The End of Empire in Uganda: Decolonization and Institutional Conflict, 1945–79 9781350051799, 9781350051829, 9781350051805

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Parliaments
3 The Army
4 The Anglican Church
5 The Press
6 Trade Unions
7 The Commonwealth
8 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The End of Empire in Uganda

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The End of Empire in Uganda Decolonization and Institutional Conflict, 1945–79 Spencer Mawby

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Spencer Mawby, 2020 Spencer Mawby has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover image: Princess Ndagire, sister of the Kabaka, and Treasurer of the Lukiko Latimer Mpagi, join members of the Lukiko Delegation pictured after meeting the Colonial Secretary for a discussion to press for the return of the exiled Kabaka to Buganda, at Church House in Westminster, London, 7 June 1955 (© Jimmy Sime / Stringer / Getty Images) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permissions for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

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To Peter Jones,

in the fragile hope that this is better than remuneration.

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Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 2 Parliaments 3 The Army 4 The Anglican Church 5 The Press 6 Trade Unions 7 The Commonwealth 8 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

viii 1 19 51 79 107 137 163 185 197 231 251

Acknowledgements Books about history are also the products of the historical circumstances in which they are written. While I like to believe that the text of this book was not directly determined by the politics of Brexit or forebodings of ecological catastrophe or the ever-stronger grip of information technology upon the human imagination, I am pleased to acknowledge that it was influenced by the many people who have helped me write it and by the common frame of reference which we share as citizens of the early twenty-first century. It is customary to mention the work of librarians and archivists in providing assistance to authors but I hope the familiarity of such sentiments does not detract from the genuine sense of gratitude one feels towards those who make archival research possible. I would therefore like to thank both the visible front-line staff and the often unseen workers at the institutions I visited over the course of the last five years. They are listed individually in the first section of the bibliography of this book. While each institution has its own character that gives colour to the research experience, what they had in common was a commitment to the preservation of the records on which historians rely. My visit to Uganda would have been less fruitful, and probably unfeasible, were it not for the willing cooperation of a number of people. For many acts of kindness, great and small, I would like to thank Deus Tumusiime, Nemah Umuziga, Godfrey Asiimwe, Shane Doyle, Lucy Taylor, Derek Peterson, George Roberts and Katherine Bruce-Lockhart. Much of my time in Uganda was spent either in the Africana section of Makerere Library or in the National Archives. In both institutions the staff proved friendly and accommodating. I would like to pay particular tribute to Justine Nalwoga and her staff for their tolerance of my constant queries and requests. With regard to the often complex protocols of publication, the editors at Bloomsbury, including Brian Wallace, Kumeraysen Vaidhynadhaswamy, Emma Goode, Dan Hutchins, Abigail Lane and Maddie Holder, offered helpful and professional guidance. Teaching and research at the University of Nottingham continued during the preparation of the manuscript, and although it is somewhat invidious to single out individuals from an inspiring group of colleagues I would like to extend my particular gratitude to Gwilym Dodd, Jörg Arnold, Claire Taylor and Michael Craven (who is more or less an honorary member of the Department of History whether he likes it or not). More geographically distant academic friends who provided good counsel include Gareth Curless, Christopher Prior and Adam Biscoe. And yet again Bryan White proved a scrupulous proof-reader at a crucial stage in the preparation of the text. The usual ups and downs of life continued during the course of research and writing. I would like to recognize the durability and good humour of my mother, Sheila Mawby, who continued to offer sage advice about the practicalities of working life, despite

Acknowledgements

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enduring some tribulations of her own. Over the last few years I also acquired a new set of familiar relations with whom I shared my thoughts more often than they may have found entirely convenient. Among the many topics we discussed was my ambivalent relationship with adjectives. In that spirit I would like to offer my largest thanks to the curious Amal Oumazzane, the indefatigable Tarik Oumazzane, the intrepid Ghizlane Kassioui and the observant Peter Jones to whom this book is dedicated.

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Introduction

With the declaration of the country’s independence in October 1962, Milton Obote took over responsibility for Uganda’s political affairs from the British colonial Governor, Walter Coutts. Now that the most powerful political figure in the country was a man born in Uganda and raised by a farming family from the northern district of Lango, it was possible to imagine that decolonization was complete. Yet anybody interested in conducting an audit of the new nation’s most powerful people might well be persuaded that Obote’s premiership was an anomaly. The head of the Ugandan army in 1962 was the son of a British army officer who was educated at Stowe school called Bill Cheyne; the bishop responsible for administering the country’s Anglican Church was Leslie Brown, who had gone to school in London and whose first ecclesiastical appointment was to a curacy in Portsmouth, and the editor of the country’s most influential newspaper, the Uganda Argus, was Charles Harrison, a journalist from Manchester who had served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and later became the East African correspondent of The Times. Other significant Ugandan institutions also bore the imprint of imperial connections. The influence of British practices upon the legislature was unmistakeable. Although the debating chamber of the new parliament building in Kampala was by 1962 populated by Ugandan legislators, the presiding office or clerk was an imperial bureaucrat from Malta called Philip Pullicino, who had previously worked in Belize and Zanzibar. The leader of the Ugandan Trade Union Congress (UTUC) was Humphrey Luande, who was suspected of being a harbinger of foreign influence because for many years his salary had been paid by British and American labour organizations. His origins in the border regions with Kenya also meant that for some observers of the labour scene, including Obote, Luande embodied the dominant role of Luo outsiders in Ugandan trade unions. Although a marginal figure in most modern histories of Uganda, Luande’s career attests to the role of institutions as vehicles for external influence even after Africanization. In foreign affairs, Uganda joined the Commonwealth at independence. As a later Secretary-General of the organization described in his memoirs, relations between members of that organization in 1962 ‘continued to be largely conducted through institutions and organs of the British government’.1 Europeans like Cheyne, Brown and Harrison were gradually replaced as the leading representatives of army, church and press by Africans like Shaban Opolot, Erica Sabiti and Ateker Ejalu. The biographies of these men had two common features of significance for the future of Uganda’s institutions. The first concerned their geographical

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The End of Empire in Uganda

origins. National institutions in newly independent states often drew from groups previously at the margins of economic and political life. Obote and Amin, who came to prominence despite being born far from the centres of power, were only the most significant examples of this larger trend in Ugandan history. Opolot, Sabiti and Ejalu were also figures from the periphery in the sense that none of them originated in the most populous region of Buganda, whose elites had gained most from the imposition of indirect colonial rule. A preoccupation with ethnic identity might be regarded as misleading were it not for a second biographical commonality, which was that all three men had mastered the forms and practices of British institutions. In the case of Sabiti and Opolot this apprenticeship became a vocation: they entered the Native Anglican Church (NAC) and the King’s African Rifles (KAR) as young men and after many years of attachment rose to the top of the sacerdotal and martial hierarchies. Ejalu’s principal commitment was to the nationalist cause but his first forays into journalism were as a student in Britain and he utilized the skills he learned there in the cause of Obote’s Ugandan People’s Congress (UPC). The exposure of Opolot, Sabiti and Ejalu to British methods corroborates the point often made by African nationalist politicians and scholars that political independence did not automatically portend a transformation in cultural, social and economic life. The trajectories of Ugandan institutions after 1962 were continuous with their past orbits. Rather than an ephemeral manifestation of colonial influence, the introduction of institutions during the colonial era embedded concepts, regulations and organizational patterns which shaped Uganda’s later history. The institutional infrastructure of decolonization introduced new formal elements into Ugandan life that were intended to facilitate imperial retreat and enable the perpetuation of British influence. Ugandans responded to these developments by seeking ways in which institutions could be made to serve their own purposes. Differences over what these aims should be continued to cause conflict within and between institutions after independence. Before elaborating on these themes it is necessary to sketch the historical and historiographical context of decolonization in Uganda.

Ugandan contexts Uganda’s modern history of colonial subjugation, initial post-independence instability, authoritarian rule and, most recently, a heavily qualified shift towards a somewhat more liberal and democratic politics is similar to that of many African states. The danger in emphasizing such commonalities is that important distinguishing features of national histories may be lost. One good reason to study institutions is that they played a large role in some of the most distinctive episodes in Uganda’s recent past: the primacy claimed by the national legislature was challenged in Buganda and the resulting confrontation with the colonial authorities persisted up to independence; the influence of the army garnered more international attention than was usual because of the lurid character of Amin’s military regime; the splits and uncertainties within Ugandan Anglicanism about its attitude to the state made a large contribution to confessional and political rivalries and culminated with the murder of the country’s Archbishop; the activities of the vernacular press led

Introduction

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a British Governor to sponsor the Uganda Argus and this established the precedent for later pro-government publications; in an act of Cold War expediency, which would generate a decade of controversy, Kampala was chosen by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) as the location for its African labour college, while the Commonwealth became embroiled in Ugandan affairs before, during and after the crisis over Amin’s expulsion of the country’s Asian citizens. Aside from these episodes, the history of Uganda’s institutions is tied to numerous controversial and unresolved political questions about national unity, the causes of violence, the role of labour in economic development and Uganda’s place in continental politics. Rather than attempting to offer an abridged, chronological account of the events of decolonization, it may be more useful to provide a preliminary sketch of the institutional contribution to these wider debates and the starting point for that discussion is the asymmetry of colonial relationships. It is true that Africans, such as the Ganda notable Apollo Kagwa, played an influential role in the management of imperial projects and it should also be acknowledged that the impact of British influence was uneven and often did not extend far into outlying territories like Karamoja or Ruwenzori, but, for all that, colonialism was a powerful force in Ugandan affairs for eight decades. During the period when British missionaries, businessmen, military commanders and imperial bureaucrats became important actors in the political, economic, social and cultural life of Uganda, there were few ways for Ugandans to exert any measure of counterforce in the imperial metropolis. To some degree this asymmetry was transferred from the political to the cultural realm after independence and this section will conclude with a brief summary of the current balance of authority to speak about Anglo-Ugandan relations. British colonialism has justifiably been indicted for a policy of ethnic divide and rule in Uganda. The centripetal force of British colonial strategy was still evident in the misshapen independence constitution, which was a gimcrack combination of unitary, federal and semi-federal elements. Such fragmentary tendencies were somewhat moderated during the period of decolonization by the priority given to national institutions, notably the parliament. The 1962 constitution was repeatedly amended but, aside from the hiatus between 1971 and 1979, the parliament in Kampala survived. Even before the establishment of the state legislature as a symbol of national unity, British officials had imposed a common administrative and political structure on the country. Uganda became a territory of districts and provinces and, although this did not wholly emasculate the much-considered distinction between the segmentary, acephalous character of the north and the hierarchical, monarchical culture of the south, it disabled some of its effect and brought a measure of uniformity to the administration of the country.2 The provincial and district network was established and administered by African notables, British civilian officials and European Christian missionaries. Atop the system was the executive government of the Protectorate located in Entebbe, which in the last resort was the ultimate arbiter of Ugandan affairs. Article 12 of the Uganda Order-in-Council of 1902 established that the Commissioner, acting on behalf of the British Crown, ‘may make Ordinances for the administration of justice, the raising of revenue, and generally for the peace, order and good Government of all persons in Uganda’.3 In 1953, during the last years of imperial rule, the Kabaka

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The End of Empire in Uganda

of Buganda, Mutesa II, would challenge the authority of national government in the name of local autonomy. In response, the Governor, Andrew Cohen, sent him into exile. Although it might be argued that the success of the popular campaign to restore the Kabaka two years later illustrated that even executive privilege had its limits, the price for his return was recognition of the authority of the national parliament. When the same conflict was refought in the era of independence, it was Obote who dispensed with the Kabaka and the other monarchs and then imposed a constitution which strengthened the hand of national government. The number of those killed and injured when Obote forcibly ejected the Kabaka from his palace in 1966 has long been contested but it is evident that the history of independent Uganda has been scarred by extreme violence. Ugandans born during the middle trimester of the twentieth century were at greater risk than those who grew up during the later years of the nineteenth century. Unlike places such as German Southwest Africa or the Belgian Congo, the British colonial authorities did not wage wars of extermination against the local people. As such comparisons have been used by apologists for British colonial rule, it is important to register that, although the employment of military and paramilitary violence became commonplace between 1971 and 1986, the damaging precedents for such coercive measures were set before 1962. The domestic use of martial force, initially by mercenary units from outside the country and later by the KAR, was a long-standing feature of colonial rule. In the history of early colonialism, it was Bunyoro that bore the brunt of the joint enterprise between British and Ganda elites to extend imperial influence. Doyle’s anatomy of the catastrophic demographic effects of imperial conquest states: ‘The belief in their nation’s superiority often caused British soldiers to behave unreasonably and even brutally rather than as the bearers of a higher civilization.’4 Rather than executing the unreliable chiefs who had either supported or turned a blind eye to insurrection, when further rebellions broke out in Bunyoro, the colonial authorities employed their customary measure of exile. Over a long period of time this was the policy of first resort when dealing with anticolonial dissidents including, among others, obstreperous publishers and editors. Joswa Kate Mugema, the owner of Munyonyozi, was exiled to the north of Uganda for twelve years and died shortly after his return to Buganda. Samwiri Wamala, who was held responsible for the disturbances of 1945, died in exile in Hoima.5 Beyond Uganda’s frontiers, and on a much larger scale, the 4th battalion of the KAR, which comprised British officers and Ugandan enlistees, participated in the most brutal of Britain’s wars of decolonization in Kenya. Even those who subscribe to the notion that the British military usually employed limited force acknowledge that the Mau Mau conflict was an exception.6 This violence was imported back into Uganda during the transition to independence. In the early 1960s escalating military force was deployed against insurrectionists in Ruwenzori in the far west, while in the remote northeastern region of Karamoja the army conducted a punitive campaign against cattle raiding. Amin became a scapegoat for this latter episode because of an often-repeated story about the last Governor’s failure, at Obote’s request, to discipline him for his brutal actions.7 What can be overlooked in such accounts is that British expatriates dominated the officer ranks of the Ugandan armed forces up to the date of independence and beyond.

Introduction

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The history of cattle raiding in the northeast and rebellion in the mountains of the west also corroborates the impression that many people living within the confines of Uganda’s new frontiers resisted colonial reordering. This intractability was often tied to economic interests and in particular the defence of autarchic agrarian production, which required land. Even though sustaining herds of livestock in the arid Karamoja was an enterprise of marginal viability, the pastoralist residents of the region resisted colonial interventions in the name of modernity. By the late 1950s resentment at British infringements sparked an increase in violent attacks across the eastern frontier into Kenya.8 At the opposite geographical pole of the country in the more populous and fertile southwest, the people of Kigezi were required to engage in new forms of work to support cotton and coffee production. British administrators did not believe it was feasible to establish an export economy across the whole of Uganda and divided the country between areas which exported agricultural goods, most notably Buganda, and territories which supplied labour, such as Kigezi.9 Migrant workers were essential for the farming of commodities, cotton ginning, porterage and public works.10 Much of this labour was either seasonal, such as cotton ginning, which took place between December and April, or occasional, such as road maintenance. Those who worked outside of their home districts would usually return there after a period of residence in the hubs of commercial production in Buganda and Bugisu. These southeastern regions became the economic core of the country, first through cotton production, then through coffee cultivation and eventually through a measure of manufacturing in the town of Jinja. Even in these export-oriented regions most people continued to produce food on small plots of land and the state exacted forced labour when it required it.11 The resulting absence of a settled wage-earning labour force hampered the emergence of trade unions. The people who were most inclined to maintain a semisettled existence as wage labourers and to join unions were Luo migrants from the Kenyan frontier who were employed by the railways.12 Other indigenous economic groups such as independent transport workers, farmers and soldiers also banded together to pursue common interests. Taxi drivers formed a nascent trade union that was soon suppressed, while farmers in Buganda resorted to organized political protest. In some respects it was the recruits to the KAR who most closely resembled European wage-earners; they were gathered together in barracks for routinized forms of labour in return for regular wages and as a consequence developed a strong sense of communal identity that could express itself either in the assimilation of the values of their employer or in rebellion against punitive discipline. The mutiny by soldiers in the Jinja barracks in 1964 may be better understood as a strike for better pay and conditions.13 The martial strikers were not alone in 1964; similar events occurred first in Tanganyika and then in Kenya. It is important to study the army and other institutions in their international context. As a small country with extensive frontiers nestling inside an enormous continent, Uganda was and is vulnerable to external influences. The most significant of all East African regional events in the modern period was the arrival of white settlers in the Kenyan rift valley. Migration from Europe to lands occupied by the Kikuyu had the most immediate consequences within Kenya but it generated apprehension about European settlement more widely. These forebodings

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The End of Empire in Uganda

were amplified by three other post-war developments: the establishment in 1949 of the Capricorn Society, which brought together Europeans living in southern and eastern Africa to campaign for a union of the region’s Anglophone territories; the outbreak of a brutal war in Kenya in 1952, which pitched landless black Africans against the settlers and the colonial state; and, in 1953, the establishment of the Central African Federation (CAF), which most Africans interpreted as a device to extend the influence of white migrants in Southern Rhodesia to Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. To many Ugandans the events of these four years portended the extension of settler colonialism across much of the continent. As the Kabaka of Buganda explained in his memoirs, they ‘affected both the European view of Africans and the African view of Europeans. In particular Uganda watched Nyasaland forced into a Federation she did not welcome and wondered if the same fate was planned for her.’14 Opposition to East African federalism emerged as a theme of modern Ugandan history. In the 1960s, after a period of initial apparent interest, Obote cavilled at the ideas of Nyerere or Kenyatta for closer union with Tanzania and Kenya.15 The overbearing political influence of Uganda’s larger neighbours outweighed any potential economic benefits at a time when many Ugandan politicians were already grumbling about the extent of Kenyan influence in the local trade union movement. Distant West Africa provided an alternative source of attraction for Obote’s UPC during the first years of independence and the party’s programme resembled that of Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghanaian Convention People’s Party (CPP). Despite the ousting of Nkrumah in a military coup in 1966, the anticolonial critique which he had articulated also became a significant feature in Commonwealth politics. Obote joined with many of his peers to criticize the conduct of British policy towards South Africa and Rhodesia. A final and often-overlooked continental influence on Ugandan politics came from outside the Anglophone Commonwealth and was conveyed from Arab North Africa. During the 1950s many anticolonial dissidents admired the revolutionary politics of Gamal Nasser’s Cairo. The Uganda National Congress (UNC), which was the forerunner of the UPC, established a headquarters there which assisted Ugandan students with travel to the eastern bloc. The influence of Arab radicalism from the north rose again in the 1970s when Libya became Amin’s most steadfast African ally. Although scholars of empire have been preoccupied with measuring the ways in which the empire struck back at the heart of the imperial culture in Britain, a definitive assessment of this impact requires aggregating influences from dozens of territories and states.16 As one nation among many post-colonial polities, Uganda’s reputation in Britain is vulnerable to journalistic excess and historical misrepresentation. Were an ordinary resident of the UK to show extraordinary scrupulousness in assimilating metropolitan coverage of Uganda over the last fifty years, they would by now have concluded that the country is the home to plantains, brutal dictatorship, HIV/AIDS, religious bigotry and little else. The defining characteristic of Uganda in Boris Johnson’s version of history is that it was abounding in bananas. The current British Prime Minister went on to dismiss Uganda’s colonial past in this way: ‘If left to their own devices the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain.’17 The superficiality of this kind of coverage originated with the understandable journalistic preoccupation with the arbitrary and brutal character of the Amin regime in the 1970s. During this

