Compressing the
sweeping timeline of a nation's history into a single volume is no easy feat,
even for a relatively young state. Authors are constantly forced to make tough
editorial decisions about where to begin, what to emphasise, and what to omit.
In A Political History of Uganda, historian Samwiri Rubaraza Karugire
presents a concise, systematic overview that successfully distils the country's
complex political evolution into under 200 readable pages.
A Pre-Colonial
Tapestry of Interconnection
Rather than treating
Uganda's pre-colonial societies as isolated entities that were only united by
British intervention, Karugire opens the book by establishing their deep-seated
interdependence. He traces historical interactions across both centralised
kingdoms—such as Buganda, Nkore, Toro, and Bunyoro-Kitara—and non-kingdom
societies in areas like Kigezi, Acholi, and Lango.
Through examples like
the regional salt trade from Bunyoro-Kitara and the grand migrations of Luo
groups, Karugire illustrates a vibrant pre-colonial regional economy and social
symbiosis. This foundation is critical: it demonstrates that these societies
shared intertwined histories long before colonial borders were drawn, while
highlighting how colonial rule ultimately interrupted their organic
development.
Buganda as the
Pivotal Axis
As the narrative
approaches the late 19th century, Karugire shifts significant focus toward the
Kingdom of Buganda. Because Buganda served as the geographic and administrative
nucleus from which the British built the modern Ugandan state, its internal developments
heavily influenced the rest of the territory. The text details how local
developments, including the religious civil wars, the introduction of
Christianity, and the pivotal 1900 Uganda Agreement, shaped the surrounding
regions and laid the framework for the emerging political economy.
The Colonial Era
and the Path to Institutional Crisis
Moving into the 20th
century, the book examines how early colonial policies created structural
fractures that would later haunt the independent nation. Karugire analyses:
The Political Economy: How colonial administrative structures
created regional disparities and influenced socio-economic growth.
Nationalist Movements & Party
Politics: The rise of
early political parties (such as the DP, UPC, and Kabaka Yekka), exploring
their internal frictions, strategic blunders, and missed opportunities for
unity.
Decolonisation: The institution of the Legislative
Council (LegCo) during the 1950s and the complex political manoeuvring
leading to independence.
Post-Independence Instability: The rapid escalation of executive tension
that culminated in the 1966 Buganda Crisis, the 1967 constitution
abrogation, and Milton Obote's shift toward authoritarianism and a
one-party state.
The narrative
culminates with the 1971 military coup that brought Idi Amin to power.
Published in 1980 just after Amin's fall, the book intentionally stops at this
turning point, recognising that the post-1971 era marked the beginning of an
entirely different structural epoch in Ugandan history.
Verdict
At roughly 197 pages
of core text, A Political History of Uganda avoids dense jargon in favour
of an accessible, highly structured narrative. Written in the late 1970s,
Karugire’s analysis carries an objective tone uncoloured by more recent
political developments. For anyone seeking a foundational narrative of Uganda's
journey from pre-colonial interregional trade to modern statehood, Karugire’s
work remains an essential starting point.
Sometime around 1870, Omugabe Mutambuka, the ruler of Nkore Kingdom, died. His death triggered what would become the longest and bloodiest succession war in Nkore's royal history.
That war eventually brought Ntare V to the throne, but it lasted three years, and by the end, the Nkore royal family had been torn apart and almost destroyed. The effects of that succession struggle would haunt Ntare throughout his reign, which ended in 1895.
Context
In Nkore, succession disputes were common; in fact, they were almost the norm. Rarely did a prince have the support of all his brothers and uncles to become king.
However, Mutambuka had been one of the exceptions. His own rise to power met little resistance, and for most of his reign, it seemed his eldest son, Bacwa, would also have a fairly straightforward path to the throne. Bacwa appeared to have everything: military standing, a loyal following among fighting men, and the respect that came with being the first-born son. By tradition and expectation, the throne seemed to be his.
