
There have always been questions about why power wielders in the current governments of Uganda and Rwanda hide their ill-gotten wealth in Israel, not Europe, the United States of America (USA), Latin America or other traditionally known safe havens.
Historians and political scientists are link it to the long-held perception that the descendants of the Chwezi dynasty in Uganda were the ‘chosen’ children of God and therefore entitled to all the wealth and good things of life.
President Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni of Uganda and President Paul Kagame belong to the Chwezi lineage, which in part may explain why they have supported and armed rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. They have supported the secession of eastern Congo to create an independent country of the Banyamulenge that is ruled by the Banyamulenge, which would give them (Museveni and Kagame) unrestricted access to Congo mineral wealth. Banyamulenge are Tutsi, to which Museveni and Kagame belong.
Museveni and Kagame have also been behind the push to bring on board South Sudan, DRC, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti to East African Community (EAC) as members. The push, some political scientists argue, is to reconstruct the defunct Chwezi Empire, said to have existed more than 1,000 years ago. The theory is a subject of ingoing political discourse and there is a school of thought in Uganda that posits that Kagame and Museveni are keen to make Uganda the nucleus of the revived Chwezi Empire.
Origins of Hima and Rwandese/Burundi Tutsi
Some scholars have drawn connections between the Tutsi Rwandese and Tutsi Burundians and the Maasai and the Oromo of Ethiopia, the descendants of the Biblical Ham, and even the ancient Egyptians.
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 have made this story a myth since it is them that are the masters while everybody else is a slave in Uganda. 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, which consumes a huge slice of the national budget but most of the money ends in the pockets of those in the deep state or those who belong to the Chwezi-Cushite bit have adopted the names of the locals. 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,
Meanwhile, many children and grandchildren of the indigenous communities are being exported into external slavery, distorting the indigenous communities traditionally, culturally and spiritually. Many Basoga children and grandchildren have become slaves, especially in the Middle East.
Chwezi migratory route
The Chwezi are said to have migrated southward from Ethiopia, or even Egypt, into Bunyoro with their long-horned cattle for they belonged to the nomadic-pastoral human energy system. That was about 800-1,000 years ago. They ended up establishing residence in Bunyoro where, as I have already mentioned, the locals called them Bahima because when they sang, they hummed like a bee. Some writers, such as Orville Boyd Jenkins (2011) wrongly talk of Bantu Chwezi. There is no such a thing as Bantu Chwezi. Bantu are Bantu and Chwezi were Chwezi.
Linking the Chwezi and Cushites
Wherever the descendants of Ham went, they are known for two things; kingship and wealth creation. They were great warriors, herdsmen and blacksmiths. Cush or Kush (/kʊʃ, kʌʃ/ Hebrew: כּוּשׁ Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈkuʃ], Kush; Ge’ez: ኩሽ) was the oldest son of Ham and a grandson of Noah. He was the brother of Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. Cush was the father of Nimrod; a king called the “first heroic warrior on earth”. The Cushites are also called Hamites. The Hamites are believed to have come from the north of the Red Sea into Ethiopia at the place called “Kush” and that is why they are referred to as Cushites. The Cushites introduced the idea of iron working in East Africa and particularly in Uganda, the idea was introduced by the Bachwezi from Meroe in Ethiopia.
The Cushitic peoples (or Cushites) are a grouping of people who are primarily indigenous to northeast Africa (Nile Valley and Horn of Africa) and speak or have historically spoken Cushitic languages of the Afroasiatic language family (Habesha Gaaffaa-Geeska Yäafrika (2021).
Table 4 below shows the main Cushite groups of people by country in East Africa. The Cushite factor may explain President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s great enthusiasm in uniting and expanding East African Community. Over the years he has been the main force in bringing Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Cushite in the DRC are the Rwandese Banyamulenge in the Mulenge area of that country. There has been talk of bring Ethiopia and Djibouti into the East African Community.
Ethiopia was the source of all the Cushites of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi who are today the Chwezi Hima and Chwezi Tutsi.
The Tigray are descendants of a Semitic people who intermixed with the Cushitic inhabitants of the region and founded the Christian kingdom of Aksum, which had its capital in the historic region of Tigray. The Tigray, however, are a sedentary agricultural people.
The Saho are an ethnic Cushitic people inhabiting the Horn of Africa. They are principally concentrated in Eritrea, with some also living in adjacent parts of Ethiopia. They speak Saho as a mother tongue, which belongs to the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family and is closely related to Afar
In Somalia, due to the aridity of their habitat throughout most of the year, Cushites are mainly nomadic pastoralists who keep large herds of cattle, camels, goats and sheep.
In Djibouti, where the population is divided between Somalis (of the Issa, Ishaak and Gadaboursi tribes) and the Afars and Danakils, the people are all Cushite speaking although the official language is French.
Ethiopia was the source of the Cushites of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. The Tigray are descendants of a Semitic people who intermixed with the Cushitic inhabitants of the region and founded the Christian kingdom of Aksum, which had its capital in the historic region of Tigray. The Tigray, however, are a sedentary agricultural people.
