Nyati Motion Pictures on February 28, 2024, premiered the Ankole segment of ‘Tuko Pamoja‘ (literary ‘we are one’) docuseries at the National Theatre in Kampala.
The 13-part series about the oneness of Ugandans and East Africans was written by SoftPower News journalist, Rogers Atukunda, and directed by Dr Cindy Magara, a Lecturer of Film and Literature at Makerere University.
The premiere was graced by Dr James Tumusiime, the Managing Director of Fountain Publishers, and Odrek Rwabwogo, an author, entrepreneur and Special Adviser to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
After the successful launch, Urban TV hosted Atukunda, the #TukoPamoja Assistant Director, scriptwriter and co-editor, on their evening entertainment show dubbed “FunPlus” to give more insight into the documentary.
This is what he told hosts Martha Fifii, Sovaria Hughes and DJ Crim.
Presenter: With us, we have Tuko Pamoja assistant director, Rogers Atukunda. How are you?
Atukunda: I am fine.
Presenter: He told me “I am soft-spoken, so, you people are shouting too much. You should calm down”. I am like really? Happy to have you here. Say ‘hi’ to the people and we get started.
Atukunda: Hello, I am glad to be here to talk to you about our history, where we come from and where we want to go.
Presenter: I want you to start from there, you brought the introduction. So, please, where did we come from?
Atukunda: Tuko Pamoja is about the history of this country before colonialism, past colonialism, and up to the current day. It is about the kingdoms that made what is currently Uganda, before it became Uganda and the non-kingdom areas like Northern Uganda and Kigezi which were not kingdoms but later were put together to form the modern Uganda. So, it is the story of our oneness, interconnectedness and unity that will take us to the federation that we are looking for.
I will give you an example to demonstrate that. When you go to Bunyoro currently, when you go to Buganda, Tooro, Busoga and Ankole kingdoms, the ruling dynasties, the kings currently ruling, are Northerners. They are Luos (Babiito) who came from Northern Uganda, colonized this area, took over power, integrated with the local people they found there, and made what we are right now. So, we are all connected.
Presenter: And you are one of the people who made this research. I want to know how you did this because I would think that the people who were there to give you the actual information, most of them are no longer there. Most of them have died. So, where did you get this information from?
Atukunda: That should be the hardest part of the project. Because when we tried to do research, we realised that the history books that we have were written by the people who colonized us. The story they were telling was the story of the hunter. They are the ones who are the heroes, our leaders who fought against them became the villains in the story.
We couldn’t find proper information in the written history books. So, we decided to go to the people in the communities. Our history as Africans has always been oral, we tell the story to our children, the children tell it to their children and so on. While we didn’t have books, while we didn’t write, we had a way of keeping our history. So, we decided to go to the community and ask the people how they remember their history. We asked the elders what they heard from their parents who heard it from their parents and their grandparents. So, they gave us a version of a story (a lion’s version) we had never heard before.
Presenter: Speaking about the story that you’re talking about; we know with time you have talked about oral. But again, sometimes a story can be told and refurnished, don’t you believe that all these stories you got were stories that were refurnished and you guys didn’t get to notice this?
Atukunda: Not Just refurnished, modified, I should use that word, there are stories that we grew up hearing. They are told like this, but now when we go back to the communities, it is a different story. It’s the same story but you get two different versions of the same thing.
Presenter: That is beautiful. Now you do the research, and you’re satisfied with the research that you get, then we get to the writing. How do you choose what you are going to take and what you are going to leave out?
Atukunda: Okay. Now, I talked about the hard part but still, the hard part continues. Now. You’ve gone, you’ve done the research, you have all this information, which is not in the formal history books, and you’re trying to streamline it and also make sure that what was written somehow corresponds with what you’ve gathered from the field. So, after getting this information, we sat down with my director, Dr. Cindy Magara, a Lecturer at Makerere University, and looked through what we got from the field. We looked at what is written in books and picked out a story that at least corresponds. There could be hearsay, so, we picked the information that could be verified by academicians, historians and textbooks.
Presenter: Do you think this would be used in the curriculum of Uganda?