But that never happened.
During a drunken quarrel, Bacwa killed his cousin. The dead man was the son of Kibangura, Mutambuka's sister, and she never forgave him. Kibangura pressured Mutambuka to banish Bacwa from the kingdom.
Bacwa first went to Mpororo, from where he later made his way to Rwanda. There, he was killed, allegedly by Kibangura's agents.
But Kibangura did not stop there. She demanded that Mutambuka have Bacwa's eldest son, Rukamisa, killed as compensation for the death of her own son. Mutambuka agreed because at the time, he did not know that Bacwa had already been killed in Rwanda.
So by the time Mutambuka finally died, Bacwa's line had been shattered. But it had not completely disappeared. One of Bacwa's surviving sons was a young man named Ntare. At that point, nobody thought much of him.
The War Begins
With Bacwa out of the picture, the real fight was between Mutambuka's surviving sons.
On one side was Rukongyi, who had actually adopted the young Ntare. Rukongyi was supported by several princes, including Makumbi, Nkuranga, and Gandiga.
On the other side was Mukwenda. He was strongly backed by his younger brother, Muhikira.
Most of the other princes supported Rukongyi. One reason appears to be that many people associated Bacwa's misfortunes with Mukwenda's side. But others were afraid of what Rukongyi's camp might do if it won. They feared revenge.
The spark that started the war was a murder that broke every rule and norm around the death of an Nkore king. After Mutambuka's death, the royal purification rites were supposed to be sacred. It was a time when violence was forbidden. But during those rites, one of Mukwenda's supporters killed Rukongyi.
Rukongyi's supporters were shocked. The leadership of their faction then passed to Makumbi, Rukongyi's younger brother.
Makumbi made a decision. He would retreat towards Kabula, near the Buganda border, and try to secure outside support.
The Trap
But Makumbi did not know that Mukwenda had moved faster. Mukwenda had reached out to the Baganda first, and he had won them over to his side.
Makumbi's party then met Mukasa, the chief of Buddu. Mukasa had been sent by Kabaka Muteesa. Makumbi and his followers believed they were meeting an ally.
Mukasa gave them a warm welcome. He invited Makumbi and the leading princes into a large house. The house had been built specifically for the meeting. It was presented as a place for a peace ceremony — a blood-brotherhood ritual, a sacred bond between allies.
But behind the walls of that house, there was a trap. The walls had been lined with bark cloth. And behind that bark cloth, armed men were hiding, waiting.
Makumbi's party were politely asked to leave their spears outside. After all, they were told, this was a ceremony of peace. You do not bring weapons into a ceremony of peace. The request seemed reasonable, so they complied without hesitation. They left their spears outside. Then they walked in.
And that is when Mukasa's men attacked.
The hidden men fell on them the moment the doors closed. What had been presented as a gathering of peace became a massacre. Seventy-eight people were murdered. Many of them were of royal blood.
The Aftermath
The Kabula massacre almost destroyed the anti-Mukwenda cause entirely. The senior princes were gone. The military leaders were gone. Many royal partisans who had committed themselves to the fight were also gone. And those who survived were in shock.
Nkuranga and Gandiga, both sons of Mutambuka, were legitimate claimants in their own right. But they lost heart. They considered abandoning the struggle altogether. And by doing so, they effectively surrendered their claims to the throne.
Ntare did not.
He was younger. He belonged to the next generation. By strict seniority, he was not the obvious choice. But he was the only one still willing to fight.
His claim also had real weight. He was the son of Bacwa, the prince many believed would have become king if he had lived. Ntare had also been adopted by Rukongyi, which connected him directly to the defeated claimant whose following he now inherited. And above all, Ntare was still standing when everyone else seemed ready to give up and flee into exile. To his supporters, that courage mattered more than birth order.
There was also something personal driving him. By fighting Mukwenda, Ntare was not only seeking the throne — he was avenging his father. This was both a succession war and a blood feud.
