Ugandan Asians, Identity and the Literacy Medium
A paper presented at CODESTRIA’S 10th General Assembly under the Theme "Africa in the New Millennium" at Nile International Conference Centre, Kampala, Uganda, 8-12 December 2002.
Danson Kahyana,
Department of Literature,
Makerere University,
P.O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda
dansonkahyana@yahoo.co.uk
Abstract
The paper will centre on the question of identity, which Aschcroft, Grifiths and Tiffin (1989: 8-9) have described in their book, The Empire Writes Back, as a special postcolonial crisis. The paper will specifically highlight the portrayal of Ugandans of Asian origin in Ugandan poetry and fiction in relation to race and ethnicity. The issue at stake will be to examine how in these writings the indigenous Ugandans view their Asian counterparts, and vice versa. Some of the questions the paper will raise are: how do indigenous Ugandans view Ugandans of Asian origin racially and ethnically? Is there social cohesion between indigenous Ugandans and Ugandans of Asian origin? How is this cohesion or chaos, as the case may be, manifested in Ugandan poetry and fiction? Lastly, do Ugandans of Asian origin fully identify themselves as Ugandans, and do they conduct themselves as such politically, economically and socially?
All in all, the paper will problematise the question of racial and ethnic identity in relation to the Asian diaspora and the Asian experience in Uganda. Discourses in selected Ugandan poetry and fiction will be interrogated, especially where they concern the notion of the “other” and other postcolonial issues of citizenship, race, politics and economics. The over all aims of the paper will be two: to study the relationship between racial and ethnic identity and how this relationship shapes inter-racial
1. Introduction:
Aschroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (1989:8-9) have described identity as a special postcolonial crisis. In East Africa, this crisis takes many forms-racial, ethnic, class, religious and political, among others. Consequently, the questions "Who am I?" "Who are we?" and "Where do I (we) belong?" are often asked. In fact, the Kenyan writer, Bernard Mbui Wagacha, has published a short story with the question "Who am I?" as its title (Wagacha 1998: 31-39). In this story, the narrator attempts to discover who he is by examining the pressures, strains and dilemmas he suffers, first as a child and later in adulthood.
In Ugandan-Asian fiction, the question of identity is more complicated than the crisis Wagacha’s narrator undergoes because it centres on sensitive and contested issues like race, ethnicity, class and religion, among others, besides directly concerning not just an individual (‘I’), but communities of people that are different from each and one another racially, ethnically, politically, economically and otherwise. These communities are the Europeans, the Asians and the Africans.
The main aim of this paper is to highlight the portrayal of Ugandans (both indigenous and Asian) in Ugandan-Asian fiction, with regard to racial and ethnic identity. The issue at stake is to examine how in this fiction the Asians have viewed themselves and their counterparts – the indigenous Ugandans – racially and ethnically. Some of the questions the paper raises are:
2. Methodology:
The paper has been conceived as a textual study. Three Ugandan-Asian literary pieces have been read and analysed in view of their treatment of the question of racial and ethnic identity. These pieces are Peter Nazareth’s novel, In a Brown Mantle (1972), Jagjit Singh’s poem, "Portrait of an Asian as an East African" (cook and Rubadiri 1971: 156-159), and his short play, "Sweet Scum of Freedom" (Henderson 1973:35-51).
The reading and analysis of these texts has been supplemented by a critical study of non-Literary texts by Ugandan and non-Ugandan writers and by reference to journals and other periodicals. The over all aim is, it should be remembered, to interrogate the discourses in the texts with regard to the postcolonial issue of racial and ethnic identities.
3. Scope:
Our primary texts, as shown above, were all published in the early 1970s (1971, 1972 and 1973). Considering the fact that Idi Amin expelt Asians from Ugandan in August 1972, the early 1970s are important in as far as reading the racial and ethnic temperature of the time is concerned. The conclusions drawn from these texts, therefore, should be understood as being meaningful to the present, especially then that the Asian question, particularly the issues of citizenship, social integration and social and political commitment, is still at large in Uganda and other East African countries.
4. Definition of key terms:
Before delving into the literary pieces, we need to know how the key words in this paper have been semantically perceived.
Identity:
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language defines the word ‘Identity’ as "the condition of being the same with something described, claimed, or asserted or of possessing a character claimed." It is easy to see how misleading this definition is, for it makes no mention of the word "difference", yet the word "Identity" entails both sameness and difference. Rukoko (1999: 240, 2002:42) does a good job when he defines Identity as "a state of being the same in nature, quality or otherwise in contradistinction to others which are different" (emphasis added).