Introduction

7

time many Ugandans risked their lives supplying information to British reporters. After the fall of Amin Uganda reappeared in news reports as one of the sources of a global health crisis and a contender in the rebarbative media competition to identify ‘the AIDS capital of the world’. Reportage about HIV/AIDS in Uganda accentuated the significance of sexual morality and African exceptionalism at the expense of remedial medical action.18 The qualified success of the Museveni governments in tackling the epidemic proved of less interest; instead coverage of Ugandan affairs moved on to the discriminatory laws targeting Ugandan homosexuals and the Church of Uganda’s hostility to gay priests. Some of the more responsible recent journalism is inflected with the opinions and actions of gay and lesbian activists in Uganda. The dissenting views of local churchmen such as Christopher Senyonjo have also been aired.19 Often the same issues dominate filmic representations of Uganda, although screenwriters and directors have sometimes incorporated greater ambiguity. Barbet Schroeder’s documentary film about Idi Amin is both a fascinating and perplexing document, which leaves viewers to puzzle over the question of whether bathos was the only way to tackle the absurdities of his dictatorship.20 A number of actors have portrayed Amin in Western cinemas, most commonly in the context of the dramatic Entebbe raid. This event features as the conclusion of The Last King of Scotland, which has been widely read as a novel and watched as a film. Both iterations include some memorable and strikingly accurate historical context but rely on the customary ingenuous European protagonist whose blankness becomes inscribed with horrific African experience.21 Lastly, more or less every prominent travel writer who has visited Africa seems to have included Uganda in their itineraries, or at the very least to have met Ugandans during the course of their sojourns. The tone adopted by authors such as Evelyn Waugh, Elspeth Huxley, Alberto Moravia, Shiva Naipaul, Ryszard Kapuściński, Paul Theroux and Vidia Naipaul is frequently unsettling. Sometimes it seems that only two registers available in such accounts are the gravity of pseudo-anthropology or the distance of comic irony.22 Africans are not usually heard discussing African issues in Britain. The most significant exception was the pioneering BBC documentary television series The Africans: A Triple Heritage, in which Ali Mazrui analysed the influence of indigenous African culture, Islam and the West. Mazrui was a former scholar at Makerere college in Kampala. More recently Ugandan writers have taken advantage of a more congenial spirit in literary publishing. This trend was evident in the positive reception given to Moses Isegawa’s Abyssinian Chronicles and Doreen Baingana’s collection Tropical Fish; it has continued with the critical success of Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel Kintu.23 Makumbi’s text was composed during her time as a student in Manchester and perhaps the principal impact that Uganda has had in Britain is through migration. With the significant exception of a small number of plantation owners and some expatriate missionaries who settled permanently, the majority of British nationals who went to Uganda in the twentieth century did so in pursuit of their careers. Both Cheyne and Brown, for example, returned to Britain after their secondments to Uganda. A number of less prominent expatriate officials have provided accounts of life in Uganda and there is an emerging historiography on their experience.24 By contrast, a significant number of people from Uganda have made permanent homes in the UK. The 2011 British census recorded that there were approximately 60,000 Ugandan-born people living in

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The End of Empire in Uganda

the country. The most famous of these is the current Archbishop of York, John Sentamu. The emergence of a high-achieving second generation of Anglo-Ugandans such as Chris Kiwomya, George the Poet, Michael Kiwanuka and Daniel Kaluuya provides evidence of the success of this relatively small community. A particularly significant movement of people was caused by Idi Amin’s persecution of Ugandan residents whose family origins were in India. Those who fled in 1972, and their children, have played a large role in British politics, business, policing, journalism and sport. Among the more wellknown names are those of Shailesh Vara, Priti Patel, Dolar Popat, Manubhai Madhvani, Tarique Ghaffur, Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Mohamed Asif Din and Paresh Bhadeshia. Such a list may suggest a triumphalist story but it occludes the difficulties experienced by ordinary, unrenowned people, all of whom were required to cope with the economic impoverishment and cultural disorientation resulting from their displacement. An historiographical corrective which examines these less celebrated histories has been provided by historians such as Joanna Herbert and Emma Robertson.25

Historiography More or less every writer with an interest in the modern history of Uganda has expressed an opinion about the significance of the colonial legacy. There is unanimity that the intrusion of the British had significant effects. The key difference is about temporality. On the one hand a number of historians and political scientists have suggested that the similarities between the contemporary Ugandan era and the pre-colonial or early colonial past are of greatest significance to the nation’s current affairs; on the other, many scholars have tended to colligate the eras of decolonization and early independence in order to demonstrate that the period between the 1940s and 1970s was decisive in shaping the politics, culture and society of the Ugandan present. These debates are part of the past preoccupation of African studies with questions about the ontology and aetiology of the failures of African government after independence. The literature on this subject is too large to offer even a scant summary. Instead two texts can be identified which are broadly representative of the debates about institutionalization and temporality. Jackson and Rosberg’s book Personal Rule in Black Africa, which was published in 1982, described a dramatic transformation at the moment of independence, and may be regarded as typical of the reaction of political scientists to the rise of African dictatorships over the previous two decades. According to the authors, whereas colonial states had operated on the basis of bureaucratization and institutionalization, the personalist rule of autocrats and tyrants marked a dramatic and consequential shift in the nature of African politics after independence.26 Once this period came into clearer historical perspective, these assumptions were challenged. In a much-cited article entitled ‘Africa in the World’ published in 2000, Jean-Francois Bayart employed the term ‘extraversion’ as an alternative to dependency and marginalization to describe Africa’s status in global affairs. The influential argument which sheltered under the theme of extraversion was that the African continent had long been integrated into global systems. European colonialism, on this account, was partially guided by African initiatives designed to

Introduction

9

consolidate political power and control trade by engagement with world affairs. African nationalists, for example, ‘used for their own purposes the political institutions which had been established by the colonial state and they made every effort to enhance and extend the influence of those institutions over the societies which they governed’.27 This history of extraversion cuts across the usual periodization of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial history utilized by scholars like Jackson and Rotberg. Those impressed by the long duration tend to view the colonial period as to some degree a hiatus and in the case of Uganda they include David E. Apter, Ali Mazrui, Richard J. Reid and Gardner Thompson. Even before independence was obtained Apter offered a bold assessment of the marginality of colonial influence. In his book about bureaucratic nationalism in Buganda, which was published in 1961, Apter stated: ‘In the history of Africa the colonial period is but a short moment in time. The changes presently underway represent a process which has a much longer history than European intervention and which indeed was interrupted by the colonial experience. African institutional life has vitality which transcends the specific structural innovations of European origin.’28 There are two aspects to this argument about the durability of pre-colonial and early colonial structures: the first emphasizes the weaknesses of the early colonial state and the large role which indigenous Africans played in shaping the history of the country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the second identifies the key areas of commonality between the pre-colonial and post-colonial periods. Glenn McKnight offers a clear statement of the former thesis in his analysis of the politics of landholding in Buganda. He noted: ‘The social forces that combined and conflicted to shape Africa’s history before the colonial period continued to be formative under European rule.’29 In a similar vein, Thompson explicitly endorses Bayart’s argument and asserts that late nineteenth-century African society was ‘vigorous, adaptable and durable’. He then refashions the extraversion thesis for the purposes of exculpating British colonialism and concludes, ‘It should be repeated though that the roots of the violent aftermath of 1962 lie further back in time … the end appears to have been contained in the beginning.’30 Mazrui’s long and controversial career was one of paradox and contradiction but an important influence on his early work was disillusionment with Western apologism for the authoritarianism of nationalist governments. In the midst of the international debate about who or what ought to be held responsible for the atrocities of the 1970s, Mazrui identified Idi Amin as an authentic representative of an autochthonous warrior tradition that was impervious to colonialism. His success was interpreted by Mazrui as evidence of deeply rooted respect for martial assertiveness among the peasantry of Uganda.31 A more sophisticated and rather more persuasive alternative to this argument is found in Richard Reid’s recent history of modern Uganda. His book identifies a number of perennial phenomena that give coherence to the country’s national history even before the nation was conceived; one of these is the prevalence of military entrepreneurialism. Reid states, ‘Cultures of violence and militarism long pre-dated the formal creation of “Uganda”, and the fault lines which opened up in the years following Uganda’s independence were of considerable antiquity. And so too were the histories of cultural interchange and reciprocal inspiration, and the economic networks which bound together diverse communities to mutual advantage.’32

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The End of Empire in Uganda

The themes of extraversion and ancient precedent are much less prominent in what might be called the colligatory approach to decolonization which constitutes an independent African tradition of historiography. Scholars such as A. B. K. Kasozi, Mahmood Mamdani, Phares Mutibwa, Samwiri Lwanga-Lunyiigo, Tarsis Kabwegyere and Onek Adyanga have all placed much greater emphasis on British colonialism as a crisis from which Uganda has not recovered. Perhaps the most striking aspect of their accounts is that they employ the idea of continuity not, as Bayart does, to challenge notions of dependency but to demonstrate that the British in Uganda were successful in embedding political, social and economic systems that suited their interests. Kasozi is the bluntest in stating that ‘modern Uganda is a creature of its colonial past’.33 Similarly, Mutibwa’s analysis roots many of the country’s problems in the politics of decolonization. He is particularly sympathetic to the difficulties experienced by Obote and emphasizes ‘the fragility of the political institutions which Uganda inherited from the British at independence’.34 Kabwegyere’s commentary offers a taxonomy of these continuities: ‘Social process, social values, social institutions do not disappear at the stroke of a pen, such as the declaration of independence. Separatist development, regional inequalities, bases of stratification, colonial ties with the imperial power – these have continued into the independence era – not to mention the religious cleavages which date back to the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants and Moslem in the 1880s.’35 Lwanga-Lunyiigo has been explicit in suggesting that the natural conclusion of this line of enquiry was the requirement for an Africanist overhaul of the institutional infrastructure inherited from the colonial period. ‘The Westminster model’, he argued, ‘is not easy to replicate. Nor will it be easy to replicate the economic revolution that turned Britain into an industrialized society. Instead we shall have to establish our own paths to political, social and economic development.’36 Mamdani, who might be regarded as the originator of this tradition, drew on Leninist theories of imperialism in order to describe Ugandan decolonization as a decisive transitionary period rather than a break with the past. On the one hand, the end of formal empire ‘testified to the weakness of imperialism, and was also a transit point in the growth of a democratic anti-imperialist movement’; on the other, the African comprador class of capitalist ‘foremen’ were still in place and the British and international banks retained control of the country’s future. Mamdani’s later scholarship about continental history attended to the instrumentalization of racial identities and the significance of indirect rule.37 This last aspect has been inspected by Adyanga whose work describes the legacy of indirect rule as a form of neo-colonialism.38 It is worth emphasizing that this kind of binary opposition between different schools, which has the great advantage of clarifying some differences, also requires some flattening out of commonalities. The works of Jan Jelmert Jørgensen and Ogenga Otunnu, for example, occupy an intermediary position. Jørgensen’s history is more or less a mirror image of Thompson’s, in that he concentrates on the economic rather than the political impact of colonialism in order to inculpate, rather than exculpate, British policymakers for their role in the failures of the later Ugandan state. Despite this, he anticipates aspects of the extraversion thesis by emphasizing the durability of the alliance between local Ugandan notables and British empire-builders and the way in which early developments in colonial history have tended to overshadow later

Introduction

11

ones.39 Similarly, Otunnu’s analysis begins in the early colonial period and suggests that the ongoing crisis of legitimacy in Uganda had roots in the centralizing instincts of the pre-colonial kingdoms, but the gist of his thesis is that the ‘no-party despotism’ of British rule greatly aggravated the tendency towards violence and autocracy.40 Beyond these qualifications and clarifications, the colligatory school’s emphasis on neo-colonialism has also provoked direct challenge, as, for example, in the case of a recent article by Ichiro Maekawa criticizing the application of this approach in East Africa.41 In some ways, Maekawa’s examination of these issues is anomalous because students of modern Africa are less concerned with political and economic matters than they used to be. As is common across the entire historical discipline, scholars of Uganda are embracing an ever-wider range of topics that no longer start with questions of authoritarianism or underdevelopment. This trend is evident from the expanding literature on the role of women, intellectual history and histories of health and medicine. Sylvia Tamale, Alicia Decker, Carol Summers and Aili Mari Tripp have made significant contributions to the advance of Ugandan women’s history.42 Summers’s analysis of the demotic politics inspired by scandalous coverage of the marital affairs of the queen mother of Buganda, or Namasole, in 1941 demonstrates that matters of gender overlap with national political history and cultural production.43 Current work on Ugandan intellectual history is rooted in the literature on ideological formation in the 1950s and 1960s by scholars such as Apter, D.A. Low and James H. Mittelman.44 Two of these three scholars worked on Buganda and this trend has continued in the work of Christopher Wrigley on kingship, Holly E. Hanson on the salience of concepts of land and obligation and Jonathon L. Earle on reading, history-writing and textual critique.45 More recently, Patrick W. Otim extended the geographical scope of this genre by sketching what a history of intellectual life in colonial Acholi might look like.46 The history of health and medicine in Africa has also been a matter of increasing interest to writers about modern Africa. In the case of Anglophone East Africa, the subject was pioneered by John Iliffe and has witnessed significant interventions by Shane Doyle and Yolana Pringle.47 Sarah Stockwell has recently commented that institutional development ‘has attracted little attention in broad histories of decolonization, and generated only limited scholarship more generally and this mostly in relation to defence, policing and intelligence’.48 This insight is confirmed by the uneven character of the literature about Ugandan institutions discussed in this volume. The army and the Anglican Church have garnered most attention. The Ugandan military not only plays a large role in general accounts of the country’s history but also has attracted a substantial specialist literature of its own. Amidst the larger scholarship about the role of the army and the salience of violence in Ugandan life, Timothy H. Parsons and Amii Omara-Otunnu have drawn attention, respectively, to the social and political legacies of colonialism.49 E. A. Brett draws these matters together in his analysis of the use of force which concludes that militarization eventually trumped democratization because of ‘the inadequacies of the independence settlement which assumed that unity could be sustained by setting up copies of western parliaments, parties and electoral systems’.50 In the case of the Anglican Church, insider accounts have proven influential, either in the form of testimonials from prominent adherents, such as Joe Church or Festo Kivengere, or as

12

The End of Empire in Uganda

conveyed in more comprehensive secondary accounts by Kevin Ward, Phares Mutibwa and Zac Niringiye, which start from a position of identification with the institution but maintain scholarly objectivity.51 The related topic of the East African revival has attracted interest from academics unaffiliated to Ugandan Anglicanism.52 The press, trade unions and the Commonwealth sometimes feature in the general literature but are usually cast to the margins of national histories. Two writers about parliament as an institution, Baganchwera Barungi and Mohammed Katamba, have close associations with it: the first as erstwhile Speaker and the second as an information officer.53 This pattern is repeated in the historiography about the Ugandan press. The two most extensive treatments are by the journalists, Jim Ocitti and Drake Sekeba.54 With the partial exception of Roger Scott’s fifty-year-old book, no attempt has been made to adequately historicize Ugandan trade unions and the handful of relevant texts focus on contemporary issues, from an anthropological, economic or political perspective.55 Lastly, the historiography on Uganda and the Commonwealth is thin, although some insights into the foreign policy methods of the Amin era can be gleaned from the account of Uganda’s former Foreign Minister, Elizabeth Nyabongo.56

Concepts and arguments The chapters which follow offer an historical analysis of six institutions but it may be useful as a prelude to this detailed discussion to conduct a brief excursion into the territories of political science, philosophy and cultural theory. This is not customary in historical monographs and the most forbidding risk is of clumsily mishandling intellectual goods which have originated elsewhere but the benefits as a means of orientation and as a way of introducing some of the broader arguments beyond the historiography outweigh the disadvantages. The first point worth making is that when the words ‘institution’ and ‘institutionalization’ are uttered or written they often float on a cushion of indeterminacy. It is not possible to entirely deflate this comforting bubble of imprecision because the question of how to conceptualize institutions has not been definitively resolved by political scientists. Institutional theory is one of the many fronts in the social scientific conflict between rationalists and their critics. Historians often approach such matters from a nominalist perspective and this has the merit of enabling work which is grounded in the conceptions of historical actors. It is certainly the case that parliament, the army, the press, the Anglican Church, trade unions and the Commonwealth were all called institutions by those who participated in them but the question is why this was so. The three criteria employed for identifying an institution fifty years ago by Nelson Polsby still seem apposite. He suggested that an organization could be called an institution if it was well-bounded in the sense of having easily identifiable members, featured a relatively complex differentiation of parts, including a recognized division of labour, and employed universalist criteria and automatic methods to prescribe behaviour.57 Under the influence of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, the new institutionalism has taken up the last of these criteria in order to make the argument that the regulation of institutions is the most important variable in determining the conduct of political life.58 Rawls defined an institution

Introduction

13

as ‘a public system of rules which defines offices and positions with their rights and duties, powers and immunities and the like’. Under this dispensation an institution is both an abstract set of rules and the actions taken to follow these rules.59 What is striking to outsiders in this debate is that the new institutionalism often seems to conflate institutions and institutionalization. In the fields of African studies it is often the failure of institutionalization, understood as rule-based behaviour, which features more prominently than the failure of institutions; in other words, it is more common to discuss notions of property rights, legal norms or state frontiers, than to conduct a detailed investigation of the history of a parliament or a newspaper. Dan M. Mudoola’s analysis of interest groups in Uganda, for example, is explicit in defining institutions narrowly on the basis of their capacity to generate rules and rule-following behaviour.60 Agyeman’s work on the damaging role of the military in politics does not offer a clear concept of institutionalization but implicitly endorses the deontological approach employed by Mudoola. He associates the irregularity of the army’s conduct with the obstruction of institutionalization and argues that this has hindered Uganda’s economic development. This is illustrative of the way in which the ubiquity of references to institutionalization has had the effect of abstracting the debate about particular institutions from concrete historical developments.61 Once a term has been defined the next question which usually arises is how to distinguish between the various things to which the definition applies. One variable that usefully demarcates differences in institutions is the notion of formalism, even though the application of such a concept is freighted with philosophical controversy. As binary distinctions came under critical scrutiny from philosophers and cultural theorists during the last century, the old Aristotelian distinction between form and substance was questioned. Modern ontology suggests that the dichotomy is otiose at best and false at worst and that there is no good reason to distinguish between the different kinds of predicates which can be attached to things. Cultural theory has had a rather more ambiguous relationship with the idea. Poststructuralists generally regard binaries of the kind represented by form and substance not as objective, integral features of the world but as something which is forced on to the flourishing multiplicity of objects by the subjectivity of power. While recognizing the subjective character of purportedly objective features of the world, Foucault’s work suggests that ideas themselves are arranged in certain ways and that the form of this organization has had a powerful influence over human affairs.62 In some poststructuralist accounts, the priority given to particular concepts in the morphology of an ideology or a cultural representation determines their impact in the world of ethics and action. This could be regarded as a sort of backhanded testimony to power of formalism. In the field of literary studies this idea is described as the ‘new formalism’.63 The old Aristotelian distinction is also still implicitly understood and commonly used in a way that suggests that ordinary people recognize formalism as a feature of everyday life. Unlike some philosophical doctrines, the notion that the parts of a composite thing must be arranged in some manner is readily comprehensible; it is then a short step to acknowledge that the arrangement of the parts constitutes its form. It might be regarded as a further leap to apply the idea of formalism to the arrangement of human affairs but it is one which is made readily when people describe such things as personal attire or a church service as more or

