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?
Recently, Equatorial Guinea officially moved its capital from Malabo, a city on an island some distance off that country's continental territory, to a purpose built city deep in the interior of the mainland.
The new capital is called Djibloho, or Oyala, depending on what you happen to be reading or watching at the time. I guess they will figure out what name to stick with once they have turned on all the lights, the streets have been cleared of construction debris and the common people have started moving in.
Until then the new capital is a city in the middle of dense equatorial rain forest adorned with all the facilities you'd expect from an unaccountable leader with millions of petrodollars to spend on a pet project.
However, I am getting carried away. This post is not about Equatorial Guinea's new capital.
However, it is while reading about Djibloho and watching YouTube videos of its new fancy hotels and golf courses that I started thinking about something that has been on my mind for some years now.
And this is it.
If Uganda were ever to build a new capital, where would the ideal site for such a city be?
I have been thinking about this question for a while now and the I turn the issue over in my head, the more I think the small northern district of Amolatar might just be the ideal site.
Why Amolatar you might ask? I have my reasons but I will get to those in a short while.
First, some background.
The idea of building a new capital has been around for decades but it has remained just that- an idea.
Over the last few years, Kampala has become more congested and has practically run out of room to expand. Any attempts at widening the roads or creating any kind of major infrastructure are fraught with all manner of headaches.
This is largely because when Kampala was first conceived and planned as a modern city in the early 1900s. It was meant to cater primarily for a ruling British elite and an Asian business class.
Therefore, the parts of the city where these two classes of people lived were well planned with paved roads, good drainage, functioning sewer systems and all that. The rest of the city was just given the most basic amenities. In fact, up to this day the majority of Kampala's residents still do not have proper sewerage systems in their neighbourhoods
At independence in 1962, Kampala's infrastructure and public amenities were suited to comfortably cater for a population of about 100,000 people
The immediate post-independence government went some way in creating and implementing a structural plan that was intended to address the needs of the majority of the city's people.
However, most of these plans were abandoned in the years of political instability throughout the 70s and 80s and even that which was working at independence fell into disrepair and a lot of the public infrastructure crumbled.
Anyway, fast forward through all that and right now the permanent population of the Kampala is around 1.8 million while the day time population (including the metropolitan population can be as high as 5 million). Yet the infrastructure, roads, sewerage system, etc has changed little from the 1960s.
As the population increased and the demands to plan for a city that is both the commercial, industrial, and administrative hub of the country grew, some people started toying around with the idea of building a new capital.
This idea has been popular in some circles but no moves have ever been made to seriously discuss it and see how feasible it is.
However, like I mentioned, the idea of a new capital comes up every now and then there never seems to be any consensus on where this city ought to be. But for some time now the preferred site has been Nakasongola district, the northern most district of Buganda and of the Central region.
Nakasongola has its pros like being sparsely populated, hence having lots of land for construction and future expansion of the capital.
Its location as the northern most district of the central region puts in roughly in a more central position in the country than Kampala is.
Nakasongola generally flat and sparsely populated, which is always a good thing when building planned cities. This gives the planners more to work with and fewer issues of displacement to deal with.
The district also borders lake Kyoga, which would provide a much needed source of water for the city.
Also, it is close to Kiryandongo, which is the site of the Karuma dam, which will be the biggest Hydropower dam in Uganda when it is completed in a few years time..So electricity will not be an issue.
However, despite all the advantages Nakasongola has, I personally believe Amolatar would be a better site for different technical and, most importantly, political reasons. Why Amolatar?
First of all Amolatar is separated from Nakasongola by only around 8 kilometeres of lake Kyoga, at the narrowest crossing point. This means it is just as central as Nakasongola is, despite technically being in Northern Uganda
In fact I believe Amolatar is a more central site being roughly equidistant east-west, north and south from Uganda's borders.
Just like Nakasongola, the topography of Amolatar is also mostly flat making it equally ideal for large scale construction.
The district is surrounded by water on 3 sides, by Lake Kwania to the West and Lake Kyoga to the South and East.
