By Bamuturaki Musinguzi
Jan 9 - 15, 2005
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For some years now, officials of Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom in western Uganda have been talking about suing the British government for its campaign of death and demolition as it battled to subdue Omukama Kabalega and establish colonial control over his domain. The kingdom now believes it has assembled enough primary evidence to take the British government to court. Bamuturaki Musinguzi looked at the evidence, some of which is drawn from handwritten reports the colonial military officers kept, and reports:- Capt. J.H.S. Gibb of the Worcestershire Regiment, commanding the Mruli Expedition that attacked the Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom in 1893, knew his marching orders: capture Kabalega�s treasure. Col. Henry Colville, commissioner and consul general in Uganda, had been more than clear: he considered the capture of the treasure (riches) the primary objective of the expedition. Gibb, according to the reports he kept, �started on 16th April with a force of 200 Sudanese troops for Mruli with the objective of capturing if possible Kabalega, King of Unyoro, also his treasure�. From then on to 1899 Great Britain invaded and occupied Bunyoro-Kitara, pillaging and plundering all the while. Troops had orders to help themselves to the treasure and herds that belonged to Omukama Cwa II Kabalega, the royal household and the community.
Colville�s orders were continued and repeated by his successors: Fredrick Jackson, Ernest Berkerley, and Trevor Ternan. The British officials routinely directed troops to pillage livestock, grain, fresh foods, ivory, and salt and passed on military intelligence reports to aid this effort. When active hostilities ended in 1899, Great Britain never made up for the damage done. It ignored its responsibility �to re-establish the victims of this war whose suffering at the hands of British troops was not justified by military necessity�, according to a 133-page claim being pressed in British courts and aimed at finally getting retribution. Titled, �Violations of Human Rights in Uganda: Great Britain Must Correct Criminal and Historical Injustices Committed in the Ugandan Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara,� the claim is the work of Mr Yolamu Ndoleriire Nsamba, the principal private secretary to Omukama Solomon Gafabusa Iguru I. The Omukama�s man acquired and compiled hundreds of handwritten reports from British field officers on the orders �to plunder and kill�. Nsamba says he got the documents from the Public Records Office in Surrey, Oxford�s Rhodes House, the Churchill archives in Cambridge � all in England � and from government archives in Entebbe.
Colonial officers apparently kept these detailed records with great pride, including documents that mention the vast quantities of ivory, food, cattle, cloth, and cultural items British troops looted, and the destruction of villages and slaughtering of civilians by Nubian soldiers. �British troops totally disregarded the food requirements of the civilian population who were abandoned to hunger, starvation, malnutrition and disease that reduced the civilian population from 2.5 million people to a mere 100,000 people by 1900,� the claim alleges. The claim is based on International Customary Law codified in the Third Geneva Convention and Additional Protocols I and II, Article 1.4 and Article 3 of Protocol I. Kabalega fought British forces of occupation from December 1893 up to April 1899. But the British troops did occupy the kingdom up to 1933 when Bunyoro was forced into an agreement with Great Britain. Bunyoro-Kitara was to remain part of the British Empire until 1961 when Uganda gained sovereignty. Between September and October 1894, a company of soldiers commanded by Capt. A.B. Thruston destroyed an estimated 25,000 hectares of food crops, property of the king and his royal household valued at �4.5 million today. Some of the ruined property was near Kitonje (Kitonya) Hill where the royal household of Bunyoro-Kitara owned intensively cultivated farmland around the tombs of King Olimi V Rwakabale. The tombs, maintained for nearly 100 years, were burnt down.