14

The End of Empire in Uganda

less formal. Both these intuitive ideas about formalism and the more sophisticated iterations offered by philosophers and cultural critics have a wide field of application. When thinking about parliaments as a global phenomenon, for example, significant variation is evident between the different instances, some of which can be captured by categorizing them as more or less formal. Applying these ideas to Polsby’s institutional definition, more formal organizations have more clearly defined concepts to mark the boundaries of the institution, a more complex differentiation of parts and more detailed and extensive regulations. With regard to the example of a parliament, the Ugandan national Legislative Council became more formal as its numbers increased, it met more regularly, the functions performed by its members became more differentiated, the rules that governed it became more elaborate and a class of bureaucrats emerged whose task was to sustain it. The history of conflict within Ugandan institutions can be expressed in terms of the preference of the colonial power for formalism and of most Ugandan actors for informalism. This in turn was tied to instrumental considerations: British policymakers believed formalism would be a vehicle for the linked goals of stabilization and continuing external influence; Ugandan actors saw informalism as a means to liberate institutions and enable them to campaign for social and political advance and to defend local autonomy. For example, the parliament of Buganda, which was called the Lukiko, was not constrained in its criticisms of British rule by the concepts, structures and rules which restricted members of the national parliament. Whereas on the British model, parliaments were conceptualized as serving the functions of representation and law-making, members of the Lukiko believed it could perform any number of tasks, depending on the exigencies of the moment, including constitutional negotiation, popular mobilization and international lobbying. Both sides of the conflict had a strategic approach to institution-building. British efforts to impose narrow definitions, elaborate organizational structures and restrictive regulations served the purpose of depoliticizing them and thus undermining their potential for anticolonial action, while anticolonial activists sought to loosen these restrictions to enable institutions to take on a larger political role. Usually the export of long-refined British models was regarded by bureaucrats and politicians in Whitehall and Westminster as sufficient to meet their strategic requirements but it was frequently necessary to adapt these models to meet circumstances on the ground. As a consequence, the institutional infrastructure of decolonization had a hybrid character in which the British model was redesigned to meet the purposes first of colonialism and then of decolonization. References to hybridity require qualification. It is one of the most ubiquitous and hard-working words in the lexicon of post-colonialism but the term is employed in what follows as an abstract noun which describes aspects of institutionalization rather than as the instantiation of any such theory. Perhaps the most influential analysis can be found in Homi K. Bhabha’s book The Location of Culture which elaborated on the ideas of Edward Said about the relationship between colonized and colonizers. Bhabha is deliberately elusive on matters of definition but one signal feature of his conception of hybridity is that it challenges stable notions of a singular national culture.64 In the context of this analysis of Ugandan institutions, the concept of hybridity does a markedly different kind of work in attempting to fix the character of institutions

Introduction

15

which were modelled on British archetypes and then subject to the respecifications of colonial policy. The hybrid character of institutions did not arise from acculturation between Britain and Uganda. Instead colonial institutions were the offspring of a marriage between cultural familiarity and political exigency; the former directed the gaze backwards towards Britain while the latter responded to the more immediate calculations made by the strategists of decolonization in the imperial periphery. The universal aspects of British thinking influenced the prescriptions which were doled out in overseas territories in various ways: parliaments should feature a chamber in which two rival parties could face one another in adversarial rows; armies worked best when they were composed of distinct regiments commanded by colonels; churches required elaborate processes of ordination, which equipped ministers to offer spiritual guidance to the laity; trade unions must have detailed rule books that could provide comprehensive guidance about collective bargaining; and a good, reliable newspaper would compartmentalize news, editorials and features. Perhaps the most striking feature of this list is not just the confidence with which such panaceas were offered but the variety of ways in which formalism could manifest itself, including spatial arrangement, organizational structure, ceremonial prescription, regulatory precision and literary configuration. The export of these ideas did not generate exact replicas of British institutions because the exigencies of colonial rule trumped the assumption that British forms were universally applicable; only those aspects which were either neutral or conducive to British purposes were encouraged. For example, Governors in Entebbe insisted that the colonial context justified the employment of electoral colleges in parliamentary elections and state regulation of the press despite the lack of metropolitan precedents for these expedients. Similarly, measures such as restrictions on the adult franchise and the deployment of troops against domestic political protest were required in Uganda, even though they were no longer practised on the British mainland. The introduction to a recent collection of essays about Uganda notes that ‘imported institutions assumed key roles in shaping the nature of the colonial encounter, as well as the contours of the postcolonial state’.65 The substantive episodes described in this book can be conceived as an attempt to analyse these roles in the manner of the colligatory school of historiography and to give due emphasis to the role of institutional conflict in the history of independent Uganda. For the retreating European powers there was a pressing need to entrench Western influence if the fearful prospect of either anarchic demotic politics or communist successor states was to be averted and institutionalization was one means of achieving this. These perceptions were largely out of kilter with the realities of Ugandan politics in the 1960s and 1970s and, in particular, paid less heed to the dangers of a military dictatorship terrorizing the civilian population than to the threats posed to Western interests by populist politics and subversion from the East. The insulation of institutions from politics by means of formal impositions was a much greater priority for the British than the flourishing of democratically inclined civic institutions which could contribute to national debates. As a consequence, at independence Uganda inherited a set of institutions which were partly designed on the basis of British models but subject to gimcrack modification in order to adapt them to the perceived needs of African realpolitik. The implanting

16

The End of Empire in Uganda

of these forms drew a wide range of responses from the people who lived in Uganda during the last years of empire and the first years of independence. The agency of Africans was evident in their collaboration and resistance and this in turn was often determined by utilitarian calculation. As far as it is possible to generalize, new national institutions were welcomed by some marginalized groups and individuals and greeted with hostility by those whose interests were in upholding the status quo. In that sense Ugandan responses to institutionalization were strategic in the same manner as British policy: collaborators with the British strategy of institutionalization regarded it as a means of advance for themselves or groups with which they were associated, those who resisted generally did so because they perceived particular institutions as a threat. Ezra Suruma has identified the problematic character of these responses. He states, ‘The failure to build institutions that allow all stakeholder groups to compete fairly for the benefits of economic growth could cause political instability since groups that believe they are marginalized opt for violent mobilization to improve their participation rates in economic and political activities and minimize further marginalization.’66 While this view captures the generality of responses, the study of institutions rather than institutionalization enables the grounding of what is sometimes a rather indeterminate diagnosis in specific historical episodes. To enable this kind of enquiry it is necessary to consider how it was that the reformed national legislature proved an ineffective check on the executive either before or after 1962, why the army was deployed in a campaign of escalating violence against citizens, the manner in which the Anglican Church became preoccupied with internal ecclesiastical squabbling, the reasons that local journalists were first subject to intimidation and later to physical violence and even murder, the circumstances in which trade unionists found their local concerns were submerged beneath Cold War controversies and the causes which underpinned the failure of Commonwealth diplomacy to respond effectively to Amin’s provocations. Although the precise circumstances may differ in detail, what these case studies reveal is that Ugandan institutions were patterned in a broadly similar way. As institutional designs were chiselled into Ugandan society, familiar examples of British cultural practices were placed into relief by protruding and obtrusive adaptations designed to meet the strategic demands of decolonization at the expense of institutional autonomy. Some Ugandans viewed this pattern with admiration and others were repelled by it. The new institutions were a success in the sense that they enabled the perpetuation of British influence for a time, but the formalism of their ideology, organization and rules made them vulnerable in the new context of post-independence African politics. The excessive power of the executive in Uganda after 1962 had its precedents in the colonial period and was enabled by flaws in the institutional infrastructure of decolonization. If the primary purpose of the studies of each institution is to explain the continuities of this period, a further and secondary goal is to bring forth new information about the modern history of Uganda. Judged on the basis of conversations with undergraduate students and members of the public, one of the most persuasive justifications for the academic study of history is that it offers a coherent response to natural human curiosity about the past. As well as requiring plausible interpretations, there is a general interest in the uncovering of previously neglected or unknown events and circumstances. In the course of the following chapters some unfamiliar affairs are

Introduction

17

described for the first time or redescribed using new documentary material. These subjects include, among others, the constitutional controversies over who should be allowed to vote in the parliamentary elections of the 1950s, the nature of Obote’s warfighting strategy in the west of the country in the early years of independence, the conflicts over ecclesiastical appointments which nearly destroyed the reputation of the Anglican Church in Buganda, the sedition trials of Ugandan newspaper editors and publishers in the late 1940s, the first attempt to unionize plantation workers in Toro and the role which Commonwealth summitry played in efforts to destabilize Idi Amin’s government. The inclusion of these episodes certainly does not in any sense complete the histories of these organizations but they are intended to suggest that should historians take up the subject of Uganda’s institutional history, they will find it a rewarding one.

18

2

Parliaments

‘Our ultimate aim in Uganda’, declared the senior Colonial Office bureaucrat dealing with East African affairs in 1955, ‘is to create a self-governing country with parliamentary institutions like our own.’ As anybody familiar with the many letters and minutes of William Gorell Barnes might anticipate, this apparently progressive statement was the prelude to a series of judicious caveats about constitutional reform rather than the exordium to a manifesto for immediate independence. He continued by noting that British institutions had evolved over centuries and that the metropolitan enterprise of parliamentary democracy was predicated on the success of universal education. Not everybody could have the vote in Uganda because ways had not yet been found ‘of ensuring that the experienced and/or educated of whatever race are not swamped by the still primitive masses, who present the perfect target for mob oratory and intimidation’.1 The elaborate devices chosen by colonial governments to prevent this ‘swamping’ included some practices entirely alien to British traditions, such as indirect voting through electoral colleges, and others which had metropolitan precedents, such as restrictions on the franchise based on income and gender. Beyond the electoral realm, the complex protocols of parliamentary procedure were exported wholesale to Uganda as a means of leashing popular representatives to the requisite standards of propriety. Whereas Gorell Barnes and the Colonial Office were concerned about threats to these standards posed by demagogues and mob rule, it was the existence of a powerful executive backed by military coercion which constituted the principal danger to liberty in Uganda and led to the temporary collapse of Ugandan parliamentarianism, with all its imported formalities, nine years after independence. This outcome was a legacy of colonialism. One common feature of the constitutional settlements of British decolonization was that, with the partial exception of some settler colonies, legislatures were left in an inferior and unequal relationship with executives. As nationalist politicians sought representation on legislative councils, the Colonial Office hoped to contain dissent by reasserting the privileges of the executive branch. After independence African nationalist Presidents and Prime Ministers extended this tradition. Obote’s constitutions of 1966–1967 strengthened the power of the centre over the regions and of the president over parliamentarians. This constituted a reversal of the democratic and republican logic of nationalist thinking which had valued national assemblies as means to express the will of the people and manifestations of popular unity. It was often local conservatives, such as Buganda’s monarchists, who frowned on the modernism associated with republican parliaments. Indigenous

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The End of Empire in Uganda

elites who had cooperated with colonialism because it placed them at the top of the political and economic hierarchy were alarmed by the export of national parliaments modelled on the Westminster system. While on the one side the ongoing reliance of colonial administrators on executive nomination and their excessively late adoption of representative principles fuelled radical Ugandan nationalism, on the other, their reliance on the Westminster model was attacked by the conservatives of Buganda as evidence of British cultural conceit. Colonial officials concluded that although national politicians were often disobliging they were indispensable to the establishment of a bipartisan parliamentary system, while reactionary elites were not. They did so only after much hesitation and the complexities of the constitution of 1962, and the associated fragility of that settlement, can be interpreted as an outcome of the history of colonial prevarication which preceded it. Given these circumstances it will be useful to consider the rationale and tactics employed by the British in their confrontations with the monarchical conservatives of Buganda’s Lukiko as a prelude to the further discussion of the export of a hybrid parliamentary model to Uganda that featured some elements of the Westminster system but with some significant utilitarian adaptations.

The Great Lukiko of Buganda Political conflicts in the last years of colonial rule in Africa often took the form of a confrontation between a charismatic nationalist politician and the imperial bureaucracy. In Anglophone Africa leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and Hastings Banda came to personify the struggle against foreign domination in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. The case of Uganda was different. Milton Obote emerged as a key political figure at a late stage in the advance towards independence. He appears as a larger figure in hindsight because of the controversies stirred by his two periods in office after independence. Probably the most significant Ugandan nationalist of the immediate post-war period was Eridadi Mulira who was notable for the moderation of his anticolonialism. His pamphlet Troubled Uganda, which was published in the ‘Fabian Colonial Controversy’ series in 1950, has an established place in the country’s dissident literature but is remarkably sympathetic to the imperial project. Mulira rejected the dissident course Nkrumah was following in Ghana at that time and concluded Troubled Uganda with the statement: ‘I do not believe that the British have done more harm than good in Uganda.’2 In the absence of a charismatic nationalist leader, it was an institution, in the form of the Great Lukiko of Buganda which for much of the 1950s offered a conservative critique of British colonial policy. In 1952 the new Governor of Uganda, Andrew Cohen, explained ‘the problem of Buganda in the constitutional and local government sphere is the most important part of our political problems and the most difficult to deal with’.3 It was the institutions of Buganda which were most likely to resist the dirigisme of British policymakers as they fashioned a strategy for the imperial endgame in what Louis and Robinson termed ‘the imperialism of decolonization’.4 The cultivation of a national legislature in Kampala intruded on the privileges of Buganda. Even the apparently innocuous subject of local government reform aroused suspicions in Buganda because plans to make district councils into

Parliaments

21

safe training grounds for local politicians across the Protectorate might presage the gradual democratization of Uganda’s Legislative Council and the flourishing of a new national politics. The gradual revision of the Anglo-Ganda imperial project, which the British had in mind as a means to accommodate other ethnic groups, was sufficient to alarm Ganda reactionaries. Under any such new dispensation the Great Lukiko in Buganda was vulnerable because it was parochial and unrepresentative. The settlement made in 1900 between the Kingdom of Buganda and the new Uganda Protectorate had established an indigenous elite of landowners and office-holders as partners with Britain in a system of indirect rule. Membership of the Lukiko comprised twenty-three saza or county chiefs and sixty-six appointees of the monarch or Kabaka. The British Resident exercised patronage by appointing chiefs, which secured them representation in the Lukiko in an ex officio capacity. The function of the Lukiko was to advise the Kabaka by means of agreed resolutions and to act as a court of appeal but its members became national figures by virtue of the priority given to Buganda’s politics. This system enabled Ganda oligarchs to acquire greater status and power than any other social or ethnic group in the Protectorate. The obstinate and undemocratic character of the Ganda oligarchs as represented in the Lukiko was a theme of both contemporaneous political debate and later historiography. Those appointed to the post of chief minister, or Katikiro, by the Kabaka became the objects of popular protest in the 1940s.5 Mulira catalogued rising discontent with the Ganda establishment in his writings and argued that the Lukiko was unpopular not merely because it was implicated in the colonial project but also because it was populated with grasping, feudal overlords.6 Opposition by the ‘conservative reactionaries’ of Buganda to the establishment of a national Ugandan polity has been identified by G. N. Uzoigwe as bearing ‘a large responsibility for the failure of parliamentary government in Uganda’.7 There is certainly plentiful evidence that the Lukiko became a forum for inflexible and reactionary politics in the 1950s but too great a focus on the culpability of Ganda notables risks exonerating by omission the inconsistent and undemocratic course set by the architects of decolonization. The post-war reforms sponsored by British Governors may have marked a shift away from nomination and towards popular representation but democratization was heavily qualified by the requirements of imperial self-interest. In 1945 it was agreed that thirtyone of the eighty-nine members of the Lukiko should be returned by indirect voting through a system of local electoral colleges and in 1950 this number was increased to forty.8 As the first generation of nationalists duly noted, despite the healthy air of benevolent reformism which accompanied debates about increased representation, the changes were intended to renovate rather than overturn the alliance between colonial administrators and Ganda oligarchs. The most sceptical critics of reform were younger members of established Buganda families, most notably Ignatius Musazi, who was the son of a chief from Bulemeezi. As Jonathon L. Earle has demonstrated Musazi’s dissent had its roots in his reading of the Bible where he found pertinent examples of the overthrow of corrupt kings and oligarchs.9 After playing a leading role in the protest movements of the 1940s, in 1952 Musazi helped establish the Uganda National Congress (UNC) as the first effective nationalist party in the Protectorate. The UNC attacked the reforms made to the Lukiko in 1953 on the grounds that incremental institutional

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The End of Empire in Uganda

adaptation was designed to safeguard colonial interests. While the application of the representative principle to Buganda’s parliament suggested a shift towards democratic practices, in reality the new constitutional arrangements were intended to preserve the status quo. The best evidence of this was the decision to persist with the system of indirect election via electoral colleges that had been established in 1945. This striking divergence from British methods was, as the UNC pointed out, intended to weed out radical nationalists who might be elected by popular vote. On 7 April 1953 the UNC submitted a memorandum about the reforms, which explained that the proposals had ‘aroused our suspicions and, indeed those of the whole country, by virtue of its being alien both to the customary practice of doing things, and to the democratic principle to which we are aspiring’. They objected to the reservation of seats for unelected chiefs who worked as British administrators, to the lack of any provisions enabling the Lukiko to control the executive, which was to remain dominated by appointees of the Kabaka acting under British advice, and to the continuation of indirect elections that did ‘not bring public opinion to bear effectively on the final numbers returned to the Great Lukiko and other Councils’.10 The elaborate nature of the 1952–1953 reforms in Buganda attested to the willingness of colonial bureaucrats to employ new formal devices, such as the electoral college, when designing the institutional infrastructure of decolonization. Indirect voting was to occur both at the saza or county level and at the miruka or parish level. The number of elected members was increased to sixty; twenty were to come from the sazas and forty from the mulaka.11 This system was personally sponsored by Cohen as an alternative to initial plans which had envisaged direct, popular elections across Uganda’s districts including Buganda.12 What was retained from the original proposals was the opportunity for the Lukiko and other district councils to assume new roles in administering local education, health and agricultural services. While the Colonial Office regarded that aspect of the reforms as innocuous and were less preoccupied than the Governor with electoral systems, they were apprehensive that by giving politicians in the Lukiko new legislative duties and a greater measure of legitimacy derived from their indirect electoral mandate, they would enable a new generation of Ganda leaders to challenge the British appointees who administered the Protectorate Government. For these reasons, they instructed Cohen to do nothing which would weaken the prerogatives granted to him in the Buganda treaty of 1900 that had established British hegemony. Matters concerning national unity or the relationship of Uganda with East African federal projects were, on this analysis, not questions for the Lukiko to consider but fell within the purview of bilateral negotiation between the Kabaka and the Governor or the Resident acting as his representative. In the short term the key British priority was to secure the Kabaka’s assent to the principle of participation in a unitary Ugandan state in order to overcome local resistance to the establishment of a national parliament whose ambit ran across the whole of the Protectorate.13 These concerns of the Colonial Office were prescient because the matter of Buganda’s integration into Uganda and the corollary constitutional question of the Governor’s right to issue binding advice to the Kabaka were to dominate Buganda’s politics for years to come. The legalities were hotly contested by all parties. The Kabaka and the Lukiko argued that the 1900 agreement effectively recognized Buganda’s exceptional character as an