When I say I am a Ugandan, it means I have identified myself with a multitude of people who consider themselves in the same way as I do, that is, other Ugandans. But by limiting myself to a Ugandan Identity, I have excluded Identities that are different from mine – say Kenyan, Tanzanian, Congolese or Senegalese as the case may be. In other words, I am a Ugandan and not a Congolese; the Congolese and I, therefore, are different. It follows that if all the people in Africa or in the world, for that matter, were Ugandans, the question of "Ugandan Identity" wouldn’t arise. Thus, what makes identity important isn’t the sameness, but the difference or the contradistinction, as Rukoko superfluously calls it.
Ethnicity:
This refers to a feeling of belonging to an ethnic group. The definitions of an ethnic group are many (see Weber 1996:52-66, Osaghae 1996:3, Kasfir 1972:43, Morris 1968b: 167). Smith (1991:20) does a good summary of the definitions provided by the above quoted scholars when he says:
An Ethnic group is a type of cultural collectivity, one that emphasizes the role of myths of descent and historical memories and that is recognised by one or more cultural differences like religion, customs, languages or Institutions.
Ethnic Identity:
This refers to allegiance to a group with which one has ancestral links (crystal 1987:34). Over and above ancestral links, we should add other links like customs, traditions and language, among others.
Racial Identity:
This refers to a feeling of belonging to a given race. A race refers to a people with a distinct physical type with certain unchanging characteristics, as a particular colour of skin or shape of skill (e.g. the Caucasian race, the Malay race, the Ethiopian race), a place of origin (the Nordic race, for instance) or, among other things, a presumed common past (say, the Anglo-Saxon race, the Celtic race, or the Hebrew race (Babcock: 1993)
Ugandan-Asian fiction:
This refers to any literary narrative, whether in prose or verse or drama, written by a Ugandan of Asian decent, or a Ugandan Asian, as I have chosen to refer to this category of Ugandans in this paper. It is important to note that the definition of fiction adopted here is specific to this paper, for under normal circumstances, fiction does not include drama (see Abrams 1993:64).
5. Theoretical Framework:
This paper has been written within the theoretical framework of Postcoloniality. As a theory, Postcoloniality "foregrounds a politics of opposition and struggle and problematises the key relationship between centre and periphery (Mishra and Hodge 1994:276). It is a theory of reading focusing on the experiences and realities of formerly colonized people, for instance Ugandans, in the context of this paper. One such reality and experience is the identity crisis, which partly has its cause in the colonial setup, especially then that the British colonialists in East Africa considered the Asians a Middle race-lower than the whites, but higher than the blacks (see Mutibwa 1992:92, Morris 1968a: 11).
It should be noted that the term "Postcoloniality" as used here, is not a historical marker like the post in post-adolescent, post-coital, post-war, post-apartheid or post-mortem. I should not therefore be taken to task by people like Anne McClintock who have seen several pitfalls in the term "Postcolonialism" or "Postcoloniality" (See McClintock 1994:291-304)
Lastly, it should be born in mind that postcoloniality is by its very nature deconstructive for it takes no assumption or presumption for granted. This is possibly why significant terms such as "Subversion", "binary oppositions", "the other", "marginalized" and "difference", among others, are found in both postcolonial and Derridan and De Manan deconstructive discourses (See Derrida 1988: 108-123 De Man1988: 354-371 Culler 1987:227-279)
Let’s now plunge into the paper proper…
1. Introduction:
In this section, I am specifically concerned with racial Identity. I argue, I hope convincingly, that Ugandan Asians consider themselves a distinct race, superior to the Blacks. Consequently, they despise blacks, who in turn despise them. This scenario, I further argue, has its origin in the colonial setup, where the Asians were pampered by the British colonialists but only for a time, for soon the ‘pamperers’ started discrediting the formally pampered before the eyes of the Africans, calling them hoarders and exploiters – an allegation that lives up today. Finally, I attempt to show that when all is said and done, the Asians are not responsible for their own predicament. Rather, history and the exclusionist nature of their social organisation have condemned them to the status of scapegoats and doubtable citizenship.
The three literary pieces have been analysed concurrently. There is therefore a switch from Peter Nazareth’s novel, In a Brown Mantle to Jagjit Singh’s short play "Sweet Scum of Freedom" and poem "Portrait of an Asian as an East African". All the three pieces are set in East Africa. The Damibia and Azingwe we find in the novel are synonyms for Uganda and Kenya respectively (See Simatei 2001:106).