Atukunda: Actually, that is where we should be going from here. When we finish the premieres, we will lobby [the government] to make sure that this story is taken to schools. The children can listen to the stories. I was telling my director that if I had watched this documentary when I was in school, I would have got a Distinction 1 at O-Level and an A in history at A-Level. This is something I can just put on my phone and walk to class just listening.
DJ Crim: For a person watching this, a young man like me who likes watching movies, what’s that one thing I can learn by coming to the cinema? What’s that one story? Let me say I am from Buganda because when you see our tribes, especially, those from western Uganda, we don’t know much about our side. So, someone like me who comes from Kashari, what is that one thing that is going to take me to the cinema and say “This, I have not heard about it and I feel when I go there, I’ve learnt a lot”?
Atukunda: Now, to answer your question, I’m going to give you what Tuko Pamoja, is about, and why I was so interested when doing research. I realized this is something that we needed to bring to Ugandans. When I was growing up, I was told that “my tribe” (ethnic group) was a Mukiga because my father came from Rukungiri. But when we went to Kabale to do this research, the people in Kabale told us that if I come from Rukungiri, I’m not Mukiga but a Muhororo.
Presenter: Oh yeah, that’s true because they say you guys mixed with the people on the border.
Atukunda: Yeah. When I go back home, my mother tells me my grandmother comes from a place called Kitagwenda (formerly Kamwenge district). Now when I was doing research, I found out that people called Batagwenda are actually immigrants from here Buganda. So, if my grandmother is from Kitagwenda, that means I am a muganda. These people came from here, Buganda. And then, my grandfather comes from Tooro. He was among these people they called Bahuma who looked after cattle in Bunyoro. So, if he was from Tooro, then he came from Bunyoro because Banyoro and Batooro are the same people. If you look at the history of Bunyoro, their leaders are Luos who come from Northern Uganda. So, it means I am a Muhororo, a Mutooro, a Munyoro, a Muganda, and ultimately, a northerner (Luo). So, basically, I am a Ugandan.
DJ Crim: Especially in this generation, we are lost. I will give an example of my friend. You ask her, “Okay, where are you from?” She replies, “I’m half-Rwandese and I’m half-Munyakore…I am half this.” There are those people. I want to know, if they come into the cinema, can they later certainly say, “This is my real origin”?
Atukunda: Exactly. This idea of “I am half this, I am half that”…actually, we are just the same people. We just keep mixing and mingling. Why we felt this project was important because it tells us that the idea of “a tribe”, for example, being called a Muganda, actually means that the person was found in a kingdom called Buganda. It is geographical. It has nothing to do with tribe. If I came from Northern Uganda and lived in Buganda at that time, I would be considered a Muganda because I’m in a kingdom called Buganda. I come from Ibanda. The moment someone hears that I’m from Ibanda, they say I am a Munyankore. I am a Munyakore because I come from a Kingdom called Ankole. But I told you who exactly I am. I am everything. I am an East African.
Presenter: And also, I feel like the other generation is washing out. We are the next generation and we need to have this information because if the next generation is seated down and it has its grandkids, what are we going to tell them? Where are we going to say our country came from?
Atukunda: That is exactly why we are making Tuko Pamoja. This is why we went back and said, “If these things are not written, let us put them in a medium that resonates with the current generation”. You have your phone wherever you are. You can just watch the video because we don’t like reading and actually, it’s our culture. Our tradition is oral. We are not used to reading. We used to sit (around the fireplace) and listen to the stories from the older generation. Now, what replaced the fireplace where we would gather around to listen to the stories, is the TV (television). It is the new fireplace. Now we have moved from the TV to the phone, YouTube. So, our children are going to find these stories. They are going to watch them in a medium that resonates with their generation. And we are going to keep this history alive with this audio-visual media.
Presenter: For this whole time, we have all been concentrating on TV like that, we never concentrate like this. That is so true. Before the trailer, one of our camera guys asked us a question. Do you remember what he asked?
Atukunda: Yes. “Why do we speak different languages if we are the same people?” Yeah. Okay. I will try to give you an explanation that I also got from the interviewees we met along the way. This last trailer is talking about the start of Africa, from where Africa was just one land called Ethiopia. Then the people start moving from this place to that place. We’ve always been moving across the continent.
