It is true. The president of Uganda Yoweri Museveni did not want to reintroduce kingdoms in whatever form. President Museveni said he did not go to the bush to reintroduce kingdoms.

There was a lot of pressure on him, especially from the Baganda, to reintroduce kingdoms. He knew what to do and he did it. He introduced what he called cultural institutions, which was a distortion since the kingdoms were political, spiritual and cultural institutions.

The strategy was to de-politicise the defunct kingdoms and make them completely dependent on the centre, which wanted to use them to achieve its political ends. This strategy made the LC1 politically more powerful than “the new cultural leaders”. LC1 or Local Council One is the lowest level of political organisation and administration of government.

Museveni chose the strategy of sustaining the cultural institutions with money. The government gives a salary of Ush60 million to every so-called cultural institution. Only the Kabaka refused to accept the salary and instead demanded to be paid monies that his institution was demanding from the government.

There is evidence that the money given as salary to the cultural leaders is not only weakening the cultural institutions but is also dividing them.

Currently, the Kyabazingaship is in crisis because of money from the centre clandestinely being used to destroy the cultural institution. One school of thought is that people called Mafioso do not want a strong leadership of Busoga because that will strategise to ensure that her mineral wealth benefits Basoga and Busoga, thereby making it difficult for the mafias to exploit its mineral wealth for their own selfish interests.

For Busoga to stand the rest of time as a constitutionally-created cultural institution without political power will be extremely difficult. Politics is where decisions are made. Without political power Kyabazingaship, unlike in the past, will not be able to decide how Busoga should be governed nor how and when it mineral wealth of uranium, oil, gold, diamonds, platinum and rare earth minerals should be exploited in the interest of the area and its people.

Currently, the central government is strategising to exploit Busoga’s oil and to use its uranium to build a nuclear plant in Buyende but the Busoga cultural institution is not involved. Besides, Busoga’s gold, platinum and rare earth minerals are being exploited by Mafioso and exported but the cultural institution is outside the trade.

Busoga is a sleeping giant that is captured as a region and cultural institution. There is a need for Busoga leaders to rethink their current conflicts and resolve to reject divide and rule for the sake of Busoga. They must know that together the sink or rise. Our future generations are in danger of not belonging to Busoga and losing their identity because foreigners are penetrating the area not only to exploit its resources at the expense of Busoga, but also create a new belonging and a new identity that has nothing to do with Busoga.

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).