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autonomous state within the Protectorate and the significant role which the Lukiko played in the affairs of Buganda. On this analysis British plans, which entailed a levelling of the status of different regions prior to the establishment of an elected central legislature, amounted to a tacit revocation of the 1900 agreement and the renunciation of the old alliance between British administrators and Ganda elites. However generous the British were in plumping up Buganda’s representation in a reformed Ugandan parliament, there was only so far that the demographic facts could be manipulated given that less than a fifth of Uganda’s African population could be classified as Ganda. Consequently, Buganda’s delegation in any Ugandan parliament would inevitably be in a minority. As soon as the new generation of indirectly elected politicians in Buganda made these calculations, British hopes that a complaisant Lukiko which would busy itself with the minutiae of local government administration ran aground. Resistance in Buganda to British efforts to reconfigure local politics was on display throughout the crisis over the exile of Kabaka Mutesa II in November 1953. One key feature of the crisis and of Britain’s strategy of decolonization was the elaborate compartmentalization of entitlements and powers. Political reform entailed the erection of new constitutional partitions, in the form of reserved powers for Governors, and the division and subdivision of functions between different institutions. Such formalism was partly determined and was always justified on the basis of the requirement to reconcile the conflicting interests of local parties but it was also a means of hemming in the opponents of British influence. In 1953 the ambition of the Colonial Office was to confirm the primacy of executive power exercised by the Protectorate Government, as represented by Governor Andrew Cohen. The ostensible reason for the Kabaka’s exile from the royal palace on Mengo hill to the hotel rooms of The Strand on 30 November 1953 was that he would not instruct the Lukiko to accept Cohen’s constitutional reforms. The wider issues at stake concerned Uganda’s role in East Africa and Buganda’s role in Uganda. Viewed from either angle, race was a decisive consideration. As Colonial Secretary, Oliver Lyttelton had provoked the crisis with a speech to the East African Dinner Club in London on 30 June 1953 which acclaimed the prospects of the Central African Federation (CAF) and commended the possibility of a similar federation in East Africa. Although ignored in the British press, Lyttelton’s words were reported in the East African Standard and caused alarm across the region. African collaborators with the British imperial project had reluctantly acquiesced to the establishment of the East African High Commission in 1948 but opposition to anything more than narrow functional cooperation in the provision of common services was entrenched, particularly in Buganda.14 The precedent set by the establishment of the CAF among the territories of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland was ominous because it demonstrated that federal multi-racialism in Africa was a thin disguise for the enhancement of the influence of recently arrived European settlers. Just as the CAF had enabled the white minority of Southern Rhodesia to extend their influence, East African federation portended an enlarged role for Kenyan settlers across the entire region. The Standard was regarded as the voice of the white establishment of Kenya and its enthusiasm for federalism amplified the suspicions of Ugandan readers at a time when it was also loudly proclaiming the need for punitive measures against Kikuyu insurgents on

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The End of Empire in Uganda

the other side of the Ugandan frontier. The priority accorded to non-African ethnic groups was also evident in the reforms to Uganda’s Legislative Council which were a corollary to Cohen’s local government changes. Proposals to increase the number of unofficial members had the inadvertent effect of exposing the underrepresentation of black Africans. Even though both groups formed tiny minorities, seven Europeans and seven Asians were to sit alongside fourteen African unofficials in the reformed legislature. Constitutional change on this basis merely extended the disproportionate business clout of Europeans and Indians to the political realm. As the Kabaka recalled, multi-racialism ‘was not seen as the beginnings of self-government, but as a possible plan to change Uganda from an African to a multi-racial society in the style of Kenya or Rhodesia’.15 Ominous regional and national developments fuelled the reactionary politics of Ganda exceptionalism in the Lukiko. On 23 September 1953 its members unanimously resolved to oppose East African federation, endorse demands for a transfer of Buganda from the Colonial Office to the Foreign Office and request from Britain a timetable for independence.16 If regional federalism was poison to the Ganda political establishment, the prospect of Buganda’s secession, which the Kabaka had also raised in a letter to Cohen, was anathema to British colonial administrators. As D. A. Low later noted, ‘It was a frontal assault on the doctrine of the unitary state.’17 In response Cohen sent the Kabaka into exile. This radical action followed six meetings with Mutesa during which the controversy narrowed to Cohen’s assertion that, in the last resort, the Kabaka was obliged to act on British advice in securing the Lukiko’s consent to his constitutional reforms. It was on the presupposition that Mutesa was a feudal overlord that the British held him responsible for the constitutional crisis of 1953 but it was the lack of precision regarding the roles of different parties in the 1900 agreement, which the British were trying to rectify, that gave credence to the Kabaka’s disavowals. Mutesa compared his interactions with the Lukiko to those of the American President with the United States Senate, which was a body with a great deal of autonomy.18 There were elements of truth in this: the Lukiko did contain representatives from different sazas, just as the Senate featured state representatives, and both institutions served a mediating role between the people and the executive. The key differentiating factor was that the United States had won its war of independence and American politics was not constrained by a colonial system which gave a directorial role to British officials. Cohen insisted that his advice to Mutesa was mandatory and that the Lukiko must defer to him as Kabaka. British documents from the time rehearsed familiar colonial tropes about the pre-modern character of Ugandan institutions. For example, a brief from June 1954 stated that ‘whatever the politically minded may say, the attitude of the Baganda generally is still largely feudal. If the Kabaka makes his views known on an important matter his subjects will not go against him.’19 Beneath the entire controversy, the most consequential issues were the longstanding indeterminacy of the Lukiko’s relationship to the Kabaka and the Lukiko’s impending subordination to the central Legislative Council of Uganda. When the British later allowed the Kabaka to return, they demanded as their price a much sharper definition of constitutional forms and functions that would enable future Governors to identify and hold to account the responsible parties in any future crisis.

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There is a rich archive of primary source material relating to Mutesa’s deportation, much of it in a sensational or theatrical register. The final confrontation with Cohen on 30 November, just before he was bustled out of the country in an RAF plane, has been described by both Mutesa and his Katikiro, Paulo Kavuma. They both emphasize the violent potential of the quarrel, particularly as the Kabaka’s bodyguard was armed. According to Mutesa his last words to Cohen were ‘Be this upon your own head.’20 Published a decade after the event, Lyttelton’s memoirs also criticize Cohen, in this case because of his unwillingness to arrange a meeting between himself and the Kabaka. The two men had served in the same British regiment and Lyttelton recalled that he ‘felt sure that he would listen to a fellow Grenadier’.21 This description of martial fraternity with the Kabaka must cast a degree of doubt on the reliability of such self-exculpatory autobiographical material. Far from expressing any fellow feeling, the Cabinet records of 19 November 1953 reveal that Lyttelton told his fellow Conservative ministers that Mutesa ‘was a weakling who had lost face with his subjects by his recent conduct’.22 He also suggested that the Kabaka was ‘unstable socially’, on the grounds that he was living with his sister-in-law. On 15 December Lyttelton provided the Cabinet with a further lurid account of Mutesa’s purported sexual indiscretions.23 For his part Cohen provided steadying reassurances to the Colonial Office on the events of the exile and its aftermath. Although these accounts offer a plausible impersonation of the unflappable Governor of popular colonial myth, the events merely accentuated Cohen’s reputation for eccentricity and neuroticism. When the Labour politician Richard Crossman arrived in Uganda in the very last days of 1953, he found Cohen ‘on the edge of a nervous breakdown owing to the crisis’. Crossman believed Cohen’s conflict with Buganda’s politicians was rooted in the latter’s jealous regard for the constitutional privileges of their parliament, or, as he put it, ‘the real grievance is that the negotiations were kept secret between the Governor and the Kabaka and that the issue was not put before the Lukiko’.24 This analysis was perceptive. Although the inflaming of passions might be grist to the mill for those who favour the emotivist turn in contemporary historiography, all parties engaged in a great deal of strategic calculation when addressing the question of the future relationship between the parliaments of Buganda and Uganda. In the aftermath of the deportation the newly elected Lukiko was united in resisting what they interpreted as a threat to the integrity of the kingdom. If the Kabaka had not been deported, the seating of new representatives in the Lukiko would probably have ushered in a new era of conflict between the conservative establishment and their critics in the UNC who had secured the election of a number of their candidates.25 Instead the rival groups united to secure the Kabaka’s return and competed in showing greater loyalty to the cause. Even Eridadi Mulira, whose cautious position as a liberal reformer placed him in some sympathy with Cohen and who had kept his distance from both the UNC and the conservatives in the Lukiko, loudly supported the campaign for Mutesa’s return. In his autobiography he identifies three motives behind the subsequent campaigns: first, the Kabaka had been deported because he represented the popular will on the question of East African federation and independence; secondly, it was a humiliation to allow foreigners the prerogative of reconfiguring Ganda institutions such as the monarchy and the Lukiko; and thirdly, it was essential that the Governor should be apprised of Ganda resistance to colonial

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The End of Empire in Uganda

meddling of this kind.26 Mulira joined the delegation despatched to London to make contact with Mutesa and open negotiations with Lyttelton. The British government initially refused to reconsider Mutesa’s exile because it provided them with an opportunity to assure the primacy of Ugandan unity and dispense with the possibility of secession in Buganda. On 15 December the British Cabinet decided that Lyttelton should go through the charade of listening to the Kabaka’s protests in the talks with him scheduled for two days later but, even without knowing what Mutesa would say, they agreed that any renewed assurances of loyalty designed to secure his restoration should be rejected on the grounds that he could not be trusted.27 In the months after Mutesa’s exile, the parliamentarians of Buganda articulated a persuasive case for his return and pursued some highly successful tactics to secure it. Even though the failure of the Lukiko’s initial mission to London was predetermined, the arguments the delegates made were significant because they articulated a rhetoric of popular representation, which was the first of the three points which had persuaded Mulira to join their cause. After Lyttelton refused to reverse Cohen’s decision, they declared in a press statement that ‘the Kabaka throughout has acted as the mouthpiece of his Ministers and the Lukiko’.28 Given its character as a corporate body whose members often differed over tactics, it would be a mistake to suggest that the Lukiko had a fixed notion of how to secure Mutesa’s return; its members tried different methods at different times, including appeals to international opinion, encouragement of popular protest and a relentless and uncompromising approach to negotiations. Such activity was interpreted in the Colonial Office as evidence of the willingness of Buganda’s parliamentarians to break with conventions about how such assemblies ought to behave. Of the devices employed by the Lukiko, one which particularly galled British officials but has been little mentioned in the historiography was the effort to internationalize the conflict. When in February 1954 Lyttelton announced an investigation into Buganda’s constitutional affairs under an independent chairman, the Lukiko sent another delegation to London to negotiate terms. Their representatives demanded that the commission should include members from outside Buganda, including the African-American diplomat, Ralph Bunche, and Ernest Kalibala, who had investigated trusteeship issues at the United Nations. The Lukiko’s efforts to draw sympathy and support from the Afro-Atlantic diaspora irritated Cohen who accused them of overstepping the boundaries of legitimate conduct. He suggested to the designated chairman of the investigatory commission, Keith Hancock, ‘You are coming here to consult with the Baganda and not these outside people.’29 Three of the Lukiko’s delegates refused to talk about Hancock’s terms of reference until their demands were met. Cohen eventually conceded and authorized the appointment of Kalibala.30 In common with many other colonial Governors Cohen identified external agitators as the source of many of Uganda’s problems and, after the Hancock Commission’s report, he continued to grumble about Kalibala as a sinister Machiavellian influence encouraging opposition to government.31 During the summer of 1954 Hancock’s committee took up residence on Namirembe hill and listened to submissions in camera for what one of the more punctilious participants estimated to be 150 hours.32 The evidence gathered testified to a consensus among Ganda radicals, reformers and conservatives that the exile of

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the Kabaka had exposed the hypocrisies of colonial rule and that the Lukiko was a vital institution. A submission from a miruka council in Kyaddondo suggested that British efforts to impose their own constitutional regulations constituted a usurpation of the Lukiko’s entitlements. Their memorandum proposed early self-government as a necessary corrective to the assumption by British administrators and advisers of the ‘the power of conquerors over us’.33 The UNC’s submission was longer and more detailed and included plans for a Ugandan federation. On the matter of the authority of the Lukiko and the Kabaka their document suggested that the Ganda had lived under the sovereignty of as many monarchs as the British. Such arguments were intended to provide a further undergirding of historical authenticity to the demand for autonomy. Self-government, according to the UNC’s analysis, was nothing more than ‘the restoration of our independence which we enjoyed for centuries before the advent of the Whitemen and which is our birthright.’34 Hancock’s response to these grievances was typical of the elaborate formal contrivances to which colonial policymakers resorted during the constitutional crises of decolonization. To compensate for the loss of autonomy entailed in the exercise of the British Resident’s authority, Hancock proposed a system of executive committees with representation from Buganda. More controversially, he suggested the Kabakaship should be transformed into a constitutional monarchy acting on the advice of ministers. This clearly drew on British models for reconciling representative democracy with monarchical supremacy and was unpopular in Buganda. In response, the Lukiko reverted to its tactics of obstruction and it took almost a year to persuade it to endorse the Namirembe principles. They only did so after wringing further concessions from the Colonial Office guaranteeing that Mutesa would be restored and that he should appoint representatives to sign any transitional agreement prior to his personal endorsement of the final deal after his return to Buganda. Assurances that some African ministers would be appointed to the executive branch of the Protectorate Government and that Uganda would not be forcibly integrated into a wider East African federation were also offered by the Colonial Office but the cost of these concessions was Buganda’s participation in a central Ugandan legislature where only half of the seats were reserved for Africans. Conservative opponents of Buganda’s integration into a centralized national government clustered around the figure of Mikaeri or Michael Kintu who became the long-serving Katikiro after Mutesa’s restoration in 1955. Their subsequent campaigns in defence of the Lukiko’s privileges were initially bolstered by the success of the methods used in securing the Kabaka’s return. Alongside the resistance of employers to trade unions, the campaign to defend the Lukiko against the intrusions of a national parliament was one of the most significant examples of opposition to institutional reform from established parties but one which was vitiated by naked class self-interest. Most of the key figures were Protestant graduates of Budo school whose families had benefitted from the 1900 colonial dispensation in terms of land or position or both. The key distinguishing feature of representatives in the Lukiko was that they did not sit atop the apex of society but in its proximity. A survey undertaken by S. B. K. Musoke in 1957–1958 indicated that of the fifty-nine elected members of the Lukiko, thirty-two were the sons of chiefs, who in Buganda were essentially officers of government. In other respects this junior administrative class did not represent the

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The End of Empire in Uganda

highest tiers of the local hierarchy: according to Musoke’s figures only thirteen of the fifty-nine were landowners. The militant conservatism of many members of the Lukiko reflected a scramble for status among an aspirant group of landless bureaucrats who still had much to gain from being seen to serve the Kabaka’s cause. Most important of all was the fact that, in marked contrast to the leaders of the UNC, only three of the elected Lukiko delegates had been educated at Makerere, while twenty-three had received only primary-level education.35 This was a group that was unlikely to be able to compete effectively once the straightforward systems of instruction and command around which provincial politics was organized were supplanted by a nationalist form of Ugandan politics which placed a premium on advanced English literacy. Throughout the 1950s Buganda’s conservatives eschewed modern party politics. It was not until 1961 that the pressure of national elections forced them to organize the Kabaka Yekka (KY).36 Prior to this Ganda elites continued to fraternize on a more informal basis in religious, charitable, sporting and social clubs. The most exclusive of these was the Kakamega Club whose members were the friends and associates of the Kabaka.37 The informal and inscrutable character of backstage politics in these societies frustrated British administrators who were accustomed to dealing with nationalist political parties. The Colonial Office regarded formal political organizations as essential to their strategy of decolonization in the medium term and the successful introduction of a parliamentary system in the long term. Parties offered up leaders who could be negotiated with when compromise was required and imprisoned or exiled when colonial politics switched to a coercive register. The constantly shifting alliances among individuals in the orbit of Mutesa and Kintu blurred the lines of accountability and the British were frequently perplexed about where the centre of political gravity in the Lukiko might be. Because the plotting of the conservative political classes was often impenetrable and clandestine, the colonial authorities generally took action against anticolonial journalists whose seditious sentiments were overt and on paper, rather than Buganda’s politicians. As a party the UNC had a formal political organization which made it more accountable and more acceptable to British officialdom but its substantive policies were regarded as disobliging. After a period of working together with the conservatives to secure the Kabaka’s return, from the mid-1950s the younger, better educated and politically conscious leaders of the early UNC began to articulate a new critique of British colonialism. The leading figure in this process was Abu Mayanja, who attracted the praise of British Labour MPs, such as Fenner Brockway and John Stonehouse, on the assumption that he might follow Nkrumah’s path to national political leadership.38 Focusing on plans to increase African representation in the Ugandan parliament, Mayanja questioned why Hancock’s reforms did not make provision for the central legislature to embrace the democratic practice of election from a common roll of constituents. In failing to uphold the principle that legislators should be elected by all the people, he argued, Hancock had foreclosed the possibility of establishing a common citizenship which, on the basis of demography, would guarantee Uganda’s future as an African-majority state.39 Even though UNC members could support Mayanja’s democratic and anticolonial ideology, like the conservatives, they were prone to endogenous factionalism. Once the UNC began to direct its energies to the

