Charles Peter Mayiga, 45, is a ball of energy. His book, King on the Throne, probably underemphasises the physical energy with some intellectual flourish that has informed the rise, times, trials and tribulations of Ronald Mutebi II’s second kingdom.

While the rise of the kingdom-- a happy tale of eventual triumph that brought the country together at the enthronement of Ronald Mutebi in Naggalabi in 1993-- is covered in detail in many secondary sources, Mutebi has a unique distinction of having brought Uganda positive coverage more than any other individual in the international press. It is very much an element of short sightedness that Mutebi’s iconic status as a symbol of one of the oldest unbroken cultural lineages that points to the earliest migration of Bantu speaking peoples in what was once a vast forest has not been used more.

The cultural kingdom seems mostly settled. It is almost foolhardy and naïve to imagine its existence in another form or proscribing it. Succession in Buganda involves both cultural rituals but also, more critically, inter-generational wealth transfer. At the helm of this process are hundreds of royal appointments, clan leaders who control what is left of traditional lands in Buganda where gems of history are buried and kept all over Buganda. The dilemma of handling these properties was explained in a piece that did not receive a lot of attention a decade ago when the former Administrator General, OMJ Ndaula, handed over records and titles entrusted to his office in the interregnum period between the abolition of kingdoms in 1966 and their return in 1993.

It’s the political kingdom that appears to be most difficult. Mayiga’s book does not pronounce itself on the issue. It is actually very difficult to pinpoint what Buganda wants. Many pages of the book are devoted to the negotiation of the regional tier between 2003 and 2005- a form of government that is inhibited by constitutional logic, structurally deficient and in the field of public administration, the weakest form of government. Uganda’s 1995 constitutional order has carefully manipulated lower local governments, turning districts into political props. They enjoy political powers without any responsibility to raise revenue.

Most of Uganda’s districts (close to 100) rely on block transfers for most of Uganda’s revenue. District chairpersons are central government employees and so are their executives. All other structures of the district-- committees and commissions-- in most areas now exist only in name. So do the lower local governments- the sub-counties.

It is very difficult to imagine how the regional tier for which the government proposed a paltry Shs6 billion in funding support will have any impact on the welfare of one of Uganda’s most complex geo-political units. In Buganda, prosperity and extreme poverty exist side by side. You only have to browse the pages of down market Bukedde whose style is sometimes everything sensational, to understand this (crime, petty theft, etc) and when these stories momentarily step into the national conscience like the ritual murders furthered from time to time in the pursuit of economic opportunities.

Mr Museveni’s social policies moan about poverty but do little more than act as transfer payments to keep his political supporters happy. Federalism attempts to answer this by providing for specialisation- leaving economic and social development at the state level and national economic coordination, defence and foreign affairs at the national level. The result would shrink government while regionalism would only layer it; adding another cheque box to which long suffering taxpayers would send another cheque.

It is not clear from reading Mr Mayiga’s book whether “closing the deal” ever considered this. It is clear that Buganda’s strategies both in 1995 and 2005 were easy to shoot down. In 1995, Buganda’s proposals got lost in a naïve formulation that included a controversial support for a five-year term for the Movement with little or no conditions that gave cover to constitutionally dubious malapropisms like the “constitutional” one party-Movement system.

In 2005, the revised quest for regionalism was unnecessary because it was tagged to perhaps Museveni’s most shameful political project- the amendment of the Constitution to remove presidential term limits. Today, some of these discussions now dither between whether Mengo officials should be elected- a logical result in a federal system but a time-bomb in the current hybrid system where these officials would, like the LC V chairmen, simply be employees of the central government.

But again as Mayiga himself admits several times in his book, Buganda’s relationship with Museveni is a little bit more complex. It has a domestic side and a public side. But again the tendencies most associated with Buganda have a correlation with other parts of the country. Arch Museveni nemesis Yusuf Nsubuga Nsambu, Buganda’s deputy Katikkiro and head of the traditionalist wing in Mengo for example rode into the CA with a 60 vote margin on the back of critical government support. These mysteries and several other failed Museveni-Buganda projects provide interesting analyses. Kimeze is just one in a long list.

This is the second part of a three-part series
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