Buganda dilemma: Reply to Serumaga
On Wednesday, Daily Monitor published a long, but incisive and provocative article by Robert Kalundi Serumaga. Serumaga is both brilliant and brutal. It is futile to attempt any sort of summary here. One has to read his piece in its entirety as it covers substantial ground and speaks forcefully to the core of the problems of the Uganda project despite Serumaga’s rather gratuitously combative and sometimes sardonic tone.
I should say though I was somewhat taken aback that Serumaga fell for the cheap charge that Bobi Wine and his new political party embody Buganda ethno-nationalism. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Ganda ethno-nationalism label flies in the face of Mr Wine’s ecumenical following and his movement’s resonance with the truly nationwide clamour to end the decadent and retrogressive rule of Mr Museveni. The ‘tribal card’ thrown at Buganda too is utterly ludicrous and dwelling on it is falling for the bait.
Serumaga concluded his article by underlining what he called the ‘Buganda dilemma.’ He sees it as the lone voice, ostensibly through the intelligentsia like Mr Serugama or the Buganda government in Mengo, in denouncing a colonially created system of government and demanding a return to indigenous institutions, norms and procedures, for the benefit of all, but with Buganda doing the heavy lifting. I disagree.
The crux of Serumaga’s missive is the ‘Buganda question,’ which has dogged Uganda’s political development since the British colonialists cobbled together the contraption that became Uganda. Uganda is only about a century old, by contrast, Buganda has a centuries-old political history and a monarchical institution complete with an illustrious and elaborate administrative apparatus. At the risk of being simplistic, the Buganda question is the conundrum of reconciling a century-old national State – Uganda –, designed as a republic, with a centuries-old subnational unit located at the heart of the former and presided over by a monarch. In my view, this is the Buganda dilemma. It is also the Uganda dilemma because it is not unique to Buganda. Uganda is a hotchpotch.
On the eve of independence, there was an attempt to forge a compromise, but the settlement set in motion in 1962, unfortunately unravelled hardly five years later. Returning to the 1962 federal arrangement has been a rallying call, fiercely supported, but also treated with suspicion especially by the current rulers.
The Baganda are deeply proud of their monarchy and have unparalleled reverence for their monarch. This is patently their fundamental right, but which has to be exercised in a republican State, for what it is worth, where Executive authority, theoretically, is conferred by the popular will of the public.
Beyond the celebration of Buganda’s venerable heritage and the social power bestowed upon the Kabaka, the crux of contention is the type of federalism as demanded by Baganda and other Ugandans who believe that the federal system is a critical solution to governing Uganda efficiently and effectively. Perhaps the logical starting point is whether Ugandans consider federalism, which in practice would likely be different from federo, is in fact what we need as a country.
Serumaga, and other Baganda intelligentsia, may well argue that Buganda’s aspirations and interests cannot be subordinated to the thinking of the wider Uganda. The problem though is that Buganda entered a marriage, whether forced or consented to, for which divorce is nearly impossible.
This is not unique to Uganda. Perhaps the most pronounced African case playing out in recent years and which Serumaga has actually written about is that of the Oromo in Ethiopia. As in Uganda, the herculean task in Ethiopia’s ancient and territorially contested political landscape remains how to manage a collage of units some of which have long fought for self-determination.
The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) fought the military dictatorship of Mengistu Hailemariam along with other rebel groups, including Meles Zenawi’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front, with the sole purpose of seceding Oromia from Ethiopia. With Mengistu defeated and the rebels in charge in 1991, secession was simply untenable: Oromia is the largest region and includes the capital, Addis Ababa. Its secession would mean the end of Ethiopia as a nation state. This is the same pragmatic dilemma that stares at Uganda, and which Serumaga alluded to albeit with a dose of paternalism: The Ugandan project is intimately tied to Buganda.
The way out is to reimagine the Ugandan union in a way that accommodates the demands of its constituent elements.
Mr Khisa is assistant professor at North Carolina State University (USA).
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