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establishment of a national party with appeal in the north and the west of Uganda, the parties’ influence in Buganda diminished, as did Buganda’s influence in the UNC. Many former Ganda leaders of the UNC, including Mayanja, defected from the party and joined the KY after it merged with other groups to form the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC). The diminishing prospects for a modernist Muganda in the UNC were evident from the controversial career of Joe Kiwanuka. After the return of the Kabaka he became a combative UNC voice in the Lukiko but became ever more isolated within that assembly and within the party. Kiwanuka’s opposition to separatism in Buganda and his support for building a wide anticolonial coalition across the rest of Uganda temporarily bolstered his prestige in the UNC.40 His policy of solidarity with other ethnic groups in Uganda was prescient, given that during the 1950s and 1960s, efforts to establish secessionist states like Buganda elsewhere in Africa were repeatedly defeated. Kiwanuka became an embattled and isolated figure in the Lukiko and was constantly embroiled in legal battles. In one such case, which seems to have been wholly fabricated by his political opponents, he was accused of plotting to have the Kabaka and his allies assassinated. On 19 March 1958 Kiwanuka, in his capacity as a UNC member, was expelled from the Lukiko. The following day a resolution was framed which noted that political parties had never been accepted in Buganda and that the Governor should be required to negotiate with the Lukiko rather than any other organization.41 Buganda’s conservatives were correct in assuming that once parties began to operate in a unitary state, a coalition of forces from outside Buganda was likely to gain the upper hand in Ugandan domestic politics. The point was demonstrated in August 1959 when Kiwanuka was suspended from the UNC in a move which prefigured the rise of northern politicians, most notably Milton Obote, and eventually culminated with the abolition of the southern kingdoms and their parliaments in 1966.42 If Buganda’s rapidly shifting politics of personal rivalry unconstrained by disciplined partisanship frustrated British policymakers, an even more irritating transgression was the aptitude members of the Lukiko demonstrated in the pursuit of populist politics. In the ideology of the Colonial Office the purpose of parliamentarianism was to move politics from unregulated streets and villages to the confines of the debating chamber. During the late 1950s members of the Lukiko refused to be constrained in this way and instead sought to mobilize popular discontent with British overrule in the cause of self-government for Buganda. By this stage the kingdom’s government had its own ministries run by its own officials who, according to a keen academic observer of the day, Anthony Low, ‘made the most of modern offices and large German cars’.43 Although their offices might be well appointed, Buganda’s ministers knew that they could not determine the constitutional settlement which the British would leave behind after independence by pursuing their narrow executive functions. In order to prevent forcible integration into a unitary Uganda, two of Buganda’s leading conservatives, Amos Sempa and James Lutaya, organized a campaign against the Kingdom’s participation in national elections. As well as placing pressure on the British, the tactic of stimulating opposition outside the legislature had the advantage of dividing their local nationalist opponents. Some former critics of the Kabaka, including Musazi and Mulira, were prepared to support electoral boycotts while others, most notably

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The End of Empire in Uganda

Kiwanuka, prioritized Ugandan unity. Explaining his decision to align himself with those members of the Buganda establishment he had once criticized, Mulira noted that his efforts to compromise with the British had merely discredited him among his peers in Buganda. Rather than speaking the language of British imperialism, Mulira informed his British correspondents that he had taken up the people’s cause: ‘I now speak to “you” in their language and they listen to me.’44 On 15 December 1958 all eightythree members of the Lukiko who were present signed a memorandum demanding the abrogation of all extant agreements with the British and ‘the handing over to us of our sovereignty’.45 The Lukiko’s extra-parliamentary campaign was resented by Cohen’s replacement as Governor, Frederick Crawford, who shared his predecessor’s determination to assert the primacy of central over regional government, especially in Buganda. He suspected that the Kabaka was intimately involved in the campaign to achieve separate independence for Buganda by means of popular protest and sought to discredit Mutesa and his ministers before Ugandan and British audiences. In one meeting British officials looked forward with relish to the likelihood that ‘the Kabaka’s government and the Lukiko might well bring themselves into further disrepute’. In response to demands for immediate revision of the 1900 agreements, Crawford and his advisers agreed that ‘Baganda participation in Legislative Council must be a prerequisite to any further discussion of amending the Agreements.’46 Richard J. Reid has interpreted Ganda secessionism, alongside the campaigns of the Amba and Konzo for autonomy in the west and the assertive irredentism of the Nyoro at the centre, as an example of the salience of ethnic historical consciousness in shaping late colonial politics in Uganda. As he states: ‘Many Ganda believed Buganda to be a nation in its own right, and Uganda to be an entirely unwanted, artificial and indeed illogical construct.’47 From the British perspective the most alarming aspect of the campaign was the trade boycott which began at the behest of the newly organized Uganda National Movement (UNM) on 8 March 1959 and appeared to portend a future of racial disorder. The secessionists urged people not to buy foreign goods, including European brands of beer, milk sold in Tetra-Paks, cigarettes and non-African soft drinks. Fears that the boycott would lead to violence were to some extent vindicated. Resentment at their large role in the Ugandan trade and retail sectors led to assaults on members of Uganda’s Indian minority. In Sathyamurthi’s secondary account there are even echoes of the extremities of complaisance violence which had such a deleterious effect during the contemporaneous anticolonial wars in Kenya and Algeria. ‘In the xenophobia generated by the movement,’ he wrote, ‘Africans who consorted with members of other races or bought goods from shops owned by non-Africans (or even non-Baganda) were subject to ridicule, persecution and even physical harm.’48 The hostility of many Africans to Indian traders is an example of a common but complex historical phenomenon in which racial minorities, such as the Marwaris of India or the Lebanese of Cote d’Ivoire, adopt mercantilist roles and attract the enmity of the general population because of their role as commercial middlemen. Although sociologists are keen to generalize about such groups, it is important to place particular examples in specific contexts. In the case of East Africa it is impossible to understand local hostility to Indian entrepreneurs during the era of decolonization without recognizing the significance of British efforts to cultivate multi-racialism. In a European context this

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term might have neutral or even positive connotations but for many Africans living during the final years of European imperialism, multi-racialism was understood as an instrument for the marginalization of the majority black African population. The key example of a multi-racial constitution was the CAF that consolidated and extended the control of the white European settlers in Southern Rhodesia. A further complicating factor, about which the historiography remains silent, is the hostility of the small community of expatriate white Europeans to the Indian minority. Beresford Craddock, who had been the first president of the Uganda Tea Association and was later a reactionary Conservative MP, opposed the appointment of an Asian minister in 1955 on the grounds ‘that he disliked all Indians (except those of the Moslem faith) and thought that it would be disastrous if a commercial Hindu were appointed as an unofficial Minister in the Protectorate’.49 While white businessmen such as Craddock could regard the Indian commercial class with disdain, for the black African population the presence of well-stocked dhukas owned by Indians became a symbol of commercial marginalization. The hostility shown to Indians during the boycott of 1959 was a grim portent of their eventual expulsion from Uganda in 1972. The colonial government also deployed violence for political purposes during the boycott campaign. By the end of April 1959 tear-gas was being used against those demonstrating in its support.50 Members of the Lukiko who supported extraparliamentary action were threatened and on 31 May Mulira, Musazi and four other prominent supporters of the boycott were arrested.51 The UNM was banned only to be succeeded by an endless number of equally dissident organizations, including the Uganda Freedom Movement, the Uganda Freedom Union, the Uganda League and the Uganda Underground Movement. Such polymorphism had the appearance of a satire of the rigid expectations of British administrators but its primary purpose was to evade the proscriptions of the colonial authorities. By the end of 1959 the violence of the boycott had abated but in December the Lukiko issued a second challenge to colonial authority on the anniversary of the first; this took the form of a long memorandum addressed to Queen Elizabeth II requiring the termination of all treaties between Buganda and Britain. This gesture coincided with the publication of John Wild’s recommendations about Uganda’s future constitution, which recommended national elections to a central legislative assembly on a common roll. By this stage, British perceptions that the Kabaka was directing resistance had altered and it was politicians inside the Lukiko, including Amos Sempa and Emmanuel Lumu, who were regarded as responsible for the disruptive consequences of the secessionist campaign. Given the ferocity of the arguments which took place among British MPs in the chamber of the House of Commons about appeasement, the Suez crisis or arms sales to South Africa, it was difficult to suggest that bouts of ill-temper in the Lukiko were exceptional. Where there was a contrast between Mengo and Westminster was that the architecture and unruly procedures of the Lukiko made it more vulnerable to popular pressure. The design of the small chamber meant members were continuously exposed to public approbation and disapprobation. During the course of a meeting in October 1960, British officials decided to publicize ‘the damage being done to Buganda’s reputation in the world at large by the domination of the Lukiko by the mob, which appeared to be connived at or at least accepted by the Katikiro and the Speaker’.52 This theme was later taken up by

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The End of Empire in Uganda

critics of the Lukiko in the UNC. In a prose poem written by Akena Adoko to explain the causes of the fighting at Mengo in 1966, the Lukiko was portrayed as an avatar of national lawlessness. A passage about the events of 20 May which preceded the army’s intervention stated: ‘There was an open meeting of the Lukiko that day./The gallery was fully packed/With hooligans, city rogues,/Questionable characters/Of all descriptions and forms … None could brave the mob’s assault,/None dare brave the mob’s insults. This same mob had recently/With their fists and with their legs,/Hurling stones and yelling abuse,/Forced Kintu and his Ministers/To resign from Government.’53 Despite their overt differences, British officials, such as Crawford, and modernizing nationalist politicians, such as Adoko, shared the goal of Ugandan national unity. As elsewhere in the empire, decolonization required the aggregation of potentially disparate territories into a single nation-state organized on either a unitary or a federal basis. Secessionist movements were therefore a serious threat to orderly independence. In the case of Buganda, the British reluctantly accepted that, because they favoured national unity, nationalist parties, even when campaigning on anticolonial themes, were preferable allies to conservative secessionists. A third annual December crisis occurred in Buganda in 1960 when the Lukiko voted in favour of independence and secession. British commentary was again preoccupied with the unconventional character of the debate. The refusal of members of the Lukiko to be restrained by colonial protocols concerning parliamentary conduct identified them as potential harbingers of political anarchy after independence. Reports noted that the public ‘cheered every Lukiko member who spoke in favour of secession and jeered anyone who spoke against it’.54 Unable to take any action that would give meaning to their nominal declaration of independence, the secessionists organized a boycott of the Legislative Council elections scheduled for April 1961. Defeating this campaign was regarded as essential to the future of a united Uganda and British officials predicted that if national elections were successful ‘the Uganda government will have won its struggle vis-à-vis the Buganda government’.55 Representatives were elected in Buganda and the electoral boycott contributed to the Democratic Party (DP) victory in twenty of the twenty-one constituencies in Buganda. The DP was overtly Catholic and their national victory represented a new threat to the Protestant establishment which had long dominated Buganda’s politics. The immediate reaction of the Speaker of the Lukiko was to suspend eighteen members, including Abu Mayanja, for collaborating with the colonial authorities in organizing the national poll. The conservative supporters of the Kabaka were left with little choice but to finally form a political party of their own. The British Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod, had tried to persuade this group to subscribe to British political orthodoxy and form a campaigning party during his visit to Uganda in December 1959. Daudi Ochieng had initially been identified as a potential party leader and, according to his own account, he had encouraged the Kabaka’s ministers to contest the April 1961 elections.56 But it was only in the aftermath of the DP’s victory that an archetypal representative of the chiefly elite called Sepiriya Masembe-Kabali established the KY. He was a landowner whose father had served the Kabaka as Omuwanika and the purpose of his new party was to sustain the old order in Buganda. Although Masembe and his allies initially resisted being labelled as a party, the mimetic pull of Western models eventually brought together different elements of

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Buganda’s polity to campaign on a common programme and to act as a caucus in local and national legislatures. As I. R. Hancock noted in his analysis of the KY, it united oligarchical and populist factions in defence of Protestant supremacy, the privileges of the Kabaka and Ganda exceptionalism.57 The growing ubiquity of KY badges in Buganda in late 1961 offered an informal demonstration of its popularity but it was their victory in the Lukiko elections of February 1962 which demonstrated the extent of its gathering strength. KY won sixty-five of the sixty-eight seats open to popular election. In order to avoid splitting the Protestant vote, the UPC opted not to run candidates against the KY, which resulted in the rout of the DP. As the price for agreeing to participate in national Ugandan politics, the Kabaka obtained special dispensation from the colonial government for the indirect election of twenty-one delegates chosen by the Lukiko to represent Buganda in the national parliament. Once their temporary allies in the UPC had defeated the DP in the new national elections of 1962, the KY was able to defend the privileges accorded to Buganda at the final constitutional conference in London in June. The political strategizing and trading between the various Ugandan factions which took place during these negotiations generated one of the most complex constitutional arrangements of African decolonization. In ten districts across the north and west of the country unitary arrangements prevailed and the powers of the central government were substantial. Ankole, Bunyoro and Toro were joined by Busoga in obtaining the status of recognized kingdoms in semi-federal relations with the central government in Kampala. These kingdoms had a degree of local autonomy especially in matters of customary law. Buganda was to enjoy exceptional status and retained a much larger measure of control over finance and internal security than any of the other subdivisions of the new nation. The settlement gave the appearance of entrenching Buganda’s old oligarchy but it also had a provisional character that was most evident in the sketchy and indeterminate character of the budgetary arrangements.58 It is only with hindsight that one can assert with confidence that this dispensation was unsustainable; at the time the constitutional guarantees of Buganda’s special status looked like a tactical triumph for the conservative factions which had dominated the Lukiko over the previous decade. Relations between the Lukiko and the Ugandan government continued to be marked by conflict in the years after independence. The weaknesses of Buganda’s position, which were temporarily hidden beneath the 1962 constitution, were exposed to the full glare of the nationalist ideology of Milton Obote and the UPC. All political energy in Buganda for the previous decade had been expended on external conflict with the British authorities and internal squabbling; no effort was devoted to ameliorating the underlying economic and social inequalities which, when aggravated still further by a host of personal rivalries and animosities, generated chronic factionalism. The initial political success of the KY became merely the prelude to a further recycling of grievances. Even during the 1962 elections to the Lukiko, the saza chiefs were reluctant to yield control to a nascent bureaucracy of KY party functionaries and professional politicians. Twenty saza chiefs and up to six nominees of the Kabaka still sat alongside Buganda’s elected representatives in the Lukiko.59 As leader of the KY, Masembe abandoned the cause of democratic reform and allowed the chiefs to play a decisive role in choosing KY candidates.60 Continuity was represented by the presence

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The End of Empire in Uganda

of Kintu as Buganda’s Katikiro or Chief Minister. For his government the renovation of Buganda’s institutions was of little relevance when set against the forthcoming ‘Lost Counties’ referendum. This poll in the sazas of Buyaga and Bugangaizi, which Buganda had gained from Bunyoro during the colonial era, was intended to finally decide which territorial government should administer them. The catastrophic defeat of Kintu’s campaign in the November 1964 referendum and the consequent loss of the territories to Bunyoro signalled the failure of Kintu’s administration. His position had previously been weakened by a censure motion accusing his government of gross mismanagement of financial matters, including a £250,000 scheme to resettle residents from central Buganda into strategic districts of the ‘Lost Counties’. Initially, Kintu was protected by the chiefs and the Kabaka’s appointees but the defeat in the referendum prompted several of this group to withhold their support and forced his resignation.61 Endogenous disputes in Buganda over corruption, constitutional reform and the ‘Lost Counties’ may not have proven fatal if it were not for the external pressure exerted by the national UPC government on Kintu and his successors. Pragmatic considerations, in the form of the requirement for allies in Buganda to defeat the DP, had forced the UPC into a temporary alliance with the KY but Obote worked by increments to free himself of his dependence on support from Buganda. The existence of a constitutionally privileged oligarchy in the largest and most productive quarter of the country was regarded by Obote as a hindrance to his efforts to promote national unity, economic development and egalitarian social policies.62 In this struggle, the UPC had a number of advantages over the KY. Although both parties were riven by rivalry among the leaders and an abiding localism among the activists, the UPC had at least the rudiments of a prevailing ideology associated with modernization and an emergent organizational structure which offered the possibility of resolving disputes inside the party. After 1962 a number of the indirectly elected KY delegates in the national parliament defected to the UPC. Ogenga Otunnu identifies three potential motives for these dissidents: disillusionment with their own party, a commitment to more effective government and personal ambition driven by the rewards which the UPC could offer.63 More speculatively, another contributory factor to the collapse of the KY parliamentary party may have been a thoroughly misjudged strategy of entryism based on the supposition that defecting KY delegates would strengthen the hand of anti-Obote factions in the UPC, especially those associated with Grace Ibingira who was widely perceived as more sympathetic to the interests of the southern kingdoms.64 According to Ibingira’s account, Obote did not welcome the defectors. He apparently stated: ‘One cannot trust the Baganda. They want to control the UPC and this crossing was their spearhead.’65 Obote took advantage of the weakness of Kintu’s successor as Katikiro, Joshua Mayanja-Nkangi, who lacked the prestige of his predecessor, and the outbreak of violence in the aftermath of the ‘Lost Counties’ referendum to outlaw the KY.66 The banning of the KY did not resolve the threat which Buganda posed to Obote personally as well as to his programme of nation-building. This was finally eliminated on 24 May 1966 when the Ugandan army attacked the Kabaka’s palace, or Lubiri, at Mengo and he fled into a second exile. Mutesa’s account of the fighting emphasizes the extent of the force used against his supporters.67 Reporters were refused permission

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to investigate the location of the battle but heard rumours that up to a thousand bodies were being cleared from the site.68 Such figures were probably exaggerated but Obote’s suggestion that only twenty people were killed was implausible.69 While there was a strong element of neuroticism in Obote’s political psychology, his decision to authorize such violence was motivated by the same kind of causes which had generated chronic confrontation between the colonial government and the Lukiko, including the employment of violent extra-parliamentary tactics by Buganda’s politicians and the attempt to internationalize the conflict. This last aspect was particularly significant and has been given insufficient emphasis in later accounts. Otunnu is one of the few historians to have noted the significance of Mutesa’s appeals to the United Nations, in which he compared relations between Uganda and Buganda to the bitterly fought civil war caused by Katanga’s secession from Congo.70 On the Katangan model the final resort for the Kabaka’s supporters appeared to be a full-scale secessionist rebellion in Buganda with the assistance of the old colonial power. Obote feared that Britain might support Buganda’s claims to independence, just as the Belgians had supported the Katangans. Mutesa and the British High Commissioner, Roland Hunt, had discussed such matters in February 1966. Mutesa proved evasive when Obote questioned him about rumours that he had invited British military intervention. The close ties between British establishment figures and conservative Baganda gave credence to the possibility of external interference. After Mutesa’s final exile, his legal adviser Frederick Mpanga hastened back and forth between Conservative MPs, members of the House of Lords and senior civil servants, all of whom seemed to have close personal relations with one or both of them. Lord Colyton reported that ‘a great many people in London were very friendly with the Kabaka’ and suggested that the British government had a moral responsibility to defend Buganda. Lord Montagu of Beaulieu informed the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) that Mpanga had confirmed that he had discussed the possibility of foreign intervention with Hunt. The CRO official responsible for the matter, Posnett, also knew Mpanga personally, but kept him at a greater distance to avoid giving the appearance of collusion.71 Obote ordered military intervention in Buganda to circumvent a plausible scenario in which ongoing civil disturbances would provide the pretext for a coalition of his opponents, comprising Grace Ibingira, former KY politicians now embedded in the UPC and military officers sympathetic to their cause led by Shaban Opolot, to launch a coup against him. In such circumstances, the promise of British military intervention sponsored by Mutesa’s allies in Britain might provide a sufficient guarantee of success to win over any waverers and set the seal on the coup’s accomplishment. The inflammatory language adopted in the Lukiko appeared to portend exactly such an event. Its members resolved to withdraw recognition from the central government and this, alongside intelligence suggesting that Ganda chiefs were arming their supporters, acted as a catalyst.72 Obote ordered the arrest of Ibingira on 22 February and imposed a new constitution which strengthened the powers of his central government. The role which the events of 1966 played in consolidating the influence of the army will be considered in the next chapter; with regard to the history of parliamentary government the most significant outcome was a complete overhaul of local administrative arrangements which eliminated the privileges of

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The End of Empire in Uganda

the kingdoms and dismembered Buganda into the four districts of Bombo, Masaka, Mpigi and Mubende. In this manner Obote finally disposed of the challenge which the Lukiko had persistently posed to the remit of a centralized Ugandan government. Its strength and weakness had been that it represented the interests of a narrow but powerful class in Ugandan political life. Their power had a variety of sources: the land and wealth acquired through their collaboration in the British project of indirect rule, the reserves of deference and patronage which had built up over half a century, the influence which came with tenured positions in government and the networks which tied them to influential allies outside Uganda. As well as a useful institutional vehicle for the expression of demands and grievances, the Lukiko served as a platform for popular mobilization at moments of crisis. The flaw in this project was that it did not address the rising discontent within Buganda at the striking inequalities in the colonial settlement. Once UNC politicians like Musazi and Kiwanuka began airing these grievances inside the Lukiko chronic factionalism ensued, which was amplified by the unwillingness of the old oligarchy to share power with a new class of politicians they regarded as parvenus. Had this conflict been isolated from outside currents, the conservative elite may well have had the resources to survive for a very long time in the manner of similar imperial collaborators such as the Hashemites in Jordan and the sheikhs and sultans of Malaya. However, the possibility of a longer-term future for the Kabaka and the class of chiefs represented in the Lukiko was foreclosed by the emergence across Africa of a new professionalized political class committed to political unity, social equality and economic redistribution. They came later to Uganda than to some other territories but the forum in which they eventually found success was the national parliament.

