Don’t ask me to substantiate my claim that I am a Muhima. Read President Museveni’s article, “Museveni speaks out on Buliisa crisis,” published in the New Vision on 19 July 2007:
“The Bahima of Ankole and Buganda…the Batutsi either from Kisoro district or Rwanda…the Banyambo of Karagwe in Tanzania…these are collectively called Balaalo. It does not include the Bahima of Lango, which are the Oyima clan, Obote’s clan now headed by Adoko Nekyon.”
There you have it from the horse’s mouth. I am one of the Bahima of Lango, which are the Oyima clan, former president Obote’s clan.
Despite my Bahima ancestry, betrayed in my physical features – tall, thin, and gapped front teeth like Winnie and Edith Byanyima – I am one of the hundreds of thousands of other qualified Bahima who will not become a cabinet or junior minister in the new administration.
Why?
The popular myth in Uganda is that no Muhima has been left behind since Museveni came to power forty years ago.
Where is the evidence to the contrary?
Forget the few well-heeled Bahima officials, businessmen and women you see around Kampala and other cities and towns in Uganda.
Go to the ground in the twelve districts that make up the greater Ankole region as I have done – from Bushenyi to Buhweju, Kiruhura to Ibanda, Isingiro to Ntungamo, Mbarara to Mitooma, Rubirizi to Sheema, Kazo and Rwampara – you will find men, women and children wallowing in abject poverty.
In fact, they are just as poor, or poorer, than the poorest non-Bahima tribes and clans in northern and eastern Uganda. Whereas those in those regions have some land to grow their own food, their counterparts in Ankole are generally landless.
Their schools and health centres are just as, if not more, dilapidated.
This is nothing new. Before Museveni came to power, poverty had driven a variety of Bahima known as Balaalo to become freelance cattle keepers for northern and eastern regions. My late father had one, called Joseph, and his wife Maria. Their daughter, Peace, became my first girlfriend.
Perhaps Bahima graduate girls and women are the most deprived. I met “Peace” – not her real name – who hails from Ibanda. She is a Makerere University graduate of Finance and Accounting, but has been unemployed since graduation six years ago. Poverty drove Peace to become a hotel waitress.
I suggested she join the UPDF and grow through the ranks, but she politely but firmly declined. She could not contemplate completing the rigorous training, or the regimented, hierarchical existence of saluting or being saluted at every turn.
I then suggested she should join Muhoozi’s PLU. She said she had just pulled out because she was required to spend a whole day supporting events only to be paid Shs 40,000.
Yet to most Ugandans who assume that any Munyankole man or woman is Muhima, they would take my friend Peace to be either a spy or a senior figure in State House or a senior official in government agencies.
I know this from experience. Under Obote II, every Oyima man or woman was assumed to be a “prince” or “princess” who lacked for nothing. They had unrestricted access to Nile Mansions, Nakasero, or Entebbe State House, from where they collected bundles of money or written chits ordering ministers to give them jobs.
Unknown to the outside world, President Obote’s head of security, Captain James Odongo-Oduka, made sure no Oyima clan member came anywhere near Obote.
When Obote fell, only William Shakespeare could have succinctly summarised their fate in the tragedy of Timon of Athens:
“Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor.”
A similar fate could be waiting for the Bahima.
The point I am making is this: let us stop hating fellow Ugandans simply because their tribesman is in State House. He does not need to bribe his own tribesmen and women with jobs. Their support is guaranteed. That is why Museveni, like Obote before him, keeps on “bribing” other tribes, leaving most of us, the Bahima, behind.
I rest my case. Please exercise your right to reply.