Pure Evil - Alive and Killing

Buganda: 19th century AD

Uganda, on the equator and surrounded by the great lakes of central Africa, was one of the last parts of the continent to be reached by outsiders. Arab traders in search of slaves and ivory arrived in the 1840s, soon followed by two British explorers, Speke and Stanley.

The ruler visited by both Speke and Stanley was Mutesa, the King (or Kabaka) of Buganda. His kingdom was one of four in this region which had become firmly established by the mid-nineteenth century. The others, lying to the west, were Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro.

The existence of these African kingdoms had a profound influence on the development of Uganda during the colonial period. But when the scramble for Africa begins, in the 1880s, this remote interior region was not immediately in the sights of any of the colonial predators. It was seen at the time merely as a distant place lying beyond the territories of the sultan of Zanzibar, which were in dispute between Britain and Germany. When separate spheres of interest were agreed, in 1886, the area of modern Kenya fell to Britain. Beyond it, round the north shore of Lake Victoria, lay Buganda. Britain expected this to be little more than the far corner of its new colony. Events proved otherwise.

British East Africa Company: 1888-1895

As with the areas being colonized by Rhodes at this same period in southern Africa, the British government were reluctant to take active responsibility for the region of east Africa. Instead it assigned to a commercial company the right to administer and develop the territory. The Imperial British East Africa Company was set up for this purpose in 1888.

The region given into the company's care stretched all the way from the east coast to the kingdom of Buganda, on the northwest shore of Lake Victoria. It was evident to all that the development of this region depended on the construction of a railway from the coast to Lake Victoria, but circumstances conspired to make this task far beyond the abilities of the East Africa Company. The running sore which sapped their energy and their funds was Buganda.

Being in a sense beyond Lake Victoria, Germany is able to argue that this region (the most powerful kingdom within the territory of Uganda) is not covered by the territorial agreement with Britain. Moreove,r the irrepressible Karl Peters forced the issue. In 1890, he arrived at Kampala and persuaded the kabaka (the king of Buganda) to sign a treaty accepting a German protectorate over his kingdom.

A possibly dangerous confrontation between the imperial powers was averted when the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, proposed a deal which Berlin, remarkably, accepted. Salisbury offered the tiny and useless island of Heligoland (in British possession since 1814) in return for German recognition of British protectorates in Zanzibar, Uganda and Equatoria (the southern province of Sudan). But Germany derived her own benefit from the deal. Heligoland subsequently proved an invaluable naval base in two world wars.

Meanwhile the East Africa Company faced further problems in Buganda, where civil war broke out between factions led by British Protestant missionaries and their French Catholic rivals. In January 1892, there was heavy gunfire between and among the four hills which formed Kampala. On the top of one hill was the Palace of the Kabaka; on another the French have completed a Catholic cathedral of wooden poles and reeds; on a third the Protestants were building their church; on the fourth was the fort established for the company by Frederick Lugard, who is the only combatant with the advantage of a Maxim machine gun. Lugard prevails. But the loss of life and destruction of property in this unseemly European squabble made it plain that the East Africa Company is incapable of fulfilling its duties.

In 1894, the British government declared a protectorate over Buganda. Two years later, British control is extended to cover the western kingdoms of Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro - to form, together with Buganda, the Uganda Protectorate.

Meanwhile the much larger region of Kenya had been relatively calm, even if the East Africa Company has achieved little of value there. But in taking responsibility for Uganda, the British government needed to be sure of the new protectorate's access to the sea. So in 1895, the company's charter was revoked and Kenya became another new responsibility of the British government, as the East Africa Protectorate.

The Uganda Protectorate: 1896-1962

Recent events in Uganda had made evident the difficulties likely to be faced by any colonial power. As a result the British government appointed in 1899 a seasoned administrator, Harry Johnston, as Special Commissioner to Uganda. His brief was to recommend the most effective form of administration.

The evident power of the local African Kings convinced Johnston that control must be exercised through them. Buganda was by far the most significant of the kingdoms. The Johnston policy became effective with the Buganda Agreement of 1900.

Under the terms of this agreement, the Kabaka's status was recognized by Britain, as was the authority of his council of chiefs. The chiefs' collective approval of the British protectorate over the region was eased by Johnston's acknowledgement of their freehold right to their lands. Johnston subsequently made similar agreements with the rulers of Toro (in 1900) and of Ankole (in 1901). With this much achieved, and a clear pattern set for the Uganda Protectorate, Johnston returns to Britain.

Later commissioners developed Johnston's solution for Uganda into a clear-cut distinction between it and neighbouring Kenya. White settlers were actively encouraged to move into Kenya's highlands, a region to the immediate southeast of Uganda. But Johnston's successor declared that Uganda was not suitable for European settlement.

Many disagreed, and pressure built to allow the establishment of European farms and plantations - until another commissioner, still in the years before World War I, made it a point of principle that Uganda was to be an African state. Uganda became very prosperous as cotton, introduced by the British, was grown with great success by African farmers.

But a federal system of semi-independent monarchies proved less appropriate in the years after World War II, when all African colonies were moving towards independence. Young and educated Africans, the likely leaders of the future, were out of sympathy with feudal Uganda and the dominant position of Buganda, by far the most powerful of the kingdoms, caused an imbalance in Ugandan politics - with much talk of possible secession by the Kabaka and his council of chiefs.

