Coming to Africa: Explorers find a not-so-dark continent

The scramble by early explorers like John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant to find the source of the River Nile and their triumphant tales retold in British newspapers continued to draw attention to the interior of Africa which, until then, had been regarded as the Dark Continent because little was known about it.

Two explorers who would follow suit, Henry Morton Stanley and Samuel White Baker, would discover that although the Dark Continent did not have the same levels of development as Europe and the coastal areas, there was method and a remarkable level of organised structures.

In the case of Baker, it was a lesson that almost cost him his life. Baker, an intrepid explorer and hunter, had travelled south, becoming the first white person to visit Lake Albert in 1861.

In 1972, having been appointed Governor General of the Equatorial Province (present day South Sudan), he returned to Bunyoro leading a military expedition of about 1,700 Egyptian troops, seeking to raise the Egyptian flag over the territory.

Division of Bunyoro
The Omukama of Bunyoro Kabalega Chwa II had only been king for a couple of years. Although Bunyoro was seeking to trade and acquire guns to counter the threat from Buganda, which was obtaining guns from its trade in ivory, and later slaves, with the Arabs based on the Indian Ocean coast, it was not expecting the Arabs who came down from areas of Egyptian influence to try to capture land and power.

In 1830 Bunyoro had been dealt a blow when Prince Kaboyo had led a rebellion in which part of the kingdom broke away to form the Toro Kingdom. By the middle of the century Bunyoro had been reduced to a quarter of its former size.

It was in such a state of uncertainty in the kingdom that Baker arrived in Bunyoro in April 1872 and soon after declared the kingdom annexed to Egypt.

Incensed, Kabalega launched an attack on the Egyptian garrison at Masindi and although the foreign troops had superior weaponry, Kabalega’s troops put up a dogged fight and routed Baker’s army. Baker was forced to withdraw to Patiko in Acholiland where he started the construction of a fort.

To justify his defeat, Baker, who was also a prolific writer, would spread word in England painting Kabalega as a scheming, treacherous coward. Although not known at the time, it would poison European minds about Kabalega and Bunyoro and lead to some of the worst human rights violations of that era. But those tales of woe were, at that point, still a few years away.

The fighting in Bunyoro had not gone unnoticed in Buganda where Kabaka Mutesa I was concerned about Bunyoro’s military might as well as Egyptian imperialism.
Although treated with a healthy dose of suspicion, the European explorers who had arrived in Buganda such as Speke and Grant did not appear to pose an imperial threat – even if they were both known to Baker – and had soon been on their way, following the Nile down to Egypt.

When Stanley arrived at Mutesa’s court he received a more pleasant welcome, for the Kabaka had an interest that went beyond the gifts of cloth and other trinkets that he bore. Mutesa saw in the more peaceful European explorers allies that he could rely on to keep the Egyptian imperialists at bay and also seek territorial advantage over Bunyoro.

Buganda was already a formidable force by the time Stanley arrived. One account reported that Stanley observed 125,000 troops from Buganda headed into a single battle, supported by a navy that comprised 230 war canoes. The figures are hard to verify and could well be exaggerated but the kingdom’s prowess was not.

Buganda’s influence
Apart from the chiefdoms of Busoga and Bukedi in the east, Buganda’s influence in the mid-1800s could be felt in the islands of Lake Nnalubaale (Victoria) and in some of the chiefdoms south of the lake in what is present-day Tanzania.
The kingdom also had remarkable levels of organisation and progress. A fence that was estimated to be four kilometres long surrounded the Kabaka’s palace atop a hill, and an estimated 40,000 people were living in the area around the palace.

In fact, in Two Kings of Uganda, published in London in 1889, Robert Ashe noted that by 1882 he found that the straight road to Kabaka Mutesa’s palace in Nabulagala was “wider than the widest street of the Irish capital” at the time.

Still, Buganda was vulnerable. For instance, Ashe writes about a battle in the late 1870s to early 1880s in which fighters from Bukedi in present-day eastern Uganda followed and massacred a party of Baganda fighters that had raided the area.

Kabaka Mutesa therefore had reason to seek to enhance his position and that of his kingdom. He had earlier converted to Islam due to the influence of the Arab traders who had arrived many years earlier, and even observed the Muslim holy month of Ramathan.

However, the Mzungus [White men], seemed to offer a better guarantee of security and by the early 1870s Stanley was trying to convert Kabaka Mutesa I to Christianity.

Stanley endeared himself further to Kabaka Mutesa when he assisted in a raid on the islands of Buvuma on Lake Victoria. Seeing an opportunity to extend European influence and counter the Arab influence over the kingdom, Stanley convinced Kabaka Mutesa to write his famous letter inviting missionaries to visit his kingdom.

In the letter published in the London Daily Telegraph newspaper on November 15, 1875, Mutesa said he wanted to be “a friend to the white man” and invited them to visit his kingdom. It would not be far-fetched to argue that this is the most important letter ever written in the history of Buganda Kingdom and what would become Uganda.

Within three months the Church Mission Society in England had raised 24,000 pounds and selected eight pioneer missionaries to visit the kingdom of Buganda.
It was not known at the time but history that would bring an end to hundreds of years of culture, political organisation and social order was being made.

In the interim, it set a framework for the contestation of influence within the region between the two dominant political organisations. Buganda had chosen friendship with the foreigners. Bunyoro, which had seen first-hand the imperialist tendencies of the newcomers, would choose resistance.

A week after Mutesa’s letter, another article appeared in the Daily Telegraph inviting missionaries who might take up Mutesa’s invitation to “teach natives to wear clothes” and to design the clothes “slightly longer than the normal”.

The article noted that, “if the Africans increase their clothing by even two inches longer than the normal that would keep the Lancaster Mills in operation for a full year.”

It is not clear whether this advice helped cement the tunic (Kanzu) as the traditional male dress in Buganda but it showed that commercial imperatives were not far removed from the more altruistic moves to bring Christianity and ‘enlightenment’ to Buganda.

He did not know it then but Mutesa had, with his acceptance of the explorers and his invitation to missionaries, started the process of the creation of the nation-state that came to be Uganda.

For that state to take root, old things had to be swept aside, including the authority of the Kabaka and the Buganda Kingdom itself. He had let the Trojan horse into his kingdom.

History forgave Mutesa the knowledge of the error of his ways – he would die a few years later, in 1884 – but not before he saw the arrival of the first missionaries and the new religion they brought which would forever change his people and Kingdom.

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