History: Did Britain protect, patronise or plunder (B)Uganda?

You’ve written a highly impressive book. How long did it take you to complete?
Approximately five years but it could have been shorter if I was working on it on a continuous basis. Also, because it was my first major work, there are certain things I know now which, if I knew earlier, would have taken me a shorter time such as finding a publisher, the editorial process which is time consuming, and agreeing on things such as the cover, fonts, paper and packaging generally.

Say that Britain hadn’t declassified information from the colonial era that you heavily rely on. Would the book not have been written?
Certainly, it was one of the most important aspects but the driving factors are about three: one is the lack of information. My generation, which did not live in the time of kingship back when it wielded political authority, are just scratching and searching for this history.
Although some people have written about the subject, none of them have treated it the way I have. They have approached Uganda as a given; a country that is united.
They talk about never-ending conflicts but never really go to the roots of instability, the lack of integration or all these differences that we have.
Second, in my position as an official in the kingdom, I felt I was in an authoritative position if I wrote something people would read it.
I also had the privilege of accessing a lot of information perhaps that many people do not have. So, ensuring that there is contextually proper information when we talk about the pressing issues that tend to dominate public discussions such as demand for federalism as a system of government and generally what appropriate political system suits our circumstances, Buganda’s position in Uganda and land, among others.
Third, I was challenged by so many people to expand a few articles I had written on Buganda into a fully-fledged work.

You’re devoted to shatter this notion that Uganda was a “British protectorate” in ways their other territories were not. But does it really matter by what name the imperialist project was called?
It really does not matter but you see there is a misconception about our relationship with Britain at two levels.
First, within Uganda is this sense that Buganda was privileged and it was given undue recognition and favours by the British and because of that it maintains a stranglehold over the rest of the country.
Second, is the sense that British colonialism was the best thing that ever happened to us because we were a ‘protectorate’ unlike our friends in Kenya or other territories.
The reality is that, on closer scrutiny, Britain did many things to undermine the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Buganda. So, it is important to unpack this “protection” by asking who and what was being protected.
If you lift the veil of ‘protectorate’, by reading the book for instance, then you see what was really being protected, which continues at different levels even up to today.

That’s absurd, isn’t it? Why do we remain beholden to them?
It is at two levels. One is really lack of awareness. If you talked to our political class today to find out to what extent they are aware of these forces of colonialism, neo-colonialism and globalisation, you will be surprised about how much people know and whether they consciously, in their day-to-day business, think about these kinds of forces.
There is great lack of a concrete understanding of the mechanics of imperialism, colonialism, how badly our systems were affected at the exit of Britain from Uganda.
Second, the colonial system left in place an elaborate structure, which we carry on with and have never really sat down to understand and even challenge.
So, what I have been able to demonstrate in the book is the continuing powerful influence of the West over our political and economic affairs in Uganda to the extent that regime changes are subject to the wishes of someone else.

Maybe it is because of the artificiality of our country. Many disparate peoples who share little in common are bound up together such that an alliance with external forces presents more immediate and tangible benefits to one’s own nation.
Partly. I think if there was more understanding, cooperation at the African level we could confront some of these things in a better way. But because we are so balkanised as countries, we cannot confront these forces in a singular way.
If we were more structured and aware of these forces at a continental level, I think we would do better than we are doing now.
Countries in the far east have developed a model that allows indigenous capital and other structures to grow but also relate with these other forces.
What they have different from us is that they understand these forces more than we do and they are doing something about it in a more effective way than we are.

But those countries do not have national identity crises emerging out of their formation in the same way we are – a subject well tackled most recently by Prof Apollo Nsibambi in his book National Integration in Uganda 1962-2013, which you make great reference to.
I do not think it is a fundamental problem. I think the principal problem we have here in Uganda is that we have not sufficiently invested in education to create opportunities and the kind of politics that would allow especially peripheral communities to develop so that people do not have to trek all the way from there to the centre to eke out a living.
The fact that people have distinct cultural systems is immaterial to some extent. If we had had purposeful leadership right from independence that was conscious of the differences, of the colonial methods of divide and rule, one that was bent on uniting our diversities around some common purposes, then we would be having a whole different conversation.
The leadership we have had to date has tended to take Uganda as if it was made in heaven. Yet Uganda was created by Britain for certain reasons and in certain ways, which are inimical, in many ways, to the forging of a national ethos.
You cannot carry on with such a structure unchanged and hope to produce different results.