It is important, I think, to make a note on the major characters in these literary pieces so that their names do not cause confusion when mentioned. The play has seven characters – Keval, a young Asian man, and his mother; three African prostitutes – Anna, Sunma and Grace; an African politician and minister, Dr. Ebongo; and a Newsreader. The major characters in the novel are Robert Kyeyune – an agitator for independence and the first prime minister of independent Damibia (Uganda); Mr. Gombe-Kukwaya, The Cow, who is an African politician and later a minister of Interior Affairs; Pantaleo Deogratius D’souza, an African Goan politician and the narrator of the novel; his father whose name is not given; Bernie Rodrigues – a faithful Goan civil servant in the British colonial government; and pius cota, the Azizgwean (Kenyan) politician of Goan descent. Among the minor characters are Joachim D’costa – a sensual Goan, and Father Van Santen, a white clergyman.
2. Racial Identity:
Three distinct races are easily identified in the three literary pieces under consideration- the whites (particularly the Europeans of British origin), the Browns (Asians), and the Blacks (Africans). These races, Morris (1968a:11) tells us, had distinct roles in the colonial days:
Administrative and agricultural development were thought to be European occupations; trade and craftsmanship were relegated to Indians; and Africans were encouraged to work in the European agricultural system and to supply cheap labour in the towns that were developing in response to European and Indian activities.
The point this quotation makes is clear: in the colonial days the three races were hierarchized with whites at the top, the Asians in the middle and the Blacks – the hewers of wood and fetchers of water – at the bottom. Thus, Mutibwa (1992:92) is not wrong when he observes that the British used the Indians (or Asians for that matter) as political and economic middlemen between themselves and the Africans to establish and later consolidate their rule, thereby making them-the Asians - an essential part of the colonial structure.
In fact, the amount the British government spent on each of the races during the colonial days reflects the hierarchization of the races, and the Asians’ status as middlemen, getting a middle amount five times lesser than the white man’s but almost ten times greater than the black man’s. It is Pius Cota, the Azingwean (Kenyan) Goan nationalist who avails us the figures:
The amount of money spent on each white settler’s child is about £600 per year. That on an Asian child is about £130 a year. On an African child, £15… per year (Nazareth 1972:17).
This hierarchisation, it should be remembered, brought the Asian closer to the European colonizer, as far as the African was concerned. This is why some Africans wondered whether the Indian (or Asian) was a white man and whether he too came from England. Ngugi (1964:3) portrays this concern clearly:
In the Indian Bazaar, black people mingled with white people and Indians. You did not know what to call an Indian. Was he also a white man? Did he too come from India?
The point to emphasize is that by becoming the colonizer’s middleman, the Asian ended up being looked at – by African nationalists – as a collaborator with the oppressive and exploitative colonial government and therefore as anti-black. Robert Kyeyune, the agitator for Damibian (Ugandan) Independence, makes this point clear to D’souza, the man who later becomes his political assistant:
The British are clever. They placed a middleman of another race between themselves and Africans so that they could rake in the profits undisturbed. Do you know the story of Cleopatra and Anthony? When the messenger brought news to Cleopatra that Anthony had been defeated, Cleopatra executed the messenger! It is the one who deals directly with the African who is hated most. The British remain aloof and are neither loved nor hated. (Nazareth 1972:45-46).
What Kyeyune is saying is that the Asian is a victim of circumstances. Unfortunately not all African leaders see this. Mr. Gombe-Kukwaya, a minister of Interior and Defence Matters in Kyeyune’s government, and Dr. Musozi Ebongo, a minister of commerce and Trade, Broadcasting, Foreign and cultural Affairs, are examples of such leaders. Listen to what Gombe-Kukwaya tells a crowd of his supporters at a political rally:
It is not only the white people who have exploited us – we have within our midst the Brown people, the Mwindi, who continue to exploit us to this very day! We have only tolerated the Mwindi, because we thought they would change and become part of us, but we know now, after bitter experience, that they continue to exploit us as though we are cattle. Will we continue to tolerate this enemy within our midst for much longer, my brothers and sisters? (Nazareth 1972:74).