The Road to the Throne
But the road to the throne was not smooth.
After Kabula, Ntare's battered party returned home to Nkore. They camped in what is now Kashongyi, in Kiruhura District. Mukwenda attacked them there. The battle was intense, the casualties were heavy, and Ntare barely escaped with only a handful of followers. He regrouped. Then he tried to rebuild.
Mukwenda again turned to deceit. He persuaded one of Ntare's servants to give him poisoned beer. Ntare became gravely ill. Before Ntare had recovered, Mukwenda attacked the camp. His forces scattered Ntare's party with ease. Again, Ntare barely escaped. He fled to Buhweju. There, he was treated, and eventually he recovered from the poisoning.
After recovering, Ntare returned to the struggle. He settled at Mugoye, in present-day Ibanda. Once again, he tried to consolidate his position. But Mukwenda soon attacked. This time, the battle was decisive.
The fighting was bitter. The casualties were heavy on both sides. But by the end of the battle, Mukwenda was dead. His brother Muhikira was also dead. The succession war was over. Ntare had won.
What He Inherited
But what exactly had he won?
Not a united kingdom. Not a realm that had peacefully chosen him. Ntare inherited a society consumed by murder, betrayal, and civil war. The royal family had been torn apart. Most of Mutambuka's sons and many of the kingdom's leading princes were dead. Subjects had fought on opposite sides. Families carried memories of relatives killed by fellow Banyankore. Ntare had won because he was the last credible fighter still standing — not because the kingdom had calmly accepted him.
His real achievement came after the war. He held Nkore together through the exhaustion that follows catastrophe. Later, he expanded the kingdom's frontiers through raids on neighbouring peoples, which showed his regime had recovered enough strength to act outwardly.
But the foundation remained fragile. The civil war had consumed most of the ruling class. Nearly every senior prince who might have provided stability, succession options, or internal balance was gone.
Closing Thoughts
Ntare's throne was won through endurance. It was won through war. But the price was severe.
A kingdom survived. A ruler emerged. But Nkore's royal house had nearly destroyed itself to put him there.
120 years ago, on the evening of May 19th, 1905, Harry St. George Galt, the
acting Sub-Commissioner of Uganda’s Western Province, sat on the verandah of a
rest house near Ibanda. Suddenly, a spear pierced his lung. Moments later, he
turned to his cook and uttered his last words: “Look, cook, a savage has
speared me.”
Galt collapsed and died instantly.
This was not just a murder. It sparked one of the earliest
and most high-profile trials in Uganda’s colonial history. A case that revealed
deep political rivalries, suspicions of conspiracy, and a mystery that has
never been fully resolved.
The Background
To understand Galt’s murder, we must go back a decade
earlier.
In 1895, the death of Ntare, king or Omugabe of Ankole, left
the Kingdom in turmoil. Three claimants struggled for the throne, cattle were
ravaged by rinderpest, and unrest spread across the kingdom.
From this chaos rose a dominant figure: Nuwa Mbaguta.
He was determined to see the young Kahaya crowned as Omugabe, with himself as Enganzi,
or chief adviser. Mbaguta secured British backing, and in 1898, a civil station
was established at Mbarara.
This move cemented Kahaya’s authority as Omugabe and
strengthened Mbaguta’s power. But it also created bitter enemies. The Ankole royal
clan, the Bahinda, saw Mbaguta as an upstart from a minor clan. Rival chiefs
remembered the exile of Igumira, their preferred contender for the throne, the
death of independent rulers like Ndagara of Buhweju, and the imposition of
unpopular taxes as the British consolidated their control over Ankole.
The British administration, represented by men like Galt,
was closely tied to these shifts in power. And that meant resentment against
colonial authority was simmering beneath the surface.
The Murder
On May 19, 1905, Galt was travelling from Fort Portal to
Mbarara. He stopped for the night at a rest camp in Ibanda.
At about 6:30 in the evening, a spear was hurled at him. He
died almost instantly.
