Binaisa didn’t do much to protect Uganda from ‘black aristocrats’

When South Africa’s pro-apartheid Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, was assassinated, a British World War veteran was asked whether he would attend his ‘friend’s funeral’. The veteran, who on his part was ailing, replied: “Oh no! It is no good to go and die at a friend’s funeral”, or words to that effect.

Similarly, when former President Godfrey Binaisa died last month, I was indisposed and could neither attend his funeral nor write a tribute to celebrate his life. His politics apart, Binaisa and some members of his family were personal friends of mine, and it is for this reason that I request my readers to permit me share at least a word with them in his memory.

In one of his series which appeared in this newspaper on August 6, Fred Guweddeko, a social researcher based at Makerere University, stated, “the life of the late President was characterised by rejection, contradiction and conflict with the poverty, ethics, social and political values of his missionary calling in the Anglican Church.”

To emphasise this point, Mr Guweddeko referred to the late President’s father who was a Canon in the Anglican Church and observed that when, in 1979, Binaisa became President of Uganda “against popular feelings and in the midst of violence, Canon Binaisa declined to bless this achievement”; that he said his son should have not accepted to be “the dumping place for a stolen presidency”. Guweddeko did not give the source of his information.

On the contrary, the Canon, who was in his 80s, told me when we met in Rome in April 1980 during the consecration of the Uganda Martyrs’ Church, that God had blessed his long life with three great events: a) his visit to the Vatican, b) the invitation that Cardinal Emmanuel Nsubuga had just extended to him to visit Jerusalem where the Cardinal was heading after the Rome event, and c) the election of his son to the presidency of Uganda while he (the Canon) was still alive.

The Canon and his daughter, Ms Mukwaya, were part of the Ugandan delegation that President Binaisa had sent to the consecration. The President, who was to lead the delegation, could not make it due to other pressing state duties.

Early in his one-year reign, President Binaisa had, through the Ugandan Embassy, expressed his desire to visit the Holy See, and to be received in audience by the Holy Father. The response from Pope John Paul II was quick and positive, but Binaisa was removed from the presidency before he made it to Rome.

Among the other businesses Binaisa left unfinished was a commitment to protect his country against ‘black autocrats’ that he made during his post Second World War days at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

John Stonehouse, British Labour Party Member of Parliament and later minister who, in the early 1950s, worked with the Federation of Uganda African Farmers for two years under Ignatius Musazi, mentions this commitment in his book, Prohibited Immigrant, first published in 1960.

Stonehouse said the problem of establishing democracy before the colonialists left Africa intrigued him, and that he discussed it extensively with students at LSE who included Charles Njonjo, former Attorney General of Kenya and Godfrey Binaisa, former Attorney General and President of Uganda. Stonehouse’s views about the continent’s future are as true today as they were at the time he expressed them.

He observed then that while the African landlord class remained very powerful, other elements wanted to take over. Yet “the problem for the imperial power in Africa is not only to transfer responsibility to Africans – that is relatively easy – but to transfer power in such a way that the new system of government has the respect and consent of the governed, and the capacity of lasting.”

“It is then that the tremendous political energies of Africans can be harnessed to the task of conquering the more complex enemies of ignorance, poverty and disease which cannot be easily defeated if independence results in successive violent political upheavals as different groups jockey for power,” Stonehouse stated.

He further pointed out that a democratic structure of one man one vote was most likely to have lasting success providing that through democratic institutions, Africans could learn to protect themselves against ‘black autocrats’.

Referring to Binaisa and Njonjo, Stonehouse said their response to his concerns was often: “Give us our independence now; we shall worry about such problems after.” Unfortunately, they were never to worry. When independence came, they joined the ‘black autocrats’ in their countries and assisted them (and themselves) in perpetually staying in power.

Mr Kiwanuka is a journalist and retired foreign service officer
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