Netters,
I was asked to post the note below.
================
Early Rivalry between advocates and opponents of the free enterprise and the issue of Buganda's position in Uganda - Viewed from a politico-economic-historical context:
I. Some individuals and groups were determined to
dismantle the institutional set up upon which the
economists had based their precdictions of a positive
post colonial economic development climate. At a UPC
meeting in Mbale, Nabudere, a lawyer with communist
sentiments, who was also a university lecturer and a
prominent member of the radical group, once threatened
that his camp would liquidate those who hindered the
progress of the UPC-left. This forewarning pointed to
the impending plight Obote's opponents were to face in
the future. MPs from the opposition parties took this
warning seriously and demanded in the National
Assembly that the government clarify what they
considered as a sinister threat to their lives.
Radical MPs in parliament had a difficult time trying
to diminish the ominous implications of Nabudere's
statement; their explanations failed to ally the fears
of the Kabaka Yekka (KY) and DP MPs. (See Ssekanyolya
February 1966 issues). The intolorence to opposition
displayed by the pro Obote group on this and other
occassion was a harbinger of the unpleasant future the
free enterprise economic development system was to
face under Obote's rule.
II. On the other hand the pro free enterprise
individuals and groups who expected to guide Uganda's
economic development along the free enterprise path
assumed by economists in the "ideal model," were
suspicious of one another's motives and therefore
lacked a purposeful unity. Within the group were those
who considered as unpalatable the position of primus
inter pares or "first among equals" Buganda had
enjoyed during the colonial era (Ibingira 1973 84-85).
The British allowed Buganda substantial autonomy in
local administration since they were convinced that
the Baganda were capable of looking after their own
administrative interests, and through the Native
Authority Ordinance of 1919, the British had
'exported' the Buganda model of local administration,
and Buganda's civil servants, to much of the rest of
the country (Laws of Uganda, vol. II, 1046). People
like W.W. Nadiope from Busoga, C.J. Obwangor from
Mbale and George Magezi from Bunyoro devoted their
energies to demanding that the departing colonial
government reverse this status quo. (N. Kasfir 1976,
109).
III. Ugandan scholars, particularly those from
Northern Uganda such as G. Pinychwa (1978), have
suggested that Buganda's prominence within colonial
Uganda was the result of the kingdom's fortuitous
location at the center of the colonial state. Other
scholars use Buganda as an example to highlight the
colonial differential modernization, in support of the
underdevelopment school's notions of how the world
capitalist system created unequal development in
peripheral states, such as Uganda (Kasfir 1976).
Kasfir for example claims that colonialists developed
Buganda to function as the metropolis while neglecting
the rest of the country - the satellites of the
peripheral state. Pinychwa and Kasfir's explanations
portray the EFFECTS (my emphasis) of colonial rule.
These scholars propose, arguably, that the colonial
arrangements helpled develop Buganda at the cost of
other regions. (There are scholars who believe that
since Buganda provided most of the funds for central
government transfer payments, while none of the twenty
one counties of Buganda [in Obote's unitary republican
constitution of 1967, in which all reference to
Buganda was consciously omitted, these counties were
lumped into four regions - Mubende, Masaka, East
Mengo, and West Mengo - and still did not receive
grants from the government] ever received funds from
the central government, other regions benefited as
well if not more than Buganda from the colonial
arrangements (Low, 1988, Nsibambi 1966).
IV. Both Pinychwa and Kasfir's explanations of
Buganda's prominence are flawed and may lead us to
erroneous conclusions since they fail to address the
colonial regime's fundamental justification for
locating its headquarters in Buganda. Like A. D. Low
we believe that the British decision to place the
territorial capital at Entebbe was not a random act,
rather it was because they wanted to study, and take
advantage of Buganda's pre colonial structure of
administration, which they had decided to adopt when
establishing British rule in the rest of the territory
comprasing present day Uganda (see the Native
Authority Ordinance of 1919, Laws of Uganda, vol II
1046). In addition to the centralized administrative
system, Berber mentions the pre colonial centralized
road system as another important consideration which
attracted the British to place their headquaters in
Buganda (Barber 1968).