The Saho are an ethnic Cushitic peoples inhabiting the Horn of Africa. They are principally concentrated in Eritrea, with some also living in adjacent parts of Ethiopia. They speak Saho as a mother tongue, which belongs to the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family and is closely related to Afar.
There are six major subdivisions within the Cushitic family: North Cushitic or Beja; Central Cushitic (also known as Agau [Agaw, Agew]), with languages such as Bilin, Kemant, Kwara, Xamtage, and Awngi; South Cushitic (spoken mainly in Tanzania), including Iraqw, Burunge, and Gorowa, the hybrid language Maʾa/Mbugu, and (in Kenya) Dahalo; Highland East Cushitic, including Burji, Sidamo, Kambata, and Hadiyya; Lowland East Cushitic, including Dasenech, Arbore, Saho-Afar, and Oromo and its close relatives such as Konso; and the Omo-Tana group, with languages such as Somali, Rendille, and Boni.
The Hebrew-Cushite linkage of the people of power in Uganda could explain why they prefer to hide their loot in Israel, according to one school of thought. It is, however, said that the Biiru (Habiris) are the true Hebrews
Table 4: Groups in East Africa that are Cushite
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Country Cushite Group
Uganda Bahima, Basiita
Tanzania Mbugu, Iragu
Rwanda Tutsi
Kenya Kinje, Galla
Somalia Boran, Rendille, Oromo
Burundi Tutsi
Eritrea Saho
Djibouti Afar, Issa, Ishaak and Gadaboursi, Danakils
Ethiopia Tigray (not pastoralists),
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Some writers have said that the immigrants upstream of the Nile penetrated the culture of the locals of Bunyoro (the Nyoro) and established a dynasty called the Chwezi dynasty, which reigned at a site known as Bigo bya Mugyenyi around 1000 AD to 1500 AD. It is these immigrants that established the famous powerful Kitara Kingdom, and the first king was called Ndahura. It is interesting to remember that the Kitara prince who established the Busoga Kingdom around 1232 – Byaruhanga – also bore the name Ndahura. His son who was the original ruler of Busoga Kingdom at Nnenda Hill was Wamara Byaruhanga Ndahura I. Apparently, Wamara was one of the kings who ruled in Kitara. The Chwezi established Kitara Kingdom during the Chwezi dynasty.
Kitara Empire Established by the Chwezi
The people of the Chwezi Empire were known as AbaChwezi. The word “Chwezi” means “lawgiver” or “ruler”. The Chwezi were pastoralists and mainly kept the long-horned cattle. They were known by various names e.g. Bahuma, Chwezi, Tutsi, Hinda and Hima. The Bachwezi formed the Kitara Empire.
The first ruler of the Bachwezi was Ndahura and their last ruler was Wamara. It is highly believed that the Chwezi ruled this great empire for about 200 years, that is, from the 14th Century to the 16th Century, and according to the oral tradition, two kings ruled the empire: Ndahura and Wamara.
Ndahura’s reign marked the beginning of centralisation of political institutions and their adaptation to the new social and economic realities of a more widespread pastoral and a more aristocratically based society (KFRT,2021). The Chwezi Empire’s most military belligerent ruler was Emperor Ndahura I kya-Rubumbi [known in Rwanda as Ndahiro, and in Buganda as Ndaula. Ndahura was a warrior-king and empire-builder, and so he was constantly leading his armies into battle. One day while on an expedition, Ndahura and his guard unit had become separated from the main army and were ambushed and taken captive by a unit commanded by a renegade general. However, the general was afraid and didn’t harm the emperor.
Eventually, Ndahura was released and he returned home to his palace at Rweisamba in Chwezi empire (modern day Busongora Kingdom), but declined to continue serving as emperor. He explained that since he had been humiliated by capture, he was no longer qualified to serve as emperor. Emperor Ndahura I Kya Rubumbi abdicated the throne in favour of a Musongora army commander named Mulindwa who was chosen to replace him. When he died the Emperor Ndahura was buried on Irangara Island, which is located in Lake Matsyoro [Lake George] not far from his Rweisamba Palace. Emperor Ndahura I kya Rubumbi abdicated the throne in favour of a Musongora army commander named Mulindwa who was chosen to replace him.
Many writers agree that the Kitara Empire was created by Ndahura, a great warrior king, who extended the small chiefdom of Bugangaizi over a vast area which included Bunyoro, western Buganda, Toro, northern Kigezi, the Sese Islands, Nkore, Kiziba, Karagwe, part of north-eastern Rwanda and part of western Kenya. Busoga and Buganda were not included. This means that the Chwezi did not initially pollute the traditions, cultures and spiritualities of the Baganda and the Basoga.
However, Ndahura lacked the military power, the bureaucracy and the means of quick communication to be able to establish a centralized state over this vast area. He therefore relied more on agents who were appointed to represent the king in the various areas. This loosely organised empire seems to have had salt, cattle and iron as its economic mainstay.
