The Exploitation of the Basua
2 Comments// Posted in blog by admin on 11.23.09.
It has been an eventful few months. What began merely as a document of the Basua people has become a tale involving corruption, incompetence and seemingly gross negligence. It tells of how an impoverished, marginalised and potentially endangered people were being exploited in order to siphon development funding, and how the funders themselves failed to notice.
In 1997, amid great anticipation, the Basua were finally to be resettled through a project funded by the European Commission (EC) in Uganda. Here was a significant donor that seemingly had the wherewithal to oversee and manage such a sensitive project. It now appears that the organisation brought in by the EC to carry out the work, RWIDE, was not merely incompetent but also largely corrupt. RWIDE’s Director, Vincent Mubiru is now being investigated by police and an audit is been launched. Yet the question remains over how this organisation was chosen, and how they managed to secure funding for so long.
The Basua are a unique social and cultural group in Uganda. They are the direct descendants of the Efe ‘Pygmies’ in the Congo and therefore distinct from Batwa of Southern Uganda who originate from Rwanda and Burandi. This distinction may seem trivial, but the fact that they are consistently being referred to as Batwa by the media, by government officials and by the organisation resettling them speaks volumes for the ignorance and disdain that surrounds them. They are a heavily stigmatised people whose culture and lifestyle are openly mocked as “backward” by other Ugandans.
When the Ugandan Government drove the Basua out of the Semiliki Wildlife Reserve in the early 1990s as part of its internationally sanctioned efforts to preserve Ugandan wildlife, they effectively washed their hands of all responsibility. This, despite the World Bank’s insistence that all relocated groups be adequately housed and compensated. Without land to cultivate and stripped of their hunting rights, the Basua were forced into a vagabond existence for over a decade.
By 2007, after failed efforts by organisations to resettle them, the Basua were placed in a makeshift campsite. It was then that RWIDE, an organisation located in another district that had no previous experience with forest dwellers, were awarded over €43,000 in funding from the EC to resettle them. With this money, they were to procure land, construct a settlement of 21 “semi-permanent” houses, build latrines and create a “cultural boma”, a building that would form the centre piece of the Basuas’ cultural performances for tourists.
When we arrived in September of this year, the project was clearly a mess. Of the 21 houses constructed, only 14 were still standing. The structures, composed of wood and cheap cement, looked battered and unfinished. Only one latrine had been built for the 90 residents. A crude foundation of concrete that was to become the cultural boma had already been “condemned” by the district engineer. What’s more, it was being erected far from the camp in a treeless area next to an electricity pole. The project’s office, complete with a gloriously ironic “Office of the King of the Batwa” sign, had been stripped of telephones, computers and filing cabinets. It was an empty shell in which two staff members sat behind two empty desks, awaiting tourists.
Yet in spite of this, RWIDE was to receive even more funding from the EC, this time to carry out a “cultural empowerment” project. Lacking any of the necessary experience or expertise in working with “forest people”, RWIDE were now being funded to provide them with education and training. Not surprisingly, this became more about assimilating them (or “sensitising”, as they call it) than protecting or promoting their cultural heritage. No experts were consulted, no impact assessments were carried out, and little effort was made to understand their unique worldview. The reports that RWIDE were filing seemed to work however, and the European Commission were satisfied that their EU money was being well spent. According to Stan Frankland, the anthropologist working with the Basua, “the failure of the EU to adequately monitor a project that intends to transform the lives of such a fragile group is astonishing”.
It was while we were still in Uganda that evidence of financial mismanagement began to emerge. Frankland obtained budget documents and testimonies indicating that the head of RWIDE, Vincent Mubiru, profited greatly both from the procurement of the land and the misappropriation of building funds. It is estimated that some 3,200,000 Ug SH was pocketed from the land deal alone. Budgets obtained of building materials show a consistent difference in either price or quantity between the amount paid and the amount received. Mubiru was, as the Ugandan expression goes, “demanding his soda”.
As a result of Frankland’s investigation, the police have opened an inquiry into Mubiru’s dealings and the EC has agreed to carry out a full audit over the coming month The story broke in the Ugandan Monitor and was more thoroughly investigated by New Vision, during which Mubiru even attempted to bribe the journalist. According to Frankland, in a report prepared for the EC, a sum of 250,000 Ug Sh was paid by Mubiru to the Basua to buy their silence. He has since fled.
The Basua’s main concern now is that the European Commission continue to fund them at this critical stage. They have established their own Community Based Organisation called the “Organisation for the Survival of the Batwa” (OSIBA), and are now looking to secure their basic food security and health care needs. It remains to be seen what the EC’s audit will uncover and whether they choose to fulfil their own responsibility . Our task now, as we begin to edit from over 26 hours of footage and interviews, is to ask how this could happen. How did such an unqualified project secure the funding to provide such an important programme, and why was nobody checking?
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This is a universal story – all over the world indiginous people’s are displaced to allow for economic development (dams etc.), resources’ mining or national parks/nature reserves. I look forward to seeing the documentary
horrifying & fascinating! well done for getting this far & pushing on with the project…it’s all in the edit! Can’t wait.