From Legislative Council to national parliament Parliaments often become symbols of national identity and in the case of Uganda the building in which the people’s representatives meet is one of the most impressive in Kampala and one which is distinct from British traditions. The central high tower may carry vague echoes of the palace of Westminster but the unadorned white exterior of the building and the prominence of the high walkways point away from the nineteenthcentury Gothic revivalism of Pugin and Barry and towards modernism. In contrast to the controversies which attend the construction of such buildings in the imperial metropolis, the opening of the Kampala parliament appeared to suggest the flourishing of an Afrocentric modernism in Uganda. The austerity of the exterior was moderated by the erection of an enormous wooden screen in the lobby which rendered people, animals and artefacts associated with African tradition. Despite this gratifying evidence of acculturation Ugandan architectural history did not float free from the colonial context of the 1950s and 1960s. The architects of the parliament, Thomas Peatfield and Geoffrey Bodgener, were graduates of the Architectural Association in London. Their newly established offices in Uganda thrived in the aftermath of independence and became an important resource for builders and urban planners but their pre-eminence was also a reminder of a legacy of dependency. Furthermore, although the parliament building

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was the company’s most prestigious project it was not built on one of Kampala’s many hills and it may be for this reason that it did not acquire iconic status among Ugandans. In contrast to Westminster, where the river location offers perspective, it is difficult to obtain a wide vista of Uganda’s parliament amidst the security paraphernalia, trees and traffic of Kampala’s urban sprawl. Pictures of the building in the Ugandan press do not usually feature the exterior and instead tend to portray parliamentarians in the debating chamber. The resemblance of these images to the British House of Commons is unmistakeable and after its construction an American diplomat noted that it was ‘very much like a small edition of the British Parliament’.73 Its configuration of two sets of benches facing one another was designed to accommodate oppositional two-party politics. Charles Goodsell commented in a survey of parliamentary architecture: ‘The Ugandan Parliament House at Kampala is clothed in a modern exterior but the interior of the National Assembly Chamber duplicates the layout (green) and artefacts of the House of Commons.’74 Of these items, the ones that offer the most vivid illustration of British cultural influence are the despatch boxes which sit on the table that divides the governmental from the opposition benches and which were donated by the British branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA). British members of the CPA, in cooperation with the clerks of the Westminster parliament, played a key role in exporting the British model of parliamentary practice. The organization was founded in 1911 as the Empire Parliamentary Association at the behest of Leo Amery, who regarded the coronation of George V as an apposite moment to celebrate fraternal feelings between parliamentary delegates from Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Newfoundland.75 After 1945 the renamed CPA began running training courses for parliamentarians from around the world in Westminster. Its General Council usually met in London but it was decided that in 1960 they would gather in Uganda to celebrate the opening of the new parliament building on 19 September. The British delegation comprised Roland Robinson, Arthur Creech Jones and Bernard Braine.76 The emergence of new parliaments with close ties to Westminster was regarded by British MPs as something to be celebrated and giftgiving was customary. The usual tokens of esteem were either luxurious bound copies of the guide to British parliamentary procedure, Erskine May, or hour glasses made from crystal, ivory and enamel. On this occasion, the British branch of the CPA decided to mark the occasion of their visit to Uganda with something even more conspicuous and redolent of British traditions in the form of two despatch boxes. They were modelled precisely on the versions displayed in the House of Commons, which were reputed to be ‘the ideal size from a functional point of view’. Beyond their purported instrumental perfection, other aspects of the design of the boxes advertised the primacy of British history. The artist’s description offered an ingenuous account of the exclusively British memories from which each box was constructed. In his words, they were fabricated from English Oak to symbolize, ‘the enduring age of England from the making of the long-bow to the construction of Nelson’s ships, indeed a “brotherhood of venerable trees” says Wordsworth’. Royal associations were asserted through the principal decoration on each box, which was a Portcullis surmounted by a Crown, described as ‘once the Royal badge of Tudor sovereigns but now associated with the Houses of Parliament’. A similar gift had been given to the parliament of the Australian state of

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The End of Empire in Uganda

Victoria and no concessions were made to the new African context into which they were to be introduced in Kampala.77 The prestige and resources of the British branch of the CPA offered a guarantee that the Ugandan parliamentarians would gratefully accept these symbols of British parliamentary culture into their national forum. In 1960 the Ugandan branch of the CPA’s relationship with the parent organization was in transition. They had graduated from subsidiary to affiliated status in 1956 but were required to wait for independence until obtaining full membership. As well as echoing the Westminster parliament in its internal configuration, the newly established national parliament had a room specifically reserved for the use of the CPA.78 Alongside the implanting of the appurtenances of British political culture, decolonization offered British legislators an opportunity to determine the rules which governed the conduct of parliaments around the world. The two Houses at Westminster have perhaps the most elaborate set of procedures of any national parliament and, alongside the despatch boxes, the Ugandan legislature later received bound copies of the regulations contained in Erskine May.79 When established in 1921 membership of the Legislative Council had been confined to six Europeans, four of whom were officials. In the post-1945 era of decolonization, measures to expand the membership and ambit of the Council ran in parallel with efforts to export British parliamentary practices to Uganda. The training of new parliamentarians was undertaken by politicians and officials from Westminster with the intention of moderating the conduct of African legislators. On attending a meeting of the Legislative Council in the 1950s Harold Ingrams was struck by its familiarity. ‘You have not difficulty in realising’, he recalled, ‘that this is the authentic spirit of Westminster transported from the banks of the Thames to the shores of Victoria Nyanza.’80 A further step towards imposing the Westminster model occurred in 1958 when the Governor, Frederick Crawford, relinquished the chairmanship of the Legislative Council to make way for the appointment of the first independent Speaker, in the person of the former Chief Justice, John Griffin. During this same period prominent Labour and Conservative MPs from the British branch of the CPA, including Herbert Morrison, Fred Willey, Patrick Spens and Bernard Braine, visited the country to offer lectures about the formalities of parliamentary practice. Their efforts were supplemented by those of the Society of Clerks-at-theTable in Commonwealth parliaments, whose meetings were less frequent but who also disseminated the elaborate protocols of British parliamentarianism. Another key figure in the export of the British model was the Fourth Clerk of the Table at Westminster whose role, from the establishment of the post in April 1953, was to liaise with the officials of other imperial and Commonwealth parliaments.81 The occupant of this position, David Lidderdale, often accompanied politicians on their imperial tours and offered his own curriculum dealing with topics such as the rules of debate and the functions of the legislature.82 In 1961 another Westminster clerk, David Pring, who would later co-author an influential comparative study of American and British parliamentary practices, spent two months in Uganda lecturing at Makerere on the work of an MP, the two-party system, legislation and the use of committees.83 The forms of British parliamentary procedure propagated by Lidderdale and Pring survived after Ugandan independence and continued to exercise their restraining function. Baganchwera Barungi, the first African clerk of the Ugandan parliament, took pride in

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the complex protocols he was required to superintend. His account of the intricacies of such mundane matters as the asking of a parliamentary question gives some sense of the constraining effects of British practice. Legislators not only had to submit such questions in advance but Barungi would scrutinize and vet them to ensure they met the stipulations governing parliamentary language. Only once he had approved them were they added to the order of business, at which point the speaker was under an obligation to see that the question was asked, that the government replied and that further supplementary questions were elicited.84 The export of Erskine May and House of Commons furniture might suggest a gratifying lack of condescension in the politics of decolonization: British cultural forms were assumed to be best and what was good enough for legislators in Westminster was good enough for legislators in Kampala. What was entirely different was the context and only those conventions which were useful in diverting populist nationalism into safe havens were exported wholesale. The British strategy of decolonization required the fabrication of hybrid institutions with a high degree of formality and in the case of parliaments this entailed adaptations to the Westminster model designed to preserve executive privilege. In the immediate post-war period the Ugandan Legislative Council was a feeble body which rarely met and, when it did, tended to approve legislation within a day.85 Karugire notes that at that time most ordinary people were unaware of its existence and that politics were dominated by parochial district rivalries, on the one hand, and the looming centralized power of the Protectorate’s executive, on the other.86 The necessity for parliament to act as a check on the executive only became operative once the prospect of independence and an elected government came into view. African representation on the Ugandan Legislative Council began in 1945 with the selection by the Governor of three nominees from the collaborationist elites in the southern kingdoms. With the arrival of UNC representatives as part of Buganda’s delegation of five in 1955, anticolonial politics began to feature in its discussions. British politicians and officials greeted the seating of nationalist politicians in the legislature with ambivalence: some regarded it as a means to safely channel anticolonial grievance away from any potential inundation of popular protest, others were more impressed with the danger that parliamentary status would strengthen the hand of potential demagogues. Speaking about the UNC for the former group, Mary Fisher of the Colonial Office commented: ‘Such a nationalist movement, I suspect, is much less tiresome if it can be canalised in the institutions of the country than if it is free to flow in all directions outside (and underneath) them.’87 The speed of political progress in Africa often depended on the strength of countervailing pressures and in the case of Uganda these were significant. In April 1956 the Conservative Party’s leading opponent of decolonization, Lord Salisbury, claimed that enfranchising black Africans was a threat to Uganda’s handful of European settlers. Speaking for the bureaucrats of the Colonial Office, William Gorell Barnes argued that the advance of nationalism in Uganda could set detrimental precedents for Kenya and Tanganyika and weaken resistance to Egyptian encroachments down the Nile valley.88 The hand of the sceptics was strengthened when the reactionary Frederick Crawford replaced Andrew Cohen as Governor in 1957. A decade later Crawford would have his British passport withdrawn for abetting Ian Smith’s settler regime in Rhodesia in his capacity as resident director of

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The End of Empire in Uganda

the Anglo-American Corporation. One of his deputies in Uganda, John Wild, recalled that Crawford ‘did not much care for’ the prospect of Ugandan self-government, and ‘deliberately back-pedalled’ in an effort to slow the pace of change.89 As his deputy, in the post of Chief Secretary, he had the even more blimpish figure of Charles Hartwell, who as late as 1960 was predicting that the British would stay in Uganda for another decade.90 Back-pedalling by Crawford and Hartwell only delayed the democratization of Uganda’s legislature by three or four years but this was still a substantial effect. It was not until 1961 that a uniform system of parliamentary elections was introduced. In the 1950s resistance to the adoption of familiar British democratic norms was evident in the reluctance with which the colonial government considered nationalist demands for the extension of the franchise and the establishment of a universal, non-racial roll of electors. The founding Freedom Charter of the UNC announced its ambition of obtaining self-government and, borrowing from American republican precedents, suggested that liberation would entail ‘Government of the people, by the people and for the people’.91 The author of this document, Ignatius Musazi, was also one of the original group of UNC representatives from Buganda to enter the Legislative Council following the resolution of the Kabaka crisis. Another of their number, Eria Muwazi, a medical doctor with a practice in the UNC hotbed of Katwe, proposed in January 1956 that all members of the legislature should be selected from a common roll of electors.92 In the words of John Iliffe, for the rest of the year, Muwazi ‘deliberately injected venom into the Council’s bland debates’ by pointing out inconsistencies in British policy, such as the fact that even ‘notoriously conservative countries like Great Britain’ gave a vote to all their citizens.93 Democratization was also a theme pursued, although somewhat inconsistently, by the conservative rivals of the UNC in the Lukiko during negotiations about Buganda’s representation in the Legislative Council. In 1955 this group had been selected by an electoral college consisting of representatives from various counties. Once the UNC had got their nominees through the electoral college and into the Legislative Council, Cohen admitted that, as a prophylactic instrument to keep the nationalists out, the method of indirect election was a broken reed. The Colonial Office agreed and abandoned secondary voting, but they showed considerable constitutional ingenuity in pressing for a more complex and restrictive franchise. The representatives of the Kabaka’s government demanded the more straightforward and democratic system of universal adult suffrage. Acting as the Governor’s deputy in the talks, Wild responded that it was ‘very desirable to proceed with some caution’ and suggested that Crawford would not make further concessions. The final agreement enfranchised Ugandans if they met any one of six criteria relating to schooling, land ownership or employment. The arrangement still fell short of the British system of universal adult suffrage and one African participant, Joseph Zake, refused to sign the final report.94 His discontent was mirrored by that of Gorell Barnes who, as the chief proponent of a narrower franchise, grumbled that the solution was ‘so slightly qualitative that it would be possible to take the view that, from the point of view of Uganda alone, one might just as well have universal suffrage’. Despite these reservations, he expressed relief that, by restricting the right to vote in Uganda, they had avoided setting a precedent of African majority rule for the other East African territories.95

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The policy of giving the vote to all adult residents who could meet any of a number of apparently latitudinarian provisions still disenfranchised large numbers of Africans if they were women. This was a deliberate act of colonial policy. At the outset of the discussions with Buganda’s representatives, the British negotiators had opposed female enfranchisement. Both parties knew that women had played a prominent role in the protests about Mutesa’s exile and calculated on this basis that giving them the vote would strengthen the Kabaka’s faction in future elections. Buganda’s representatives in the negotiations made the case ‘that the fears about the effects of giving votes to women were unfounded; women’s organisations, in particular women’s clubs, were doing very well, and the women had shown during the exile of His Highness the Kabaka, that they could organise effectively and constitutionally in dealing with political matters’.96 Although the British eventually dropped their opposition to the universal exclusion of female voters, one advantage of the finally agreed qualitative criteria from their point of view was that it ensured a gender imbalance in the franchise. Men were still far more likely to go to primary school than women, so it was difficult for the latter to qualify on the basis of the educational criteria. Because of the gendered patterns of employment, customary land ownership and income distribution across Uganda, most women were also unlikely to meet any of the other requirements stipulated in the new electoral laws. When the qualitative franchise was applied to the rest of the country, there was significant variation in its impact on gendered patterns of voting but it was estimated that 20 per cent of women were entitled to vote in the elections to the Legislative Council in October 1958.97 Press reports from the electoral frontline suggested that more women than men turned up to polling stations in some districts.98 The arguments over female enfranchisement in Uganda in the late 1950s demonstrated that opposition to women’s suffrage in the colonies was continuing forty years after its establishment in the metropolis. Colonial policymakers were less resistant to giving women a role in the legislature than to their enfranchisement because the process of nomination remained in the hands of the already powerful executive. The first generation of African women legislators were appointed by British Governors and represented the elite class from Buganda on which the British had relied before the 1953 crisis. They included Pumla Kisosonkole, who, although born in South Africa, was married to the prominent landowner and saza chief, Christopher Kisosonkole, and Joyce Mpanga, who was the daughter of a court official at Mengo. The structural factors inhibiting the election of women were daunting and Mpanga recalled that it was the failure to elect any women candidates that led to her unexpectedly being offered a seat in the national parliament. This was not merely a matter of male patronage because it was the activism of women in civil society, most notably through the Uganda Women’s League, which became the Uganda Council of Women, that raised them to a position of prominence.99 If it was only the privilege of their backgrounds which enabled some women to sit in the parliament, the same circumstances also facilitated a degree of outspokenness which eventually confounded expectations. Tamale suggests that the female parliamentarians of the 1950s and 1960s were more forthright than those who came to the parliament after 1979, partly because the greater pluralism of the independence era enabled a livelier style of politics but mainly because ‘almost all first-generation female MPs emerged

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The End of Empire in Uganda

from political families, either as wives or daughter of male politicians’.100 The most important figures in overturning assumptions about the potential pliability of female legislators were the two women MPs of the early independence years, Sugra Visram and Florence Lubega. Selected by the Lukiko to represent Buganda in the national parliament in the aftermath of the 1962 elections, they formed part of the large KY delegation in the first independence parliament and were rendered conspicuous because they were the only women among the ninety parliamentarians.101 As a Muslim Ugandan Asian who was supportive of the conservative KY movement, Visram was an anomaly in Ugandan politics. Her fluency in Luganda and her willingness to wear traditional Ganda dress provided a striking demonstration of the multi-racial character of the early women’s movement in Uganda.102 Like Visram, Lubega was an influential figure in the KY. On her appointment she expressed the optimistic hope that in taking up her post as a Muganda and a woman she was marking a ‘new chapter’ in the history of Uganda.103 During the parliamentary debates of the mid-1960s she offered trenchant criticism of those member of the party who abandoned the cause in order to support Obote’s government. Despite this, she eventually acquiesced to Obote’s constitutional coup of 1966 and proved willing to adopt the nationalist rhetoric about neo-colonialism. To the irritation of British parliamentarians, during the CPA meeting in Kampala in 1967, Lubega complained about the detrimental effects of continuing British meddling in Ugandan affairs.104 Although many of them lived long lives, the late colonial generation of women in politics were largely tied to the lost cause of conserving the hierarchies of Buganda’s politics and were marginalized by the most significant development of the 1960s and 1970s, which was the rise to national prominence of civilian and then military men from outside Buganda. Although often divided among themselves, there was a common resentment among the new politicians emerging from West Nile, Acholi, Lango and Teso at the social and economic impoverishment of the north and west of the country under colonialism. These areas largely functioned as civilian and military labour reserves. The role of their people in the economy was to engage in small-scale food production to meet local needs, while providing seasonal labour for commercial cotton and coffee cultivation in the south. Enlistees from these areas also fought the wars of empire as members of the King’s African Rifles.105 This marginalization generated a series of resentments: firstly, against the self-interest and complacency of British imperial rule; secondly, against the political, social and cultural supremacy of Ganda elites; and thirdly, against the commercial dominance of those Indian families that had settled in Uganda and established a prevailing role in the retail and trade sectors. Ambitious, educated politicians from these once peripheral regions, such as Cuthbert Obwangor, Felix Onama, Akena Adoko and Milton Obote, entered the UNC during the 1950s and took power in the party away from the veterans of Buganda’s protest movements of the 1940s, such as Musazi and Kiwanuka. Its representatives in the Legislative Council offered a critique of colonial rule and the most persuasive of those critics was Obote. As well as being a hugely influential figure in Ugandan history his life story was typical of the small cohort of professional politicians who became nationalist leaders without access to the privileges of the Ganda establishment. Speaking to the American journalist Edward Sheehan in 1967, Obote emphasized that