V. Pinychwa and Kasfir's analyses may mislead the
reader when they reverse the order of CAUSE and EFFECT
(my emphasis) of the colonial regime's attraction to
Buganda. They blame the colonial state for locating
most of its organs of administration in Buganda,
without mentioning the perilous political conditions
that were prevailing in other parts, particularly in
the northern territory of present day Uganda, and they
do not mention the comparative political order in
Buganda when the British arrived in the territory. Yet
reality entails that cause precedes effect. British
government's disinterest in Northern Uganda was partly
due to the prevailing ethnic strife (CAUSE of British
disaffection) in the region that pre dated colonial
rule. Barber depicts the relationship between the
ethnic groups (tribes?), which convinced the British
that the area was not suitable (EFFECT upon British
policy) to host the colonial headquarters, as follows:
"The relation s between the tribes had, by this time,
settled into a pattern of mutual hostility and raiding
and counter raiding for water, grazing, and stock...
It was among such people that Macdonald signed 28
treaties, in none of which British protectorate was
promised" (Barber 1968).
VI. Similar to Low and Barber we believe explanations
of Buganda's prominence in colonial Uganda should not
ignore or attempt to downplay the vital role pre
colonial political and economic development in Buganda
had played in convincing the British to place their
headquarters there. During the 700 hundred years that
preceeded colonial rule Buganda had evolved into a
stable, politically organized, centrally administered
kingdom; this, more so than any other considerations
attracted the British to locate the colonial
headquarters (Low 1988) in the "unattractive" (in
European terms) steaming tropical environment on the
shores of Lake Victoria at Entebbe in Buganda.
VII. Climatic conditions, proximity to European
settlements, and strategic location within the British
overseas territory, were usually vital considerations
for selecting a site for a colonial territorial
headquarters. If local pre colonial political
development had not been a paramount consideration for
choosing the colonial headquarters in Uganda, other
locations would have been more attractive to the
British than Entebbe. For example, Mbale on the
foothills of Mount Elgon in Eastern Uganda, Kabale in
the highlands of Southwest\Western Uganda, each of
which place has a modified tropical (high altitude
creates a temperate climate in these areas) climate
similar to that of Nairobi; Jinja or Tororo, near the
country's border with Kenya, where the largest
community of European settlers in East Africa lived,
or Packwach on the Banks of the strategic Nile close
to the territories of the British empire in North
Africa.
VIII Those who were frightened of Buganda's pro minent
position in Ugandan politics included the once
influential the late, Grace Ibingira, Uganda's first
post colonial Minister of Justice who came from the
kindom of Ankole. A British trained lawyer with
liberal political sentiments, he was a founding member
of the UPC party. Despite his desire to contain
Mengo's political stature, Ibingira was sufficiently
politically astute to broker a coalition with Buganda
as the only sure way to guarantee victory for his
party, the UPC. He was therefore one of the major
architects of the UPC-KY alliance (Ibingira 1973, xii,
200-202). Although Mengo wanted a federal organization
of the state, Ibingira and his friends pushed for
unitary constitutional arrangements for the post
colonial state (at the time of his death he had
converted to fedralism, and was a staunch, eloquent
advocate of the federal ideology). Despite the
political differences between Mengo and the Ibingira
group, on the political-economic level the two sides
had much in common since both embraced a common
economic philosophy of free enterprise.
IX. Ibingira admitted that fear of the prospect of
Buganda dominating post-colonial Uganda politically
persuaded him and his colleagues from Western and
Eastern Uganda to develop a rappot with Obote. They
regarded Obote as politically weak and malleable, and
hence easy to control, since he came from a
politically insiginificant Nilotic ethnic group
(Lango, Obote's home district, had only 4 out of the
ninety-two seat in the first independence parliament)
of Northern Uganda (Ibingira 1973). As king makers,
Ibingira and his colleagues (most of whom ended up in
jail during Obote's post 1966 rule until his removal
by Amin in 1971) thought they would have a firm grip
on the national government (Ibingira 1973). A wide,
albeit undeclared, political-economic philosophical
gap which colored the activities of the UPC existed
between the Ibingira and the Obote f actions. This gap
became clear only when the latter faction ultimately
revealed its uncheckered socialist sentiments.
