The Pre-colonial Social Formation among the Bakenhe Fishing Community of Lake Kyoga region of Uganda, 1800- 1894.

Abstract

This paper, therefore, set s out to bridge this gap by specifically looking at the pre colonial social formations of the Bakenhe fishing community of Lake Kyoga Re0i on, between 1800 and 1900. In essence this is a preliminary? Attempt t o explore about the past of the Bakenhe, a people whose past have curiously been neglected by those who have studied or written about the pas t of Ugandan societies. The paper seeks to explain how the interaction between the Bakenhe and t heir natural and social environment contributed t o the development of their pre-colonial social formations. Our ultimate contention in this paper is that human .history is nothing but the connection established between man and nature, and between man and fellow men through the dynamic process of production and reproduction.

That is t o say that human history of necessity concerns how man is able to produce and reproduce his concrete material life. It is, therefore, follows t hat for us to delineate the social formation that permeated the Bakenhe society in the period mentioned above, we must know who controlled the Bakenhe society in the means of production, what were the objects of production, who controlled the distribution and use of products, and above all what was the nature of socio- economic relations in the society.