In the Middle: Amin Dada (father of Idi Amin) - 1897-1976; Top left hand corner: Idi Amin Dada - 1928-2003; Top right hand corner: Tshombe Jaffar Remo Amin - 1966 - ; Middle left hand: Iya Sauda Aate - 1999 - ; Middle right hand: Mangarita Nakoli (mother of Tshombe Jaffar Remo Amin) - 1952-; Bottom left hand corner: Tshombe Jaffar Remo Jr. - 1997-; Bottom right hand corner: Idi Amin Alemi 2004-.
TABLE 1
GENEALOGICAL ASSIMILATION BETWEEN THE ADIBU & OKAPI-BURA CLANS OF WEST NILE SUB-REGION
1st generation / Guki
2nd generation/ Yeki
3rd generation / Zaki- Jaki
4th generation / Temeresu son of Zaki at Mount Liru Bango son of Zaki –Jaki at Oleba
5th generation / Wangita- Adibu son of Utusi from Obali –Okapi at Oleba
Ora extending to the other side
6th generation / Dada son of Ide of the Nyikamero Oka - Okapi at Oleba
Clan
7th generation / Baba son Atta of the Nyori Clan Enzu- Okapi at Oleba
8th generation / Dada son of Aka of the Morobu Clan Lewoziya- Okapi at Oleba
9th generation / Nyabira son of Ute - Biyu of the Turupa Clan Avudri- Okapi at Oleba
10th generation / Al-Amin Dada son of Atata of the Godiya Clan Lenya married from the Bura Clan
11th generation/ Buda married from the Mbokolo Clan
12th generation / Aate was betrothed to Al-Amin Dada
13th generation / Idi Al-Amin Dada son of Aisha Aate of the Okapi –Bura Clan
14th generation / Jaffar Remo Al-Amin son of Nakoli of the Ba-isemuwaya-Ngobi Clan
15th generation / Idi Alemi Al-Amin son of Tiko of the Leiko-Yatwa Clan
IDI AL-AMIN'S ANCESTRY CHART (INCLUDING MATERNAL LINEAGE):
TABLE 2
13th Century
1260-1310
Temeresu son of Zaki-Jaki
from Kupera Clan Mama Iriyaka from
Odhobu Clan Mount Liru Koboko District
14th Century
1360-1410 Wangita son of
Temeresu from
Taranga Clan Mama Utusi from Ora Mount Liru Koboko District
15th Century
1460-1510 Dada son of Wangita
from Ora Clan Mama Ide from
Likamero Keri River Koboko District
16th Century
1560-1610 Baba son of Dada from
Likamero Clan Mama Atta from Nyori Keri River Koboko District
17th Century
1610-1660 Dada son of Baba from
Nyori Clan Mama Aka from
Morobu Keri River Koboko
District
18th Century
1710-1760 Nyabira son of Dada
from Morobu Clan Mama Biya from
Turupa-Ponyona Keri River Koboko
District
19th Century
1897-1976 Al-Amin Dada son of
Nyabira from Turupa
Clan Mama Atata from
Godiya-Gombe Keri River Koboko District
20th Century
1928-2003 Idi Al-Amin son of Al-Amin
Dada from Godiya Clan Mama Aate from
Okapi-Bura Oleba County Maracha-Terego
District
20th Century
1966- Tshombe Jaffar Al-Amin
son of Idi Al-Amin
from Okapi-Bura Clan Mama Nakoli Bulima
from
Ba-isemuwaya-Ngobi Namugongo County
Kaliro District
21st Century
2004- Idi Alemi Al-Amin son
of Tshombe Jaffar Al-
Amin from Ba-
Isemuwaya-Ngobi Clan Nnalongo Tiko
From Leiko-Yatwa Leiko Sub-County
Koboko District
Footnote:- Assimilation traits in most Ethnic groups in the Great lakes region:
Cultural diffusion as opposed to enculturation which refers to the passage of culture from one generation to another, goes some way to explain the consistent examples of multicultural traits in most of the Ethnic groupings in the Great Lakes region of East and Central Africa.