�I have this month and will in future...burn their houses, destroy their crops and cut down the banana plantations,� Thruston wrote. �In the large and thickly, inhabited district under Kitonje, a hill to east and opposite the centre road to Baranywe [Baranywa], I came upon traces of a concentration, at Chief Intamara�s house. I burnt his village and destroyed his banana plantations...� Nsamba argues that what Thruston actually burnt was the royal tomb and Ntamara used to be its attendant. He held the chiefly title of Mugema. In April and May 1895, British troops led by Lt. Madocks and commanded by Capt. Major Cunningham destroyed some 10,000 hectares of crops valued at �18,000 at the Anfimo royal farm on the banks of the Nile. In his dispatch No. 86, Berkerley reported: �At Anfimo he [Lt. Madocks] found and destroyed the settlement which he describes as well cultivated and populous.� During their occupation, the British troops pillaged a herd of 30,000 head of cattle belonging to Kabalega. �Though the possession of Kabalega�s property is of no importance to us, the loss of it to him would be the severest blow he could receive, and in his recent loss lies the only expectation of the possibility of his asking for terms, for he is now an old man and comfort is a greater object to him than prestige, and although this latter has suffered considerably... the former has scarcely at all,� Thruston wrote from Hoima on December 20, 1894. A herd of 60 head of cattle and 3,000 sheep and goats was plundered on January 31, 1894 at Kihaguzi on the southwestern edge of the Budongo forest by troops led by Kakungulu who took orders from Col. Colville. �I accordingly ordered Kakungulu to attack him [Kabalega] and he advanced from Kisabagwa with 1,000 guns on the following day... On February 4th Kakungulu returned and reported that 31st he had surprised Kabalega, who... fled in confusion allowing the Waganda to capture 3,000 goats and 60 head of cattle...� Colville�s dispatch to the British diplomatic and consul general in Zanzibar reads. On May 17, 1895, a herd of 1,500 head of cattle was pillaged as Kabalega and members of the royal family were being chased in the Wakedi Country (now Acholi and Lango) by troops under Capt. Cunningham. �I beg to inform you that a column pursued Kaba Rega [Kabalega] 20 miles inland into Wakedi Country. They were unable to capture him, but took over 1,500 of his cattle,� Cunningham�s letter to his superiors deposited in the Entebbe archives reads.
The king�s stock of 270,000 kilogrammes of dry cereal and legumes stored in underground granaries at Kibiro and Kitana (now Kigorobya Town Council) was plundered on January 8, 1894. �The very strong fort at Kitanwa constructed by Lieutenant Villiers is practically completed and about 11,000 rations of dry food has been collected and stored.� According to the Unyoro Field Force Diary, on June 16, 1894, a Sudanese officer led troops to Kisabagwa to search for ivory after extracting information from captives about where Kabalega had stored it. The information led Youzbashi Rehen Muhammed to 72 tusks of ivory. A summary of the Unyoro Diary from October 30 -November 23, 1894, reads: �Kabalega had fled leaving behind him his cattle, his clothing, his ammunition, his Ivory, cloth and household goods and the superstitiously venerated insignia of his office. Shortly afterwards a fire broke out probably started by our regulars, and his powder magazine and ammunition store exploded, half the large struggling town was burnt and probably much valuable property was destroyed, but over three hundred head of cattle, and two thousand rupees worth of cloth and large quantities of shells and beads and all his household goods fell into our hands.� Dried foodstuffs for the civilian population and royal family were depleted by the British during the years of hostilities in Bunyoro-Kitara. �I regret to report that instead of carrying out my orders to join me on the Island, the Waganda seized the Canoes sent over for them, and proceeded to loot for themselves in various directions,� Gibb wrote. While Colville adds: �I regret I am not able to speak favourable of the Waganda contingent. They appear to have disobeyed orders and to have been generally useless.� �I am directed by the Earl of Kimberley to transmit herewith for information copies of a letter from the Aborigines Protection Society and of his Lordship�s reply relating to the charges brought against some officers in Uganda of treating the natives with undue harshness. Previous correspondence on the subject was recently laid before Parliament in Africa No.7-1895 of which copies have been sent to you,� reads Draft No.30 from the Foreign Office to Berkeley dated May 21, 1895. The Banyoro cite an incident in Buyaga County where about 600 people were allegedly forced into a cave and suffocated to death. They also claim that Sudanese soldiers came with syphilis. A salt mine at the village of Kibiro was seized on January 17, 1894, on the orders of Colville. From 1894 to 1961 the Omukama of Bunyoro-Kitara was denied earnings he was entitled to from the mine. The British appropriated 66,231.67 kilogrammes per annum and 43,707,290 kilogrammes during their occupation, according to calculations in the Banyoro claim. Col. Colville wrote on February 5, 1894: �On 17th January... I dispatched a company of Sudanese to seize the Kibiro salt mines, Kabarega�s source of wealth... �There is now a large village of Wanyoro repairing the salt field. Arrangements were made for one third of the produce to be given to the government.