Is Dr. Musozi Ebonga’s speech any different from this? Listen to it, and you will judge for yourself:
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a very, very well known fact that the Africans have always been exploited…We have finally pushed the British imperialists out of our beautiful land. Africa is now free…but the Africans are still very, very oppressed, I tell you – economically. I am referring of course to the Asian community now (Singh 1973:45).
We all know the disasters this kind of racist talk from a political orator can lead to. For didn’t millions of Jews perish in gas chambers as a result of Hitler’s racial bigotry (Richards 1977:334)? Didn’t 3,700 blacks and coloureds perish – from 1975 on wards – due to Afrikaner state-inspired ethnic cleansing rhetoric (Mazuri 1990:234)? And didn’t at least 50,000 Asians lose Ugandan citizenship as a result of Idi Amin’s racist and fascist talk (Mutibwa 1992:93)?
Now, we all know that when Idi Amin expelt Asians from Uganda, the move received wide support among the indigenous population… several letters were published in both the English and the vernacular press, all praising the action of Amin, whom they called "the saviour of Uganda" (Mutibwa 1992:94)
Were these people as racist as Amin? Possibly. One such person called the Indians bastards and parasites and recommended, "They should all be sent packing to India" (Singh 1973:37). But I would like to argue that these people are not racist. Many of them are simply naïve, comparable to Shakespeare’s fickle crowds that are easily moved by a good oration. For didn’t Mark Anthony, Julius Caesar’s henchman, win the sympathy of many Romans- when mourning the Caesar whose assassination they had welcomed – through a good speech (Shakespeare 1993:307-311)?
But why, anyhow, have East Africans shown an anti-Asian feeling? Tirop Simatei suggests that it is because of the Asians’ exclusionist nature of their social organisation. And of the many reasons that account for this exclusionist nature, he argues, two standout prominently:
The notion of exclusion, which is so ingrained in their social organisation that it comes to them almost naturally, and the factor they saw themselves as a race that was definitely superior to the Africans (Simatei 2001:74)
This notion of exclusion, it should be remembered, has its origin in the accursed Hindu caste system which totally restricts a person’s way of life – for example, allowing only certain kinds of jobs or certain marriage partners. The Brahmins (priests) constitute the highest class, in this caste system, below them, in descending order are the Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaisyas (farmers and merchants) and Sudras (servants) (crystal 1987:38). The 2001 Human Rights watch has revealed that 240 million people in South Asia live a precarious existence, shunned by much of society because of their ranks as untouchables or Dalits at the bottom of this rigid caste system.
Let us stop wandering and make a return to the Asians’ racial superiority as portrayed in the literary pieces under analysis. Nazareth’s narrator, D’souza, talks of "the bitter history of our race" (Nazareth 1972:3). This is the history of conquests of Goa by one colonizer after the other, on one hand, and the history of immigration on the other. This is why his father talks of the Asians as an immigrant race that should not get involved in Damibia’s (Uganda’s) fight against British colonialists lest they "bite the hand that fed us what we could not obtain at home (Nazareth 1972:11). Besides, D’souza’s father tells Pius Cota, that an immigrant race should not "get involved in somebody else’s fight".
The point I am belabouring is that D’souza’s father has used his Asianness to distance himself from the fight for freedom and by acting like this, he has discriminated himself from his black brothers and sisters. This, I think, is what Gombe-Kukwaya means when he says the Asians purposefully kept aloof during the fight for independence. This is what he and other African nationalists are looking back to in anger,
Searching in vain
for brown liberals behind the counter
and taunt [ing] us about commitment (Singh 1997:156)
This lack of political commitment, together with the Asians’ feeling of racial superiority, irked the African nationalists even the more. Listen to Keval giving Anna, his African Prostitute, the reason as to why Indians do not marry African women:
They are so pure and clean – must say their prayers and wash their bodies everyday. And they are so rich – most of them and they have such big cars and you don’t - so they will never marry you (Singh 1973:46).
This speech, by all standards, is racist. Its portrayal of the African as unclean, godless and poverty – stricken needs not to be stressed. But Keval is not yet done: This is how he concludes his speech:
besides, black is so untamed and dangerous for [the Indians].
Armed with this weapon of racial arrogance, the Asian finds it easy to throw abusive words at the African. Listen to the words of an Indian shop owner to a pathetic African, Wahinya, who is sagging under the weight of a heavy load:
Hurry up with that load. You lazy boy. Money you want, work no! You think money coming from dust or fall from sky. Kumanyako (Ngugi 1975, 1993:121).
