Contributing to the Citizenship Debate: Lessons from Western and Southern Uganda, 1894–2000

When Uganda was declared a British protectorate in 1894, all residents in the territory became natives of Uganda. However, internal migrations from one territorial community to another have aroused a sense of nativism, making the question of citizenship recurrent theme. Field research in western Uganda, archival research, document analysis, and secondary data from different sources reveal that citizenship continues to be shaped by historical forces in Uganda, and citizenship contestations have characterised colonial and postcolonial Uganda. The chapter argues that, due to migration and nativism, there is a clamour for resources, as theorised by instrumentalists, leading to overlapping kinds of citizenship. Hence, an average Ugandan belongs to two kinds of citizenships: (1) national, where membership is based on the laws of the land such as the 1995 Constitution, and (2) local, which is based on membership to a given sociolinguistic group inhabiting a specific region of the country. The study concludes that Ugandans consciously or unconsciously tend to link citizenship to access to resources, power relations, and political considerations, which breeds conflict.