The talk about tribalism in Uganda is full of ignorance. If we go by this ignorance, we would then be right to accuse the 1995 Constitution of Uganda for being tribalistic since it took time to identify each of the tribes that make up Uganda.
Yet if you move away from the colonial definition of a tribe and ask the Baganda, they will tell you that the people who surrounded Buganda (before the formation of Uganda by colonialists) were known as Banamawanga.
Now, banamawanga doesn’t mean tribes but rather nations (from the root word Eegwanga). The Baganda recognized the peoples that surrounded them as unique independent nations.
Then came the British who put all these nations under one brand (Uganda) and umbrella (Constitution) WITHOUT a federal system of governance.
Compare that to forming the United Nations whose President is president of all the nations that make up the United Nations. That would be a recipe for disaster.
The founding fathers of America understood this sub-nation dynamic and organized themselves into Federal States. Germans settled in certain States and so did the English and French. Together they have created the United Nations (States) of America.
For Uganda there is a cultural, natural and structural problem that fuels tribalism as its erroneously known locally. Every sub-nation of Uganda that takes presidential power is naturally pulled into sub-nationalistic politics and governance tendencies. The same is true for most if not all African political establishments.
Until we re-organize our politics to align with our unique sub-nation and cultural composition, be sure that the Basoga would give most jobs to their own if they get their chance on the Wheel of Power.
We need what I defined many years ago as Culturalcracy that many would call federalism.
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Note: The fusion of cultural sub-nations and national democracy into a singular is what I define as ‘Culturalcracy’.
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