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his ancestors were from a Langi ruling caste but acknowledged that his own early life was a humble one. He acted as a shepherd and goatherd in support of his father’s small-scale farming enterprises.106 His education at Protestant mission schools was intermittent but he did sufficiently well to earn a place at Makerere college. As one of the few northerners at the college in the 1940s he had a short and unhappy experience there and failed to graduate. Employment in Kenya in the midst of the Kikuyu war offered a further stimulus to his anticolonialism. Gingyera-Pinycwa indicates, ‘For a young politician like Obote, who learned the ABCs of politics in a pan-African setting – namely in Kenya … the more militant and radical forms of African nationalism must have been very appealing.’107 Obote’s anticolonialism was less mediated than that of UNC leaders in Buganda, who directed much of their ire towards those local oligarchs willing to collude with colonial systems of indirect rule. He believed the British had pursued divisive policies in their own self-interest. This analysis encompassed the religious divisions caused by missionaries, the economic divisions caused by the regional differences in labour policy, the racial divisions caused by the migration of Indian workers and the political divisions caused by the sub-imperialism emanating from Buganda; all were a consequence of the establishment of a British Protectorate in Uganda. The extent of Obote’s impatience with the imperial legacy is conveyed by the leading historian of modern Uganda, Phares Mutibwa who, during his time at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, got to know the Prime Minister. ‘He was a follower of Kwame Nkrumah’, Mutibwa records, ‘a man who believed in the dismantling of all those traditional institutions which had been fostered by the British and which, in his view, would not favour the creation of a united and dynamic African state or the united and dynamic African continental government which he also held dear.’108 Mutibwa’s analysis is plausible to the extent that Obote was impatient with the elaborate formalities designed by the British to check nationalist influence but needs a degree of qualification because he also utilized certain institutional precedents from the colonial era which served his political purpose. One late colonial institution of which Obote thoroughly approved was the national Legislative Council which would become the parliament of independent Uganda. Alongside many other new politicians of the decolonization era, he had an interest in establishing the national assembly as the pre-eminent political forum in Uganda. Some secondary sources have offered a muddled version of the circumstances in which Obote became Lango’s representative in the Legislative Council. Cherry Gertzel’s early account based on interviews is the most reliable. Responding to the inert performance of Lango’s first representative on the Council, Yakobo Omonya, UNC luminaries on the district council elbowed him aside and elected Obote as a replacement in December 1957 on the basis of his energy, family connections and educational attainments. He took up his seat in March 1958.109 Election to the legislature offered representatives from the marginal north, like Obote, a gratifying opportunity to perform on the national stage, which was usually occupied by prominent figures from the southern Kingdoms in general and Buganda in particular. Despite the complex protocols which regulated the behaviour of legislators, there was an egalitarian aspect to the conduct of national parliamentary affairs under the British system; all of the representatives gathered there had the right to speak and were judged on their ability to perform. There are differing views about the extent to which these

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The End of Empire in Uganda

new parliamentary practices were assimilated into Ugandan culture. According to the jaded account of the first clerk of the National Assembly, Philip Pullicino, the absence of an indigenous tradition led to dull debates. On the question of the extent to which Uganda had accepted the Westminster system he concluded that the country ‘is still chewing it, but has not yet swallowed it’.110 One of Obote’s leading critics, Samwiri Rubaraza Karugire suggests that minatory interventions by government ministers inhibited the free expression of opinion after independence.111 Despite these caveats it is clear that the procedural equality exercised in parliament produced different reputational outcomes and the status of politicians was often measured on the basis of their perceived success or failure in debate. One of the leading politicians of the DP, Paul Ssemogerere recalled that debates in the independence parliament ‘were vibrant and often attractive’ and that there was sufficient interest to keep the galleries full of public spectators.112 Pullicino’s successor Barungi described public fascination with the novelties of political issues being thrashed out between representatives in a public chamber; he goes as far as to suggest that it was the inadequate parliamentary performances of DP delegates, such as Ssemogerere, and the discursive agility of their UPC opponents, which facilitated the eventual defeat of Benedicto Kiwanuka’s short-lived pre-independence ministry in 1962 and the establishment of Obote’s ascendancy.113 While the reformed national parliament acquired greater prominence in Uganda during the 1950s, the notion of parliamentary supremacy, which was so significant in the metropolis, was thoroughly vitiated in colonial Uganda by the dispersal of lawmaking authority to the regions and the power of the executive, embodied by the colonial Governor acting as the representative of the British monarch. The regional devolution of political authority which the Colonial Office had propagated was a signal feature of the 1962 constitution and continued after independence. As one of Uganda’s leading legal scholars and practitioners, George Kanyeihamba has suggested: ‘The most glaring weakness of the Independence Constitution was the way it distributed power in Uganda. The National Assembly was handicapped by the federal powers that were granted to the four kingdoms and to the territory of Busoga.’114 The problems which regionalism posed to the legislature were aggravated by Obote’s determination to regain the privileges lost by the government in 1962. The powers of the executive at independence were considerable weaker than they had been when a colonial Governor held sway in Entebbe. The panoply of legal measures of last resort to which the colonial authorities resorted, including orders-in-council drafted under the guise of the Privy Council in London or reserved powers harboured in Government House, were denied the new Ugandan Prime Minister. When the Kabaka was installed as an indigenous President in 1963 yet another layer of complexity was added to this strikingly convoluted political system. Some have blamed the political parties for the elaborate indeterminacies of the independence constitution. Commenting before the upheavals of 1966–1967, Morris and Read argued that the Ugandan constitution was distinctive because it was largely authored by the African political parties rather than by the Colonial Office.115 Writing afterwards, Grace Ibingira, who was usually critical of the colonial legacy, conceded that the British largely acted as ‘impartial umpires’ in the final constitutional negotiations.116 There was a degree of plausibility

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to this view because Uganda’s constitutional singularity seemed to be the product of a tactical and self-serving compromise between the centralizing instincts of the UPC and the Ganda exceptionalism of the KY, which was reached solely to circumvent the potential hegemony of the DP. Yet any such analysis must also take into account British neuroticism about the prospect that undiluted democracy would lead to mob rule. From the distance of Whitehall, British ministers feared that ‘civil war’ might erupt after independence if the constitutional balance of power was not clarified beforehand.117 Obote’s retrospective view was that the independence constitution had been ‘worked out by citizens of Uganda, but in large measure it was also worked out by the British government’.118 Despite the elements of self-justification in this view, Obote was correct in suggesting that British designs had a significant influence over what happened in Uganda after independence. In the first four years of independence Obote became frustrated with the intricacies of the independence constitution, which seemed designed to impede progress towards the UPC’s programme of national unity and economic development. As Mutibwa has commented, ‘Obote was not yet in full control of either the UPC or the central government itself.’119 The institutional factionalism left behind by colonialism was evident in political parties, trade unions, the army, the police and the civil service. In January 1964 Obote announced his determination to tolerate only truly national political parties, ‘as opposed to the present situation which allows for factional and tribal groupings’.120 When set alongside his frequent exhortations about the requirement for unity, this appeared to presage the establishment of a one-party state on the Ghanaian model. Quotidian squabbling within the legislature and external interference increased the likelihood of such an outcome. UPC politicians attacked the constitutional privileges which allowed Buganda disproportionate influence in national life in general and in parliamentary life in particular. KY legislators responded by asserting that the northern military and civilian clique around Obote, in which Idi Amin was prominent, were guilty of corruption. In March 1965 Amin was accused by the KY spokesman Daudi Ochieng of smuggling gold from the Congo. Criticism of Obote’s handling of the ‘gold affair’ was taken up by his rivals inside the UPC, including Ibingira, Obwangor and Nadiope. According to Ibingira’s account of Obote’s conduct, ‘For a whole year, unequalled in Uganda’s parliamentary history, he sought to obstruct, postpone, or eliminate Ochieng’s motion demanding an inquiry.’ Obote believed Ibingira’s group were in coalition with Amin’s rivals in the army led by Shaban Opolot, conservative politicians in Buganda including the former Katikiro, Mikaeri Kintu, and external Cold War actors, most notably British military and intelligence agencies.121 On this interpretation, the ‘gold affair’ was a device fashioned for the purpose of challenging the UPC’s radical nationalist programme and parliament’s decision to endorse an enquiry into the matter was the pretext for a coup. On 22 February 1966 Obote ordered the arrest of Ibingira and four other southern ministers and suspended the constitution on the grounds that his domestic opponents were plotting with foreign countries to install a new government.122 There is some significant evidence to suggest that Obote’s preoccupation with subversion from abroad was warranted. The most sensitive documents from Western archives are routinely withheld but a report from G. Mennen Williams, who advised the American Secretary of State Dean

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Rusk on African affairs, dated 13 September 1965, explicitly states that the American government ‘provided the money to support moderate members of the UPC and to aid them in establishing control of the party machinery’.123 The potential recipients of this support and the wider rationale behind it are evident from a fretful intelligence briefing about Ugandan politics, which portrayed Obote as sympathetic to communism. The document cautioned: ‘Ibingira specifically has close ties with the US, and Obote might single out the US as the malefactor that forced him to take steps against the southern ministers.’124 While Washington cultivated anti-communist politicians like Ibingira, the British sought to exploit the many connections established between British and Ugandan officers in the colonial era. According to his old commanding officer Iain Grahame, Amin admitted during a private late-night colloquy in Kampala that he and Nekyon had received monetary rewards from Obote because of the success of their Congolese gold smuggling scheme. During the course of the same conversation Amin also insisted that Opolot was planning a coup.125 These prognostications were partly corroborated by the British High Commissioner, Roland Hunt. He reported that southern ministers had cultivated sympathizers in the army and were cautiously plotting against Obote and Amin. They hesitated to act because of their fear of the consequences.126 In the eighteen months after the arrest of his Cabinet opponents, Obote curtailed the power of the regions, abolished the southern monarchies and introduced a radically revised constitution with extensive presidential powers. The three elements of the new dispensation of 1966–1967 which weakened the legislature were overt military interference in parliamentary politics, an ideological shift away from representative democracy and towards republican populism, and the effective collapse of the multi-party system following the evisceration of the KY and the DP. In April 1966 a new constitution was placed in the pigeonholes of Ugandan legislators as a fait accompli. They were required to endorse the document while the parliamentary estate was occupied by soldiers and air force jets whistled overhead. Ssemogerere is a partial witness but his judgement, that after 1966 politics was ‘carried out by a subdued Parliament, surrounded by gun-wielding military personnel’, is endorsed by Barungi who, despite his evident sympathy for Obote’s goals, admitted that, after being intimidated by the presence of armed soldiers in 1966, Ugandan parliamentarians ‘were gripped by fear from which they never recovered’.127 These political changes were in some senses a radical break with the past, and in others marked a revival in the colonial pattern of politics. The weakening of the party system was a leap backwards to the form of colonial authoritarianism practised before the requirements of decolonization prompted the British to cultivate a brand of party politics that replicated aspects of Westminster practice. Obote suppressed the KY and, although the DP under the leadership of Alex Latim continued to criticize Obote, it too suffered numerous defections and was reduced to a rump of six members.128 Elections were postponed until 1971 and by the late 1960s Ugandan legislators worked from an expired mandate which robbed their activities of legitimacy. The diminishment of the legislative opposition and the filling out of the chamber with Obote’s UPC supporters, including defectors from other parties, meant that its affairs looked irrelevant even before the military coup.

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The demoralization of legislators enabled UPC leaders to appeal over their heads. Rather than leaving the discussion of further constitutional reform to legislators qua popular representatives, during 1967 Obote organized two weeks of national discussion with Ugandan citizens about a new constitution. The decision to consult ordinary people was innovative and suggested a contrast to the undemocratic character of colonial politics. Even the most dedicated critic of the proposals, Abu Mayanja, conceded that popular scrutiny did foster a wider debate about the constitution.129 There were other republican aspects to the 1967 constitution that distinguished it from some of the obfuscatory measures of the past, most obviously the fact that Ugandan Presidents, unlike colonial Governors, were to be elected and were to draw their mandate from the popular will. However, the constitution also strengthened the powers of the executive in relation to the legislature and the consequent marginalization of the country’s parliamentarians had deleterious longterm consequences. The enhancement of presidential power and diminishment of the parliament harked back to the systems of the immediate post-war period but were justified by Obote and his supporters on the grounds that constitutional arrangements must be adapted to African conditions, which meant dispensing with what Adoko described as ‘the collaterals of English and American democracy’. The impatience of some nationalists with colonial encumbrances was evident from Adoko’s suggestion that the niceties of Western legal procedures were unlikely to be understood in a nation of villages whose residents knew exactly what was prohibited and expected a swift and condign popular justice to prevail when the norms of life were violated.130 Obote’s allies also placed great emphasis on the economic circumstances that he was trying to remedy. In contrast to the wealthy West, in Uganda the state was required to go further in meeting basic needs. If those basic needs were unmet any popular mandate would be lost. Felix Onama put this in a blunt but coherent form when he stated: ‘He was aware that no government could continue to rule indefinitely without the consent and support of the people. That was why they were also taking steps that would give material benefit to the people. There was no need to sing liberty and democracy when the people in the country were starving.’131 Despite the Afrocentric embellishments of these rhetorical justifications, their logic eventually circled back to the arguments made by colonial Governors for maintaining the ascendancy of the executive over any popularly elected legislative assembly: in order to fulfil the duty of serving the people, government ought not to be hampered by the obstructionism of quarrelsome parliamentarians. The persistence of this principle in Uganda was evident from a continuous tradition of executive nomination of legislators. Article 40 of the 1967 constitution permitted the leader of the governing party to appoint a number of specially elected members of parliament in order to ensure that they had an absolute majority of up to ten in the legislature. In the initial proposals the President’s powers of appointment were even more extensive and allowed for the nomination of twenty-seven legislators to support the government’s cause. One opposition politician, Humphrey Luande, described the measure as ‘a clear step back to the dark days’.132 The reference to the period in Uganda’s history when colonial Governors had populated the Legislative Council with officials and nominees was warranted.

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The End of Empire in Uganda

The events of 1966–1967 let the air out of democratic politics in Uganda and the loss of the cushioning effect of parliamentary scrutiny and debate yielded up a series of stark personalist confrontations inside government, army and judiciary. By far the most significant of these was the escalating competition between Obote and Amin which became a matter of survival for both men. As in the case of Obote’s previous conflict with Ibingira, the details of many of the political intrigues are not always accessible, although the influence of Western hostility to Obote was apparent to all parties. The matters of external influence over the army and ethnic divisions within it will be addressed in the following chapter. With regard to the fate of parliament, it is notable that the tide which swept away the UPC government on 25 January 1971 took with it the UPCcontrolled legislature. The seventh of the seventeen accusations that the new military government levelled against Obote’s regime was that elections had been consistently delayed.133 At his first press conference Amin promised to restore a system of multi-party politics. However disingenuous this was, it did attest to the fact that the legislature had acquired a degree of legitimacy during the previous decade.134 A month later Amin declared that no elections would be held for five years; politics was suspended, with the threat that anybody who did engage in such activity would be ‘dealt with severely’.135 Emptied of legislators, the parliament building retained its administrative staff, including its clerk, Edward Ochwo, whose function now was to organize conferences such as the 1975 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in Kampala.136 Many of the leading legislators of the previous decade, including Basil Bataringaya, Joe Kiwanuka and Benedicto Kiwanuka were murdered during the Amin years; others including Florence Lubega, Paul Ssemogerere and Adoko Nekyon went into exile. In place of the lengthy and intricate process of passing legislation through an assembly, Amin resorted to rule by decree. In part, Amin’s aversion to parliamentarianism reflected his cultural predispositions: as a poorly educated soldier familiar with the martial disciplines of instruction and obedience, he did not look with sympathy upon the conventions of political debate or the close scrutiny of texts which took place in the legislature. The environment in which Obote had flourished was also the one least amenable to Amin’s skills and predispositions but wider structural factors were ultimately of greater significance. Amin recognized that the legislature could check the executive and it had been introduced by the British during the process of decolonization for that very purpose. British Governors had demonstrated the instrumental purposes of institutions and Amin’s attempt to exercise power without a legislature was motivated by the chimerical notion that he could exert quotidian control over the lives of Ugandans through the power of unencumbered executive command. Peterson and Taylor have emphasized that this politics of exhortation required an extensive bureaucracy of its own whose tasks were to pass on military injunctions and to generate reams of paperwork on which could be fabricated a vision of societal progress.137 In amputating the legislative arm of the state Amin was not engaging in a wholesale rejection of the methods of modern technocratic government but rather simplifying the political structures inherited at independence in order to enforce his will on the people of Uganda.

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Conclusion British colonial Governors in Africa justified their authority on the premise that they were capable of taking a more disinterested view of political affairs than the people who lived in countries such as Uganda and thereby championed a tradition of executive paramountcy over the legislature. As long as the small legislative assemblies of colonies were populated by officials and nominees they posed no challenge to the political domination of the appointees of the Crown. The first Africans selected to join the Ugandan Legislative Council were chosen to speak for the southern kingdoms and the fact that they were unrepresentative of the wider nation justified the retention of power by the executive. Such an ideological dispensation was enormously handy to colonial bureaucrats but it could not survive the global democratizing impulse which required that ordinary people should be able to participate in politics. In Uganda it was the UNC/UPC which promoted such ideas but concessions to nationalist demands were made only when independence was in sight. In his analysis of the failure of parliamentary democracy in Uganda, Barungi concluded, ‘The brief history of the Legislative Council does emphasize the fact that Ugandan politicians had no means of interaction in an institutional manner until the mid-1950s. The formation of national politics came too late and when established there was no trained managerial manpower.’138 Even when popular representation was conceded, various contrivances were built into the hybrid institutional model in order to contain anticolonial politics, including the fashioning of an enormously complex set of qualifications for the franchise and an attempt to exclude women entirely. The inconsistencies apparent in the promotion of British constitutionalism in the empire were highlighted by anticolonial critics and even the neo-conservatives in the Lukiko emerged for a short period of time as champions of women’s suffrage. While Governors hesitated to apply the democratic franchise that had long since been conceded at home, some other elements of extant British practices answered to the exigencies of decolonization. The operations of a vigorous party system inside a centralized legislature and the application of formal restrictions on the conduct of parliament and parliamentarians by means of elaborate regulation and parliamentary design on the Westminster model were regarded as useful prophylactic measures against populist demagogues. Nationalist politicians were suspect because of the influence they might exert over newly enfranchised peasants and workers but alliances with some of the critics of colonial society were imperative if the British connection was to be maintained after independence. Such calculations were a boon to the literate classes who aspired to replace the old hierarchies of the southern kingdoms. Milton Obote was the most notable example of a skilful politician from an unconsidered region who thrived in the meritocratic environment of a national parliamentary chamber. While purveying an anticolonial critique inside the chamber, in the aftermath of independence Obote and the UPC reverted to the tradition of executive paramountcy which they believed was essential in order to facilitate the politics of modernization. In 1966–1967 they quashed the regional legislatures and cowed the national parliament by deploying the military. As a substitute for reliance on parliament, Obote sought legitimacy by means of an

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The End of Empire in Uganda

egalitarian and populist programme of change but the weakening of parliamentary institutions left the civilian state vulnerable. The military dictatorship of the 1970s was anticipated at two key moments of confrontation between legislators and the state. The boycott campaign of 1959, during which members of Lukiko took up populist extra-parliamentary politics, portended a frightening future for Uganda’s Asian population. The deployment of the army to parliament in 1966 provided an ominous foreshadowing of the militarization of national politics. Neither of these events can be understood outside of the coercive colonial context, as a more detailed investigation of Uganda’s martial institutions will demonstrate.

