Abstract
The diasporas–home development thesis avers that diasporas improve their homelands’ general conditions through financial remittances contributing to home country national budgets; through global–home linkages for social, techno-scientific, professional and business investment opportunities; by showcasing tourism potentials of home countries; by creating pressures for democratisation; and by upholding human rights and peaceful resolution of prevailing conflicts through lobbying and advocacy. This ‘bright side’ signifies the metamorphosis of migrant communities dispersed worldwide – regardless of the conditions under which they migrated, their identities and politico-ideological persuasions -into fruitful nonhome development forces. Beyond this ‘bright side’, another equally significant not so easy to ignore is the ‘dark side’ of diasporas, especially their politico-security dimension. To properly understand the development prospects and implications of diasporas for nation-states, we must appreciate the implications of such communities for national and regional security, in terms of the state’s geopolitically constituted international relations, and people’s safety within geopolitical spaces sometimes characterised by ethno-political security configurations. This chapter applies Zeleza’s (African diaspora. New dictionary of the history of ideas 2005,) insight on ‘new African diasporas’ and Mushemeza’s (The politics of empowerment and integration of banyarwanda refugees in Uganda, 1959–1990. Kampala: Fountain, 2007) thesis on integration of refugees, to examine the security intricacies resulting from Banyarwanda migrants in Africa’s Great Lakes Region. Their role in Rwanda’s and the region’s post-1959 insecurities is demonstrated. Arguably, under conditions of ethno-political uncertainty and vulnerability, amidst state failures, dispersed nonhome communities can metamorphose into significant forces in national and regional insecurity, thereby retarding national and regional development.
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Notes
- 1.
The GLR includes most of East and Central Africa, excluding the Horn and parts of Central Africa not directly affected by the Uganda–Rwanda–Burundi–DRC (in)security axis. Thus, though Filip Reyntjens outlines eleven countries in the region—Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo Republic, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Republic of South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia (the GLR may be viewed as stretching from Lake Turkana in Kenya to Lake Chad in Chad) – this chapter concentrates on the Rwanda–Burundi–Uganda–DRC security axis of the post-1959 era. In 1959 the Rwandan revolution led to the extrusion of Banyarwanda refugees into neighbouring countries.
- 2.
It is called a geo-colonial entity because colonial boundaries were arbitrarily imposed on African spaces now called Nation-States. Precolonial Rwanda was a single, Banyiginya-ruled kingdom of Rwanda–Burundi that included parts of the present-day DRC. Kinyarwanda (their language) speakers in DRC, Uganda and Tanzania, like many transnational ethnic groups in Africa, exist. Hence, today’s Rwanda–Burundi is the land not of all but some Banyarwanda–Burundi peoples.
- 3.
Inyenzi means cockroaches – a detestable, unhygienic insect and pest that entomologically undergoes incomplete metamorphosis but is elusive enough to survive under difficult conditions, coexist with human hatred against it meanwhile thriving on human food and establishments. It is not clear why this rebel group was called Inyenzi.
- 4.
However, not only Batutsi were extruded in 1959 as several accounts claim. Many Bahutu families thronged Uganda between 1959 and 1961 and have since settled in the country: it is factually wrong to claim that only Batutsi fled the country in 1959. Indisputably, however, the revolution pitted Bahutu against Batutsi; Bahutu triumphed over Batutsi. It targeted mainly Batutsi elites and not every Mututsi. The Bahutu had no political power at the time the revolution broke out but were struggling for power and had the support of the departing colonialists (Eltringham 2004).
- 5.
Museveni has always remarked that Fred Rwigyema, Uganda’s deputy minister for defence during Museveni’s post-1986 NRM government, had always reminded him of his home – Rwanda (Mukasa 2009; Ssemujju-Nganda 2009). The Museveni–Rwigyema friendship is also indicated in Museveni’s autobiography (Museveni 1997).
- 6.
Other prominent Ugandan military officers in the RPF were (Late) Maj. Chris Bunyenyezi, (Late) Maj. Peter Baingana, Maj. (now Col.) Okwir Rabwoni (who was then escort to Fred Rwigyema) (Rabwoni is not a Rwandan. He is a brother to Uganda’s former Chief of Military Intelligence [CMI] and former Permanent Secretary in Uganda’s Ministry of Defence.) (Late) Brig. Noble Mayombo. The fact that Rabwoni was an escort to Uganda’s deputy minister of defence, later leader of RPF, Fred Rwigyema, and that Ugandan officials undertook a rebellion in Rwanda Ugandanizes Rwanda’s civil war. [PL. check changes made in footnote].
- 7.
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7846339.stm, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7846940.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7724088.stm, accessed June 07, 2011.
- 8.
Filip Reyntjens, on the Biaro–Kasese massacres, writes: ‘Several reporters who visited Kasese and Biaro after 28 April made analogous and incriminating observations. In Biaro they heard the sound of a digging machine requisitioned a week earlier by the rebels but they were prevented from proceeding any further ‘for security reasons’. Congolese soldiers and civilians said there was an ‘open-air incinerator’ at km 52, next to a quarry. A Belgian entrepreneur running a logging operation in the area confirmed this information to the author. A soldier told a photographer working for the Associated Press that ‘there is much work to do, digging up the bodies and burning them. When the UN eventually comes to investigate there will be no evidence’ (Reyntjens 2009, p. 95). Those who survived here were followed by RPA/AFDL soldiers and killed along the way to and into Mbandaka, near the border with Congo-Brazzaville. The Congolese authorities opposed the deployment of UN investigation team in Mbandaka possibly for similar reasons.
- 9.
Angola, Zimbabwe, DRC, Namibia, Chad (the Chadian expeditionary force supported Kabila) and Libya (funded the Chadian force); Sudan (initially supported Zaire); Burundi–Rwanda–Uganda, Zambia and the Horn; Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa (indirectly, through negotiations); and other DRC’s neighbours were involved in this war (Reyntjens 2009, pp. 244–278). On July 10, 1999, countries which had forces in DRC signed a ceasefire witnessed by the UN, OAU and SADC.
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Rwengabo, S. (2014). The Dark Side of ‘Diasporas’ in Africa’s Great Lakes Region. In: Sahoo, S., Pattanaik, B. (eds) Global Diasporas and Development. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1047-4_17
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