Matovu,
Dr. Apollo Milton Obote received the instruments of independence in 1962. You were probably to young then, or even not born. What's Museveni's legacy? -- kirr, kirr, kirr!
y
>From: Lutimba Matovu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: ugnet_: RE: How independence came
>Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:28:02 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Netters,
>
>Its shocking that AM Obote was opposed to Uganda
>attaining Independence whereas his supporters and
>himself have always claimed he was a nationalist. Read
>on................
>
>LM
>
>======================================================How
>independence came
>
>By Fred Guweddeko, oct 9 - 15, 2003
>
>Nationalists lost the war but received the prize�
>
>The road to Uganda�s Independence was drawn by the
>most unlikely of all parties. It was when Germany�s
>Adolf Hitler moved to colonise the biggest colonial
>masters, Britain and France.
>
>By resisting Hitler�s colonialism Britain lost the
>right to occupy Uganda. Britain was committed in the
>1941 Pacific Treaty with the USA, to free such
>imperial territories as Uganda.
>
>America�s support to prevent Hitler from colonising
>Britain was given on condition that the colonies would
>be freed.
>
>After the war, Britain was bound by the UN to free the
>territories and people under its bondage.
>
>The United Nations Organisation also recognised the
>right of people under imperial bondage to struggle for
>their freedom.
>
>No independence
>
>The 1941 Treaty notwithstanding various British
>government departments, private interests and
>ideological groups made concerted efforts between 1945
>and 1959 to prevent Uganda from becoming independent.
>
>Three years from the 1941 Pacific Treaty, a grand
>imperial ceremony to mark 50 years of British rule in
>Uganda was held on April 10, 1944.
>
>The Governor Sir Charles Dundas declared that Britain
>would certainly celebrate on April 10, 1994 - a
>century of its stay in Uganda.
>
>British officers, the Hon. A. S. Richardson and Mr M.
>Birch demanded and predicted that Britain would rule
>Uganda forever.
>
>The Bishop of the Church of England in Uganda, Mr
>Birch the Chief Secretary and the leader of the
>British community in Uganda, the Hon. Frasser,
>repudiated independence.
>
>Months later, in January 1945, the colonial government
>in Uganda used as an excuse, a workers welfare strike,
>to destroy anti-colonialism. Critical Ugandans,
>literature on political freedoms and native contacts
>with the free world were violently suppressed.
>
>
>
>Natives who first criticised colonial rule in 1945
>such as Katikkiro Wamala and Samsom Kisekka were
>declared to be insane.
>
>They were deported to Arua and Bunyoro to �protect�
>society from anti-colonial ideas.
>
>External opposition
>
>In immediate post-war Britain, only the Prime
>Minister, Winston Churchill, was committed to the 1941
>Pacific Treaty to quickly withdraw from the colonies.
>Churchill consequently lost elections to the
>pro-colonies interests.
>
>Economic interests in Britain were restructuring
>colonies to support its post-war reconstruction.
>
>The post-war finance minister in Britain, Chancellor
>Cripps, told the British Africa Governors Conference
>of 1947 that the whole future of the Pound Sterling
>and Britain�s economic recovery depended on their
>resources in Africa. Independence had to wait.
>
>When the Colonial Secretary Mr Creech Jones, visited
>Uganda in 1947, Governor Sir John Hall prevented
>native leaders from mentioning independence.
>
>They instead petitioned for native development under
>British colonialism. In South Africa, General Smuts,
>the World War II leader favouring Africa�s
>independence, lost elections to Dr F. Malan for this
>reason.
>
>Dr Malan conceived the idea of granting independence
>in British Africa to the local British population.
>
>The idea became popular with the British settler
>community leadership, which sought to unite Kenya,
>Uganda and Tanganyika for independence under their
>(White) leadership.
>
>This delayed the advance to native independence and,
>in Buganda, caused Kabaka Fredrick Mutesa�s
>deportation in 1953.