The Chwezi dynasty succeeded the Batembuzi dynasty – the first rulers of the area comprising of Bunyoro. The word “Batembuzi” literally means forerunners or pioneers. The Batembuzi reign is not well-documented and has to be derived from oral tales and scholarly investigations. There is a very little agreement among scholars, regarding the period of Batembuzi reign in history. Even the names and successive order of individual kings are not properly documented. It is believed that their reign dates to the height of Africa’s Bronze Age. Different scholars have given a different number of individual Batembuzi rulers, ranging from a minimum of nine to a maximum of twenty-one.
The Kitara Empire covered areas of Uganda (including Bunyoro, but excluding Buganda and Busoga). Western Kenya, northern Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, the eastern parts of the DRC, Zambia and Malawi. What is known as the Great Lakes Region of Africa is thus also known as the ancient Chwezi Empire or Bachwezi/Chwezi Empire of the moon.
This historical account explains why President Tibuhaburwa Museveni of Uganda and President Paul Kagame are frequently cited as committed to re-establishing the Chwezi Empire. The decision of the combatants of Luwero Bush War to constitutionalise Banyarwanda is thought to be a political strategy to make Uganda the nucleus of the revival of Chwezi nationalism in the whole of the Great Lakes Region.
There is a school of thought, which believes that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s efforts to expand the East African Community beyond Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania to include Somalia, South Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda, has more to do with the reconstitution of the Chwezi Empire than enhancing trade, business and economic relations in the Great Lakes Region and parts of the Nile Basin.
In fact, there was a clandestine document, which was serialised by The Monitor in the early 1990s – The Microscope – which claimed that the new rulers of Uganda and Rwanda were planning to re-establish the Chwezi Empire in the Great Lakes Region.
Bachwezi clans, Bachwezi songs, name of the first king of Bachwezi, Bachwezi music, what were the origins of the Bachwezi and the Chwezi spirits are topics that are still attractive to many scholars, especially the dominant power in Uganda and Rwanda who are suspected by the Great Lakes Region peoples to be still believing they can reestablish a Chwezi Empire in the region. Table 4 below show some of the Clans of the Chwezi (Bunyoro-Kitara, 2023). I don’t include the Babiito clan because that belonged to the Luo and it was the ruling clan after the fall of the Chwezi dynasty.
Table 4: Some clans of Bunyoro-Kitara
Bachaki Abanywagi Abagomba
Abagweri Abagumba Abahemba
Abatembe Abagaya Abacwa
Abasiita Abacwezi Abasingo
Abami Abayanja Abatwa
Abagabu Abaregeya Abayaga
Abahinda Abasambo Abagere
Abahamba Abaseke Abaginga
Ababaki Abasindika Abahembo
Abagonza Abahembo Abaduka
Abagere Abachubo Ababiiro
Abagimu Abalisa Ababemba
Abategwa Abandikasa Abahangwe
Chwezi rulers
Some scholars or writers recognise only three Chwezi Kings: Ndahura, his brother Mulindwa and his son Wamara.
Table 5 below shows some of the Kings (Emperors and Empresses) of the Chwezi Dynasty that established the Kitara Kingdom.
Table 5: Some kings of the Chwezi dynasty (Source: Bunyoro-Kitara)
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Ndahura kya Rubumbi ]
Kogyere I Rusija-Miryango [Empress] [1090-1120]
Kogyere II [Empress] [1120-1130]
Kyomya I kya Isiimbwa [1130-1140]
Mugarra I [1140-1150]
Ndahura I kya Rubumbi [1150-1160]
Murindwa [1160-1170]
Wamara Bbala Bwigunda [1170-1200]
Kyomya II Rurema [1200-1210]
Kagoro [1210-1220]
Kakara-ka-Shagama [1220-1250]
Njunaki Kamaranga [The last Empress the Chwezi Empire] [1250-1280]
Shagama-rwa-Njunaki [First king of Busongora Kingdom] [1280-1300]
Shagama-rwa-Njunaki was a brother of Sumba, who was grandfather of Namada the father of Abakhoone nation. Namada was the son of Mugerwa, son of Sumba.
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Wamara was the last king under the Chwezi dynasty. He is said to have been a weak ruler who failed to defend his people from external attack thus making the Chwezi dynasty vulnerable to its enemies – the dark-skinned people from the north who established the powerful and extensive Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom.
Apparently, the names Kyomya and Simbwa are common in Busoga. A retired bishop of the Diocese of Busoga who is still alive at the time I am writing this treatise, is called Kyomya.
Simbwa, Ndawula and Mulindwa are names in Buganda. It is possible that the Chwezi were assimilated in Busoga and Buganda at least by name and language. If they lived in Busoga and Buganda, they were also assimilated linguistically. This way they became pollutants of Busoga and Buganda genes. It is known that many districts of Buganda are dominated by Tutsi Rwandese and Buyende and Mayuge have many Rwandese Tutsis too. These could be offshoots of refugees that flocked into Busoga and Buganda in 1926 and in the late 1959s.
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.
For God and My Country
- A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Center 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.