Rwenzori in Uganda: the failures of reconciliation

In July 2014, several districts in the Rwenzori region were affected by a series of violent attacks launched by youth affiliated with a local cultural institution, the Rwenzururu Kingdom. This chapter focuses on the history of the Rwenzururu movement, an autonomist group that was active between 1962 and 1982 in the Rwenzori, providing essential background by tracing the sources of contention and spontaneous violent mobilization in the history of the Rwenzori region. It concludes on rising concerns about the persistence of cycles of violence in the region. The cleavage between hardliners and moderates became manifest in the late 1970s, as Idi Amin carved two new districts in the Rwenzori region out of lands previously subject to Batoro rule: Kasese and Bundibugyo (at the time known as Semliki). The ethnicization of politics is one of the factors that led to the emergence of violence in 2014 and in 2016, as well as one of the persisting problems of the Rwenzori region.