This means it has more water than Nakasongola and it also receives more rainfall on average than Nakasongola, which is largely dry.
Now the fact that Amolatar is surrounded by water on 3 sides can be viewed as a disadvantage in that it makes it slightly harder to access from Kampala and other southern areas.
However, I think this is not that big an issue and it can be easily overcome with some clever road linkages.
It also offers a chance to build a bridge that connects the northern and southern halves of Uganda. This bridge could run from Zengebe in Nakasongola to Namasale in Amolatar. This is an ideal crossing point and in fact there is already a ferry plying that route
This bridge will be costly to build but I believe that it would pay for itself in a short while when the capital is established and settled.
Besides it would be an ideal chance to have a grand infrastructural project that will in itself be a major landmark or iconic structure-a Ugandan equivalent of San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge or Lagos's 3rd mainland bridge.
Besides, Lake Kyoga is a shallow lake so I am guessing it might not actually be that much of an engineering feat to build a bridge across it.
I could go on and on trying to give technical justifications for why I think Amolatar would be Ideal for a new capital but these are not really the most important. At the end of the day my main reasons for favouring Amolatar are mostly political.
Having the administrative capital of Uganda in northern Uganda would be a big boost towards developing the region and going some distance in correcting the historical concentration of development projects and economic activity in the "Bantu areas" south of Lake Kyoga.
The greater northern region has suffered decades of neglect, to varying degrees, since colonial times and this was compounded by a two decade long war waged against the Lords Resistance Army that meant the region remained stagnant while most of the country was slowly moving forward.
Therefore, having a capital in the region will almost certainly stimulate development and provision of services for the people of the area and in the process create some kind of north-south equilibrium
I also believe that on some level a capital city in northern Uganda will help draw the people of the north and south closer and go some way in fostering national unity. Not least because of the interactions and inevitable migration to the city but also because things that happen around the capital or centres of power, like parliament tend to attract nationwide attention-this would draw attention to the issues of the area.
Besides if the capital were to be built in Nakasongola, this would not only mean that the two most important cities in the country were in the south but it would also mean having both these cities in Buganda. Knowing my Ugandan people's obsession with regional balance, this might not go down too well
Furthermore, on the same day that parliament approved the creation of a new capital, it also approved the establishment of the four regional cities of Arua, Gulu, Mbale, and Mbarara and the designation of five strategic cities, including Hoima (as a centre for the oil and gas sector), Fort Portal (as a tourism city), Moroto (for mining development) and Nakasongola and Jinja (as industrial cities).
This means Nakasongola will still be developed as an industrial city and having the administrative capital just across lake Kyoga would raise the potential for so many positive linkages that I cannot begin to enumerate here.
Also that bridge discussed earlier would become a lot more necessary.
From my point of view there is more to gain for the country if quiet sleepy Amolatar was made the future capital of Uganda.
Leaving Kampala to concentrate on growing its profile as the true heartbeat and engine of growth for Uganda by developing it as a hub for finance, transport, education, entertainment etc can only be advantageous
Granted, a lot of what I have just said is just theorizing and hypothesizing with very little in the way of concrete examples on how these ideas can be put into action. After all, I am not an urban planner, neither am I a civil engineer and my knowledge of Amolatar is very basic, having ever only just passed through the district once a few years ago.
There might be some real insurmountable reasons I am unaware of as to why Amolatar is not ideal for a future capital and some would argue that Kampala's congestion can be best dealt with by developing the other urban centres to take some pressure off the city.
However, Like I said earlier there is more to my reasons for recommending Amolatar than purely technical pros and cons and the more I think about it the more shifting the capital to a new city in Amolatar appears to be an idea worth considering.
The Ugandan media landscape is changing fast and, as a result, traditional print and digital media are being forced to rethink the methods of work that have kept them relevant to their audiences and profitable for decades.
With the advent of digital media platforms, the leveling effect of social media and the multiplicity of online sources of news, many legacy media houses are finding themselves more and more alienated from the audiences they have come to depend on for views and sales.