>
>For Uganda, the Hon. Col. Ponsonby (MP), the Chairman
>of Britain�s Joint East African Board, addressed the
>local British settlers on independence.
>
>Col. Ponsonby said that any colonial political changes
>would involve Africans coming more under European
>organisation and less under native chiefs.
>
>Col. Ponsonby said it would be better for Africa and
>the world if British colonies there advanced to
>independence with natives under Europeans. The
>Colonial Secretary, the Lord Chandos, was supportive.
>
>Political repression
>
>Between 1945 and 1950, the colonial government in
>Uganda criminalised native political associations to
>destroy any connection with anti-colonial
>mobilisation.
>
>Natives could have community associations, commercial
>companies and agricultural co-operatives but not
>politics.
>
>Agricultural co-operatives were the largest and most
>popular native associations. They could not organise
>beyond the county and later the district. The colonial
>government directly controlled them to bar them from
>politics.
>
>From 1946, the anti colonial movement titled �Bataka
>Union� in Buganda and Busoga, operated under the cover
>of a company called Federation of African Farmers.
>
>The Bataka Union and its African cover company were
>banned in 1949.
>
>In Britain the interests opposed to independence for
>the colonies, at the beginning of the 1950-decade, won
>control of the colonial office at Whitehall.
>
>The colonial office team of O. H. Morris, J. H. Horton
>and Chesseman conceived an official programme titled
>�Corona� to mobilise against independence in the
>colonies, which included Uganda.
>
>The �Corona� programme was under Sir Charles Jeffries.
>
>In Uganda local agents in each ethnic district
>executed the campaign against independence. One
>outstanding local anti-independence campaigner was a
>chief in Ankole called Lazaro Kamugungunu.
>
>Lazaro Kamugungunu was even awarded the colonial
>service medal of MBE.
>
>He traversed Ankole between 1952-1956 praising
>colonial rule and warning of civil wars if Uganda ever
>became independent from Britain.
>
>Citing the arrogance of Buganda, inter-religious
>competition, ethnic hostility, and poor leadership,
>Kamugungunu said it would be a miracle if nationalists
>do not fight each other within five years of
>independence.
>
>In Bunyoro one Antonio Kalisa of Masindi and A. N.
>Kamese of Kikindo led the anti-independence campaign.
>
>They urged the local people to thank Britain for
>transforming Bunyoro from wars, slavery, trade and
>crude leadership to a peaceful progressive region.
>
>Rwot Hipolyto Omach, a chief of the Jonam at Pakwach,
>kept his local people very grateful for being under
>British colonial rule. Hipolyto predicted that with
>independence from Britain the natives would resort to
>witchcraft, human sacrifice, raiding and other vices.
>
>At Arua, the Opi called Matteo Wadi Ongwench banned
>any talk about independence for Uganda among his
>people.
>
>Ongwech cited the numerous pre-colonial conflicts in
>northern Uganda, and the Buganda versus Bunyoro wars,
>which had been contained by British rule.
>
>Independence would plunge Uganda back into wars, he
>warned.
>
>In Gulu, O. L. Lalobo, an assistant agricultural
>officer, was the main anti-independence activist.
>Lalobo said that the only way for the backward
>northern regions to develop was for Uganda to continue
>under British colonialism.
>
>With independence, the greedy Bantu in the south of
>Uganda would only develop themselves, their relatives
>and their home areas. The future of progress in Acholi
>was therefore only safe under British colonial rule.
>
>Busoga�s position
>
>In Busoga, the local leaders, Y. K. Mulondo, Wambi,
>Walukamba and Lubandi opposed independence.
>
>Like Lalobo, they preferred the assured development of
>Busoga under British colonial rule to the
>uncertainties of independent Uganda.
>
>Using the example of the industrial town then under
>construction in Jinja, the leaders applied the idiom;
>�Gwewalabyeko ye mwana.� This meant that the bird the
>Basoga had in hand under colonial rule was better than
>the anticipated two after independence.
>
>In the rest of the eastern province, it was Mr. T. R.