� Colville later assured his superiors thus: �The salt indemnity at Kibiro will form a valuable source of revenue.� Cultural property was not spared either. Between January 25 and February 4, 1894 two venerated royal ceremonial tusks of ivory known as omusanga, a crown, an ancient royal stool called nyamyaro, a royal drum known as kajumba and two ancient ceremonial bronze spears handed down generations from the Abachwezi dynasty were plundered at the southern edge of the Budongo forest by troops led by Kakungulu. �Among the property which fall into our hands were Kabarega�s brass spear and scepter, the insignia of his office, which had been consecrated by special witchcraft and which he and his people held in great veneration,� Colville reported regarding the Kakungulu-led attack of January 1894. Kabalega�s rights violated Kabalega was denied a fair trial after British troops captured him in April 1899 and he was imprisoned on Mahe Island in the Seychelles for 24 years. Kabalega and his two sons (Nyakana Zazaya and Karukara), Queen Mother Kanyange Nyamutahingurwa and his two sisters, including Kalyota or Rubuga (head princess) Victoria Mukabagabwa, were denied rights as war victims, the claim says. �I have much pleasure in drawing your Lordship�s attention to the very satisfactory result of the capture of Kabarega...Very great credit is I think due to Lieutenant Colonel Evatt and the troops attained,� Ternan wrote to the Marquis of Salisbury on April 15, 1899. �I have the honour to inform you that under instructions from His Majest�s Commissioner I have handed over the two ex-chiefs of Uganda with...various followers (Mwanga, Mumia, Barizalona, Salima, Mariamu, Mazaliza, Kisimuyu, Kabalega, Zazaya, Narongo, Mtagunga, Kidongo) as marginally noted to the Coast Agent of the Uganda Protectorate in view of their being forwarded under escort per S.S. �Boldan� to the Seychelles Islands where I understand they will in future reside,� J.W. Tritton, acting sub-commissioner, wrote to the administrator of the Seychelles on October 1, 1901. Nsamba argues that the British never helped Kabalega, a victim of war, to manage his property in Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom and the properties suffered neglect. Kabalega�s dependants and the members of the royal household sunk into poverty as a result. He also maintains that in detaining Kabalega on the Seychelles Islands outside the borders of the occupied country, his rights as a prisoner of war were violated. The British also failed to ensure support for all the dependants of Kabalega including the non-combatant members of his household. The queen mother and princess were interned behind Rubaga Hill in Kampala in a place filled with cow dung and looked like a pigsty, Nsamba says. When hostilities ended in 1899 they were not repatriated and they died in internment. Nsamba claims that between them the two women had property worth �12 million. �When they died their graves were unmarked and the royal household of Bunyoro-Kitara has never been informed about their end,� he says. Bunyoro�s first demand for compensation was sent to the British government in August 2001 through Mr Tom Philips, then its high commissioner to Kampala. Nsambe wrote at the time �...Kindly facilitate onward transmission to the British Government the Omukama (King�s) appeal to Great Britain to make a just settlement as a follow up of our earlier request. The Omukama holds Great Britain responsible, accountable and liable for the abuses she committed and which for over one hundred years she omitted to repair despite her obligation under International Law.� In a December 3, 2001, reply Philips said all the laws and conventions Nsamba referred to did not exist in the 1890s and that 100-year-old claims could not be dealt with. Philips went on to write about British commitment to the development of Uganda including the Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom. Nsamba had a response to that: �Throughout most of the last 100 years the King and the Banyoro have been so incapacitated that they were not able to seek justice. Hence this suit is timely. Not with standing �the origin of the conflict or causes attributed to the parties� the inviolable rights of the victims of war remain paramount as stated in the Preamble of Protocol I.� The kingdom has contracted lawyers in England and in Uganda to handle the case. The kingdom is claiming up to �3.7 billion �as damages for alleged requisitioning, organised pillage, destruction of crops, goods and assets, and abuses against prisoners of war� including the kingdom�s most renowned personality, Omukama Cwa II Kabalega. Lawyers in Uganda and Great Britain are studying the evidence before proceeding to the courts in London. |
� 2005 The Monitor Publications.
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