It is a very troubling phenomenon when neighbors go to war with each other and we can only hope it doesn’t happen again; we can only hope that the president of Uganda Yoweri Museveni and the Kabaka are working out their differences.

We have known too many conflicts in this region, none more violent or horrific than the Genocide in our country of 1994.

Anytime then one sees neighbors begin battling each other due to tensions between ethnicities it is grounds for deep alarm.

Guaranteed the causes of our catastrophe were much more extreme and took place in a more conducive environment, i.e. a predatory state that was quite prepared to carry out the massacre of an entire ethnic group.

Yet our Ugandan brothers cannot afford to sit back without fully resolving the issues at the root of the recent riots in their capital and elsewhere upcountry in Uganda.

They know those issues much better than anyone else. The Baganda are incensed that their Kabaka could not visit the region of Bugerere because a sub group called Abanyala would not allow them to.

But we also know that the Banyoro group has a long-standing grievance against the Baganda over chunks of territory they claim were theirs once; these are what are known as “the lost counties.”

These grievances date back to the earliest days of British rule in Uganda.

What will it take to resolve them? This is the difficult question likely to dog the beautiful country of Uganda for years to come.

Equally difficult is the relationship between ethnic groups of the north and the rest of the country. A vicious insurgency there has been ongoing for so long cynics long ago decided Museveni is perpetuating the Lord’s Resistance Army conflict to keep northerners miserable forever as “punishment” for earlier years of atrocious northerner rule.

We think the answer simply is that the Ugandan army, the UPDF, beset by all sorts of problems chief among them corruption and incompetence simply isn’t up to the task of sorting an illiterate peasant like LRA leader Joseph Kony.

Does Mr. Museveni, after almost a quarter century in power, have any new ideas to lead Ugandans to a better life?

Do the Kabaka and his hangers on have the judgment not to cause riots whose outcomes can never be in their favor?

Is anyone in charge in Uganda?

These are questions our Ugandan brothers are asking themselves with ever more urgency.

Related articles:

Mobs of Baganda youths to Banyarwanda: get out of our country!

Editorial: Oh, our Baganda Brothers!