On Saturday, July 5, 2014, a group of what was described as unknown people armed with machetes (pangas), spears, knives and bows, and arrows made 13 coordinated attacks in the Rwenzori region districts of Bundibugyo, Kasese, and Ntoroko.
Although the government initially described the attacks as tribal clashes between the Bakonzo and Bamba communities, there was no record of deaths among the Bamba community.
Save for one incident in which 11 family members of the Basongora Community in Bigando (Kasese) were reported to have been killed, all the attacks were made on police and military personnel.
The attackers were later identified (by confession) as members of the Bakonzo Community. Although attacks on military and police personnel may have attracted the tag of structured armed rebellion, the motivation was guided by tribal sentiments.
With a history of violent conflict dating way back to the early days of colonial administration, any act of armed violence in the Rwenzori region (small or otherwise) tends to trigger fears of a recurrence of the old cycles of violence. Indeed, since the 2014 incident, there have been several other incidents of such a nature; the latest of which occurred last Saturday.
In response to last Saturday’s attacks, the buzz in the intelligence traffic is that it was not Rwenzururu (read: Omusinga Charles Wesley Mumbere) and ADF.
Mr Museveni has even been quoted as saying ‘the attackers came from the DRC’. But it is one thing to know who is not involved and quite another to know who is and his or her motives.
It is our position that the State needs to interest itself in this matter beyond last Saturday’s incident. For some disclosure, our study group wrote a briefing paper on Kasese for all the presidential candidates in the 2026 elections. I know Mr Museveni’s copy should be floating somewhere in his office; and when he gets the time to read it, he will find the November 1 incident back-grounded bulungi.
The Rwenzori region has been problematic since Independence. And this recent incident should offer us an opportunity to seek a permanent solution to the incessant security challenges in the region.
The Rwenzori was the first region to be placed under a state of emergency in post-independence Uganda. Kasese District (as part of Tooro Kingdom) is the only district that has ever been administered by the central government (in this case Prime Minister’s Office in the 1960s) after the local government administrative system collapsed due to the Rwenzururu insurgency.
It is in the Rwenzori region that the Uganda Army (after Independence) first saw active combat (against the self-declared Rwenzururu United Movement Army). With this hindsight, the November 1 attacks may not be the last security breach incident in the Rwenzoris if we don’t do the needful. We would like the intelligence services to place the November 1 incident in a position of strategic interest beyond the particulars of the attacks. There are two points that the security agencies should look at critically in their ‘forward’ deductions of the November 1 incident.
One: The attacks were not carried out by the ADF; neither were they the handiwork of some new rebel force, as some people opposed to Mr Museveni may wish. But the fact that a less trained (and less motivated) force of Bakonzo peasants could carry out a daring raid on multiple military installations is likely to inspire the ADF remnants (or some other negative forces opposed to Museveni).
Two: The failure to resolve the politics of socio-cultural identity in the Rwenzori region is likely to expose the region to the tempting overtures of negative forces like ADF and others.