The "new media" is creating newer modes of capturing, packaging and distributing news content that are more relevant and responsive to the needs of a new generation of news audiences.
These changes in the media landscape have forced many media houses in Uganda to begin thinking critically about how they can embrace the new technology and platforms in order to stay alive in a rapidly changing media market.
This has led to media houses getting involved in experimentation with different formats, content and distribution channels but as yet nobody seems to have a good idea of what works best.
Those that have made some headway in producing, and delivering, content that their audiences want are finding they have to figure out how to make money from these new formats and platforms.
The dilemma that many media houses are facing is that innovations in digital and mobile news gathering and distribution will ultimately mean very little if these innovations cannot be monetized.
At present, while the media houses are slowly getting to grips with digital media, the advertisers are still hesitant to spend their money on these new products and platforms. The advertisers are still more comfortable dealing with legacy media, probably because they understand it better.
All things considered, it will be a while until Ugandan media houses sort through the experimentation to find what works and inevitably some will not survive.
However, those that are thinking seriously about the future, and investing in keeping relevant in the digital age, will experience lots of birthing pains but they will inevitably be the first at the table when what is today's new digital/social media fad becomes tomorrow's mainstream platform for delivering news.
Its a brave new world out there but it is also full of untapped potential.
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.
Recently a colleague asked me what my hometown was and
I said Kampala.
However, my colleague felt I had not quite understood
her question because she chose to rephrase it along the lines of “ I mean where
are you from”, to which I repeated “Kampala”.
At this point, the clearly perplexed lady said,
“ But you are not a Muganda” and I said“Yes”.
She added, “ But how then can you be from Kampala?”
This exchange went on for a while but it ultimately ended
the same way most such exchanges I have had over the years have ended, which is
usually something along the lines of me being told I have no sense of roots or
belonging or other things of that sort.
The confusion on my female colleague’s part arose because,
for some reason, nobody seems to ever “come from” Kampala.
There is a pervasive mindset in Uganda that only the
few thousand people who can trace their family roots to a pre-colonial Kampala
are allowed to call it their Home.
I find this quite absurd.
For those that are a bit puzzled at this point, let me
attempt to put the exchange with my colleague, and others of her ilk, in
context.
Kampala, the city in which I was born and have lived for all but 2 of the 37 years
I have been alive, is the capital of Uganda.
Kampala also happens to be located in a region called
Buganda, from which Uganda gets its name and, which is predominantly populated
by the Baganda. Baganda make up around 18% of Uganda’s population, which makes
them the largest single ethnic group in Uganda.
Also, my parents are from different parts of South-Western
Uganda and they are Banyankore.
Furthermore, Uganda is a largely rural country and
people like myself, born and bred in cities and towns, are a relatively small
(but rapidly growing) minority.
Finally, in most Ugandan cultures children "belong" to
their father and hence take on his name, clan, and by extension, wherever it is
he comes from.
You would think that that last point above would pretty much put
my issues to bed. After all, if the dominant societal culture says I come from wherever my father
comes from then why would I say I come from Kampala?
The thing is that Kampala seems to have its own
standards when it comes to these matters.
Let me explain with an example.
If my dad had been born in Masaka, which is in Buganda,
and had then moved to Mpigi, also found in Buganda, and I had been born in
Mpigi, I am sure I nobody would say I was from Masaka. Most people would simply
accept that I am from Mpigi.
However, when it comes to Kampala the same logic does
not apply.
I remember spending an exasperating 15 minutes
explaining to the fellow who was registering me for a national ID, why I
insisted on filling in Kampala as my home district.
The man was adamant that the people who had put that section on the form had meant
for me to fill in where my father came from, not necessarily where I was
born or where I had lived all my life. I had more important things to do than argue with the man so I quickly picked
new forms and filled in an answer that was more to his liking and only then was
I entered into the system.