The Bantu people come from West Africa; Cameroon and Nigeria. That is why you heard someone from West Nile saying they come from the Igbo of Nigeria because we came from that side and started coming downwards, running away from Arabs who started entering Egypt and conquering the whole of North Africa; running away from Romans who came from Europe going down to Egypt, pushing the black people downwards. That is how we come from that part of Africa and start coming downwards.
Now, language is reinforced by people speaking it. When I came here to Buganda…I’ve been trying to learn Luganda because I don’t know Luganda, I want to speak English, which can be considered neutral. As I’m concentrating on that, I’m actually forgetting Runyankore because I’m not speaking Runyankore.
So, these people as they come downwards, they keep separating. This group goes to this side and the other group goes to the other side. Wherever they go, they meet other people. Their languages start fusing. So, this group that has met new people will forget the original language of their original group that went the other side.
Let me use just one example. The people called Ateker are the Karamojong, the Iteso and the Lango. This is what the gentleman [in the trailer] was saying. These people come from Ethiopia, come from Egypt, they come downwards and when they enter Uganda, they first concentrate in Moroto, that mountain. Now when they reached Moroto because they are pastoral people, they have cows, and the cows quickly overgraze the area. So, the elders send young children to go and survey ahead, to see where they can get water and pasture for the animals. Now, when the children moved from Moroto and reached Teso (what is currently Soroti), they found an expanse of green grass and water. So, the children say “Now, what is the reason we need to go back? We are going to stay here”.
Then the elders tell them, “You are going in the wild and there’s nothing there. You might die there”. So, I’m told the word for death or a grave in ngaKarimojong language is ‘Ates’. So, that is how these people come to be called the Iteso. So, the elders cursed them saying they would die in that new land. Now, the other group of the same children say, “Let us continue ahead and see if there is better land”. So, they continue and go to what is now Lira, that is Lango. So, these people become three groups of the same people. The ones who stayed in Moroto were Karamojong, the ones who stayed in Soroti became Iteso and the ones who were in Lira became Lango.
But then, the question is, if these are the same people, why is it that the Lango language is different from Ateso, and ngaKarimojong? When you come to Lira, they are close to what is Acholiland. So, the Luo “luonised” the Lango and they started speaking a Luo language, forgetting their Ateker languages. That is the same way Kiswahili came about. Do you think there are people called ‘Baswahili’? (Laughter). No. When the Arabs came to the East African coast to trade, they were not able to communicate with the natives and vice versa. They could not speak the local languages and the indigenous population could, likewise, not speak Arabic. So, as the two groups tried to communicate with each other, a new hybrid language was born called Swahili.
Presenter: I have two questions. 1) Why did you choose to make a documentary? Why not go ahead and make a movie? 2) What is the reception that this documentary is receiving so far from Ugandans?
Atukunda: Firstly, we originally wanted to make a film about Omukama Kabaleega of Bunyoro and Kabaka Mwanga of Buganda. When we did the research, we realised it was too much information. To preserve that history, we decided to make a documentary first. We also did not have enough money to make an action series (our next project). As such, we decided to use this documentary series as a fundraising campaign to raise resources from Ugandans. If every Ugandan gives us a dollar, we will be able to raise at least $5m (about Shs19bn) to make a historical series of Kabaleega and Mwanga.
Secondly, I would say that we are getting a very positive reception. When we premiered the Bunyoro-Kitara segment on February 3, many Banyoro turned up to watch the film. For the Buganda segment, this being Kampala- the heart of the kingdom- it was a full house. Busoga segment also got a reasonable audience. Now, what surprised me, last night, it was Ankole and it was a full house.
Presenter: Wow!
DJ Crim: Give us an update. What should we expect in the coming days?
Atukunda: After every premiere, we start showing the segment at Ham Cinemax in Wandegeya. Currently, Ankole is showing for a whole week. The next segment to premiere (still at National Theatre) will be “Ango Peoples” on Sunday, March 10, 2024 at 3 pm.