For example we the Kakwa of the Bari Ethnic Group have experienced our fair share of both cultural diffusion and enculturation into our neighbouring Sudanic Madi ethnic grouping that includes the following sub-tribes of Avukaya, Lendu, Madi, Lugbwara and Logo.
A similar case in point is seen in the Plains Nilotic Langi who form part of the Atekerin Ethnic group constituting of the Karimojong,Teso, Sebani, Kumam and Langi in Uganda. However through the years they have experienced in the case of the Langi their fair share of cultural diffusion into the Preponderant River Nilotic Luo Ethnic Group of the Acholi and Alur-Junam.
Further south The Mythical so called Ba-tembuzi (Actually Hamitic Oromo) call them what you may: Tshewezi-Luo-Bibito-Bahinda-Hima-Tutsi-Bahororo-Bafumbira-Huma Royal Lineage which forms the so called Bantu Kingdoms in the Great Lakes region are definitely what Bambushi "Major Stigand" termed "of a composite mixer under rulers of foreign extraction".
Their combined diffusion and enculturation in fact taking up and relinquishing their original languages and taking up the languages of their Indigenous Bantu Subjects: Banyoro, Balamoji, Basoga, Bugweri, Baganda, Bakooki, Bahaya, Baziba, Bairu, Bakiga, Bakonzo and the Bahutu Ethnic groups, who trace their origins from the Katanga region of Central Africa. Here in the Cushite-Hamites practically usurped a way of life but also brought in the so-called superior way of life from the Horn of Africa into the Great Lakes region some 600-500 years ago.
A NILO-HAMITIC EQUIVALENT OF THE JUDAEO-SEMITIC GENESIS OF THE KAKWA TRIBE
Our Nilo-Hamitic equivalent of the Judaeo-Semitic Genesis account comes from one of today’s most prominent and respected of Kakwa Adiyo Narrators, Elder Erinayo Lega from the Padombu Clan and Midiya sub-clan, in Ko'buko County. He tells us our very own version of historical events deeply rooted in Mythical Legend.
This is how he proceeded in an interview aired in the 90s on Radio Uganda, "Kakwa Program", which the Program host, Akita Mungo Park, of the Leiko Clan kindly recorded and which Yuga Juma Onziga later had the privilege of laying his hands on.
Please note at the outset that it is our Kakwa unique traditional style to reduce the narration of the events of the past or ethno-history to kaze (variant kaje) or {yesterday}. Furthermore, this information can be gleaned from Yuga Onziga’s website: http://www.kakwa.org/history.htm.
Yuga Juma Onziga of the Rugbuza Clan near Mt- Liru made great efforts in translating the Oral Recitals from Kakwa into English almost verbatim (i.e. as is).
Kakwa Social-Political Set-up:
Among all Bari-speaking tribes, types of dependant affiliation have been reported (Buxton, p.11). The Bari call them dupi or "clientsâ, pena" or "prisoners of war " and lui or "free men". Crazzolara (1951) claims to have found similar dependants among the Alur of Uganda. Exactly what their status and role in society was is not well explained.
For the Mundari, they were a society, which has always seen political assimilation of different kinds: that of dependant strangers to established patrons; that of new groups to older ones; and that of the politically weak to the politically powerful. In contrast, Kakwa society has always seen mostly the assimilation of the nephews to their mother’s clans.
A case in point is that of the Midiya clan in Ko-buko, which boasts of having the largest numbers of assimilated nephews. The ability to assimilate individuals and small groups of people into society and imbue them with strong feelings for the Kakwa culture and way of life may, in fact, have been one of the reasons why the Kakwa succeeded in retaining their independence in the face of southward and westward pressure by their powerful Sudanic neighbors.
Egalitarian Structure:
Kakwa people have a patriarchal form of society without a central supreme authority. Fragmentation was the essence of the political system, a single village sub-clan known as ketimi being the largest unit with full social and political functions.
The sub-clans always have had strong individualistic and partisan interests. Each clan was politically independent of others and it enjoyed sufficient traditional loyalty. At the head of each clan, and the highest political officer, there was the Kayo the oldest and eldest member of the clan.
