The people of Bunyoro, under the reign of the mighty Omukama (King) Chwa II Kabalega, resisted colonial domination with a might that took the British by surprise. Omukama Kabalega, and his well-trained army of Abarusuura (soldiers), put his own life on the line by mounting a fierce, bloody resistance against the powers of colonialization. On 9 April 1899, Kabalega was captured by the invading colonial forces and was sent into exile in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. That partly explains how the mighty Kitara empire became whittled away to the present underdeveloped kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara. While Kabalega was incarcerated, the British started oil exploration in his Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom. The oil exploration efforts started way back in 1910. In 1925, the petroleum potential of Uganda was documented by a colonial government geologist named E.J. Wayland in the publication “Petroleum in Uganda”. This included reporting of the existence of oil seepages in Uganda. The British colonial government however never pursued further oil exploration up to production stage before they left the scene in 1962. However, they had other plans for the people of Bunyoro whom they colonized through blood and iron. The British colonialists gave huge chunks of the land in Buyaga and Bugangaizi counties to the Buganda Kingdom which had collaborated with the colonizers, and went ahead to turn several thousand square miles of Bunyoro Kingdom land into national parks. All these developments had adverse effects on the food production in a kingdom whose main strength for centuries had hinged on food security. Tea, tobacco, and sugar plantations found their way to Bunyoro and stayed even after Uganda had gained independence in 1962.
By the time the current Ugandan government had decided to revisit oil explorations in the Bunyoro sub-region at the beginning of the 21st century, it found a people still suffering the effects of many years of orchestrated, intentional, and malicious marginalization. Matters were made no easier by the current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who keeps referring to the oil in Bunyoro as his and that it must be extracted by any means necessary. In January 2006, the company Hardman Africa—that had been doing oil explorations in the region—struck oil, leading to the government to declare Mputa-1 in Hoima District the first commercially viable oil well in Uganda. The demand for land in the region to be used for oil-related infrastructure intensified as more oil discoveries were made. Multinational companies and local speculators all moved to the area in quest of oil-related opportunities. Before too long, cases of land grabbing hit the area on a scale never seen before.
In this article, I explore how communities in the Bunyoro region have once again mobilized to stage resistance against the new capitalistic trends that threaten to dispossess them of the remaining land. The struggles and successes of people living in Uganda’s oil region (Albertine region) against the machinations of the multinational capitalist companies have been looked at in this article mostly from the theoretical frameworks of passive resistance and collective identity. The current political economy of investments in East Africa is characterized by governments allying with powerful companies and giving them concessions regarding the exploitation of natural resources, usually without much regard for the rights of host communities and the environment. The companies provide the finances while the government enacts the laws aimed at protecting the interests of the investors. This gives the companies a privileged status in areas where they are operational, leaving the host communities at their mercy. Direct resistance to the actions of companies that undermine the communities’ property rights is usually dealt with harshly by the state machinery, reminiscent of what the colonial government used to do. This makes passive resistance a better option under the circumstances.
Read the full article. Turn to page 42.
Allan Kalangi
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