Ugandan Maragoli set for state recognition

immage source https://www.softpower.ug

You know the kind of news that gets me excited. Last week, I pricked my ears at the news that the Maragoli people in Uganda may soon be recognised as one of the country's indigenous ethnic communities. The Ugandan Parliament will be considering an amendment to the Constitution to formalise the addition of the Maragoli to the 56 communities currently recognised as indigenous.

This development interests me on three main counts, a personal one, a cultural one and a historical one. The historical angle is the most obvious one to most of us. We have read or heard of the complex patterns of the migration of our peoples and their settlement in the regions where they live today. Yet a closer look at the historical constructs of our scholars can really startle us with their impact on contemporary practical decisions, as in the case of the Uganda Maragoli.

Part of the schedule to the Constitution under which communities qualify as indigenous Ugandans states that such people (or their predecessors), should have been living in Uganda as of the first day of February 1926. Now, some historical sources suggest that the Maragolis or their ancestors might have been on the ground in Uganda, settled in the present-day districts of Masindi and Kiryandongo, as far back as the 18th century (1700-1800)! That makes 1926 look like a mere yesterday.

But let us get on to the personal level of my own involvement with the Maragoli. I have a host of men and women of Maragoli origin among my many Kenyan colleagues and close friends. Indeed, trying to mention even a few of them, especially in the academic and literary circles, would sound like snobbish name-dropping, so I will skip it.

But I will certainly be discussing with them the significance of the Ugandan Maragoli phenomenon. Why, I might even be a Mulogooli who stayed in the old homestead as my more adventurous relatives moved further afield. I told you once of how I was struck by the similarities between Francis Imbuga's home speech and my grandmother's Runyakitara language.

On the cultural, and maybe political, front, the prospects of indigenous Ugandan Maragoli underline my constant advocacy of an open-minded and flexible understanding of our identities, whether these be ethnic, national or transnational. The "village-focus" mentality that brands anyone from across a stream a "foreigner" is simply untenable in a progressive, globalising world.

Article by Austin Bukenya via Daily Nation.
Shared for reference at saniaga.blogspot.com