Mr Muniini K. Mulera
Dear Tingasiga:
The presidential directive to evict Ugandan citizens from wetlands is a measure that invites careful reflection and resolution. It invites diehard environmentalists like me to set our emotions aside, and don sober pragmatism, mindful that successive governments have been enablers of environment destruction during the last 50 years.
But first, let me tell you about the wetlands in Kigezi, and those along the Kabaare-Kampala highway, with which I am very familiar, to illustrate the dilemma that we face today. I will then make a public appeal and recommendations on behalf my people in Kigezi, whose pain and realities I understand best.
In Kigezi of my childhood, the rains of Katumba (March) soaked the hills and mountains, with millions of litres of water infiltrating the rich soil. The runoff was slowed down on its steep descent by the verdant blankets of thick bushes, grasses and Burikooti (Blackwattle trees.) Weakened sheets of water arrived in the V-shaped valleys and gently found their way into the large streams and rivers, and headed down to the enormous swamps that were everywhere.
The swamps, green with reeds gently swaying in nearly every valley, presented a beautiful sight that we considered normal and permanent. In Rukiga and Ndorwa counties, where I spent most of my childhood, there was more land under swamps and marshes than that occupied and tilled by the relatively small population at the time.
These papyrus swamps were part of a nearly continuous system of public wetlands stretching from Bufumbira, through Omurubanda, continuing south through Omuruhita and Rwakaraba, along the great River Kiruruma. At Kabaare, the swamp branched southwest, along River Rwabakazi-Rugyendaira, through Kitumba to Rubaya and Rwanda.
The main swamp at Kabaare continued down through Kyanamira to Maziba, hugging the Kiruruma, whose name perfectly described the power of its roar (okururuma) as it hurried towards the man-made waterfalls downstream. The swamp hugged the waterway through Birambo, Kigarama, all the way to Kahondo ka Byamarembo.
From Muhanga to Rushebeya was all swamp. Here it would rendezvous with its sister from the valleys of Mparo and head north to Kashambya and Nyarushanje, feeding the River Rushoma, along which the infamous 30-metre waterfall at Kisiizi lies. The swamp continued to Kebisooni in Rujumbura, hugging the River Mineera.
On my journeys to and from school in Buganda, I enjoyed a visual feast of swamps in the districts of Ankole, Masaka and Mengo. The swamp between Masaka and Mpigi was beautiful and scary, my mind convinced that deadly reptiles lay in wait for the unsuspecting wanderer. Past the pristine and uncluttered junction to King’s College, Budo was Kyengera, a tiny hamlet that was the gateway to a gorgeous swamp on both sides of the road to Busega and Nateete, completely free from human habitation and spoilage.
These swamps were part of an indispensable ecosystem whose destruction we mourn with heavy hearts, but for which we do not blame our struggling compatriots to whom the small farms on the wetlands mean the difference between life and death. The real destroyers of these swamps, and the environment in general, were the governors of Kigezi and Uganda, from the mid-1970s to the present. The better educated leaders did no better than their uneducated predecessors. They encouraged the destruction and looked away as humans committed environmental suicide.
In Kigezi, the well-to-do were the first to persuade government officials to allocate them vast parcels of wetlands that they turned into pastures and farms. Within a few years, the great swamps of my childhood vanished, replaced with cattle farms and concrete structures. President Yoweri Museveni’s own disregard for the environment, including the destruction of Namanve Forest in Kampala, his attempt to give away Mabira Forest, giving square kilometres of swamp at Lukaya, Masaka to Chinese rice growers, and supervising the conversion of greenbelts and drainage systems into urban jungles and sand mines, encouraged others to continue the assault on the environment.
To compound the problem, Museveni opposed and dismissed experts’ recommendations to prioritise family planning as a means of population growth management. He favoured accelerated population growth to serve as a market for business and for the defence of the country. In 2007, some ruling party MPs, among them Dr Chris Baryomunsi, voiced strong opposition to the president’s ill-considered opinion. Baryomunsi argued that Uganda’s population growth rate of 3.5 percent per year would increase poverty in the land. As expected, Museveni got his way. Ugandans obliged him. Our small territory is now home to 50 million people.
In Kigezi, where the population density in 1969 was 170 per sq km, it was 314 per sq km in 2014. The population density in Rukiga District in 2020 was 246.8 per sq km. The figure for Kabale District was 401 per sq km, while Rubanda District had 689.8 people per sq km. To put these figures in perspective, the population density in Uganda in 2020 was 183.6 per sq km. Kiruhuura District had only 61 people per sq km. Neighbouring Kazo District had 139.8 people per sq km, and Isingiro District had 225.2 per sq km.
Sadly, Baryomunsi was proved right. With dwindling tillable land per person in places like Kigezi, poverty thrived. The consequences of environment destruction were depressingly oppressive. We shall not narrate them for they are your lived experience.
Having dropped the ball on environment protection, the President would be wise to (1) halt all evictions of Ugandan citizens from the wetlands; (2) offer mass education about environment restoration and conservation; (3) develop a carefully considered, well-planned and well-funded compensation and resettlement programme to move people from overpopulated areas in Kigyezi to underpopulated areas in districts like Kiruhuura and Kazo in Nkore; (4) enact legislation for mandatory return and restoration of drained swamps to the government; (5) evict foreign nationals and companies from Uganda’s swamps, lakes and hillsides; (6) embark on escalation of family planning programmes to slow down population growth in areas like Kigezi; (7) abandon policies that put industrialisation and other economic pursuits above environment and human protection; and (8) create a national environment day, with mandatory tree planting and other environment restoration activities.
The President should remember that most people tilling the soils in the wetlands of Kigezi were born long after the destruction had occurred. They are innocent inheritors of lands that they consider to be theirs. Telling them to vacate those lands without a viable alternative is courting social discord and potential violence. It must be avoided at all costs.
Muniini K. Mulera is Ugandan-Canadian social and political observer. [email protected]
