President Museveni has denied marginalising the Rwenzori region, but critics say his government’s record of intervention, particularly in restive Kasese district compared with other conflict-prone parts of the country, shows otherwise.

“We know how to fight for the oppressed and marginalised in society. We have done it and we have some certificates of recognition on that as opposed to those who pretend to fight for the marginalised,” President Museveni reportedly told leaders from Kasese district last week at Mweya Safari Lodge, located inside Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Perceptions that the central government has sidelined Kasese dominate debate in matters related to the district, and have been used to explain the persistent conflict flare-ups there.

These views are fuelling calls for the region’s secession, to create a “Yiira republic that would include parts of eastern DR Congo occupied mostly by Banande. They are the reason the district leans heavily towards the opposition. In the just concluded elections, the Forum for Democratic Change, Uganda’s largest opposition party, won all the parliamentary seats as well as majority of lower level positions."

Proponents of this view point to the fact that Kasese is one of three areas in Uganda that have experienced major armed conflicts. The others are northern Uganda, which the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army devastated for over two decades, and the Luwero Triangle in central Uganda, where Museveni launched and for at least three years waged the guerrilla war that first brought him to power three decades ago.

Yet, whereas Museveni created a ministerial position in charge of reconstructing Luwero not long after he captured power in 1986, and another to do the same for northern Uganda immediately normalcy returned in 2006, he has never deemed Kasese to merit similar special focus, his critics say.

For northern Uganda, the ministerial position came with two robust recovery programmes — the Peace and Recovery Development Plan (PRDP) and the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF).

More recently, in the just concluded general elections, the region was also used to pilot “Operation Wealth Creation” — a new government initiative to improve household incomes through provision of quality planting materials and animal stock.

Under OWC, between July 2013 and December 2014, Luwero Triangle received 26.3 million coffee seedlings, 2008.5 metric tonnes of maize, 812.1 metric tonnes of beans, and 346,243 bags of cassava cuttings. It also received 846,756 orange seedlings, 389,824 mango seedlings, 2,199,335 tea seedlings, 393,000 tree seedlings and 10,000 banana tissues.  

For Kasese, it has largely been left to its own devices. In the lead up to the 2011 presidential elections, government unveiled the Rwenzori-Luwero Development Programme, targeting 40 districts, including Kampala.

It was designed similar to PRDP and NUSAF, and assigned the same purposes: To redress the socioeconomic effects to these regions of especially the 1981–1986 war and the 1996–2003 insurgency of the rebel Allied Democratic Forces.

But given the timing, RLDP was perceived more as intended to portray the government as responsive to the region’s peculiar needs in order to win Museveni his fourth term in power — a point the deputy minister in charge at the time did not deny.

“We could have gained some political mileage but what does the community lose when it is implemented?” Rose Namayanja, the former Minister of State for the Luwero Triangle under which RLDP falls, once said in an interview.

Since 2010 when the programme started, Ush34.6 billion ($10.4 million) has so far been disbursed, according to Sarah Kataike Ndoboli, who succeeded Ms Namayanja.

This money is 6.4 per cent of the Ush540.9 billion ($163.3 million) the programme was initially budgeted for over it five-year span.

“This place has always required affirmative action in view of how much we have suffered and the government ought to implement one,” said an official from the Rwenzururu Kingdom.