KABAKA COMES BACK FROM EXILE.
Oct. 31, 1955
When the signal came from the airport, the royal drums thundered into life for the first time in two years. To Buganda's 1,300,000 people, the noise announced the return of their beloved Kabaka (King). Thousands of gallons of banana beer had been brewed, garlands fashioned, 16 arches constructed over the processional route with banners proclaiming: "He has triumphed." Stiffly upright in his immaculate grey suit, 31-year-old Edward William Frederick David Walugembe Luwangula Mutebi—Kabaka Mutesi II—bowed stiffly to the right and left from his Rolls-Royce convertible as it rolled triumphantly toward his palace in Kampala past throngs of his screaming, weeping, dancing subjects.
They beat their cheeks in the Baganda brand of war whoop, thumped tom-toms, flung themselves prostrate as the Kabaka passed. And for four days and nights, an orgy of welcome roared on.
No Time for Change. For young King "Freddie," as his London friends call him, it was a proud moment and sweet revenge for the humiliation back in 1953, when he watched Uganda's British Governor Sir Andrew Cohen touch a button in his office to summon a policeman. Then, King Freddie was unceremoniously hustled aboard a plane for exile in London without so much as a chance to change his clothes or say goodbye to his wife. King Freddie's sin was that he had dared defy the governor's plans for Uganda, of which Buganda is officially a province.
The British were talking of melding Uganda into white-dominated Kenya and Tanganyika to form an East African Federation. The Kabaka, ruler of a proud old kingdom where white men cannot even buy land without great legal difficulties, wanted no part of a multiracial federation. He demanded separation from Uganda and that the British set a date for self-government. Furthermore, the Kabaka balked at Governor Cohen's proposal to allocate to Africans only 20 of the 56 seats in the protectorate's new Legislative Council—less voice for 5,300,000 Africans than for 57,000 whites and Asians. The British colonials were aghast; this troublesome young man had to go, and the Lukiko (Parliament) could elect somebody more malleable to replace him. The decision, said Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton, was "final."
Hollow Triumph. To the British it had seemed simple and tidy. Lyttelton silenced Laborite criticism and moved himself nearly to tears with an emotional speech about his own affection for the Kabaka. "It was the more painful to me because he was a member of my university, and of my regiment [the Grenadier Guards], and a friend of my son's at Cambridge!" The press applauded, the critics subsided chapfallen.
Scarcely anybody noticed that parliamentary triumphs in London had no effect whatever in Buganda. There the Lukiko refused flatly to elect anyone to replace the Kabaka. Cohen was hissed and booed in Kampala. Thousands of the Kabaka's subjects swore never to shave until he returned. Even when the British offered concessions, the Lukiko refused to accept them in the Kabaka's absence. King Freddie, ensconced in a West End apartment at Britain's expense, behaved as a young ex-guardsman should.
Price of Mistake. Finally, Her Majesty's government was forced to recognize that they had made a mistake. Under new Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd, agreements were worked out which changed the Kabaka from an absolute to a constitutional (and therefore more manageable) monarch, and King Freddie agreed to swear renewed loyalty and obedience to the Queen. But Freddie got more than he gave. The British reshaped the protectorate's Legislative Council to include, for the first time, more Africans than whites. They promised not to press the East African Federation. They gave Buganda control over its own natural resources, schools and local government. Africans were allotted three jobs in the protectorate "Cabinet," the first time that African hands have been allowed to touch executive power.
With typical Whitehall urbanity, the Colonial Office represented the Kabaka's exile and return as designed from the first for the Baganda's own good, which had been practically forced on them to save the Baganda from the stubbornness of an absolute monarch. They should have told that to the Baganda. At the ceremonial signing of the new agreements last week, 10,000 roared noisy applause as King Freddie spoke. Then Governor Cohen rose. "Who does not believe that this friendship [of Britain and Buganda] has emerged not diminished but strengthened?" he asked rhetorically.
The assembled tribal chiefs burst into raucous, mocking laughter.
Ps:
Ayagala okulaba ku bifaananyi ebiraga oBuganda bwe bwajaganya nga Ssekabaka Muteesa II akomawo okuva mu buwanganguse e Bungereza mu 1955 atunuleko wano:
Life Magazine 14 November 1955 (Eisenhower Convalescing).
The Troubles of the King of Buganda.
Nov. 30, 1959
In the East African kingdom of Buganda, a province of the British protectorate of Uganda, the night gleamed with bonfires. In the flickering light, huge gourds stood in rows, ready to be filled with the banana beer that was brewing in hollowed-out logs. Musicians gave an additional twist to the cow sinews binding their drums, bringing them up to concert pitch. Shapely dancing girls added extra layers of cloth to the bustles that accentuate their sinuous movements. Throughout the green and rolling land last week, 1,500,000 Buganda tribesmen were getting ready to celebrate the 35th birthday of their Kabaka (King), Edward Frederick William David Mukabya Mutesa II.
But the Cambridge-educated King, brooding in his bungalow palace on a hilltop near Kampala on his birthday eve, had other things on his mind. Summoning Uganda's Anglican Bishop Leslie Brown and a selected group of government ministers and relatives, the King presented the testimony of palace servants. Their story: that very night they had caught the King's wife, Queen Damali, and the King's brother, Prince Juko, in the shrubbery of the palace grounds. Worst of all, Prince Juko had been clad only in underpants. The King sternly announced that Queen Damali was to be confined incommunicado to her room for the present, and would later be exiled to the lonely Sese Islands, 30 miles offshore in Lake Victoria. The assembled advisers were not terribly impressed by the King's evidence, since they—and all Buganda—were well aware that the King wants to divorce Queen Damali so that he could marry his great and good friend, the Queen's unmarried sister Sarah, thus putting Sarah's two children in line for the throne.
Next morning, the King celebrated his birthday by attending service in Namirembe Cathedral, and listened thoughtfully to a sermon by Bishop Brown, which stressed that even Kings must obey God's commandments and Christ's teachings if they wish to be regarded as Christians. Canceling a ceremonial visit to Parliament because the British Resident, Anthony Richards, would be there (the King is constantly embroiled in quarrels with Britain as well as with his wife, his brother, and the Anglican Church), King Freddie went to a soccer game.
That evening, 50 guests arrived for the traditional birthday cocktail party in the palace grounds, found no one to welcome them and nothing to drink. Inside the palace, the troubled King was listening to two paramount chiefs as well as the father of both his wife and of his sweetheart Sarah. They urged him to reconsider his hasty action against Queen Damali. Prince Juko, far from being cast into a cell for a crime in the shrubbery, was gaily taking part in all the birthday celebrations. The consensus in Buganda was that Queen Damali had been framed and that, in order to marry Sarah, the King would have to try something else. One possibility: he might leave the Anglican Church and become a Moslem.
Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list Ugandanet@kym.net http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