I also remember a friend of mine from secondary who had lived in Kyambogo all his life but he filled in Lira when it came to filling in university admission forms section on district of origin. He asked me why I had filled in Kampala and not Mbarara and I told him I had never lived in Mbarara. He said that that did not matter because, according to him, the guys at UNEB (or ministry of education) would be confused by the mismatch between my "home district" and my surname.
By the way, nobody should get the impression that I
have no love or attachment to Rwampara County in Mbarara district, (which is
where dad was from).I do like the
place. Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.
I like the fact there is extended family all around
the area. I like the peace and quiet I enjoy when I am there. Most of the time
I spend there is quite refreshing and I enjoy most of the visits I make there
once or twice every year.I might
even spend my retirement years over there in the unlikely event that I get tired of living in
Kampala
However, despite all the things I like about Mbarara, it just does not feel like
home. When there I somehow always
feel like that guest who comes to your house so often that you no longer feel
the need to to accord him any special treatment, but he still remains a guest.
He is still has boundaries he cannot cross because he is simply not a member of
the household.
I essentially have no sense of history with Mbarara. I
have no memories of growing up there. No childhood friends I got into mischief
with, no romances and relationships or special places with deeply held memories attached them.
Nothing.
You can pass whatever judgements about what my parents
should or should not have done but that is neither here nor there.
Mbarara is just not home in the sense in which I understand
the word.
I do however recognize Mbarara as my ancestral home and I see no contradiction in ancestral home and hometown being two very different, and mutually exclusive, things. It seems in this I am something of a minority, at least when it comes to the people I deal with on a regular basis.
Kampala, unlike Mbarara is in my DNA, so to speak.
I have seen it
grow in the same way it has been all around me and moulded me all my life.With its countless street corners full
of memories, numerous childhood friends (and some foes), favourite spots that have come
and gone, neighbourhoods I lived in that are now barely recognisable from 30
years ago. The good, the bad, the lovely, the memorable and the not so
memorable.Its all there in
Kampala.
This city, formerly of seven hills, is the only true
home I know.
So. Guys…why won’t you just let me call Kampala home?
English has become an international language to the extent that it now has many different varieties of which the most well known are the British and American varieties.
However, because English has been adopted as an official, or second, language in many countries, the language has developed as many flavours as there are communities that speak it.
In this regard Uganda is no exception in that a variety of English that is flavoured by the peculiarities of Uganda's cultures and languages has emerged over the past few decades.
Ugandan English, or Uglish as it has come to be known in some quarters, has hardly been studied and, as such, there is very little written about it.
It is this lack of literature on the subject of Ugandan English that motivated Bernard Sabiti to write a a book on the history and nature of this variety of English. The result of Sabiti's work is the little book "Uglish: A dictionary of Ugandan English".
This book attempts to give a bit of an academic treatment to Ugandan English while not taking itself too seriously. The result is a fun read for people interested in Ugandan English or Uglish.
I had a chat with Bernard Sabiti about his book, and Uglish in general, and this video is a summation of his thoughts on the subject of Ugandan English and the discoveries he made while writing his book.
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.
As of February 2015 only areas within a 65km radius of Central Kampala are covered by the digital signal.
However, by the end of the year the digital footprint is supposed to have increased to cover more parts of the country.
The Uganda Communications Commission has set June 15th as the date on which the switchover from analogue to digital will begin. It remains to be seen whether the country will be ready for this switchover by that time.
In the meantime, for those that are in the coverage zone the digital signal is up and running and quite clear.
For those seeking to make the switch to free-to-air digital television there are 2 important pieces of equipment necessary; a TV set and a set top box (also know as a converter). Also, depending on where you are, an external antenna might be necessary.
The TV set
Some people might be under the impression that to watch digital television one needs an ultra modern fancy High definition TV set. This is simply not true.
Just about any TV set will do just fine if you want to watch digital TV all one has to do is hook it up to a set-top box that will convert the digital signal to an analogue one that all current TVs “understand”.