An inquiry into the murder was quickly set up. This inquiry
first suggested revenge as a possible motive because just days before he was
murdered, Galt had ordered the hanging of a man from Toro for murder.
Could his son have retaliated?
However, there was no evidence to support this theory.
Suspicion quickly shifted toward political motives rooted in
Ankole’s rivalries.
The Wilson Inquiry
Soon after, another inquiry was set up with George Wilson,
the acting commissioner of the Uganda Protectorate, leading a thorough
investigation. Chiefs from Ankole and Toro were summoned, but he found them
evasive, secretive, and even deceptive.
At first, a peasant named Rutaraka was identified as the
killer. The spear that killed Galt was traced to him, and villagers described
him as violent, even unstable. But soon after, Rutaraka was found dead (allegedly
a suicide by hanging). Wilson doubted this. He suspected that Rutaraka was
silenced to cover up deeper involvement.
More witnesses emerged. Testimony pointed fingers at two
powerful figures: Gabrieli Rwakakaiga, the county chief of Mitooma,
where Ibanda was situated, and Isaka Nyakayaga, a dismissed official.
Witnesses claimed that Rwakakaiga had promised cattle, land,
and even chieftainships to anyone who killed a European. They said Nyakayaga
helped recruit and shelter Rutaraka. Eventually, both men were arrested and
charged with instigating the murder.
The Trial
The trial opened on October 20, 1905, at Entebbe before
Judge G. F. M. Ennis.
The accused were defended at their own expense by Byramji
Rustamji of Mombasa, whose fees were apparently paid in cattle.
The prosecution relied on five key witnesses. They testified
about conversations where Rwakakaiga and Nyakayaga supposedly incited Rutaraka
to spear Galt. However, their stories were riddled with contradictions — dates,
locations, rewards, and even the presence of witnesses varied wildly.
Still, Judge Ennis dismissed these inconsistencies as “usual
in native evidence.” He convicted both men and sentenced them to death.
However, in January 1906, the Court of Appeal for East
Africa sitting in Mombasa overturned the convictions. The judges ruled the
testimony unreliable, contradictory, and uncorroborated. Rwakakaiga and
Nyakayaga were acquitted.
One appeal judge, however, admitted to a lingering suspicion
that they had indeed instigated the murder, though this had not been
conclusively proved.
Aftermath
Despite the acquittal, colonial authorities were not
satisfied. George Wilson deported both men to Kismayu, in present-day southern
Somalia, which was part of the British East Africa Protectorate at that time.
Rwakakaiga died there ten years later. Nyakayaga was allowed to return in 1925
as long as he agreed to live in Jinja.
The Mugabe and chiefs of Ankole were fined 1100 heads of
cattle, the people of the Ankole counties of Buhweju, Buzimba and Mitooma and
the Tooro county of Kitagwenda were made to pay double poll tax for that year.
Forced labour was imposed on the people, and the Ankole Agreement was
suspended. The whole kingdom suffered collective punishment.
The murder left scars. Some said it was an act of revenge
for old injustices. Others believed it was orchestrated to undermine Mbaguta’s
power or even instigated by rivals in Toro.
Even today, the murder is still talked about, and the true
motive remains a mystery. Some still believe that Rutaraka was merely a
scapegoat, too sick to have thrown the fatal spear.
Retrospect
The trial of Galt’s murder was Uganda’s first high-profile
colonial case. It exposed the tensions between chiefs, the fragility of early
colonial justice, and the deep mistrust between the people of Ankole and their
new rulers.
But one thing is clear: the truth was never fully uncovered.
Was Galt the victim of a political conspiracy? Or just a tragic target of a random
act of vengeance?
I recently decided to start teaching myself Swahili, which is the most widely spoken language in East Africa.
I wanted to learn Swahili (or Kiswahili as it is called in Swahili) because I have been a keen supporter of the East African community initiatives and I am a firm believer in the idea of an East African federation.