>Cox, the provincial commissioner, who campaigned
>against independence.
>
>He told the various small ethnic groups that they
>would become colonies of Buganda.
>
>They were reminded that Buganda was always raiding
>them before the protection of British colonial rule.
>The campaign was a success.
>
>The commissioner used the successes of his campaign to
>report to the colonial office at the end of 1956 that
>there was absolutely no local support for Uganda�s
>independence among people in the eastern province.
>
>Buganda�s view
>
>In Buganda, the Katikkiro Paulo Kavuma was against
>Uganda�s independence. Kavuma warned the local chiefs;
>clan heads and Lukiiko members that if at all Uganda
>got independence, the savage tribes of the North would
>descend on Buganda�s civilisation.
>
>In Lango, Rwot Oluwa, Rwot Olet and T. K. Otim, the
>Rwot of Adong worked with district commissioner B.
>Jacobs against independence.
>
>They imprisoned people who they connected to or
>suspected to be subscribing to the UNC�s campaign for
>independence.
>
>Independence could not be bought, they said. People
>were paying for anarchy. All those involved in the
>independence campaign had criminal interests, they
>said of the UNC and other nationalists.
>
>In Lango, even abusive language on Britain was
>punishable.
>
>In November 1957, Yekosofati Engur was sentenced to
>three years for using the example of Mau Mau to tell a
>friend that the British were murderers and land
>thieves. In Toro Katikkiro Rukuba opposed independence
>for Uganda.
>
>He said that before British rule, there was no Uganda
>and no Toro. If the British leave, Uganda and Toro and
>the benefits from a common government would end.
>
>Divisions spread
>
>This anti-independence campaign sharply divided the
>people of Uganda. The older generation (mostly those
>above 50) comparing the pre-colonial and colonial eras
>was opposed to the youths seeking a brighter future
>after the British.
>
>Thus there were several clashes over dependence.
>
>In the Ankole Eishengero, the father Marko Kiiza
>opposed to independence, and the son Basil K.
>Bataringaya in favour of it, went physical and fought
>after a heated argument.
>
>Under the �Corona� programme to prevent independence,
>those remote areas where a white person still caused
>fear in the natives, received fully sponsored British
>visitors.
>
>These white visitors went about the remote villages
>distributing gifts. The impression was created in the
>simple minds of the unsophisticated Ugandan peasants
>that the British were only a compassionate, generous
>and peaceful people. There was therefore no
>justification to send them away for independence.
>
>Special Branch
>
>In 1945 the colonial government in Uganda established
>the Special Branch to trace, neutralise and punish
>local opponents.
>
>The Special Branch is the equivalent of the State
>Research under Idi Amin and the CMI under President
>Museveni.
>
>Unlike its post-colonial successors, the colonial
>Special Branch brought death to very few people.
>
>The Special Branch suppressed hundreds of nationalists
>through up-country deportations, torture, loss of
>employment and imprisonment.
>
>Following the 1949 riots against the colonial regime,
>hundreds of people became ��Abalira kunsiko�� (living
>in the bushes) to avoid the wrathful Special Branch.
>
>Fenner Brockway, a British Labour MP came to Uganda to
>save their lives. The Special Branch used to deport
>their victims to isolated places in the bush in
>northern Uganda.
>
>This action sounds similar to the current
>incarceration of political opponents in ��safe
>houses�� by the CMI and other state security agencies.
>
>
>It is a psychological method to break the intellectual
>resolve and mental capacity of the victim.
>
>Torture victims
>
>The victims of the Special Branch between 1945 and
>1961 are too many to be listed here.
>
>When colonial rule ended, the survivors created an
>association called �Graduates of the University of
>Self Government.��
>
>The executive committee of this association included
>Paulo Muwanga, I. K. Musazi, Festo Kiziiri,
>Otema-Alimadi, Yekosofati Engur, Peter Oola, Abu
>Mayanja, Mary Nkata, Augustine Kamya, Godfrey Binaisa
>and John Bull Kintu.
