27 July 2008
opinion
Nairobi — THE MOUNT RWENZORI REgion is today more famous for its armed rebels and smugglers than the scientific and anthropological treasure trove that it has always been.
Famously known as the Mountains of the Moon, the Rwenzori have over the years attracted mountain enthusiasts who are enamoured by their snow peaks and magnificent glaciers. Early in the last century, Italy's Duke of Abruzzi led an expedition to the Rwenzori, and for more than their 100 years, the geography and the people of the Rwenzori region have been the subject of a range of academic and popular writing.
On the occasion of the Abruzzi centenary celebrations in 2006, Fountain Publishers of Kampala have published, Rwenzori: Histories and Cultures of an African Mountain, edited by Cecilia Pennacini and Hermann Wittenberg.
The book, a compilation of academic papers covering the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, political science, history, literary studies, music, religion and lexicography, attempts to cover and document the unique cultural and historical heritage of the Rwenzori region straddling western Uganda and eastern Congo. The editors notet, "The essays collected in this book bear testimony to the extraordinary interest of the Rwenzori massif..."
In this interdisciplinary volume, contributions from leading Western and African scholars of Rwenzori history and culture, provide fascinating insights into one of Africa's most complex and dynamic socio-political environments.
The authors of the papers discuss issues of vital concern in African studies, throwing new light on ethnicity and nation, modernity and tradition, violence and state ethnicity, modernity and tradition, violence and state formation, as well as the fluid interplay between language, culture and identity on the one hand, and the geography of the montane environment on the other.
ACCORDING TO PENNACINI and Wittenberg, major issues is "the increasingly difficult existence of pygmy communities -- Basua/Bambuti/Batwa -- throughout the region, subject to marginalisation processes caused by old cultural attitudes, as well as the recent establishment of natural parks that forbid them to continue their traditional hunter and gathers economy."
The Department of Anthropological, Archeological and Historical Territorial Sciences of the University of Turin has been carrying out ethnological researches in the Great Lakes Region of Africa since the 1970s, mainly in Uganda and Congo.
The researches are co-ordinated through the Italian Ethnological Mission in Equatorial Africa, supported by that country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and have been directed by Pennacini, an anthropologist at the University of Turin since 2005.
In a paper titled, The Rwenzururu and the Kingdom, Tom Stacey writes: "Consider these mountains. Consider the phenomenon of creation, this massif on the equatorial girdle of the world, some 45km in length overall, and 23km wide, with its clusters of might peaks of which, until recently, five were glaciered and the entire upper canopy under permanent snow."
In his description of the magnificent mountains Stacey says "...Do you know there is no such place in the world that compares with Rwenzori? Its glaciered plateaux lie at 16,000 feet; its peaks rise to nearly 17,000 feet, over 5,000 feet higher than the greatest mountains of Europe. The vegetation and wildlife of Rwenzori reach almost to the snouts of its glaciers, and of course overlap the outer fall of its snows. It is a world of its own."
Its abundant rainfall contributes as much as half of the waters that feed, via the Semliki valley, the Central African reaches of the White Nile, notes Stacy, further saying, "The territory above, say, 11,000 feet, induces the famous surreality of gigantic species among its prevailing vegetation of senecios, lobelias, heathers and helichrysums, which occur nowhere else on the globe except on a far lesser scale on other East African heights: Kilimanjaro, Kenya and Elgon.
"To our Rwenzori we ascribe an unprecedented array of unique species for so compact a piece of territory, a mountain island, as it were -- all the species derived from its combination of attitude and climate; its 15 species of mammals, some of them formidable and famous like the Rwenzori black leopard, the Rwenzori Colobus, and the hyrax; its 25 species of reptiles; its 18 unique birds, including the brilliant turaco, and its daringly designed sunbirds, its score upon score of strictly Rwenzori, insects, mosses and fungi," writes Stacy.
Historically, social formation in the Rwenzori region began with migration of peoples to the Semliki from the seventh century onwards, from all directions -- west, north, northwest, southwest and south, according to Arthur Syahuka-Muhindo in the paper, Migration and Social Formation in the Rwenzori Region.
The earliest migration constituted the Batembuzi society, which gave rise to the Bachwezi who, in turn, formed the first political associations in Kitara. Spatial population distribution in the early state-nation redefined the context of population movements within the region, thereby redefining the context of settlements and political relations among groups, says the author.
"The Semliki valley was the melting pot in which many different groups of immigrants to the region coalesced into clans before moving east into the heartland of Bunyoro-Kitara, where they mingled with immigrants from the north, northeast and south, to form the Bakitara people," notes the writer. "The Semliki valley also experienced reverse emigration of groups such as the Bakitara, or Bachwezi, from the heartland Bunyoro-kitara, who were fleeing the violence associated with state formation."
THE LANGUAGES OF THE Rwenzori region are discussed by Oswald K. Ndoleriire in the paper, Language Use and Attitudes in the Rwenzori Region. These are Lubwisi, Lukonzo, Kwamba (Rwamba), Bulebule, Runyabindi, Rusongora, Rutoro, Rutuku, Luhiju and the Venoma people who are considered as a sub-group of Kwamba speakers, among others. Kiswahili and English are also widely spoken in this region.
Today, in Kasese District, there are a number of ethnic majorities and minorities. The 1991 Uganda Population and Housing Census documented 35 different groups, in Kasese district alone.Ndoleriire's paper discusses how people circumvent linguistic barriers to fit in.
It also highlights the exemplary language use of the Bakonzo, who do not hesitate to put aside past and even present ethnic rivalries for better communication. "All in all, the future of language use in the region looks bright, except in cases where some languages and dialects could become extinct; and should this happen, it would be a great loss of human heritage," he observes.
In their paper, Continuity and Change in Bakonzo Music: From 1906 to 2006, Serena Facci and Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza look at continuity and change in terms of performance practices, the types of instruments used, the various contexts of performance, musical structures and meaning.
In Rwenzori: A Bridge of Cultures, Baluku Stanley Bakahinga Mbalibulha notes: "Rwenzori presents to us an interesting area. It is one of the exceptional areas where a mosaic of cultures (both indigenous and immigrant groups) has converged. All the groups, irrespective of their sizes, are worthy of respect because of their respect of their cultural values, mutual or otherwise.
"In spite of the pressure on the resources and occasional outbreaks of ethnic conflict, Mount Rwenzori and the adjacent Rwenzori region serve as a symbol to which all these outline cultural groups look for posterity. The pastoralists will need the rivers, water and pasture while the cultivator needs the soil, and the hunter needs the forest and the wilderness. In this way, all Rwenzori's cultures use the environment for cultural enrichment."
Luca Jordan's paper, Ambiguous Borders: The Case of Rwenzori focuses on the Rwenzori as a border that separates Uganda and Congo. This border, established in colonial times, has been the core of continuous tensions between and within the two states.
ON THE UGANDAN SIDE, it was the base for the Rwenzururu Movement, the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (NALU) rebels and recently the Alliance of Democratic Forces (ADF).
While the ADF has been accused of being a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda, it is said that NALU received support from former president Mobutu Sese Seko's government to destabilise President Yoweri Museveni's administration.
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