Highlights of some key paragraphs:
Until they categorically reject the political views of
their political mentors ( the likes of Obote and
Nabudere); Obote and his UPC-left lack moral or any
other authority/credibility, to advise any Ugandan,
including the Kabaka, on how to relate with post Obote
regimes including that of M7, as Mr. Adhola
volunteered in the unsolicited article which he mailed
to the Monitor. Nabudere's views, mentioned in Parag
I, still frighten many peace loving Ugandans away from
the present-day UPC, that was comandeered by the
radical wing.
Parag II points to adverse results of hating Baganda.
The rabid hatred of the Baganda that permeates Mr.
Adhola, Mr. Mukanga and their fellow travellers'
postings, tends to blur, in their minds, the genuine
political and economic benefits their home regions
would derive from a federal political arrangement for
Uganda. Those imagining that a federally organized
Uganda would make Buganda superior to the rest of the
country (like the Obwongors, the Magezis and others
once imagined, are caught in an unfortunate time warp;
otherwise how do they reconcile their mistaken
position with the fact that, the pangs of poverty have
been digging ever so deep into the ribs of societies
in most parts of Uganda, in the era of unitary rule,
than they did during the first four years of post
colonial rule, when the federal constituition was in
effect? Moreover, architects of the crumbling
socio-economic and political systems which have
reduced most people in most parts of the country to
abject poverty were/are non Baganda, who have been
weilding national executive political power in the
independence era.
Challenges to Modernization and Underdevelopment
theoristical analyses of colonial Uganda in Parag III.
Pre colonial Buganda ha d both a developed
administrative system and infrastructure, two
fundamental prerequisites for socio-economic
development; To be successful, a political system must
evolve over a long, long period that may stretch into
hundreds or even thousands of years. And, citizens
must pay allegiance to the rulers. Buganda's
established political system pre dated colonial rule
and trade and commerce were thriving between Buganda
and many of her neighbours at that time. Citizens
accepted/recognized their rulers, and participated in
communal development projects which included building
commuter and trunk roads. Only dishonest scholarship
would attribute Buganda's political and socio-economic
development to colonial rule, the alleged "kingdom's
fortuitous location at the center of the colonial
state".
Mr. Adhola and those who share his vitriolic decrying
of colonial civil servants from Buganda who once
worked in his and his cousins' areas, should pause,
and recall the socio-political and economic
environment obtaining in those areas at the advent of
colonial rule in Uganda, which Barber eloquently
helped us to revist, as summarized in paragraph V.
What does it take for one to realize the folly of
imposing political unitarism in an ethnically diverse
society with strong pluralistic desires such a Uganda?
After a lengthy (spanning 35++ years) soul-searching
exercise, Ibingira realized that millions of Ugandans
had been killed (and that many more millions would be
killed by this and successor regimes, under the guise
of nation building or national security) by those
chasing a illusive goal --- harmonious rule within
Uganda's comatose unitary political system, this along
with the collapse of the socio-economiic,
communication, health, welfare etc sytems of the
country, since 1966, were too great a cost to Uganda,
for him to morally justify continuing advocating the
unitary political ideology blindly, which we sa w him
champion inParags. VII and IX.
Parag IX reveals that the objectives of advocates of
the unitary political system were strongly motivated
by selfish ethnic/(tribal?) interests rather than a
sincere belief in the egalitarian "nationalistic"
ideology they espoused in public. Most honest
political power brokers seek out politicians who
derive power from a strong rather than a fragile
political base, to lead a political party. The
advantages to the party and the polity, of having the
former type of politician (a politician with a large
home political base) at the helm of a political party
and, possibly, subsquently at the helm of the
country's government, should, I assume, be obvious to
most people.
That the architects of the UPC party from Western and
Eastern Uganda bestowed the leadership of their party
to the weakest, least competent candidate they could
find 'the weakest link', speaks volumes about their
motives; It also helps us to better understand why
Obote always felt at home while consorting with the
likes of Idi Amin. Worst of all, the decision by the
UPC founding fathers to discard merit in favour of
expedience (by annoiting Obote as party leader),
erected the rickety political stage, upon which
ominious political events (events whose repercussions
still afflict Ugandans) would inevitably take place in
the independence era.