Those clans destined for rain prediction like the Adibu Likamero, Bura and Morodu Clans also have a special chief known as the Mata lo Kudu literally Chief of Rain often mistakenly referred to as "rain-maker". Other clans who trace their lineage through Wokube, the brother to Yeki refer to this chief as the Bura-tiyo.
This is so since they actually are not descendants of Yeki and neither are they descendents of Zaki son of Yeki, but as mentioned are the descendants of Wokube, the sibling who insisted to their father Guki that they should slaughter Dikilinya the Cow, which was chosen as the welcoming feast for Yeki the Prodigal son who had to make a four day trip from his father’s Kraal to his newly found Wodogo Mt-Liru and another four day trip back to his father’s Kraal in Lolowi.
Immediately below the Mata are the clan elders known as Temezi-ka who are more often than not, heads of sub-clans and are related to the Kayo, being brothers. The main function of the Mata lo Kudu is To-bura "wisdom and strength" to look after the welfare of each clan and consequently of the entire Kakwa people altogether.
For instance, in cases of outbreaks of mysterious diseases, prolonged droughts, hunting expeditions, conflict resolutions etc, the Bura are consulted. In some clans, Chieftainship was confined to the rainmaking clans and the chief would simultaneously assume two titles as chief of the land and chief of the rain.
Some Kakwa clans did not have a rainmaker for various reasons but most plausibly because their founding father "any of Zaki's 12 children" did not belong to a rainmaking family. In such clans, the duties of the chief of the land and the chief of the rain were separated. That of the chief of the rain was entrusted to another person who was not the chief.
However, it was rare to find a chief who was not also a rainmaker. As a patrilineal society, the position of the chief has always been hereditary. However, among the non-rainmaking clans, the chief's office was not hereditary. Clans without rainmakers could borrow them from other clans and a borrowed rainmaker did not have political influence. He would instead be paid for his consulting services.
The Kakwa indigenous political system features small villages centered around a group of men who are related by patrilineal descent. A council of male elders wields political and judicial authority.
Most land is devoted to cultivating Corn / Maize, Sorghum, Millet, Potatoes, and Cassava.
Cattle, goats, sheep and chicken are part of the economy but not central to it.
Kakwa operate on a common principle. All clans in society are related genealogically by the Kakwa way of thinking. Any Kakwa clan knows only it's own genealogies in detail and something of those of it's immediate neighbors, who were always considered to be of the same division. Beyond one's own community, little or nothing was known of the genealogies of other groups except through marriage and maybe adoption.
The historical past of another group’s ancestry was relevant as its present territorial and social relationship to one's own. It was clear also that in this context social distance was equated more or less with spatial distance.
The accounts of the creation and of the activities of the siblings before the heroes---- from Guki to the present---may be called mythical; those of the clan-founders' descendants may be called genealogical; those of the heroes themselves presented both mythical and genealogical features, that is, they may be placed in either category on different occasions. If we put them on a time scale, the heroes are either at the end of the mythical period or at the beginning of the genealogical period.
But to do this is to distort the significance of accounts. The difficulty is that Western myths and histories are placed on a time scale and, therefore, the concepts we use in this context contain reference to non-recurrent measured time.
During the mythological period-----from Mungura to Biyu---- the personages lived in isolation in a world in which there were no clans. They committed incest, not recognizing ties of kinship; they did not transfer bride-wealth for their mates and ties of affinity and the family as such were not recognized; they could do marvelous feats that men can no longer achieve: workers of miracles, miraculous men, magic or the introduction of techniques by magical means.
Their characteristics were non-human or contra-human (i.e. against or in opposition to or contrary to humans). It is with the appearance of the heroes and their begetting sons that human beings became social beings living in society and personages were ordinary beings and clan members behaved in the way that people did normally. These heroes also possessed superhuman and magical ties.
Before that they were not members of a society - "there was no society, in fact and they and their world existed in the north outside present Kakwa territory, a territory where every part was associated in tradition with a particular clan".