Britain has said it is done apologising for its colonial history. Yet you say not so fast. If Buganda especially feels it was grossly sinned against, why have you not constituted charges against Britain the same way Bunyoro or the Kikuyu have successfully done?
The Kikuyu Mau Mau survivors hired lawyers in the UK who helped them investigate and dig up these records.
If they had not been found the British would not have conceded to having committed any atrocities. Because remember Britain had a whole military-like operation (Operation Legacy) as they prepared to leave to destroy any evidence that would expose anything other than a glorifying account of their time here.
So, there is work to be done and the book is probably part of it. You need to mobilise evidence and present it to a point where the British will not be able to deny it.
I have outlined what we need to do, which we have not had a real opportunity to given the tumultuous times we have suffered. But also in 1962, Buganda believed it had got the best deal possible as a semi-autonomous entity in Uganda.
However, that was short-lived and Buganda has never been the same, since 1967 when it was abolished, in terms of its authority, power, capacity to make any of these cases.
Even when it was restored in 1993, its immediate priority could not have been to fight colonial impunity. There has been a lot of work to rebuild, re-establish the institutions of the kingdom and I think some progress has been made.

Why does Buganda like to enter negotiations so quickly even when your history is replete with deals gone bad? Do you simply have a surplus of trust or is deal making just your way of life and you can’t help yourself?
Many times, when you are placed in a difficult situation where you cannot easily exit you are forced to negotiate and find the best possible way you can live in that situation.
That has been Buganda’s predicament throughout our history. Besides, we generally are pacifist. We rather resolve differences in a civic way as opposed to a violent or militaristic way.
That said, Buganda needs to learn that if it wants sovereignty, it needs to have a mechanism to defend it.

Buganda obsesses about sovereignty in a form of federal governance. Why have you never been interested in swallowing the whole of Uganda as Governor Walter Coutts observed in 1962 or Prof Mahmood Mamdani more recently in 2011?
Buganda has never had ambitions to swallow Uganda. It is not interested and is in no need for that.
There is a way in which it was sufficiently happy with managing its institutions within the territory it had. Its agenda has never been to rule, say, the Karimojong or the Bamba.
This is not withstanding the fact that historically it has expanded through conquest and assimilation. Times have changed.
So, it would be presumptuous for Buganda’s leaders to say now because we are the centre and we have these advantages let us be the overall rulers.
We are interested to manage our business and let others do so with theirs as well. We don’t take our being the majority, a point around which Mamdani argues, as a godgiven opportunity to rule over others.
We do pretty well with embracing people from all walks of life and that is why when we talk about Buganda, we are not talking about ethnicity but a nation that brings together people with different ethnic backgrounds.
So, there has never been justification why we should swallow the British project.

Rather than the so-called ‘Buganda Question’, which tends to cloud our politics, you say what essentially requires tackling is the ‘Uganda Question’ of lack of integration through a national dialogue. Is the one currently in the works sufficient for the purpose?
If it receives full government support, if we sort out the suspicions lingering about it, identify and agree on the essential issues, the processes of getting views and what to do with them thereafter, it would be effective.
National dialogue is so critical in creating a country that is stable, peaceful and focused on the growth and development of all its peoples. It has been tried elsewhere successfully.

Relations between Buganda and the central government have thawed recently. Is it because of the change of tack we see from Mengo?
It has never been Buganda’s policy to be confrontational with the central government. Often, we are put in a position that requires us to resist or defend ourselves.
In such situations we are relentless. This is then misinterpreted in some circles as being confrontational.
Yet whenever we have been called upon to make a case on land, federalism or the Kabaka’s position, we have cooperated and done what we have had to do but there is a limit to engagement with the state over what we can and cannot accept.
So, we will continue to engage whenever there is an opportunity to do that with the state but that will not stop us from doing what we can do in terms of developing our people, our part of the country, supporting the Kabaka.
We are on a journey of rediscovery, of rebuilding Buganda and it is not one that will take a short time. Books such as mine are part of that journey to educate the young ones and keep the fire burning.
But it is not just a Buganda specific publication because of its expansive scope. Many other people from different parts of the country will find their circumstances reflected in it and, hopefully, use it to better understand and historicise our current struggles.