Uganda

A

Pre-Colonial Kingdoms

In the 1,500 years before Europeans arrived in the area, the lake region of Africa, with its temperate climate and good soil, was a crossroads for invasions of Bantu agriculturists and Nilotic cattle herders. A fusion of these peoples occurred, and by the 15th century Bunyoro, the first of the great Ugandan kingdoms, had been founded. During the next two centuries its armies brought much of central Uganda under its control. These areas were ruled by governors subordinate to the great king of Bunyoro.

In the late 18th century, during a period of conflict, the governor of Buganda declared his independence, and the new kingdom quickly became the major lake state. Two smaller kingdoms, Ankole and Toro, also became independent of Bunyoro. Each of these, with variations, modelled its society and political system on the mother state. Buganda was ruled by a semi-divine king (kabaka) who was advised by a council of great nobles (lukiko), and the land was divided among the nobility and farmed by the peasants. Cattle were symbols of power and were owned by the nobility. The state was defended by a standing and conscript army obedient to the king’s desires. Although powerful, Buganda never completely dominated the other kingdoms and scattered Bantu groups.

B

British Rule

The first Europeans to visit Uganda were the British explorers John Hanning Speke and James Grant, when they were searching for the source of the River Nile in 1862. They were followed by Samuel White Baker and Charles George Gordon, commanding Egyptian troops. The explorer Henry Morton Stanley, welcomed by Kabaka Mutesa I (reigned 1852-1884), reported the king’s eagerness to understand Christianity. Soon both Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries were working in Buganda.

Within a decade the factions they created caused a civil war. Once isolated, the region, with its rich soils, had become by 1890 a major object of the European nations’ scramble for African territory. Britain, after securing German recognition of its rights, moved to secure Buganda. Frederick Lugard, working for the British East Africa Company, ended the civil disturbances, and his successors used the Bugandan army to help conquer the other kingdoms and peoples.

By 1896 a British protectorate administration had extended its authority over most of the region, and the name Uganda was adopted. Final details concerning the administration of Uganda were settled by a series of agreements in 1900, the most comprehensive of which guaranteed special status to Buganda, including the continuation of its social and political system.

C

Towards Independence

Britain’s almost 70 years of rule in Uganda was a centralized European bureaucracy superimposed on a federation of kingdoms and peoples. This worked relatively well until the independence movements of the 1950s, when Buganda demanded separation from Uganda. Only after Kabaka Mutesa II was exiled for two years in 1953 was it possible to proceed with developing a united government.

D

Obote as First President

After much experimentation, a federal constitution was promulgated in April 1962. The Uganda People’s Congress won the elections, and Milton Obote became prime minister. Independence was granted in October. Dissension continued, however, and in May 1966 Obote sent the army into Buganda and drove the kabaka into exile. He then proclaimed a new republican constitution, which formally abolished the kingships, and became Uganda’s first president of a unitary government.

E

Idi Amin’s Reign of Terror

Bugandan recalcitrance, a fall-off in the economy, and charges of corruption led to an army coup in January 1971. Power devolved upon the army commander Idi Amin, who began eight years of terror and misrule. He increased the size of the army, murdered his political opponents, and began a reign of terror directed at the people of Buganda, Obote’s Lango people, and at their neighbours, the Acholi. It is estimated Amin ordered the killing of around 300,000 Ugandans. He also expelled more than 60,000 Asians, many of whom were entrepreneurs, from the country (1972).

By 1978 Uganda was bankrupt, in the grip of internecine warfare, and the government dependent on massive loans from Arab states friendly to Amin. After Uganda went to war with neighbouring Tanzania in late 1978, Tanzanian forces allied with Ugandan rebels drove Amin from the country early the following year and he was allowed to escape to and settle in Saudi Arabia.