However, over the years I have increasingly began to feel like a bit of a fraud because of my inability to speak any Swahili.
I have been finding my inability to speak Swahili at odds with my preaching the gospel of integration and getting East Africans to come together as one.
Because Swahili is the de facto langauage of the East African community, I felt I was not setting the right example myself by not speaking Swahili, which I believe is the easiest step an individual Ugandan can take towards being part of the bigger East African family.
It is now a few weeks into my "Learn Swahili" project and everything is going rather well. I wish I had embarked on this earlier.
However, as I have been studying Swahili, I have also been reflecting on why the language is not spoken as widely in Uganda as it is in other East African countries.
Everybody will tell you that Ugandans do not speak Swahili because it is a language that was long associated with brutal military dictatorships and their soldiers but this, while true, is only a small component of the whole story.
The reasons why Swahili never developed as a widespread lingua franca in Uganda have more to do with opposition to in from the kings of Buganda and the early Christian missionaries.
The British in Uganda had decided in the early 20th century to promote the Swahili language as a means of communication among lower levels of government and as a language of instruction in the early years of education.
However, the Christian missionaries at the time resisted, and worked against this, because they associated Swahili with Islam and they felt that teaching Swahili might somehow give Islam a foothold in Uganda.
This missionary opposition to Swahili might not have amounted to much if the Kabaka of Buganda, Daudi Chwa II, had supported the policy of teaching Swahili.
But Kabaka Chwa was not only opposed to Swahili, he was actually quite emphatic about how he would never allow the language to be taught in his kingdom.
Kabaka Chwa believed that teaching Swahili would lead to a situation where it became the lingua franca of the Uganda Protectorate and he was afraid this would then diminish the cultural influence Luganda, and by extension Buganda, was already beginning to have on the expansion and establishment of British rule in the protectorate.
The Baganda collaborated with the British from the beginning of their establishment of the Uganda Protectorate and they had been rewarded with lands from other kingdoms and communities and Baganda chiefs were being used to spread British rule to other parts of Uganda especially in the East and parts of the West.
This had led to a situation where Baganda had been elevated to a special status by the British and by default Luganda had started to gain an equally special status in local administration and education outside Buganda.
It is against this background that Kabaka Chwa felt that Swahili would diminish this new found status of Luganda and he thus opposed its teaching in Buganda and since the British depended on the goodwill of the Baganda at this time, they acquiesced to the Kabaka's demands.
Because British colonialism spread out from Buganda to the rest of Uganda, when the teaching of Swahili in Buganda was abandoned the Swahili project died for all practical purposes though efforts to teach it continued up to the late 1940s.
In the late 1960s President Milton Obote, through his "Move to the left" initiative had laid out plans to make Swahili a national language and a unifying force in Uganda.
Obote was a great admirer of President Nyerere of Tanzania and he wanted to emulate what the Tanzanian president was doing at the time to do away with tribal identities in Tanzania and create a Tanzanian identity through Swahili.
However, Obote was overthrown before his plans could take off.
Therefore by the time the military dictatorships of the 70s and 80s came around Swahili was already pretty much dead and it has been struggling since.
Anyway, I am committed to my pursuit of fluency in Swahili and I hope by the end of the year I will have attained a level of proficiency that will enable me hold general conversations on most common topics. By the end of next year, I want to be able to write, talk and debate on any topic of interest.
This short video is a basic comparison of what the town looked like in 1961 and what it looks like in 2015.
The 1961 footage is from a documentary called Gentle Winds of Change, made by an American academic visiting Ankole (the region where Mbarara is located) between 1959 and 1961.
This is a preview of a longer feature I intend to make on the changes that have taken place in the social economic lives of the people of Ankole over the last 50 years.
The Uganda Museum is the oldest Museum in the East African Community having been established in 1908 by the British Protectorate government as a repository of some ethnographic materials.
The museum has been in its current location on Kitante Hill in Kampala since 1954.
