The Great Lakes Region of Africa, which includes the countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, is said to be an area that not only has an interconnected and shared history, but interlocking and ongoing conflict. A lecturer for our course on conflict and peacebuilding in northern Uganda recognized this when he remarked that all of these countries gained their independence in the late 1950s and 60s. They all experienced massive population movements and were subjected to the redrawing of ethnic boundaries by colonial powers. Rwanda and Burundi were first under German rule but soon were taken over by the French. Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania share a history of British colonization, while the DRC endured through harsh Belgian subjugation. Moses Okello, our lecturer, made certain that we understood that systems of oppression and domination that were established under colonialism gave birth to modern-day conflicts.
The Great Lakes Region has endured through decades of dirty, full scale war and low intensity conflicts. Tensions in Uganda manifested around 1958 as they did in Rwanda with the Hutu Revolution. During that time, the Tutsi were expelled from Rwanda leading them to flee to neighboring Uganda, DRC and Burundi, adding to existing tensions in those countries. Tanzania and Kenya, although direct conflict in those countries did not erupt in 1958, are now facing budding tensions. For national and international actors it is convenient to define and reduce these conflicts as ethnic in origin. It is the most common reason, Moses pointed out, that gets overused in the “native population + settlers + colonialism = ethnic conflict” formula. Although it is true that the redrawing of boundaries by colonial powers led to different ethnic and linguistic communities being resettled and shifted, it is only one dimension to the conflict and oppression taking place today.
Looking more closely at the country of Uganda will show how the colonial policy of “divide and conquer” is a legacy that has held together a system of oppression kept functional by the very people who fought to end foreign control. Lecturer Stella Laloyo, was able to show this through her presentation on Ugandan history. Because the colonizers were able to better identify with the Baganda’s hierarchal system, they saw the group as more civilized and sophisticated than their neighbors to the north such as the Acholi, Langi, Karamajong and Iteso. The Acholi, more specifically, did not have such a defined and centralized monarchy system, but instead had a series of chiefdoms headed by rwodi or kings. The Acholi were viewed as inferior to the Baganda, having little to contribute to the development of the colony. To the British, the Acholi were backwards and their cultural practices primitive making them best suited for military service. The area, thus surrounding the Baganda, in central Uganda, was developed and invested in and still to this day contains the highest concentration of universities and businesses. In contrast, the northern region received its first public university in 2002 with the establishment of Gulu University.
The categorization of the Acholi as militant and violent and the Buganda as educated and civilized merely serves as a backdrop to what is fueling the conflict. The war that took place in northern Uganda from 1986 to 2006 is very much an extension of the five year conflict that was waged in the central region of Luwero. Anthropologist Sverker Finnstrom, after conducting extensive research in the north, concluded that the causes of the war are also political and economic. In addition, colonial rule left Christianity as one of its legacies making the old saying “the gun followed the Bible” that much more true as you begin to uncover the factors contributing to the conflict. The main point from the lectures, is that to understand any conflict in Africa today, one must abandon the rhetoric of ethnic strife and invest in a deeper understanding of the ordering and reordering of power during colonialism. Even further, one must also look at the interrelated histories of these conflicts across international borders like with the countries in the Great Lakes Region. It is here, that those invested can more effectively deconstruct the causes of these conflicts and create solutions for an end.
(originally written: July 21, 2011)
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