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| History ---------- Nothing much about Uganda's pre-colonial history is well documented but at least a few oral tales date back to the 1600s when a number of people living around Lake Victoria and along River Nile eked a living off the land and kept cattle. The northern region is a different story of tall people armed with a spear or bow and arrow in hand, hunting and fishing for a living. Uganda is one of the most heterogenous countries in the world, given its small size into which a mosaic of tribes, dialects and cultures has been squeezed over the last 1,000 or more years. Over 36 languages are spoken in a country that has revived its cultural foundations of hereditary kings, chiefs and clan elders. The country had its first exposure to foreign influence in the 19th Century, first with Arabs who traded in the much-needed guns, cloth and other trivia like trinkets in exchange for ivory and slaves. The Arab influence on their arrival took a loose foothold in the palace of King Muteesa I but that influence was to be brushed aside with the arrival of British indirect rule and two Christian faiths -Catholic and Anglican- in the late 1800s. Acrimonious religious wars among Islamic, Catholic and Anglican followed in Buganda with the British finally declaring Uganda a protectorate after agreements were signed with Buganda Kingdom in 1900 and later on with the kingdoms of Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole and the chiefdoms of Busoga and other areas. King Muteesa, who had taken the initiative to invite the British missionaries to his kingdom through a famous letter sent to Henry Morton Stanley an intrepid journalist and explorer, and printed in The Times of London, died a broken man. He had refused to become a Muslim although he read Arabic competently and observed the fast and lunar dates in his palace. Having refused to be circumcised, he encouraged all religious faiths to be practised, but on his death Mwanga, his incompetent son got into a bind. He switched faiths, engaged in several battles before being dethroned twice. As a last resort, he ordered the execution of 22 Catholic pages that had gone against palace norms by defying his orders. A number of Protestants were also killed during that heroic age. British colonialism was of the indirect rule type, where British administrators, who were short of resources to administer the country, ruled through Baganda chiefs some of whom were transferred to other regions outside Buganda, to the chagrin of natives who were subjugated under the yoke of colonialism. In addition, while agriculture and education were albeit belatedly introduced into the country Uganda did not seem to have suffered the vagaries of oppression like the neighbouring Colony of Kenya where British farmers for example took all prime farming land and confined local people in camps and reserves. The British found well organised political units run on a pyramidal hierarchy of monarchs at the top who deferred some powers to the Chancellor. Uganda's cultures remained intact but trouble started as early as the 1920s when Baganda peasant farmers questioned the rationale of giving chiefs too much land and power. Many of them wanted to take over the job of appointing chiefs to political office, a prerogative of the king. Others agitated for the rights to gin and market their crops of coffee and cotton which was at that time in the hands of Asians and some Britons. Further rebellion led to bloody riots but these were quelled. The 50s saw Buganda asking for self independence as a separate state from the rest of Uganda but the Governor, Sir Andrew Benjamin Cohen would hear none of this since he wanted to deliver a united Uganda. Buganda had after all in 1900 signed an agreement to remain under the rule of Her Majesty the Queen. Because of the demands, King Frederick Muteesa II's recognition by the British Empire as a monarchy of Buganda under the 1900 was revoked when he refused to back down. He was as a result hurriedly flown off in 1953 into exile in London where he stayed for two years before his return home. The two major political parties, which now exist in the country, were formed in the late 1940s and 1950s. In addition, although the Democratic Party and Uganda People’s Congress have lost their initial tribal and religious tag, they had a Catholic and Anglican leaning respectively. Ignatius Musaazi formed Uganda’s first political party, the Uganda National Congress in 1952 but this was merged and formed into the Uganda People's Congress. Uganda got her independence on October 9, 1962 after a short stint of self-rule, with the Democratic Party, headed by Benedicto Kiwanuka, a Muganda lawyer, losing out to UPC which was headed by Milton Obote, a Langi from the north. This party had forged an alliance with the Kabaka Yekka (King's) Party to beat the democrats. Milton Obote, a Ugandan with meticulous oratorical skills from the north, took over as Prime Minister, while the Kabaka of Buganda was made a titular President. This uneasy alliance was for convenience and it was not to last. In 1966, the Kabaka found himself in an uncomfortable position when he refused to oblige the prime minister with signatures to the many documents that would undermine Buganda's special status of a federated state. |
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