The Museum has a few artifacts of historic importance displayed in different galleries like ethnographic gallery, natural history gallery, traditional music gallery, science and industry gallery and the early history gallery.
The
following article, written by Andrew Green, was originally posted on the ThinkAfrica Press website on 14th November 2011 (link to original story). I am
reproducing it here, with full permission, as the first of a number of
interesting articles from other sources related to my promotion of Uganda's
Jubilee this year.
October
9 may have been Independence Day in Uganda, but it could have been any other
sleepy Sunday in Kampala. Disappointment from the previous night’s football
match against Kenya – a 0-0 draw that denied Uganda a spot in the Africa Cup of
Nations – dulled any impulse for celebration. There were rumours of a ceremony
at the Kololo Airstrip, where British colonial administrators had handed power
to Milton Obote 49 years previously, but the grassy field stayed empty even
after the morning drizzle finally cleared.
The
lack of pageantry was apace with the scepticism and dismissiveness that marks
Uganda’s approach to historical discussion and celebration. It is a country
where the national archives cannot accept new material because it does not have
the space and because the government tried to tear down the national museum to
turn it into offices last year.
Uganda
has the world’s second youngest population, but the lessons of its past are
being lost to its children, leaving no national identity to overcome commonly
held ethnic stereotypes. The USdecision this week to join an ongoing conflict
in northern Uganda highlights a division some scholars believe a more complete
teaching of history could help resolve.
How
soon is now?
Ugandans
have “made a lot of mistakes in the past and we still make mistakes,” explains
Edwin Paratra, who works at the Uganda Museum. “I look at the children we groom
and they’re docile … many are just passing through the time.
"It’s
important to make them be critical, but how can they criticize when they don’t
really know [about the past]?”
Paratra
joined the museum in 2007, part of a wave of new hires ahead of that year’s
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala. He was a student at
Makerere University then, and he clearly still delights in getting the
opportunity to work at the museum. As he walked through its halls, he stopped
to point out a temporary exhibition on transportation he helped set up.
For
the last five years, part of his job has been giving tours to the busloads of
students who show up each school day.
“It’s
good that the young ones know where they come from,” he says, with a hall of
displays on traditional Ugandan customs as his backdrop. But their interests
are limited to the things they are taught in school, he continues. So they
marvel over the country’s first car and its first typewriter – both legacies of
the colonial era – but they rarely ask why there is no mention of the country’s
post-independence leaders anywhere in the museum. History textbooks in this
country end where the post-colonial era begins.
Reading,
writing and remembering
“Anyone
who comes in power doesn’t want the others’ history to be put anywhere,”
Paratra explains. Not in textbooks, not in memorials, and not in the national
museum. According to Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a senior history lecturer at Makerere,
the decline in historical preservation is partly an attempt by the country’s
leadership to control the national narrative.
More
broadly, the history of history in Uganda is one of neglect. In a poor country
with limited resources, doctors, engineers and even teachers provide the kind
of results that look good on international donor reports and campaign
billboards: lives saved, buildings constructed and students educated. The work
of historians, archivists and curators does not deliver those kinds of
statistics, so does not get the same kind of attention and support.
But,
overlooked in a results-driven society, are the uncountable benefits of a
citizenship with a robust sense of its own history. Uganda must, according to
Ndebesa, create “motivation for society, incentives for work, motivation for
nationalism and patriotism…We want to create the soul of a nation. We have no
soul in this nation”.
In
the absence of a national identity that the teaching of history would help
create, Uganda is running the risk, he claims, of becoming a country where
ethnic divisions dominate individual perspectives. He repeats several times
that in his classes “I don’t take people into the past to leave them there”.
One of the most important things he does in his history of Uganda class, he
says, is to trace historical migration patterns to show people that
contemporary ethnic prejudices have no basis in historical fact. That many of
Uganda’s tribes are steeped in intermarriage. And that divisions within
society, which sometimes erupt into conflict, are not necessary.