The appearance of the Europeans in Kakwa land has also been accounted for in a similar use of myth. They were said to have introduced kido bo-li literally "tortoises or vehicles". These foreigners were also given similar attributes, such as cannibalism, disappearing underground, walking on their heads and covering long distances in a day by this means; as soon as they were noticed, they began to walk on their legs but if attacked they would vanish into the ground and come up some distance away.
They legend says would then move away on their heads. They were thus literally inverted. For Kakwa, time was periodic, reckoned mainly by generations of men and women, the seasons, the stars, the moon and the sun. All these phenomena occurred at regular intervals and were not placed on a scale of non-recurrent time. Events that did not recur were not put on measured time scale. Kakwa myth and genealogy were little related to historical time. Genealogy explained and validated the social relations among living people. No Kakwa knew the genealogy of other people except their own, since they were for the most part outside everyday experience. Genealogies dealt with social beings as members of a given community, and the ancestors were significant, and therefore, remembered insofar as the relationships between them validated the present composition of the community. But the ancestors were placed in society, and society itself was given meaning and validity, by myth.
Linguistic connection:
The Kakwa are related to the Bari, Kuku, Mundari, Nyangwara, Pojulu and even to the Karimojong. Although Kakwa people speak an Eastern Nilotic language, they are geographically separated from other Eastern Nilotic speakers. Kakwa society occupies the region bordering northwestern Uganda, southern Sudan, and northeastern Congo. The exact point at which the Kakwa separated from the Bari and Bari-Speaking Tribes or from the rest of the Nilo-Hamites/ Plains Nilotics groups as a whole is not known. The general conjecture is that they split east of the Nile at Kapoeta from the eastern shore of Lake Rudolf (Lake Turkana), or they split somewhere in the present northeast area of the Red Sea in Ethiopia and may be they split even in the Nile Valley of the Sudan.
The place of Yeki, Zaki and Mount Liru in Kakwa traditions and history is well documented in songs, dances, child naming ceremonies and in other aspects of the tribe's traditional culture. These are always reinforced by the Kakwa elders during funeral rites, wedding ceremonies or during any communal feasts and events. The greatest honour bestowed upon Yeki and Zaki has been undertaken by the legendary Kakwa singer and musician Agele, of the Ginyako Kakwa clan, in Ko-buko. Indeed, his songs known as mute or mourning songs are still sung to this day. Even the fundamentalist Christian cult, locally referred to as 0-barokole or 0-borokole, have adopted Agele’s songs. Also, a Kakwa infant, born anywhere in the world, is pointed to Mount Liru to connect the child to his or her ancestry.
Additionally, it is to make him or her live long and become as legendary as the famous mountain. In the Kakwa tradition of gbiyo na N'giro or Child-naming ritual, the nursing mother of an infant emerges from her house officially after the kapule (or umbilical cord) of the baby has fallen off the navel. Up to that point, the baby who has been kept indoors since birth, is brought outside for the first time. If the infant is a girl, the nursing mother emerges with her after three days and if it is a boy after four days.
At the door, an aunt holds the infant and points her or him to the direction of Mount Liru with the pronouncement: Liru, N'giro lolu ilo (which literally translates into: "Liru, here is your child"). If it is a baby boy, this pointing and pronouncement is repeated four times. If it is a baby girl, the pronouncement: Liru, N'giro nonu ina "Liru, here is your child" is repeated three times. After this, an appropriate proper name is given the child. Jungba na laputu na nyeyi (a special meal prepared from a type of pea is eaten) as a special meal for celebrating the child naming ritual.
The handful of the Kakwa people who have long settled in Arua call themselves Kakwa-ti-Arua or Kakwa-ku-Arua [i.e. the "Kakwa of Arua"] or Kakwa of Mvara or Kakwa of Ochi- ba, or Kakwa of Awindiri etc., depending on what exact outskirt of Arua they have settled in. Such Kakwa have always considered themselves as being "more advanced" socially, culturally and economically than their counterparts in either Yei, Ko-buko, A'di or Godia Bura.