======================================
Early Rivalry between advocates and opponents of the free enterprise and the issue of Buganda's position in Uganda - Viewed from a politico-economic-historical context:
I. Some individuals and groups were determined to
dismantle the institutional set up upon which the
economists had based their precdictions of a positive
post colonial economic development climate. At a UPC
meeting in Mbale, Nabudere, a lawyer with communist
sentiments, who was also a university lecturer and a
prominent member of the radical group, once threatened
that his camp would liquidate those who hindered the
progress of the UPC-left. This forewarning pointed to
the impending plight Obote's opponents were to face in
the future. MPs from the opposition parties took this
warning seriously and demanded in the National
Assembly that the government clarify what they
considered as a sinister threat to their lives.
Radical MPs in parliament had a difficult time trying
to diminish the ominous implications of Nabudere's
statement; their explanations failed to ally the fears
of the Kabaka Yekka (KY) and DP MPs. (See Ssekanyolya
February 1966 issues). The intolorence to opposition
displayed by the pro Obote group on this and other
occassion was a harbinger of the unpleasant future the
free enterprise economic development system was to
face under Obote's rule.
II. On the other hand the pro free enterprise
individuals and groups who expected to guide Uganda's
economic development along the free enterprise path
assumed by economists in the "ideal model," were
suspicious of one another's motives and therefore
lacked a purposeful unity. Within the group were those
who considered as unpalatable the position of primus
inter pares or "first among equals" Buganda had
enjoyed during the colonial era (Ibingira 1973 84-85).
The British allowed Buganda substantial autonomy in
local administration since they were convinced that
the Baganda were capable of looking after their own
administrative interests, and through the Native
Authority Ordinance of 1919, the British had
'exported' the Buganda model of local administration,
and Buganda's civil servants, to much of the rest of
the country (Laws of Uganda, vol. II, 1046). People
like W.W. Nadiope from Busoga, C.J. Obwangor from
Mbale and George Magezi from Bunyoro devoted their
energies to demanding that the departing colonial
government reverse this status quo. (N. Kasfir 1976,
109).
III. Ugandan scholars, particularly those from
Northern Uganda such as G. Pinychwa (1978), have
suggested that Buganda's prominence within colonial
Uganda was the result of the kingdom's fortuitous
location at the center of the colonial state. Other
scholars use Buganda as an example to highlight the
colonial differential modernization, in support of the
underdevelopment school's notions of how the world
capitalist system created unequal development in
peripheral states, such as Uganda (Kasfir 1976).
Kasfir for example claims that colonialists developed
Buganda to function as the metropolis while neglecting
the rest of the country - the satellites of the
peripheral state. Pinychwa and Kasfir's explanations
portray the EFFECTS (my emphasis) of colonial rule.
These scholars propose, arguably, that the colonial
arrangements helpled develop Buganda at the cost of
other regions. (There are scholars who believe that
since Buganda provided most of the funds for central
government transfer payments, while none of the twenty
one counties of Buganda [in Obote's unitary republican
constitution of 1967, in which all reference to
Buganda was consciously omitted, these counties were
lumped into four regions - Mubende, Masaka, East
Mengo, and West Mengo - and still did not receive
grants from the government] ever received funds from
the central government, other regions benefited as
well if not more than Buganda from the colonial
arrangements (Low, 1988, Nsibambi 1966).
IV. Both Pinychwa and Kasfir's explanations of
Buganda's prominence are flawed and may lead us to
erroneous conclusions since they fail to address the
colonial regime's fundamental justification for
locating its headquarters in Buganda. Like A. D. Low
we believe that the British decision to place the
territorial capital at Entebbe was not a random act,
rather it was because they wanted to study, and take
advantage of Buganda's pre colonial structure of
administration, which they had decided to adopt when
establishing British rule in the rest of the territory
comprasing present day Uganda (see the Native
Authority Ordinance of 1919, Laws of Uganda, vol II
1046). In addition to the centralized administrative
system, Berber mentions the pre colonial centralized
road system as another important consideration which
attracted the British to place their headquaters in
Buganda (Barber 1968).