By the early 1960s, the leading Ugandan politician was Milton Obote, founder of the UPC (Uganda People's Congress), a party drawing its support from the northern regions of the country. Its main political platform was opposition to the hegemony of the southern kingdom of Buganda. Britain granted Uganda full internal self-government on March 1962. In the following month, Obote was elected Prime Minister. It was he who negotiated the terms of the constitution under which Uganda became independent in October 1962.

Confronted by the problem of Buganda, Obote accepted a constitution which gave federal status and a degree of autonomy to four traditional kingdoms, of which Buganda was by far the most powerful. In the same spirit, Obote approved the election in 1963 of the Kabaka (Mutesa II) to the largely ceremonial role of President and Head of State. It proves to be a short-lived collaboration.

Obote and Amin: 1962-1985

By 1966, the deteriorating relationship between Obote and Mutesa came to an abrupt end. Obote sent a force, led by his newly appointed Army Commander Idi Amin, to attack the Kabaka's palace. Mutesa fled to exile in Britain.

Obote immediately introduced a new constitution. This abolished the hereditary kingdoms, ended the nation's federal structure and provided for an Executive President - a post taken by Obote himself in addition to his role as Prime Minister. With the help of army and police, Obote terrorized any remaining political opponents. But meanwhile an ostensible ally, more ruthless even than himself, was making good use of the widespread discontent.

In 1971, when Obote was abroad, his regime was toppled in a coup led by Idi Amin. Obote settled just over the border from Uganda in neighbouring Tanzania, where he maintained a small army of Ugandan exiles under the command of Tito Okello.

Here Obote bided his time while the unbalanced Idi Amin subjectED Uganda to a regime of arbitrary terror. The country's economy was severely damaged when he suddenly expelled in 1972 all of Uganda's Asians, a mainstay of the nation's trading middle class. His obsessions took more local form in the persecution of tribes other than his own. Between 100,000 and 500,000 Ugandans were reported to have been murdered or tortured during Amin's seven years in power.

In 1978, Amin took one unbalanced step too many. He invaded Tanzania. Julius Nyerere, the Tanzanian President, not only repelled Amin's army but also toppled his gruesome neighbour. Tanzanian troops, joined forces with Obote's private army, reached Kampala in April 1979. Amin fled and lives on as an exile in Saudi Arabia.

During the following twelve months, there were two interim governments led by returning Ugandan exiles. But in May 1980 a Ugandan general, Tito Okello, organized a coup which brought Obote back into power. He was confirmed as President in a general election six months later. Uganda lurched from a mad dictatorship to a repressive regime held in check only by anarchy.

During the 1980s, Obote used violent means to reimpose his rule, while the country continued to suffer economic chaos and tribal massacres carried out by armed factions beyond anyone's control. In 1985, Tito Okello intervened once more, driving Obote back into exile (eventually in Zambia). But bizarrely, both Obote and Okello were only peripheral figures. The only well organized faction in these years of chaos was a guerrilla army led by Yoweri Museveni.

Museveni: from 1986

Yoweri Museveni was briefly Uganda's Minister of Defence during the interim government after the fall of Amin. When Obote returned to power as President in 1980, and his party (the UPC) won a majority in elections widely regarded as fraudulent, Museveni refused to accept this turning back of the clock. He withdrew into the bush and forms a guerrilla group, subsequently known as the National Resistance Army (NRA). Doesn't this sound eerily similar to Kony’s LRA???

During the 1980s, the NRA steadily extended the area of southern and western Uganda under its control. Okello, after toppling Obote in 1985, proved no match for Museveni. By January 1986, the NRA was in control of the capital, Kampala. Museveni proclaimed a government of national unity, with himself as President. It was a turning point in Uganda's history.

A decade later, the country was back under the rule of law (apart from some northern regions, where rebellion rumbles on). The economy was making vast strides (an annual growth rate of 5% in the early 1990s and of more than 8% in 1996). There were improvements in education, health and transport. International approval brought a willingness to invest and to lend. The nation, emerging from two decades of appalling chaos, was suddenly almost a model for Africa.

The only flaw, to western eyes, was that the one-party rule. It was an essentially pragmatic state in which good ideas from any part of the political spectrum were welcome (even Uganda's kings now have a role restored to them) but the new constitution of 1995 limited executive power to the National Resistance Movement, the party emerging from Museveni's guerrilla army.

Even today, Museveni strongly criticizes western insistence on the multiparty model of democracy, seeing it as simplistic to assume that a single pattern can be appropriate in every circumstance. In his view, parties in Africa, often based on tribal allegiances, are only likely to frustrate democracy.

Museveni argues instead that the important elements are the benefits taken for granted in a functioning multiparty democracy - universal suffrage, the secret ballot, a free press and the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers. He describes his Uganda as a 'no-party democracy', claiming that people of widely differing views can argue their case to the electorate as competing individuals (it is campaigning as a party that is banned). Museveni, as current ruling President of Uganda, regularly promises a date in the future for the legitimizing of opposition parties.