The Songora or Shongora (pl. Basongora, sing. Musongora; also known as "Bachwezi", "Chwezi", or "Huma") are a traditionally pastoralist people of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa located in Western Region, Uganda and Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. They have distinctive customs and speak Rusongora, a Bantu language that is similar to Runyoro and Runyankole. Basongora originally occupied the Nyakasongora area of Bunyoro-Kitara (present-day Nakasongola district). Since the county's induction into Buganda under the 1900 agreement), many Basongora emmigrated south-west to southern Bunyoro, Toro, Rwenzori and northern Ankole). Their population in Uganda was reported at numbering 15,897 people in the 2014 census. Although various community estimates put their population at around 40,000 and 50,000 people. Some Basongora also live in Eastern Congo. The colonial and neo-colonial governments in Central Africa instituted programs to encourage the Basongora to abandon their traditional lifestyle, and most of the territory traditionally owned by the Songora community has been appropriated for use as national parks or has been settled and occupied by other communities, notably the Batoro and Bakonzo. Also Songora territory has been partitioned into several districts and is distributed across Uganda and Congo. The traditional lifestyle of the Basongora is notable for its adaptation to dry savanna and scrublands, as well as mountainous terrain.
Overview The Basongora are a mixed Nilotic/Bantu group in East and Central Africa, traditionally residing in the foothills and plains at the floor of the western arm of the Great Rift Valley and the hills around the base of the Rwenzori Mountain Range. The Songora traditional economy was largely based on cattle-rearing, as well as salt-manufacture and trade in iron. The political organization of the Songora was a form confederacy of several states united by a parliament called Muhabuzi, and a constitutional monarchy led by a trimviate that consisted of an empress dowager (Omu'Gabe'kati), a female ruler (Omu'Go), and a male ruler (Omu'Kama). The confederacy emerged from a single Songora state that dates back to the 12th century consisted of several provinces including Kisaka-Makara, Kitagwenda, Bugaya, Bunyaruguru and Kiyanja.
History According to their own oral history, the Basongora emerged from the ancient empires of Shenzi/Chwezi. The traditional homeland of the Basongora is the region centred in the foothills and plains that surround the Rutshuru and Rwenzori mountain ranges. Some of the most notable Songora monarchs include Kyomya Bwachali who died around 1850, and was the maternal grandfather of King Ntare V of Nkore kingdom. The last precolonial King of Busongora was King Kasigano. He was deposed in 1906 by the British, ostensively for his having sought to ally himself with the Belgians in the Congo. Busongora was then partitioned and divided between the Congo and Uganda Protectorate, and the portions that fell within Uganda were further sub-divided into several districts, all of which were then annexed to the kingdoms of Toro and Nkore. The Kingdom of Rwenzururu formed in the later part of the 20th century on the territory of Busongora. In 1931 there was an outbreak of rinderpest that decimated the cattle populations of the Nyakatonzi Basongora, forcing them to disperse to other areas of Uganda and the eastern Congo. Basongora believe the outbreak began as a result of a virulent drugs vaccination program started by the colonial government. The biggest group that fled to the Congo did not return to the area until 1964 due to the strife caused by the Mulele rebellion there. In 1925, Parc Nationale des Virunga was created by the Belgian colonial authorities encompassing areas of the chiefdom of Kiyanja (of the Bamooli clan), Kakunda (now called Kyavinyonge), Rwemango, Makara, Kashansha and Bugaya among others and pressure to protect the adjoining ecosystem in Uganda led to the establishment of game reserves around Lake George (Known as Rweishamba by Basongora) and Lake Edward (locally known as Rweru) between 1906 and 1950. Several name changes followed and Kazinga National Park was gazetted in 1952 and in 1954 it was renamed Queen Elizabeth National Park by the colonial administration. This left only limited land for the pastoral Basongora. In 1940s the colonial government introduced cotton growing in Busongora. By coincidence, the best soil and suitable climate for cotton growing was in the Bwengo area and other plains of the Busongora County in Kasese. Although some remained in the park – albeit illegally, thousands of others moved across the border with their herds into the Virunga National Park in the Congo. Between the 1940s and 1950s, the cotton growing enterprise lured particularly the Bakonjo from the highlands to the lowlands. By 1962, the Rwenzururu Freedom Movement had also displaced some Bakonjo from the mountains, forcing them to settle in parts of Busongora that had not been gazetted as protected areas. In 1962 Basongora started returning to their original areas only to find that the Toro Development Company (TDC) that wound up in 1970, had leased some of their land, and was running projects such as the Mubuku Irrigation Scheme. When the cotton industry plummeted in the 1970s, the general Ugandan public lost interest in cotton, thus giving the Basongora pastoralists a chance to resettle in vast plains of Nyakatonzi. When the NRM government introduced the decentralization policy, it was hijacked by the extremist fringe of the Bakonjo and was seen as an opportunity to displace and subjugate the Basongora. This coincided with peak cotton production between 1987 and 1989 and it is in the same period that Basongora were displaced from their ancestral lands of Bukangara and Rweihingo.
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