>
>Sir Edward Mutesa was an honorary member.
>
>Foreign friends
>
>Failing to organise politically for Uganda�s freedom,
>I. K. Musazi sought assistance from International
>Anti-Imperialists associations in Europe and the USA.
>
>Two anti-imperialism friends from Britain, one from
>the USA and one from Italy subsequently came to
>Uganda.
>
>Due to their anti-colonial activities, John Stonehouse
>was soon declared a ��prohibited immigrant�� and
>deported by the colonial government.
>
>George Shepherd was prevented from re-entering Uganda
>after a foreign working trip; Roger Carzio was hounded
>out of Uganda, while Diana Noakes was subverted from
>one anti-colonial mission.
>
>Ethnic nationalism
>
>Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones in 1947 ordered
>the political development of ethnic groups to pre-empt
>[the struggle for independence].
>
>In Uganda the principles of Ethnic Nationalism brought
>the demands for ethnic political and social
>development ahead of nationalism.
>
>1949 - 1957
>
>Instead of Uganda�s independence, ethnic groups
>preferred to get their own Busoga College, Lango
>College, Teso College, ethnic co-operative unions,
>ethnic hospitals, ethnic scholarships and ethnic local
>administrations.
>
>Ethnic nationalism became more fashionable than
>anti-colonialism.
>
>There emerged a strong local campaign to shelve
>independence calls until backward ethnic groups
>developed.
>
>The young Apollo Milton Obote, before his nationalist
>eyes were opened, led a campaign publicised in the
>press against Uganda�s independence [while] Northern
>Uganda was still backward.
>
>Obote�s campaign was that: The UNC (later UPC) has
>hastened to call for self-government for all the
>people of Uganda. For areas that were still backward,
>there were more immediate needs. Thus we will not
>associate with this self-government because we are not
>ready.
>
>Political school
>
>In 1950 the British Colonial ministry went further to
>establish an institute at Nsamizi in Entebbe to extend
>their rule over Uganda.
>
>The Nsamizi Training Institute was far greater than
>the post-independence NRM political school at
>Kyankwanzi - in the seriousness of its mission and
>professional instruction.
>
>It was strategic for every local person in Uganda or
>any native wishing to progress under the colonial
>regime to attend the political course at Nsamizi.
>
>Like the early NRM cadre courses, Nsamizi ensured that
>the people who mattered in society understood and
>supported British colonial rule.
>
>Headmasters, civil servants, secondary school
>teachers, chiefs, job and scholarship applicants,
>native executives of British companies, aspiring local
>leaders, native co-operative managers and their wives,
>attended the political course at Nsamizi.
>
>It was the passport to public resources.
>
>Beauty and sex
>
>The core course at Nsamizi was dressed under the title
>of �citizenship.� It taught British civilisation,
>British International [Colonial] history, British
>culture, British Government and Colonial policy.
>
>The course included teaching the participants to read
>British newspapers, British dancing, British alcohol,
>British dress codes and even to appreciate the British
>notion of female beauty.
>
>The instructors told the students that : ...the
>British have over centuries across the world ended
>wars, stopped savage customs, opened churches, built
>schools, hospitals, roads, railways, harbours,
>established law and order, harnessed and developed
>resources against desperate poverty.
>
>�The British have taken nothing but generously given
>in money, equipment, materials and devoted manpower to
>their dependencies.
>
>�Britain has imposed no tax upon any of its colonial
>peoples that is not for their good and which is not
>spent in their country on their needs.��
>
>The colonial politicisation course went even further
>to teach against the full-breasted, big-bosom,
>wide-hipped, big-legged African female figure. To the
>tutors this was associated with breeding large numbers
>of children typical of under-development.
>
>The British tutors required the Ugandan participants
>to drop the traditional African concept of serenity
>and comeliness among women.
>
>They were also coached to reject the enormously fat
>native woman who could scarcely walk and adopt the
>British feminine concept of feminine beauty.
>
>Native Ugandans were known to love women, sex and
>producing many children.
