Uganda, March 23 -- Writing in The Observer last week, Dr Busingye Kabumba of Makerere University's Law School, attempted to make the case for ethnic federal system in Uganda. The argument is slippery, quite historical and sits on a very shaky foundation, which prompted Dr Kabumba to hasten to underline 'ethnic communities as political units rather than exclusionary tribes'.

Dr Kabumba deserves to be saluted as one of the few truly citizen intellectuals, consistently engaged in the public square to offer critical interventions on key national and international questions of the day. Why should federal political units be based on ethnic markers, not other forms of identity markers, organising or socioe-conomic bases?

Dr Kabumba evokes the...