Most are also either Protestants or Muslims (sometimes erroneously called Nubis), and they hail mainly from the Ko-buko clans of Godiya (Godia), Nya ngiliya (Nya ngilia), Turupa, Leyiko (Leiko) and Dimu. The Protestant segment is mainly settled at Mvara and Awindiri. Many of it's members have been mainly prominent church leaders and goers of the famous Emanuel Church in the vicinity of Arua town. Here, their main occupation was Primary or Elementary school teachers.
The Muslim population concentrated around the Tanganyika Village, Lumumba Road, and in Ochi-ba. These are mainly traders, drivers, butchers, and even peasants. Indeed, the family of Idi Awongo Alemi [Idi Amin Dada] settled in the Tanganyika Village after the armistice WW I in which his Father Amin Dada Nyabira had forcefully been conscripted into serving between 1915 and 1921 in the Kings African Rifles when he joined the Colonial Police Forces at Nsambya Police Baracks.
Because of their Islamic faith, the whole Kakwa community in Arua have been equated with the Nubis or Nubians.
Although conditions of living of the Arua Kakwa have always been obviously harsh—with constant food and accommodation shortages—for example, they still believed that they were living a "better" life than their rural Kakwa counterparts. It is this self-conceitedness, utopia, paranoia, and myopia that have consistently and foolishly tended to drive them to look down upon their distant relatives. But, as if to remind them that they were refugees in Arua after all, many of these Kakwa ti Arua were also forced to vacate West Nile's capital in 1979, after the so called liberation of Uganda, by the invading Tanzanian and UNLA forces.
In doing so, the Arua Kakwas lost most of their possessions in the district's capital. Even worse, they became worse-off refugees than the rural Kakwas who were already used to being self-reliant in food and accommodation, and having faced decades of dire social and economic problems throughout much of their daily lives before.
An even worse situation was faced by those Kakwa people who described themselves as ngutui-ti-lojo meaning the "overseas people". The word ngutu means "person" and lojo (lozo) means "across river or lake" or simply "overseas". Hence, these people sometimes also call themselves Kakwa-ti-lojo (or "the overseas Kakwa"). The term generally designates the Ugandan towns and other areas of "economic vibrancy", such as Bugerere (Kayunga), Soroti, Mbale, Gulu, Moyo, Kakira, Kawolo (Lugazi), Kigumba, Kampala, Jinja, Hoima, Kakoge, Masindi, Namasali, Namasagali and Mbale.
These places had become the chief centres of kasa nmvu (cheap labourers) drawn largely from the northern Uganda tribes that include the Kakwa people. This southward migration peaked soon after World War I when Uganda's present territorial borders were finally demarcated. This migration further ushered in wave after wave of adult Kakwa males who had to work in the sugarcane, banana and coffee plantations in order to receive financial payments to pay for the newly-introduced poll taxes. Meanwhile, the Kakwa of the Congo migrated to Kinshasa, Kisangani, Wacha and Bunia also as labourers, or rarely, to enlist as soldiers in the notorious Belgian army or Force Publique then commonly known as the Tukutuku.
A similar migration pattern developed among the Kakwa of the Sudan who are now found in Juba, Khartoum and Port Sudan—mainly voluntarily compared to either Uganda or the Congo.
.
LIFE TOUR OF THE LATE IDI AL-AMIN ALEMI DADA FROM 30TH MAY 1928 TO 16TH AUGUST 2003:
TABLE 3
Age Year In Year Out Time Place of Residence
1-3 years 1928 1931 3 years Police Barracks Shimoni-Nakasero &
Kololo Hill Poice
3-8 years 1931 1936 5 years Arua Muslim School
Arua District
9-12 years 1937 1940 4 years Semuto-Luwero
12-16 1940 1944 5 years Al-Qadriyah Darasah Bombo
& Mehta Sugar Plantation
17-18 years 1945 1946 1 year Imperial Hotel Speke Avenue
18-34 years 1946 1962 17 years KAR-UR
conscription
No. N44428
34-44 years 1962 1971 10 years Command Centre
Mbuya UA no. UO-03
44-53 years 1971 1979 9 years Head of State
2nd Republic
of Uganda
53-76 years 1979 2003 24 years Exile in Libya
& Saudi Arabia
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