Ethnic Politics In Uganda

1. INTRODUCTION
One of the political concerns of the post- independent Uganda today is that ethnicity has been harmful to democracy, national unity and development (Kibanja, Kajumba, and Johnson 2011). The political conflicts in Uganda from 1964 -1966 when the then Prime Minister Milton Obote overthrew President Edward Mutesa, took an ethnic turn. The 1971 coup by General Idi Amin Dada, the 1981-86 bush wars which brought President Yoweri Museveni and later the civil wars in Northern Uganda from the late 1980s have all had the element of ethnicity as one of the driving forces (Okuku 2002). Ugandan society is plural, our human organization is based on the knowledge of different levels of family, clan, village, religion and tribe identity,

I contend that uncontrolled ethnic concerns are not inevitable and the answers to the ethnic political problems are not to slow down the process of democratization of the institutions, especially in a country with volatile history. Ethnic politics in Uganda, as in other parts of African have been historically built and subsequently reproduced; while democratization may be problematic especially in the face of ethnic politics, the best way to reduce ethnic consciousness is more

Politically, this can be analyzed in different forms: from the colonial boundaries, organization of power within the colonies, the political and economic domination of Buganda, and the development of civil society (Okuku 2002). Uganda was under the influence of the British colonialist who themselves had different cultural and moral values. Each of their new territories created more valued culture inherited from its colonial power and this was at the expense of another, it’s believed that the British encouraged these divisions, especially between the southerners and the north (Nannyonjo 2005). This made political leaders and faction of citizens to believe to be superior to others (Hansen 1977:29). The reforms by the political leadership who inherited the central state were limited as far as the breakdown of political grounds of ethnic consciousness was concerned (Okuku 2002). What was important for any reform of the system should have been the re-establishment of a new political system on the basis of merit and technocracy because the inherited colonial bureaucracy was highly ethicized. However it failed, after independence in 1962 for example instead of appointing technocrats to head the newly formed bodies like the Uganda