Speakers of Kiswahili know very well the gravity of the abusive word "Kumanyoko". I don’t want to emphasize it lest I tread the path of obscenity. And the word "boy"- leave alone the lazy part of it – is, we know very well, a very powerful weapon racists use to put "natives in their place". La Guma’s meditative character, Isaac, observes thus:
Boys, boys, boys … You could grow to a hundred and they [the colonialists, the apartheid racists, e.t.c] would still call you a boy because you were black (La Guma 1972:111).
These insults (Kumanyoko, boy, baboon, e.t.c) clearly highlight the fact that in one way or another, racial identity entails racial arrogance and racial discrimination. Thus, it is not surprising that the whites, thinking themselves the master race, throw out Pius Cota and his black brother out of a hotel when they demand service (Nazareth 1972:17), and that D’souza, the narrator , at one time moved to the front seat of a bus while on holiday in Azingwe (Kenya) only to be told by the conductor to move to the back, the front being for Europeans only (Nazareth 1972:12).
What is clear is that D’souza is not comfortable with the British’s racial arrogance. And it is worth noting that he minds not a society where the races are socially, economically and politically on an equal footing. But other Asians mind. Read Simatei (2001:74) and you will see what I am talking about:
When Charles Eliot, the then commissioner of the [British East Africa] protectorate, settled the colony with British settlers from South Africa who then began to advocate for the apartheid policy of separate development of races, the Indian opposition to the colonial government began. But this opposition was not really motivated by a desire to create a broad non-racial society that would accord equal treatment to all peoples including the African population. It was more of a struggle for a privileged position in the colony, which the European settlers were carving for themselves.
This probably explains why Asian social clubs were racially exclusive. It was not until Damibia (Uganda) got independence that the Abala Goan institute became relatively multiracial (Nazareth 1972:133).
The Asians’ feeling of racial superiority partly explains why, i think, the Asians discouraged inter-marriage with Africans. When Tom Mboya, the Kenyan African leader, suggested that Asians need to integrate with Africans through inter-marriage, one leading Indian is reported to have said:
Shahs will not give their daughters to patels, and they will not give them to Africans (Delf 1963:5).
Consequently, D’souza’s father has to go all the way to Goa for a Goan woman (Nazareth 1972:6) and Mashood Khan, an Asian businessman, has to leave Uganda for Khyber pass for a wife, after "sowing enough wild oats (Dawood 200:11). No wonder, then, that Karim Hussein, a Ugandan Asian, gets so mad and beats up his wife when his daughter, Zenaat, marries Fred Makoza, an African lawyer (Singh 1973:46-47). The mother is beaten up, of course, "for not taking proper care of Zenaat". And how do other Indians react to this incident? One of them, Keval’s father, sends all his daughters to India to get married, lest they get seduced – mark the word seduced – by African men (Singh 1973:47). The similarities between these racist fathers and racist lago - Shakespeare’s most notorious Villain – need not be stressed.
This brings us to Singh’s poem. Having asserted himself in section II of the poem as the descendant of brave soldiers and freedom fighters who challenged the British Imperialists, the East African Asian Persona expresses his despair, for the evil of racial discrimination ("the cancer of colour") appears to be all over Africa, not and only in South Africa ("the toes of Africa"). Here is the extract in full:
Farewell my dear beloved illusions,
for I, too, would have liked to think
only the toes of Africa were infected
but the cancer of colour
has gathered fresh victims now.
Black surgeons, too, have prescribed new drugs
and we,
malignant cells,
must fade away soon (Singh 1971:158).
What Singh is saying here (and what he has said in his short play) is that East African Asians are racially discriminated against, which is why he compares them to the Jews, whose flight has been immortalised by Shakespeare in his play, The Merchant of Venice. This, as we have shown above, is partly true. What is not true, however, is the implied suggestion that the East African Asians are just victims of racial discrimination, and not racial discriminators themselves.
The analysis I have made above shows that both races have had racially discriminative members, viz., Gombe – Kukwaya and Dr. Ebongo on one hand, and Keval and Karim Hussein, on the other. In other words, by showing Asians as victims of racial discrimination the literary pieces in question have subverted themselves in true Derridan and De Manan spirit and have shown that the Asians are also racist. What this means is that the Asians are not just sinned against; they have also sinned against their African counterparts. What remains to be determined is the race that has sinned more than being sinned against and the race that has been more sinned against than sinning.