>
>The political course moved to change this social
>culture to that of the British to ensure their
>loyalty. The principal of Nsamizi Training Institute,
>called Mr P. G. Coutts, was the equivalent of the
>NRM-NPC, Dr Crispus Kiyonga.
>
>He also went around the country promoting the ideology
>of British rule and advising that Britain should never
>leave Uganda�s leadership.
>
>District politics
>
>In 1950 the Colonial Government started establishing
>local district council governments. For one to become
>a district councillor, an extra-mural course for a
>Makerere College (University) certificate of
>competence was required.
>
>The Extra-Mural Course served not only district
>politics. It passed for councillorship those
>candidates who [supported] the administration of the
>districts and not self-determination from British
>rule.
>
>The Makerere (University) College Extra-Mural
>programme for district councils also offered refresher
>courses and capacity building seminars, which
>strengthened the colonial base at the district level.
>
>This exercise effectively cut the districts off the
>independence campaign.
>
>All the resolutions, save for Lango district, to
>support Uganda independence by the districts failed.
>
>Acholi problem
>
>The Kabaka Crisis, which started in June 1953, saw
>Buganda call for the �neighbouring countries�� of
>�Toro, Ankole, Teso, Lango and others to demand for an
>end to colonial rule.
>
>The British Government recruited the Acholi
>immediately to prevent an anti-colonial uprising in
>Uganda.
>
>Early in March 1955, Governor Sir Cohen visited Gulu
>to open the Sir Samuel Baker College Library.
>
>The Governor while meeting Acholi traditional leaders,
>the district council and prominent locals, raised
>issues cited in the records as:
>�...You Acholi are a vigorous people. You have the
>stuff from which leaders are made...other tribes may
>have had longer periods of education, but the people
>of this area have every chance to lead them...��
>
>Many activities followed to militarise the Acholi to
>prevent any uprising for independence in Uganda.
>
>The Acholi factor as the military power behind the
>ruling regime in Uganda was thus created to protect
>the colonial regime.
>
>One of those attending Governor Sir Cohen briefings on
>the role of the �Acholi� in Uganda was young Eric
>Otema Alimadi (later to become Prime Minister under
>Obote II).
>
>Otema Alimadi would thus become part of the various
>Acholi paradigms in Ugandan politics.
>
>The Acholi factor manifested itself again from 1964,
>through to the current �Acholi� region crisis, which
>started under Alimadi�s chairmanship of the rebel
>Uganda People�s Democratic Movement (UPDM) in 1987.
>
>Leadership project
>
>Britain�s Colonial Social Science Research Council
>planned the final assault against Uganda�s
>independence.
>
>The East African Institute of Social Research at
>Makerere University College executed it.
>The plan was to develop countervailing leadership to
>that of anti-colonial nationalists to avoid the India
>experience of Gandhi.
>
>The research was to find and develop leadership types
>and centres resistant to nationalism.
>
>Kings created
>
>Under this programme, studies were made on the various
>ethnic groups (tribes) in Uganda to establish their
>leadership political culture. Upon establishing the
>inclusive and exclusive characteristics of the ethnic
>(tribal) groups in Uganda, leadership models were
>drawn.
>
>This move to undermine national anti-colonial leaders
>and nationalist organisations created paramount
>cultural leaders and traditional political
>institutions where they were non-existent.
>
>Where such leaders existed as in Buganda, Toro, etc.
>they were strengthened and developed to become
>traditional states within a modern state.
>
>The Colonial Government under this Makerere-based
>programme created several cultural ��kings��: Layolo
>Maber for Acholi, won Nyaci for Lango, Kingoo for
>Sebei, Umwami for Kigezi, Senkulu for Bukedi, Umuinga
>for Bugishu, Emorimor for Teso, Kyabazinga for Busoga,
>etc.
>
>These small �kings�, grafted on the leadership culture
>of each ethnic district and financed by the colonial
>government, were to compete and counteract the
>nationalist cause.
