Uganda History

The ruler visited by both Speke and Stanley is Mutesa, the king (or kabaka) of Buganda. His kingdom is one of four in this region which have become firmly established by the mid-nineteenth century. The others, lying to the west, are Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro.

It is seen at the time merely as a distant place lying beyond the territories of the sultan of Zanzibar, which are in dispute between Britain and Germany. When separate spheres of interest are agreed, in 1886, the area of modern Kenya falls to Britain. Beyond it, round the north shore of Lake Victoria, lies Buganda. Britain expects this to be little more than the far corner of its new colony. Events prove otherwise.

The region given into the company’s care stretches all the way from the east coast to the kingdom of Buganda, on the northwest shore of Lake Victoria.

Being in a sense beyond Lake Victoria, Germany is able to argue that this region (the most powerful kingdom within the territory of Uganda) is not covered by the territorial agreement with Britain. Moreover the irrepressible Karl Peters now forces the issue. In 1890 he arrives at Kampala and persuades the kabaka (the king of Buganda) to sign a treaty accepting a German protectorate over his kingdom.

Meanwhile the East Africa Company faces further problems in Buganda, where civil war breaks out between factions led by British Protestant missionaries and their French Catholic rivals.

Lugard prevails. But the loss of life and destruction of property in this unseemly European squabble makes it plain that the East Africa Company is incapable of fulfilling its duties.

Meanwhile the much larger region of Kenya has been relatively calm, even if the East Africa Company has achieved little of value there. But in taking responsibility for Uganda, the British government needs to be sure of the new protectorate’s access to the sea. So in 1895 the company’s charter is revoked (with compensation of £250,000). Kenya becomes another new responsibility of the British government, as the East Africa Protectorate.

The evident power of the local African kings convinces Johnston that control must be exercised through them. Buganda is by far the most significant of the kingdoms. The Johnston policy becomes effective with the Buganda Agreement of 1900.

Johnston subsequently makes similar agreements with the rulers of Toro (in 1900) and of Ankole (in 1901). With this much achieved, and a clear pattern set for the Uganda Protectorate, Johnston returns to Britain.

Many disagree, and pressure builds to allow the establishment of European farms and plantations – until another commissioner, still in the years before World War I, makes it a point of principle that Uganda is to be an African state. The economics of the protectorate support this policy. Uganda grows prosperous as cotton, introduced by the British, is grown with great success by African peasant farmers.

By the early 1960s the leading Ugandan politician is Milton Obote, founder of the UPC (Uganda People’s Congress), a party drawing its support from the northern regions of the country. Its main political platform is opposition to the hegemony of the southern kingdom of Buganda.

Confronted by the problem of Buganda, Obote accepts a constitution which gives federal status and a degree of autonomy to four traditional kingdoms, of which Buganda is by far the most powerful. In the same spirit Obote approves the election in 1963 of the kabaka, Mutesa II, to the largely ceremonial role of president and head of state. It proves to be a short-lived collaboration.

Obote immediately introduces a new constitution. This abolishes the hereditary kingdoms, ends the nation’s federal structure and provides for an executive president – a post taken by Obote himself in addition to his role as prime minister. With the help of army and police he terrorizes any remaining political opponents. But meanwhile an ostensible ally, more ruthless even than himself, is making good use of the widespread discontent.

Here Obote bides his time while the unbalanced Idi Amin subjects Uganda to a regime of arbitrary terror. The country’s economy is severely damaged when he suddenly expels in 1972 all Uganda’s Asians, a mainstay of the nation’s trading middle class. His obsessions take more local form in the persecution of tribes other than his own. Between 100,000 and 500,000 Ugandans are reported to be murdered or tortured during Amin’s seven years in power.

During the following twelve months there are two interim governments led by returning Ugandan exiles. But in May 1980 a Ugandan general, Tito Okello, organizes a coup which brings Obote back into power. He is confirmed as president in a general election six months later. Uganda lurches back from a mad dictatorship to a repressive regime held in check only by anarchy.

But both Obote and Okello are already peripheral figures. The only well organized faction in these years of chaos is a guerrilla army led by Yoweri Museveni.

During the 1980s the NRA steadily extends the area of southern and western Uganda under its control. And Okello, after toppling Obote in 1985, proves no match for Museveni.

A decade later the country is back under the rule of law (apart from some northern regions, where rebellion rumbles on). The economy is making vast strides (an annual growth rate of 5% in the early 1990s and of more than 8% in 1996). There are improvements in education, health and transport. International approval brings a willingness to invest and to lend. The nation, emerging from two decades of appalling chaos, is suddenly almost a model for Africa.

Democracy is a subject on which Museveni has strong and interesting views. He criticizes western insistence on the multiparty model, seeing it as simplistic to assume that a single pattern can be appropriate in every circumstance. In his view parties in Africa, often based on tribal allegiances, are often likely to frustrate democracy.

This is a somewhat utopian blueprint depending, like enlightened despotism, on people of good will at the top. It may be in token of this that Museveni regularly promises a date in the future for the legitimizing of opposition parties