 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 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, militarization 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.

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’ by presidential whim or mood, as we witnessed recently when the youth came out to demand the resignation of Speaker of Parliament Anita Anite 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 rethink 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.

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.