Will Katikkiro Mayiga sustain his robust tone?

On June 24, the new Katikkiro of Buganda, Charles Peter Mayiga, delivered his inaugural speech before members of the Buganda high council and legislative body known as the Lukiiko.

Mayiga, a lawyer and from the Omutima Omuyanja (Heart) clan, is the youngest katikkiro (the Luganda term for the viceroy of the king) in 40 years.
At times Mayiga’s speech sounded more like a contribution at the old Mambo Bado CBS FM town hall public talk shows started by Radio One with its “Ekimeeza”, before they were banned by the government in 2009 than a formal address to the Lukiiko. He spoke with street language, the way President Museveni does, replete with anecdotes, referring to members of the audience by name.

It was a well-structured, humorous speech, built around what he termed five strategic, all-important issues facing Buganda today (“Ensonga Ssemasonga”, he called them).
Mayiga tried to break out of the narrow-minded, inward-looking mould that Buganda has for years been accused of, by addressing himself to national issues since, as he explained, a Katikkiro is of necessity also a national leader in the wider Uganda.
In his examples, he also discussed the laws created by the apartheid governments of South Africa to suppress the Black majority. Seeking to show Baganda that in the long-term justice finally triumphs, he pointed out the 70-year period it took for Italy to finally, recently, return an obelisk that the invading Italian army had looted from the historic town of Axum in northern Ethiopia in 1936.
In tone and theme, the speech was defiant from start to finish, unapologetic at stating Buganda’s demands, especially the now almost taboo topic of federo, a federal status for Buganda within a federal Uganda.

Federo dilemma
Federo is the term that most unsettles Museveni about Buganda, as it does many non-Baganda. It undercuts the President’s authority or limitless powers. It ends the servant-master relationship between the central government and Buganda, in which Buganda is forced into the humiliating position of having to entreat one man, President Museveni, just to get what the government legally and morally owes Buganda.
It creates a self-sufficiency that renders irrelevant most aspects of the central government’s reason for being.

The thought of Baganda united, working as Baganda, able to tax and invest those taxes, create thriving royal businesses, build roads --- the thought of a powerful, proud Buganda, in other words, sends fears of the unknown through the minds of many, from State House to smaller tribes.

Over the last few years, the mood in Buganda has increasingly turned toward resignation. Patient negotiations with the central government over everything from rent arrears owed Buganda to a return of property the government still occupies and other matters have yielded few results, if any.

All the support the Buganda Kingdom gave the NRA guerrillas in late 1985 after the then Crown Prince Ronald Mutebi toured NRA-held areas in western Uganda, appear to have come to naught.

The warm relations that had been building up from 1986 and climaxing in the coronation of Mutebi as king in July 1993 --- relations that helped not only legitimise the Museveni presidency but also created the image in the southern half of Uganda of the NRM as a civilised and progressive government --- have all but disappeared and only a polite but tense co-existence remains today.

Loyalty
Many Baganda are doing what is taking place in many parts of Africa and Central Asia: Turning back to the basic tribal loyalty after getting convinced that the central government either has let them down or is even working against their interests.

In the Middle East and parts of Africa, this return to the basics of one’s core identity are leading to the rise in Islamic militancy or, as in the case of Mali, Libya, northern Nigeria, Somalia, Niger, Algeria, Yemen, the Kenyan coast and Tanzania’s archipelago of Zanzibar, this reaction to alienation from the central government is leading to calls to break away and create Islamist states.

It is not an uncommon sight around Kampala to see the Blue-white-blue Buganda flag being defiantly flown at schools, car repair garages, markets and businesses instead of the Uganda Flag.

The Buganda anthem “Ekitibwa Kya Buganda” is usually sang with much more vigour and conviction at public events than the Ugandan Anthem “Oh Uganda” and demonstrators in Kampala and Masaka often burst into the Buganda anthem as clouds of police tear gas billow around them.

To the average Muganda, while Buganda’s administrative seat at Mengo does from time to time disappoint them, Mengo is still fundamentally different from the central government.
Mengo cannot launch a military attack on Baganda, fire tear gas at them or throw the Kabaka’s subjects in jail without trial. Mengo can be incompetent but Mengo cannot be cruel to its own people, at least not since Baganda page boys were burnt to death at Namugongo in 1886.

On mission
Mayiga, who once had a newspaper column called “Shooting from the Hip”, represents this youthful, defiant movement in contemporary Africa and the Muslim world, in which if the central government no longer works for them, then one feels it is their duty to turn to alternatives, especially those that go back centuries before the modern nation-state.
Still, major challenges face the new Malcom X-ish Katikiiro. The first and most obvious is that State House (which is what the Uganda government has come down to) will not be pleased by this firebrand speech by Mayiga.

Not at this time of growing and visible public political unrest. Not with a staggering 83 per cent youth unemployment rate countrywide. And not at a time when the true intentions and capabilities of a renegade army general in London have not yet fully been measured.
The state will try its best to undercut Mayiga’s influence. What methods it will use, Mayiga will need to know.

Buganda often tends to reply too much on goodwill and the emotional support of its people, but is not always effective at detailed organisation and planning.

Mayiga need much political information, what in statecraft is called intelligence.
Mayiga must make his first task to set up a solid information-gathering system to help him understand the political and social atmosphere around him.

Without it, like most of his predecessors and most of us Ugandan citizens, he would find himself operating in an environment of complex power play that can derail even the best of his plans and intentions.

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