“The
prejudices are there… but there is no systematic way of ‘de-teaching’ to remove
those prejudices,” he says, adding that,
“[I am] aiming at doing that. But I don’t have big audience. These are very few
students. Uganda is 32 million. If I teach 200 people, it’s a drop in the
ocean.”
The
dangers of forgetting
Ndebesa
will soon be getting some support. Next year the state-of-the-art, fully
digital Kitgum Peace Documentation Centre in northern Ugandan will be
operational. Part memorial, part research centre, its goal is to encourage
national reconciliation in a region subject to massive violence for more than
20 years.
The
conflict in northern Uganda has variously been described as a guerrilla
campaign by the Joseph Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) or as a civil war
between the country’s north and south. Through both force and persuasion, Kony
drew troop supplies from his own Acholi tribe in the north, while
simultaneously waging a terrorist campaign against the Acholi and their
neighbours.
People
in the north maintain that the government’s slow response to the LRA is, in
part, out of ethnic retribution. The National Resistance Movement party of
President Yoweri Museveni has never enjoyed much support in the north. And
Uganda’s former leaders Obote and Idi Amin, who are vilified by the current
leadership, traced their lineage to the northern part of the country. Even as
the conflict has waned, thousands of Acholi are still displaced from their
homes, breeding further resentment. Obama’s decision to send US troops to clear
out what remains of the LRA underscores the fact that the conflict – and the
ethnic divisions it has exacerbated – is still not fully resolved.
“The
more we looked into the conflict in northern Uganda, the more it became clear
that the problem is a manifestation of those historical problems [between north
and south],” says Moses Okello, a senior research and advocacy advisor at the
Refugee Law Project, the group setting up the centre. The violence “is a
product of a blinkered way of teaching history”.
The
new museum will build on oral histories and documents to “create a complete
picture”, Okello says. But ultimately, the bigger goal is to force the country
to reconsider how it teaches history.
“History,
and particularly its cultural dimensions, creates a sense of identity as
individuals and as a nation,” Okello argues.
“The
average Ugandan kid is ignorant of other ethnic groups. The average Ugandan
adult doesn’t know so much about other parts of the country. What they know is
mostly stereotypical. By and large many of the problems of conflict come from
this teaching of history.”
I have been following the regular photo uploads on the History in Progress facebook page but I didnt know that they had a website. Until now. The website has a relatively large collection of pictures taken in different parts of Uganda from the very early 1900s to just after independence, which are a delight to look at for anybody as interested I am.
Students and teachers of Gayaza Girls School pose for a photo in 1908
In its own words "History In Progress Uganda collects and publishes photographs from (private) collections and archives in Uganda. By doing this HIPUganda opens up possibilities to relate to, react on, and think about Uganda's history in photographs. These photographs can be put in context by those who lived in the time the photographs were taken, or know stories about it. That way they can become valuable in understanding the past and relating it to the present".
An aerial view of Kampala in the early 60s
Its the bit at the end about the value of the pictures in understanding the past and relating it to the present that is of particular interest to me. As I had already indicated I feel that Uganda's 50th Independence anniversary should be leveraged to get a strong campaign going that will have most Ugandans focusing on what they have in common that is worth celebrating. The Jubilee should also be used to reflect on how far we have come and why we have not moved further than we could have. The people that have been ruling Uganda should hence be called to account or made to step up to the responsibility of pushing the country further.
Making a canoe near Lake Bunyonyi Kabale in the 1930s
The pictures on History in Progress website and Facebook page tell a story of a country and a people developing and embracing a different way of life as the years progress. They show Uganda's steady evolution from a collection of traditional societies to a modern nation, which ought to cause one to reflect on the apparent stagnation or regression (in some areas) since independence. The pictures, especially those of the Uganda Protectorate Public Relations department show the kind of importance attached to things like agricultural extension services, which have all but disappeared in Uganda today resulting in some of associated problems the agricultural sector is facing.