There are what are known as Integrated Digital TVs which come with the inbuilt ability to pick digital signals without any additional hardware. However, these TV sets are rare in Uganda and they are pretty costly at the moment.
It is also worth noting that not every flat screen High Definition TV you see is digital. I personally use a 15 year old JVC TV and it works just fine.
The main thing you have to be careful about is that the TV set you have has a way to connect with the set top box you have purchased or are intending to purchase. This is most likely to be by RCA Connectors, which for some reason are commonly called banana pins. Some others may use RF connectors and newer TV sets will also probably have a HDMI connection.
The Set-Top Box
There are different kinds of Set top boxes out there.
The kind most people are used to are those sold by GoTV and StarTimes, which come pre-programmed to scan specific frequencies and pick specific channels that are encrypted and one has to pay a subscription to watch these channels.
Such set-top boxes will not pick the free-to-air channels, unless those channels are included specifically in the paid bouquets available.
Free to air set-top boxes
However, this is not the kind of set-top box I will be discussing. I will be talking only about free-to-air set top boxes. As the name suggests, these boxes will pick any free unencrypted channels that are out there just like your regular TV would.
While these free to air set top boxes also come in many forms, anybody buying one for use in Uganda has to keep in mind one very important thing, which is that the set top box ought to be DVB-T2 compatible.
I will not get deep into the technical issues here except to say that there are different standards for Digital Terrestrial Television in the world, the most common being DVB-T and DVB-T2. DVB-T2 is the more modern of the two and it is the standard that Uganda adopted.
Also, depending on what your needs are and how much you are willing to spend the DVB-T2 compatible set top boxes also come with some differences. For example, some have slots for smartcards others don’t. Some are HD ready and some are not.
However, all those are extras that may not be immediately important, because as of now the PayTV companies will not sell you a smartcard without you purchasing their set-top box. Also, to the best of my knowledge there are no High Definition channels broadcasting on the digital platform at the moment.
As the technology progresses and high definition broadcasting becomes more common it might be a good idea to “future proof” yourself and buy the most advanced set-top box out there so you don’t have to upgrade in a few years.
I personally use a Chinese made set top box I bought from a company called Widestar in Kampala at a cost of 150,000 shillings. It has a smartcard slot should I ever feel the need to pay for subscription. Its is HD compatible and it has USB port to which I can connect a hard drive that I can use as a PVR to record programmes or from which I can view digital media files in a variety of formats.
There are some cheaper models going for around 70,000 shillings that have no card slot and have no High definition capability.
Earlier I had mentioned that some people might need external antennae and others might not. The reason for this is that the set top boxes come with their own antennae and if you are in an area where the signal is strong then you will not need an outdoor or external antenna.
However most people are probably going to need external antennae especially as the digital signal is till very much in the test phases and also because the digital signal is slightly weaker than the analogue one most people are used to.
Channels At this point some might be wondering, “What channels do I get after I have set everything up?” Most, if not all, set top boxes come with an auto-search function which will allow you to pick any channels that are freely available in your neighbourhood-which means pretty much every channel you have been watching free to air with your analogue TV.
However if for some reason your set-top box cannot do an auto-scan then you will have to manually scan specific frequencies in order to get the channels on those frequencies.
In my trials I found that most of the common Free to air channels are on the 474MHz (474000 Khz) frequency. With a few others on the 594Mhz (59400 Khz) frequency. By these I mean channels like NTV, Bukedde, NBS and so forth.
There are a few new channels out their and some that are testing their signals. I hope that there will be more stations.
Channels Available on digital (February 2015)
UBC, NTV, WBS, Star TV, Record TV, Urban TV, Bukedde 1, Top TV, LTV, Miracle TV (Channel 44), Al-Jazeera, BBC, CCTV, CITIZEN, EA TV, Capital TV, ITV.. The following are testing their signal, HTV, ABS TV, Delta TV, RTV, Magic One, plus 2 others I cannot quite figure out.
On January 26 2015 Dominic Ongwen made a pre-trial appearance at the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
Ongwen was one of the commanders of the murderous Lord's Resistance Army that terrorized people in Uganda for 20 years.
