UGANDA

THEMATIC ISSUES
are favoured by the regime in power. In Hoima, it was said that the tribe of the President,
the Banyankole, are untouchable. Participants gave an example of a group of Banyankole-
Balaalo herdsmen who, when summoned by a Sub-County Chief over letting their cattle
graze in cultivators’ farms, rhetorically asked him
“Who are you? You are in charge of the sub-county but we
are in charge of Uganda.”
In the case of the Banyankole, it is often alleged that being a member of
this tribe (the tribe of the President) puts one in a favourable position
to access state employment. While this dynamic may be considered to
hold some ground, it is also often exaggerated and used to stigmatise
the Banyankole.
Across the country, participants pointed at ethnic conflict or ‘tribalism’ as a key factor in
different armed and non-armed conflicts. While it seemed it was never the sole reason
to take up arms, deeper discussion often revealed that ‘tribalism’ indeed contributed
to prejudice, frustration, anger and eventually conflict, and related to other causes of
conflict like poverty and the lack of rule of law or equal opportunities. Disputes over
resources, or the political incitement of one ethnic group against another, for example,
frequently appear to be at play, and participants argued that ‘tribe’ has become a tool
around which to mobilize people as well as a way to attempt to explain different conflicts
in Uganda’s history.
The term ‘tribe’ has been problematized by sociologists who argue
that the unit of the ‘tribe’ has been invented or exaggerated, at least
in part to justify colonial strategies of divide and rule, and that it carries
misleading stereotypes and assumptions of stagnancy and uniformity
(see, for example, Lowe C, Behrend H, Mamdani M. ‘Ethnicity’ is
generally seen to be a more open and flexible term to describe belonging
(including shared ancestry, culture, language etc.). In this Compendium
we use both terms interchangeably, not least because it is in common
usage throughout Uganda. We use the term ‘tribe’ where participants
consistently referred to a group as a tribe.
DISPLACEMENT
Most of the conflicts described in this Compendium have caused displacement, and this,
according to participants, constitutes one of the most salient impacts of the different
conflicts that have affected Uganda. In every single district visited, displacement was
described as one of the most harrowing consequences of conflicts. A participant in
Kitgum remembered the dire circumstances of displacement and said
“I’m not willing to go to the camp next time. I will accept to
die at my home.”
Conflicts have caused Ugandans to flee both within and across Uganda’s borders. In
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