1.Introduction:
In this section, I now discuss ethnic Identity. The argument here is basically similar to the one in the previous section, that is to say, that Asians’ ethnic Identity is as rigidly insular as the racial one. East African Asians, I further argue, would, if they had political power, possibly embark on a policy of Ethnic purity, where citizenship is limited to unspoilt and unalloyed blood, the way it is and it was in Germany and apartheid South Africa respectively. My aim is not to judge or condemn East African Asians, but to problematise the Insular nature of their social organisation.
2.Ethnic Identity:
Ethnically, East African Asians are not a homogeneous community as is commonly believed. Some see themselves as Pakistanis, others as Indians, and yet others as Goans. In fact, Delf (1963:9) tells us that Goans
Dislike being classified as Indians, being often of mixed blood… Despite their small numbers, they run their own schools. The young men often return to Goa to find wives, and caste – consciousness is still strong.
Indeed, when D’souza meets Robert Kyeyune, he Identifies himself as a Goan, and not an Indian, and Kyeyune in turn distinguishes between Goans and Indians: the former are civil servants, the latter exploiters (Nazareth 1972:25).
The return to Asia for a wife, as we have earlier seen, is a very important aspect of Asian social life. When Masood Khan decides to marry he considers his ethnic connection to pathan blood as a key factor in the choice of a spouse:
In the Multi-ethnic society of Uganda, he had enjoyed the company of a great variety of women, white, black and brown but for the purpose of choosing a wife he nurtured a different notion. Wife and children, he decided, must come from the same lineage as himself and for that he must make a visit to the Kyber pass. There were a few old Pathan families in Uganda but over the years they had changed beyond recognition. He knew that he must make a trip to his native land to find the original Kingship unalloyed and unspoilt (emphasis added) (Dawood 200:11-12)
This insistence on unalloyed and unspoilt Pathan blood Smirks of ethnic fundamentalism, comparable to that of Germany (particularly under Adolf Hitler) and Apartheid South Africa. In Germany, citizenship id determined by descent, not culture. Consequently, ethnic Germans who have lived their whole lives in Germany and who are completely assimilated to German culture are not allowed to gain citizenship (Kymlicka 1995:23). This is more or less what was happening in apartheid South Africa, where mixed race marriages were discouraged and the children of such marriages (the coloureds) excluded from their neighbourhoods and organisations, even though the language and culture of the coloureds were essentially identical to their own (Kymlicka 1995:23). The reason for this is the insistance on "Unalloyed and unspoilt blood links".
In fact, there is cause to believe that if East African Asians had political power, they would attempt a formation of an Ethnic nation. This is because of their unwavering determination to have their daughters and sons marry at whatever cost, from India and Goa. Like Masood Khan, D’souza’s father has to go to Goa to get a wife (Nazareth 1972:6); Karim Zeenat has to beat up his wife because his daughter’s marriage (not elopement) to Fred Makonza, an African, vividly proves her failure in her motherly role (Singh 1973:46-67). And, Keval’s father has to send all his daughters to India to get married, lest they marry black men (Singh 1973:47).
Concluding Remark
This paper set out to highlight the portrayal of Ugandan (both indigenous and Asian) in Ugandan-Asian fiction, with regard to racial and ethnic Identity. We have seen that racially, Ugandan Asians identity themselves as a race distinct from, and superior to the Africans. Any postcolonial and deconstructive reading of the literature written by East African Asians reveals that these Asians are not a homogenous society as is commonly believed and that they have a strong, unwavering insistence on "unalloyed and unspoilt blood", which is partly why they are against inter-racial marriages. This is also the reason as to why they fail to identify themselves fully as Ugandans or Kenyans or Tanzanians politically, socially and culturally. For if they did, they would be active in the mainstream political and socio-cultural activities like electoral polls and cultural galas, among others. Consequently, cohesion between indigenous Ugandans and Ugandan Asians has been in low key: each group looks at itself as distinct from the other.
However, there is a reason to smile in this new millennium:
Indigenous Ugandans’ voting of Jay Tana, a Ugandan Asian, to the sixth parliament as the representative of the youth from the Eastern Region of the country (The New Vision 21 July 2001: 1) shows that somehow, the two groups are trying to iron out their prejudices against each other, and that they are becoming accommodative. This, I think, points to a brighter future where the indigenous and the immigrants will live as brothers and sisters, for prosperity to posterity. How nice Uganda will be when the peace and love and unity of the lord reigns there!
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relationships, and to investigate how Ugandan literati represent racial and ethnic identities.