>
>This they achieved through exploiting the inclusivist
>and exclusivist values.
>
>In Buganda, the existing monarchy was ballooned to
>become cultural, political and executive at the same
>time.
>
>The three leadership values made Buganda impenetrable
>to the nationalists and incompatible with other
>institutional authorities.
>
>The leadership project effected a volte-face in
>Uganda�s independence politics.
>
>Instead of searching for national leaders and
>independence, the people sought for local cultural
>�kings� and tribal glory.
>
>The nationalists
>
>The campaign against independence was directed at the
>nationalists. The colonialists exposed their failures,
>weakness and scandals with exaggeration.
>
>Initially, the nationalists were presented as public
>criminals creating disorder; destruction of property,
>production, development and sowing animosity.
>
>Their followers were identified as lazy, redundant,
>poll-tax defaulters, violators of native crop farming
>and domestic hygiene regulations. The communist label
>followed.
>
>Communism was defined as the politics where people
>owned nothing, including the clothes they wore.
>
>With communism, nationalists were accused of plotting
>to ban Christianity from Uganda.
>
>Uganda Nationalism was described as the child of a
>frustrated, ungrateful educated minority mobilising
>people in whom little knowledge had stirred much
>discontent against order and development.
>
>Nationalists were described as less than ordinary
>peasants but claiming Utopian values and persevering
>only because the natives had no standards to judge
>them.
>
>Morally, nationalists were exposed as people without a
>soul, who could utter volumes of lies, perform and
>abate series of any unprincipled acts towards their
>selfish ambitions.
>
>As a class, the nationalists were described as people
>who had failed both to succeed as up-country peasants
>and to climb the ladder of the modern system.
>
>The professional nationalists were largely jobless and
>without property.
>
>Socially, nationalists pretended to rub shoulders with
>the European elite but were actually only comfortable
>and respected in the slums and by village dwellers.
>
>Financially, Uganda nationalists were perpetually dry.
>On several occasions, Ignatius K. Musazi, Apollo Obote
>and others failed to pay bills incurred during their
>independence campaigns.
>
>More often than not, nationalists were always nursing
>financial crisis, fundraising or quarrelling over the
>use of donations and subscriptions.
>
>Some of their political rallies were staged more to
>collect money from the public than for political
>purposes. Many fraudsters collecting subscriptions for
>independence work were arrested.
>
>The Colonial Government claimed to protect citizens
>from nationalists, to demand for genuine receipts and
>accountability for subscriptions from the
>nationalists.
>
>The outgoing Governor Sir Cohen described Uganda
>nationalism as a veiled anti-Buganda tribalism.
>
>He said that in Uganda, tribalism was stronger and of
>greater development potential than
>nationalism.
>
>Cohen claimed that in spite of its workload the
>Colonial Government in Uganda was always ahead of the
>nationalists in foresight, plans, action and public
>opinion.
>
>There was no future for Uganda nationalists.
>
>Successful campaign
>
>The campaign against Uganda�s independence was for its
>architects a success. A referendum on independence
>would certainly have been in favour of continuing with
>British colonial rule.
>
>On the eve of Uganda�s independence there was a lot of
>love and respect for Britain. Those who had been
>fighting for independence were fighting to be in the
>good books with Britain.
>
>The people of Uganda and the pro-independence
>politicians had become hostile to each other than to
>Britain.
>
>There was no chance that British colonial rule would
>have left Uganda through the pressure of nationalists
>or organised popular action.
>
>The developments, forces and pressure, which made
>Britain to grant independence to Uganda - on October
>9, 1962 - were beyond the power of the anti-colonial
>interests of Britain.
>
>After holding out against the 1941 Pacific Treaty
>commitment to leave Uganda, the decision of Britain to
>leave and their departure lasted only seven months
>from March to October 1962.
>
>Many Uganda politicians of the time have claimed to
>have fought and won Uganda�s independence.
>
>The fact is that they lost the war but received the
>prize, which was independence.
>
>
>
>
>=====
>LM
>
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