The 1900 Buganda Agreement that sealed colonial rule

Having captured, and exiled to the Seychelles Islands, Kabaka Mwanga of Buganda and Omukama Kabalega of Bunyoro, the British found that they had a free hand to impose their rule over Uganda.

This responsibility fell on Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston, who arrived in Uganda in 1899 and took up the role of consul general over the Uganda Protectorate. Johnston’s main job would be to ensure the signing of what came to be known as the 1900 (B)Uganda Agreement.

Few documents can be said to have shaped Ugandan politics and the economy as this singular document, signed on March 10, 1900, did.

Writing in Buganda and British Overrule 1900-1955, Donald Anthony Low and Robert Cranford Pratt argue that few agreements “have been of such consequence…few have been so detailed, few have attained such importance in the relationship with the colonial people.”

The agreement had three major clauses (as well as many more by implication).

First, the agreement recognised the British government’s authority over Buganda Kingdom beyond the ‘protection’ that Lugard’s 1890 treaty with Mwanga had offered. Although the Kabaka remained the direct ruler of his people, his power was now exercised with the consent of the British. The imperial power event went as far as giving itself the power to approve the person nominated by the Lukiiko for the position of Kabaka – providing, perhaps in mitigation, an annual stipend of £500 to the king.

The agreement cemented the position of the collaborator chiefs – the Katikkiro (prime minister), chief justice and treasurer who were to receive £300 per year on top of acting as regents for the child-king Kabaka Chwa II.

In addition, Buganda lost the rights to collect tributes from vassal kingdoms such as Busoga, with the British not only taking over that but also introducing two new taxes; a hut tax and a gun tax, both of four shillings per year. Natives were restricted to a maximum of five guns per person while the Kabaka was, in effect, restricted to only 50 and his officials between three and 20.

Thus, while Mwanga as Kabaka had, less than five years earlier, mobilised over 2,000 guns in his revolt, his son and successors could now only have less than a tenth of that – and required licences from the British over those.
Secondly, the agreement attempted to outline a legislative framework, specifying the role of the Lukiiko, which would now, in effect, share power with the Kabaka. Even here, the British gave with one hand and took with the other; while the Kabaka had the authority to appoint notables to sit with the county chiefs in the council, he could not sack them without the consent of the colonial officials.

The third and perhaps most significant development caused by the agreement revolved around land. Land had always been a political and economic tool in Buganda held by the Kabaka on behalf of his people. It was used as a tool of patronage to command the loyalty of men and chiefs but, apart from clan burial grounds, was under the thumb of the Kabaka.

The agreement changed that. Buganda’s land area, then estimated at 19,600 square miles went from being held by the Kabaka, to being divided up into four categories. Some 350 square miles went to the estate of the king, (the queen mother and other royals got some of their own outside this), while some was given to the three chiefs and the offices they held. Another 8,000 square miles went to create new landed gentry – mainly of collaborators – while the rest turned into ‘crown’ land, held by the colonial government.

Proponents would go on to argue that this created a progressive culture of private land ownership which would go on to spur land use and economic growth in Buganda in the decades that follow.

Land ownership changed
Critics, however, point out that this privatisation of land left hundreds of thousands of peasants (Bakopi) landless and disenfranchised. While they had not owned the land previously, now they could be actively evicted from it by the landed class that received this windfall secured, soon after, by land titles confirming their ownership.

It created a stalemate that continues today in Uganda and which subsequent laws, from Amin’s decree in the 1970s to the current Land Act had tried to solve without success; one in which people own land they do not use – with another set of people using that same land without owning it.

The 1900 agreement also had some other consequences, including giving Buganda what came to be seen as a favoured position in relations with the colonial government. (Although the British signed agreements with Toro in 1900 and Ankole in 1901, they were not as detailed or privileged, while they did not bother to sign any such agreements with the other territories that, with time, came to be part of the protectorate). Notably, none of the other kingdoms had signed prior treaties acknowledging or accepting Britain’s protection as Buganda had done.

The question of Buganda’s place in a wider Uganda would remain at the heart of political contests in the country and, some would argue, continues to manifest itself in Uganda’s contemporary politics.

It did not help matters that, having signed the agreement, the British, using Lugard’s methods of indirect rule, then turned to their Baganda collaborators to try and extend their influence over the rest of Uganda.

In many areas it went down without much incident and would help spread aspects of Buganda’s culture, such as language, food and dress but in other areas – particularly in Bunyoro – it turned into a form of sub-imperialism that would have dire and disastrous consequences.

Continues tomorrow

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