Ongwen surrendered to Seleka rebels in Central African Republic in January 2015. He was later handed over to US special forces who subsequently handed him over to the International Criminal Court.
The International Criminal Court had issued an international arrest warrant for Dominic Ongwen, along with four other commanders of the Lord's Resistance Army.
The ICC has set 24th August as the commencement date for Ongwen's trial.
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.
Parts of Kampala can look like a ghost town over the festive season. These pictures were taken on Christmas day and streets that are ordinarily full of traffic were almost completely empty.
I kind of liked the feel in a way. Almost wished the city was that quiet all the time.
Took the Canon EOS 600D out on the town one Saturday night to see if I could shot night video with only the surrounding lights for illumination.
I now know its quite possible and with a few tweaks in the settings and focus I can probably get something less grainy and sharper- learning curve just got less steep.
I would like to think that my article in the Daily Monitor had something to do with these developments. I hope that now they can do the same in the electronic media and in local languages
Kampalans lining up to buy GOTV decoders. What most don't know is that
digital migration is not the same as subscribing to a digital PayTV provide
r (photo courtesy of Daily Monitor)
The confusion surrounding the recent switch-off of some TV stations in and around Kampala, as equipment to enable migration to digital television was being installed on the Kololo TV mast, exposed just how little sensitization has been done to prepare the public for digital migration.
The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has done a poor job sensitizing Ugandans on the digital migration to the extent that even the few who have an idea of what digital migration is about associate the move to digital with subscription services like StarTimes and GoTV.
UCC has not done enough to sensitize the public on the purchase of free-to-air decoders (for which no subscription is required) and how these will work. It has instead kept quiet while the PayTV stations are raking in millions from people who are under the impression that without a subscription from a pay TV provider like GOTV they will not be able to watch any TV when the switch to full digital is complete.
The UCC should be clearly telling people that they are now only testing the digital signal and hence people will still be able to watch their analogue channels for a while until the full switchover is done. They should then further explain how the migration will work and how the people will be able to get their favourite channels for free as they have been doing before migration.
The UCC should also take steps to either import subsidized free-to-air set-top boxes or at least prepare, and publicize widely, a list of trusted distributors from where people can go to buy set-top boxes that fit their price range. A clear distinction should also be made between free-to-air set-top boxes and those for which a regular subscription will be required.
As of now the UCC is silent on all these issues, which fuels suspicion that they might be in cahoots with the Pay TV companies, helping them reap big profits while the population is still ignorant.
All this comes on the heels of confusion over which standard for terrestrial digital television Uganda would adopt. First UCC said it would be DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting — Terrestrial) then it later changed its mind and decided on the more advanced DVB-T2 yet many consumers had already purchased DVB-T decoders mostly from StarTimes, which, on top of not offering them free-to-air channels, will soon be rendered obsolete. This was on top of UCC misleading people in the early days that those with digital satellite receivers/decoders from companies like DSTV would not have anything to worry about from the switch from analogue to digital because these decoders were already digital. What they failed to mention was that DSTV decoders (and those of other satellite TV services like ZUKU) decode DVB-S/DVB-S2 (Digital Video Broadcasting — Satellite), which though related in some ways is not the same as DVB-T/DVB-T2
The UCC website is also woefully lacking in any useful information on digital migration. The site only has a press release on the just concluded switch-off of TV channels on the UBC mast and a page on “Minimum specifications for DVB-T2 digital set-top boxes for the Ugandan market”, which even for somebody like me with some knowledge on digital television is too technical.
UCC should at the very least have a FAQ page that answers most of the questions consumers are likely to have and also allay some fears based on conflicting information. There should be a simplified explanation of the set-top box specifications that does not only make sense to a technical person. There should be a well laid out time-frame over which the migration is going to take place in different parts of Uganda.
The website is just one channel through which information can be relayed but unfortunately it can only be accessed by only few people. Therefore a lot more sensitization has to be done especially on the local radio and TV stations over coming months so that by the time the global switch to digital is complete a lot more people are aware of what is going on.