V. Pinychwa and Kasfir's analyses may mislead the
reader when they reverse the order of CAUSE and EFFECT
(my emphasis) of the colonial regime's attraction to
Buganda. They blame the colonial state for locating
most of its organs of administration in Buganda,
without mentioning the perilous political conditions
that were prevailing in other parts, particularly in
the northern territory of present day Uganda, and they
do not mention the comparative political order in
Buganda when the British arrived in the territory. Yet
reality entails that cause precedes effect. British
government's disinterest in Northern Uganda was partly
due to the prevailing ethnic strife (CAUSE of British
disaffection) in the region that pre dated colonial
rule. Barber depicts the relationship between the
ethnic groups (tribes?), which convinced the British
that the area was not suitable (EFFECT upon British
policy) to host the colonial headquarters, as follows:
"The relation s between the tribes had, by this time,
settled into a pattern of mutual hostility and raiding
and counter raiding for water, grazing, and stock...
It was among such people that Macdonald signed 28
treaties, in none of which British protectorate was
promised" (Barber 1968).
VI. Similar to Low and Barber we believe explanations
of Buganda's prominence in colonial Uganda should not
ignore or attempt to downplay the vital role pre
colonial political and economic development in Buganda
had played in convincing the British to place their
headquarters there. During the 700 hundred years that
preceeded colonial rule Buganda had evolved into a
stable, politically organized, centrally administered
kingdom; this, more so than any other considerations
attracted the British to locate the colonial
headquarters (Low 1988) in the "unattractive" (in
European terms) steaming tropical environment on the
shores of Lake Victoria at Entebbe in Buganda.
VII. Climatic conditions, proximity to European
settlements, and strategic location within the British
overseas territory, were usually vital considerations
for selecting a site for a colonial territorial
headquarters. If local pre colonial political
development had not been a paramount consideration for
choosing the colonial headquarters in Uganda, other
locations would have been more attractive to the
British than Entebbe. For example, Mbale on the
foothills of Mount Elgon in Eastern Uganda, Kabale in
the highlands of Southwest\Western Uganda, each of
which place has a modified tropical (high altitude
creates a temperate climate in these areas) climate
similar to that of Nairobi; Jinja or Tororo, near the
country's border with Kenya, where the largest
community of European settlers in East Africa lived,
or Packwach on the Banks of the strategic Nile close
to the territories of the British empire in North
Africa.
VIII Those who were frightened of Buganda's pro minent
position in Ugandan politics included the once
influential the late, Grace Ibingira, Uganda's first
post colonial Minister of Justice who came from the
kindom of Ankole. A British trained lawyer with
liberal political sentiments, he was a founding member
of the UPC party. Despite his desire to contain
Mengo's political stature, Ibingira was sufficiently
politically astute to broker a coalition with Buganda
as the only sure way to guarantee victory for his
party, the UPC. He was therefore one of the major
architects of the UPC-KY alliance (Ibingira 1973, xii,
200-202). Although Mengo wanted a federal organization
of the state, Ibingira and his friends pushed for
unitary constitutional arrangements for the post
colonial state (at the time of his death he had
converted to fedralism, and was a staunch, eloquent
advocate of the federal ideology). Despite the
political differences between Mengo and the Ibingira
group, on the political-economic level the two sides
had much in common since both embraced a common
economic philosophy of free enterprise.
IX. Ibingira admitted that fear of the prospect of
Buganda dominating post-colonial Uganda politically
persuaded him and his colleagues from Western and
Eastern Uganda to develop a rappot with Obote. They
regarded Obote as politically weak and malleable, and
hence easy to control, since he came from a
politically insiginificant Nilotic ethnic group
(Lango, Obote's home district, had only 4 out of the
ninety-two seat in the first independence parliament)
of Northern Uganda (Ibingira 1973). As king makers,
Ibingira and his colleagues (most of whom ended up in
jail during Obote's post 1966 rule until his removal
by Amin in 1971) thought they would have a firm grip
on the national government (Ibingira 1973). A wide,
albeit undeclared, political-economic philosophical
gap which colored the activities of the UPC existed
between the Ibingira and the Obote f actions. This gap
became clear only when the latter faction ultimately
revealed its uncheckered socialist sentiments.
