Why Makubuya is pushing hard to change names of Kampala streets

In June, Mr Makubuya made a special presentation to Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) on the heritage, toponyms and nomenclature of the city’s roads and streets on account of his book’s research, which draws from mostly British declassified colonial files in the UK and the private archives of Buganda’s royal family.

His invitation by KCCA was inspired by its strong belief “that a conversation about the aforesaid subject matter is absolutely necessary and vital in guiding the policy formulation process as we advance the transformation agenda of the city,” the invitation letter reads in part.

The presentation not only awed city officials, it added spark to exchanges about street names and decolonisation more broadly that are unceasing on all major social media platforms, an indication to Makubuya that people feel strongly about both issues.

“It has been eye opening, including in KCCA itself. I have people commenting on it from virtually across the country. Of course, there are views that support retention of the controversial names. But I suspect those views are not based on a full knowledge on the past deeds of these colonial agents,” Mr Makubuya explained.

“My proposal is that KCCA or Parliament sets up a committee of experts on cultural heritage to look into the gravity of crimes these colonial agents committed and advise on the renaming process that is more patriotic and promotes legacies that are worthwhile to Ugandans.”

What’s in a name?
In 2017, KCCA developed a set of guidelines on how to name or rename roads in Kampala as part of its transformation agenda. The guidelines emphasise the need for names that act as reminders of local history, culture and citizens, the opportunity to reflect all aspects of the city and country’s history in a fair manner and to address or replace names which are considered controversial or offensive.
Such thinking is rooted in a dominant paradigm that place, and/or even object, names are serious business because they actively impact how a people or community identify, perceive and memorialise itself.

As Ngugi wa Thiong’O argued long ago in Re-membering Africa, a collection of essays first published in 2009, “Names have everything to do with how we identify objects, classify them, and remember them.”
Even roses, Ngugi added, however much by any other name they might still smell as sweet, “the truth is that [their] identity would no longer be expressed in terms of roses but, instead, would assume that of the new name.”

Ngugi has further observed how it is not merely to demonstrate power and domination that all colonial conquests and systems of foreign occupation seek to remake the land, its people and their cultures in the conqueror’s image. Rather, the aim is to erase and plant a new memory that “becomes the new marker of geographical identity, covering up an older memory, or more strictly speaking, burying the native memory of place.”

Such is its impact that “even today, years after achievement of political independence, the African continent is often identified as Anglophone, Francophone or Lusaphone.”
Thus, KCCA’s thinking also reflects a growing trend towards a re-evaluation of colonialism and slavery from which many of its street names derive their origin.

East African perspective
In East Africa, Kenya has been the most proactive in this regard. Soon after gaining independence in 1963, it embarked on “the erasure and re-inscription of street names…to renounce the colonial regime and its ideology, and redefine the city’s identity with toponymic symbols of nationalism and pan-Africanism,” notes Melissa Wangui Wanjiru and Kosuke Matsubara in their 2017 study on the role played by street names in the decolonisation of the urban landscape in post-colonial Nairobi.

“In the process, street names acted as sites for the restitution of justice and arenas for reputational politics, spatial scales of memory, and symbols of ethnic diversity and unity,” because “during the period of British rule (1895-1963), toponymy was used as an exercise of power and ideological dominance over space with the purpose of reflecting British control,” they add.

In 1972, Uganda too renamed roads and natural landmarks such as waterfalls, lakes and parks for similar reasons as Kenya. As president Idi Amin, who decreed the changes, reportedly explained, “It is time we took stock of ourselves with a view to restoring our cultural heritage, human dignity and respect, which has hitherto been denied to us by forces of imperialism and their agents.”

That is how, for instance, Stanley Road was renamed John Akii-Bua, the record gold medallist in that year’s Olympics. Unfortunately, some of the names were rescinded after Amin’s ouster.
In South Africa, more than 1,000 names of roads, residential areas, suburbs and national geographical places have been changed since the end of apartheid in 1994 to decolonise the heritage landscape and reflect the country’s new post-colonial, post-apartheid and democratic reality.

Rhodes (and his ilk) Must Fall
In 2015, South Africa sparked a new wave of the re-evaluation of colonialism and slavery when a section of students demanded the removal from the University of Cape Town the statue of Cecil Rhodes.
A ruthless and openly racist British bloodhound, Rhodes raided, captured and named present day Zambia and Zimbabwe after himself among his multitude of transgressions to those territories and their peoples.

As Rhodes was to South Africa, so was Captain Frederick Lugard, who opened up Uganda on behalf of the exploitative Imperial British East African Company, and a host of British military officers to Uganda and East Africa generally – bar naming cobbled territories after themselves.

These fellows undertook violent invasions, dispossessed natives of their lands, tortured, castrated and committed several other atrocious abuses on them. Twice now, Britain has had to quickly settle out of court with victims of their agents’ injustices and repressions in Kenya and Bunyoro “rather than confront its former subjects in court and stand the graphic details of their wrenching testimony,” Mr Makubuya notes in his book.

Mr Makubuya, therefore, says the colonial naming was a deliberate order that aimed to honour key aristocrats, agents and benefactors of the colonial enterprise. For instance, Lake Nalubaale, among the Baganda or Namlolwe, among the Kenyan Luo was renamed Victoria, an English monarch at the time.
He now advocates for a change of this colonial names.

Renaming realities

To rename a road in Kampala is quite an elaborate process that begins with an interested party filing an application to that effect with KCCA. According to its guidelines, interested parties are limited to the land owner, whose property’s address fronts the road, a local reputable committee such as a village or parish council, or an organisation such as a church, mosque or education institution.
Mr Peter Kaujju, the KCCA spokesperson, says the institution can only move itself “under special consideration like government requesting or due to public interest like in the case of [Stephen] Kiprotich.”

Mr Kiprotich bagged an Olympic gold medal in 2012, the second ever in Uganda’s history after Akii-Bua’s in 1972. Yet whereas Akii-Bua quickly had Stanley Road renamed after him by president Amin, nothing similar has happened for Kiprotich seven years on, a clear demonstration of the limits of the public’s demands or pressures like Mr Makubuya is mounting.
Coupled with such limits is a section of people who are downright opposed to the whole decolonisation project. In their view, it is a simplistic, even vain, attempt at erasing/rewriting a history where, according to some, such as the provocative critic Timothy Kalyegira, things were better than they are to date.

Mr Makubuya says he is alive to such frustration and discontent about Kampala’s dysfunctionality in many areas. Yet that, in his view, should not distract us from correcting historical injustices whose impact lives to date.
“Given our political history level of knowledge of the past and a general apathy on change, the cynicism in some quarters is not surprising,” Mr Makubuya says.