A billboard here and there in combination with the odd press conference and accompanying press release in the national English language papers will not do.
Early in the morning on Wednesday 3rd July 2013 the police in Mbarara municipality conducted a pre-dawn security operation in the municipality’s Kakoba division ostensibly to weed out criminal elements that have been terrorising the area's residents for some time. The event that triggered this operation was, supposedly, the murder of a World Food Programme employee Andrew Mpubani, who was killed outside his home in the area a few days earlier. During the raid the police rounded up hundreds of people and detained as suspects those who could not immediately identify themselves with resident identity cards.
While the police should ordinarily be applauded for vigorously trying to combat crime, one cannot help but think that the Kakoba operation was nothing more than a show for the public and media, which will ultimately prove counter-productive.
In a country which has no national ID and in which one has no legal obligation to carry an ID, it makes no sense to demand ID from random individuals and arresting those that do not have any identification. Even if, for arguments sake, we assumed that everybody had some sort of ID, how does carrying one prove that the individual is not a criminal or that not having any ID proves that one is intent on doing harm or committing a crime?
Anybody who has walked along Nasser road or Kampala road, around Cairo International Bank, in Kampala will tell you that "Resident IDs" are sold in the open. It is therefore more than likely that Mbarara has its own areas where such IDs are sold. On top of the fact that these IDs have no weight of legality to them, what is to prevent a criminal from owning up to 5 different ones, all conveniently signed and stamped (another thing that is easy to forge)? Does the police have a record of all LC1 officials’ signatures and official stamps against which to cross-check. Even if one had a duly signed, stamped and recognised Resident ID, how does that in any way prove that they are/were not involved in committing crimes?
The Uganda Police should get serious and invest in doing proper policing as opposed to operating through reactive knee-jerk operations. They should invest in cultivating community cooperation and in encouraging the citizens to be vigilant and act as the eyes and ears of the police as a way of helping the police to help them.
The "panda gari” tactics employed in Mbarara are another result of filling the Uganda Police Force with military people who do not know much about civil policing. They lack the skills and finesse to carefully carry out investigations that are likely to yield better results than their preferred tactics of running roughshod over all that's in their wake, which only serves to alienate the very people they are meant to serve and whose help they need to do their work better.
While the police might claim that the operation was a success because they got a few weapons and army uniforms, there is no indication that they are any closer to solving the insecurity issues in the town yet in all likelihood they have made many Kakoba residents unhappy and resentful. This does not bode well for the future of the harmonious relations between the police and the people they are meant to serve and protect.
Ordinarily an American actor's death would mean nothing more for me than a few minutes on the news and I'd be back to whatever I was doing. However, Gandolfini's passing triggered some personal memories.
Kept me company before I found The Sopranos
No, no, I didn't know "Tony Soprano" personally. However, 5 years ago I moved to Beijing where I was to live for almost a year and the first few weeks were quite lonely because I had just moved into a sparsely furnished apartment with no TV or anything I could pass time with and I had no friends. I bought a used laptop shortly after and one day as I was going home I came across a street vendor with all Six seasons of the Sopranos (which had just wrapped up a few months before). I cannot say I was a fan of the show having only watched a the first few episodes of season one on DSTV around 7 years earlier, but it was the only one he had in English and I was really not looking forward to another night in an empty flat with only Yangjing
beer and some tasty orange coloured chicken from the street vendor round the corner to keep me company.
Anyway I bought all 6 DVDs and went home to watch them. For the next few weeks I watched 2 or 3 episodes per day (initially I was stretching it until I found a supplier of other English language DVDs) and before long Tony, Carmela, Meadow, Junior, Chris, Silvio, Paulie and all the other characters became close acquaintances.
So that's why Gandolfini's death brought back all those memories of those first few weeks in an empty Beijing flat with only The Sopranos to keep me company.
RIP Tony Soprano you made this Ugandan's life a lot less dull