Highlights of some key paragraphs:
Until they categorically reject the political views of
their political mentors ( the likes of Obote and
Nabudere); Obote and his UPC-left lack moral or any
other authority/credibility, to advise any Ugandan,
including the Kabaka, on how to relate with post Obote
regimes including that of M7, as Mr. Adhola
volunteered in the unsolicited article which he mailed
to the Monitor. Nabudere's views, mentioned in Parag
I, still frighten many peace loving Ugandans away from
the present-day UPC, that was comandeered by the
radical wing.
Parag II points to adverse results of hating Baganda.
The rabid hatred of the Baganda that permeates Mr.
Adhola, Mr. Mukanga and their fellow travellers'
postings, tends to blur, in their minds, the genuine
political and economic benefits their home regions
would derive from a federal political arrangement for
Uganda. Those imagining that a federally organized
Uganda would make Buganda superior to the rest of the
country (like the Obwongors, the Magezis and others
once imagined, are caught in an unfortunate time warp;
otherwise how do they reconcile their mistaken
position with the fact that, the pangs of poverty have
been digging ever so deep into the ribs of societies
in most parts of Uganda, in the era of unitary rule,
than they did during the first four years of post
colonial rule, when the federal constituition was in
effect? Moreover, architects of the crumbling
socio-economic and political systems which have
reduced most people in most parts of the country to
abject poverty were/are non Baganda, who have been
weilding national executive political power in the
independence era.
Challenges to Modernization and Underdevelopment
theoristical analyses of colonial Uganda in Parag III.
Pre colonial Buganda ha d both a developed
administrative system and infrastructure, two
fundamental prerequisites for socio-economic
development; To be successful, a political system must
evolve over a long, long period that may stretch into
hundreds or even thousands of years. And, citizens
must pay allegiance to the rulers. Buganda's
established political system pre dated colonial rule
and trade and commerce were thriving between Buganda
and many of her neighbours at that time. Citizens
accepted/recognized their rulers, and participated in
communal development projects which included building
commuter and trunk roads. Only dishonest scholarship
would attribute Buganda's political and socio-economic
development to colonial rule, the alleged "kingdom's
fortuitous location at the center of the colonial
state".
Mr. Adhola and those who share his vitriolic decrying
of colonial civil servants from Buganda who once
worked in his and his cousins' areas, should pause,
and recall the socio-political and economic
environment obtaining in those areas at the advent of
colonial rule in Uganda, which Barber eloquently
helped us to revist, as summarized in paragraph V.
What does it take for one to realize the folly of
imposing political unitarism in an ethnically diverse
society with strong pluralistic desires such a Uganda?
After a lengthy (spanning 35++ years) soul-searching
exercise, Ibingira realized that millions of Ugandans
had been killed (and that many more millions would be
killed by this and successor regimes, under the guise
of nation building or national security) by those
chasing a illusive goal --- harmonious rule within
Uganda's comatose unitary political system, this along
with the collapse of the socio-economiic,
communication, health, welfare etc sytems of the
country, since 1966, were too great a cost to Uganda,
for him to morally justify continuing advocating the
unitary political ideology blindly, which we sa w him
champion inParags. VII and IX.
Parag IX reveals that the objectives of advocates of
the unitary political system were strongly motivated
by selfish ethnic/(tribal?) interests rather than a
sincere belief in the egalitarian "nationalistic"
ideology they espoused in public. Most honest
political power brokers seek out politicians who
derive power from a strong rather than a fragile
political base, to lead a political party. The
advantages to the party and the polity, of having the
former type of politician (a politician with a large
home political base) at the helm of a political party
and, possibly, subsquently at the helm of the
country's government, should, I assume, be obvious to
most people.
That the architects of the UPC party from Western and
Eastern Uganda bestowed the leadership of their party
to the weakest, least competent candidate they could
find 'the weakest link', speaks volumes about their
motives; It also helps us to better understand why
Obote always felt at home while consorting with the
likes of Idi Amin. Worst of all, the decision by the
UPC founding fathers to discard merit in favour of
expedience (by annoiting Obote as party leader),
erected the rickety political stage, upon which
ominious political events (events whose repercussions
still afflict Ugandans) would inevitably take place in
the independence era.
======================================
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