3

The Army

Militarism has come to be regarded as a chronic feature of Ugandan society and politics. In an analysis of the period between 1956 and 2001 Patrick J. McGowan counted the involvement of the Ugandan army in four plots, nine failed coups and four successful coups. Such events were rarer in the other countries which acted as recruiting grounds for the King’s African Rifles (KAR) in which Ugandan troops served until 1962. Malawi registered only three misfiring military plots in the same period, while the Tanzanian and Kenyan records were identical, amounting to two plots and one failed military coup.1 If the martial inheritance of these countries was similar, there were significant differentiating structural factors. At independence Uganda inherited the smallest army and the largest security problem in Anglophone East Africa. The colonial frontier was and is particularly troublesome in Uganda: the Kenyan, Sudanese, Congolese/Zairean, Rwandan and Tanzanian borders have all been zones of instability at different times. Ugandan soldiers were in a minority within the KAR and, as a consequence, the force inherited at independence was undermanned and ill-prepared. Reaching back further in time, Richard J. Reid has identified the long-standing success of armed entrepreneurs, from Olum Labongo to Idi Amin, as a way to comprehend a unified national Ugandan history.2 From a slightly different perspective, Ali Mazrui contended, in one of his most often cited works, that Idi Amin’s military dictatorship was more grounded in Ugandan society than the Westernized politics introduced by Obote because it represented an authentic expression of the country’s indigenous warrior traditions.3 Other commentators have placed the blame for the militarization of Ugandan political life on Obote’s reckless politicization of the army in general and his cultivation of Amin in particular.4 Some of the evidence to support this argument was examined in the last chapter and with hindsight it is apparent that Obote’s decision to send troops first to the Ugandan parliament and then to the Kabaka’s palace set dangerous precedents. Yet the events of 1966 need to be contextualized. Despite Mazrui’s view that colonialism had demilitarized African society, Ugandan troops had been pitched into a brutal war against the Land and Freedom Army in Kenya during the 1950s. Even more significantly, although the employment of military violence against political protest may have been ratcheted ever upwards in the 1960s and 1970s, it also occurred frequently during the colonial era as colonial Governors sought a means of quelling civil dissent. In 1962 Obote embarked on a martial reformation that was flawed and haphazard but which was intended to

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The End of Empire in Uganda

solve problems bequeathed by the British and these would have tested the ingenuity of the most brilliant political strategist of any continent or any era. In the end it was the colonial tradition which reasserted itself: the officers who organized the 1971 coup had been drilled in British military methods as NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers) and, once in power, promised to uphold colonial martial forms, roll back Obote’s experiment with socialism and prioritize diplomatic relations with Britain.

Forming and reforming the Ugandan army Scholars such as Samwiri Lwango-Lunyiigo, Timothy H. Parsons, Samwiri Rubaraza Karugire and Phares Mutibwa have identified the ‘martial races’ theory as one of the most significant legacies of imperialism for both the Ugandan army and the wider nation.5 There is compelling evidence to demonstrate that Britain’s empire-builders relied on a taxonomy of ethnic difference in which some groups were characterized as tough, aggressive and plain-speaking, while others were defined as frail, complaisant and strategically minded. In colonial Uganda the theory appears to be perfectly instantiated in the way that northern ethnic groups were classified as Nilotic and ascribed martial qualities and people living in the south were grouped together as Bantu and regarded as fit for commerce and administration. Once the relevance of this theory has been recognized, it is possible to read the contemporary history of civilmilitary relations in Uganda as a battle for supremacy in which the southerners have repeatedly been subdued by force of arms as a consequence of colonial recruitment patterns. The theory is lent credence by the rise of Amin and other less familiar but influential figures such as Mustafa Adrisi, who originated from the northerly West Nile region.6 Scholarly preoccupation with the ramifications of the martial races theory has led to the marginalization of two other related factors. Firstly, categorizing colonial subjects by their purported fitness for army training was only one aspect of the racial preconceptions which underpinned imperial soldiering. Aside from the martial races notion, a further manifestation of ethnic presumption was that white Europeans were assumed to be superior to all other groups and particularly to black Africans because of skin pigmentation. Colonial armies such as the KAR were a visual embodiment of this idea because they consisted of large numbers of dark-skinned soldiers under the discipline of a handful of light-skinned officers. This practice continued after independence and it was British commanders who led Ugandan troops during the first major violent confrontations of the period which took place in Ruwenzori in the far west. Resentment at white domination of the top echelons of the army played a role in the 1964 martial strike or mutiny. The second factor which ramified into the independence period concerns the cultural universalism of British martial policy, which was in tension with the racial exclusivity of command structures. The excellence of the regimental system, of the officer training conducted at Eaton Hall, Mons and Sandhurst and of British models of tactics on the battlefield and close order drill in barracks were apparently applicable anywhere, including East Africa. Upholding these traditions and embedding them in military regulations seemed likely to enhance the broader political strategy of decolonization, which required the entrenchment of

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British institutional influence. Military training in Britain, for example, was, as Sarah Stockwell has pointed out, a means of ‘gaining friends’ among the emergent elites of Africa, even as political power was relinquished.7 The strategy failed in Uganda and this unravelling took place in two phases. Between 1962 and 1966 Obote found his defence policies so hampered by the unavailability of trained African officers that he sought assistance from countries beyond Britain and as a consequence developed closer ties to Israel and the Eastern bloc. In the second phase between 1971 and 1973, Anglo-Ugandan relations followed a steep downward trajectory as Amin revealed that training in British methods offered no guarantee of sympathy for the old imperial power. The instrumental purposes of British racial theories were evident from the outset of the colonial project in Uganda. The propagator of the martial races theory in Africa was Frederick Lugard, who also played a decisive role in shaping the colonial state in Uganda. In a manner which gives credence to critics of British divide and rule tactics, Lugard advised that the best means to uphold colonial authority was to ensure that civil and military institutions should recruit from different areas. Whichever ethnic group was to dominate the civic administration should have no role in the military, while the martial race or races charged with imperial enforcement should come from other areas in which schooling for bourgeois occupations would have a low priority. In Uganda it was the Ganda who were to dominate the bureaucracy, while the Acholi and Teso were assigned the role of martial races. As the historiography on the subject reveals, the martial races theory was less about the intrinsic bellicosity of particular groups and more about complaisance and expediency. Omara-Otunnu notes that the Acholi rather than the Langi were designated a martial race because the latter resisted the advance of British imperialism in alliance with the kingdom of Bunyoro, while the former did not.8 From 1902 Acholi and Teso influence was attenuated by the merger of east and central African forces into the KAR under the direction of W.H. Manning.9 The Ugandan martial tribes were greatly outnumbered in this new organization by their Kenyan equivalents, the Kamba and Kalenjin.10 The formation of the KAR signalled a move away from reliance on mercenary forces in favour of a permanent, flexible military unit consisting of local enlistees and following British forms and protocols. For the next sixty years, challenges to regimentalism, such as the importuning of European settlers in the 1920s to replace the KAR with a militia, were repeatedly dismissed in order to maintain the British system of regular military organization.11 The reliance on a professional, volunteer force inculcated a sense of separation from civilian society and a martial elitism which would have long-term consequences. When decolonization was contemplated, British policymakers were confident that the subtle influence of regimental tradition would secure diplomatic amity after independence. Clayton has noted that British military organization in East Africa was underpinned by ‘a firmly held belief that this model represented the best organization for a free society’s military force’.12 British military forms were centred around the regiment and were advertised as voluntary, efficient, humane and apolitical. Some aspects, most obviously the humane application of minimum force, were ditched in the interests of expediency as the Mau Mau war would demonstrate. Regimentalism required insignia, such as a badge, and dress codes, including the wearing of the fez

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on ceremonial occasions, to distinguish the KAR from other units. More significantly it necessitated the organization of ordinary soldiers, NCOs and officers into a clearly demarcated hierarchy. Integral to the binary command structure was the codification of the commission as an ultimate mark of prestige. Commissioning offered monarchical sanction to the dissociation of officers, who had a duty to maintain distance, from the other ranks who were warranted to obey but not to command. For almost its entire history KAR commissions were the preserve of white European expatriates. Noting in 1952 that ‘there are no black officers yet in Uganda’, the future Colonial Office minister, Julian Amery, attributed these inequitable circumstances to the fact that, with the exception of the Nubi, Ugandans were not ‘very good soldiers’.13 This crude, racialized analysis masked the fact that the recruiting agents of the KAR were disinclined to select what one of them described as ‘namby-pamby mission-educated types’.14 Having filtered out any candidates with educational aspirations, it was inevitable that the KAR should be short of well-qualified Ugandan candidates for promotion. The division between black and white soldiers, which was evident on every occasion that the KAR formed up, was the product of deeper assumptions about the character of African recruits or askaris. One of the most prominent former KAR officers to write a memoir, Iain Grahame, suggested that local recruits were prone to extremities of behaviour. In his book Jambo Effendi Grahame suggested that the trust offered by British officers to poorly educated African NCOs ‘was often sadly betrayed’. He recalled: I recognised perhaps more clearly than other Europeans who had less experience of serving with them, the necessity for a firm, guiding hand to be ever present to assist them. When the hand was there, the askari was as fine a soldier as could be found anywhere in the world. Without it he was like a babe in the wilderness and his defences against temptation vanished utterly.

At the end of the book Grahame employs a Punch cartoon of 1894, which appeared with the title ‘The Black Baby’, to illustrate the paternalist case for imperial rule. The orphaned child in the cartoon is wrapped in a blanket labelled ‘Uganda’. The caption has the paterfamilias, Mr Bull, guarding a neo-classical doorway and declaring, ‘What another!!-Well I suppose I must take it in!!’ Grahame comments: ‘Seventy years have elapsed since then, but the baby lay there still, very much in need of help, howling intermittently, and only the exclamation marks were missing.’15 In private, British officers could be even franker in their assessment of African soldiers. James Houston, who was the Ugandan army’s Chief of Staff in the first years of independence, declared that the ‘savage tribal background’ of the typical askari had made him ‘a born killer’. On his account, Western standards were inapplicable in Africa ‘because of the remarkable ability of the backward races to endure apparently chaotic conditions on the one hand and the unpredictability of their reactions to changing circumstances on the other hand’.16 Long before he became President, Amin provoked a blimpish sense of racial complacency in British military and political officials. He was promoted because he was popular with his commanders but even positive assessments of his character were imbued with condescension. As an expatriate working in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, John Stuart Champion preferred Amin to his rival Shaban Opolot because he

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was ‘a splendid type & a good rugger player’, but added that ‘both are virtually bone from the neck up and need things explained in words of one letter’. Griffiths of the Commonwealth Relations Office offered a slightly more diplomatic iteration of the same analysis of Amin: ‘He is tough and fearless and … completely reliable. Against this he is not very bright and will probably find difficulty in dealing with the administrative side of command.’17 A later defence adviser was blunter still in describing Amin as ‘just thick’.18 With the exception of Grahame’s memoirs, British officials were reluctant to expose their views on the racial character of African soldiers to public scrutiny and imperial administrators were able to deny the existence of overt prejudice because structural factors militated against the rise of African officers. KAR recruiters were most active in the labour reserves of northern and eastern Uganda where schooling was least available. They prioritized the physical prowess of African recruits; those promoted to act as NCOs were chosen because they were estimated to have the requisite combination of courage, regimental loyalty and forcefulness rather than the intellectual acuity which might later qualify them for a commission. In the case of Uganda these trends were accentuated by the integration of its forces into a large regiment in which they formed a small minority. It was only at the last moment that British administrators acknowledged the paucity of potential African candidates to command the armies of independent East Africa. By 1957 there were fifty-three second lieutenants, twenty-five regular lieutenants, forty-six captains and fifty-four majors in the KAR; none of them were Ugandans. By this stage, ambitious British national servicemen rather than African enlistees had become captains and lieutenants. Senior military officials pursued a twofold strategy to rectify the imbalance: the most favoured of the long-serving African NCOs were chosen for accelerated promotion through the officer corps, while a new generation of local soldiers, who were sufficiently literate to benefit from intensive training in Britain, were recruited. The scale of the task required innovation and a new classification of ‘effendi’ was fashioned for ambitious African NCOs. Effendis were commissioned by colonial Governors to act as second lieutenants without a royal commission, which would have provided access to the officers’ mess. It was only after they had been offered guidance on social mores, or ‘knife and fork’ training, at the Nanyuki camp in Kenya that effendis were given full officer rank.19 As a result of this frantic last-minute extemporization African officers were found to serve in the most junior commissioned posts of the Ugandan army at independence. Idi Amin and Shaban Opolot were the first of the Ugandan effendis to be made lieutenants as a consequence of the crash programme of Africanization that began in 1961. Many other warrant officers and NCOs were considered unfit for promotion and, in a reflection of their preponderance inside the KAR, Kenyan effendis were selected to serve with the newly independent Ugandan army.20 The last resort of the British was to offer the unprecedented option of officer training at Sandhurst to some Ugandan recruits. Augustine Karugaba, a mission-schooled Mukiga from the far southwest, embodied the new approach to soldiering. According to Semakula Kiwanuka and Grace Ibingira, Obote later obstructed Karugaba’s rise because he was a Catholic and a Bantu speaker but he was eventually praised by the Ugandan press as a hero of independence.21

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Africanization did not just entail replacing British lieutenants and captains with Ugandans but also required the reconsideration of institutional inheritances. In British martial tradition the regiment was both a locus of loyalty and the arena in which hierarchy was most evident, with, as Clayton notes, ‘officers in a vestigial squirearchic relationship to their soldiers and their soldiers’ families’.22 Differentiation between regiments required symbols of identity, including ties, colours and insignia. Sartorial markers were particularly significant for colonial forces and these were often tokens of imperial history rather than expressions of local culture. Amin’s fondness for such symbols gave credence to the notion that African soldiers relished British formality. Six years after independence, Nigel Crawford, a former KAR officer who was appointed Defence Adviser at the High Commission in Kampala, was surprised to discover Amin wearing his regimental tie at a cocktail party. Reportedly, Amin urged him to follow his example, despite Crawford’s fear of causing offence by parading a symbol of the past.23 Gratification at the ongoing currency of the regimental tie provided useful anecdotes for imperial nostalgists but the ditching of the fez by the Ugandan army suggests that such sentiments were not widely shared. The fez was a reminder that the predecessors of the Ugandan army had served as a pacification force originating in Sudan. It was no longer standard headgear in the 1950s but was still worn on ceremonial occasions.24 When Obote visited the barracks at Jinja in 1961 he announced that he wanted the fez to be discarded and drew an admission from some of the British officers that Ugandan soldiers believed it had connotations of inferiority as well as being impractical. Champion recorded, ‘The fez is particularly unpopular with Ugandan ORs [Other Ranks], partly because it involves shaven heads, which they dislike, and because the fez is not thought to be appropriate at independence, being an Arabic headdress imported from the Sudan.’ Proponents of the fez admitted they were motivated by ‘traditional and sentimental reasons’, but they also insisted that it was expedient for Ugandan units to maintain the sartorial standards of the imperial era in order to sustain the possibility of a future joint military command in East Africa. Such considerations were trumped by the exigencies of Cold War realpolitik. Cheyne noted that British opposition to the reform of unpopular dress codes would only increase sympathy in Uganda for the alternative political and military models of the Eastern bloc. Given that Ugandan party leaders were opposed to its retention, the fez was relinquished.25 British enthusiasm for a combined East African military force may have been unsuccessful as an argument for retaining the fez but it was an important component of Britain’s strategy for decolonization which has largely been forgotten because the project failed. Regional Governors hoped that East African Prime Ministers would tolerate ongoing British control of a federal defence force rather than insist on the establishment of separate independent armies. Uganda’s Governor, Crawford, offered the inaccurate prediction that nationalist leaders would not want national forces because ‘control of the army would prove an embarrassment to the new government’. His colleague in Tanganyika, Richard Turnbull, pressed the same point. Even if plans for a regional force proved unsustainable, he urged that the British government should ‘continue to exercise the greatest possible influence’.26 Turnbull was correct to consider this contingency because both Obote and Nyerere insisted that national sovereignty required national armies. After their federal plans were frustrated, the architects of

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Britain’s strategy for decolonization increasingly relied on the ingrained culture of deference to Western martial expertise. Memories of the time when European officers commanded African NCOs were revived as a stream of old KAR hands were sent back to Uganda during the 1960s and 1970s, sometimes with the task of rekindling Amin’s nostalgia, at others with the more onerous responsibility of attempting to resolve the latest crisis in Anglo-Ugandan relations. Those erstwhile members of the KAR most often called on to perform these duties were Chandos Blair, Hugh Rogers and Iain Grahame. In 1967, amidst rumours that the British had planned an abortive military intervention to support the Kabaka, Amin attended a dinner party at the British High Commission. He was manoeuvred towards Blair who ‘played up well and, appealing to their previous comradeship, denied absolutely any intention to interfere in Uganda’s affairs’.27 In 1971, with Amin now in power, Hugh Rogers led a military mission to Uganda. Although civilian bureaucrats suggested that appointing a friend of Amin’s to the role might strike the wrong note, their criticisms were countered with the argument that there was ‘considerable advantage in having a team leader whom Amin would associate with the “good old days”’. The Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, described Rogers as ‘a very happy choice’.28 During the rest of the decade Grahame and other former KAR officers were repeatedly prevailed upon to visit Uganda in an effort to advance British interests. When the journalist Denis Hills was threatened with execution in 1975, Blair and Chandos were sent back to Uganda once again but, on this occasion, Amin accused Blair of rudeness and insisted on meeting the Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan, instead.29 It was only when Callaghan finally consented to talk with him that Amin reverted to the register of Anglophone bonhomie which the military men had failed to elicit and released Hills.30 As the Hills case demonstrated British policymakers sometimes misapprehended the potency of martial nostalgia. The diplomacy of colonial sentimentality was also at variance with later British efforts to promote professional training for a new Ugandan martial elite from southern Uganda. The Anglicizing experiences of men like Amin and Opolot had taken the form of constant exposure to British instruction and command while living in barracks or serving in the field. Once plans for a regional force after independence collapsed this was no longer a feasible strategy. The new vehicle for exerting influence was to train the country’s younger and better educated recruits. As the first Ugandan to graduate from the Royal Military College (RMC) at Sandhurst, Karugaba occupied a prominent place as a symbol of the new officer corps in both the British and Ugandan imagination. Very few followed in Karugaba’s footsteps. This outcome was partly determined by practical exigencies and partly by a culture of metropolitan racism. Senior leaders at Sandhurst sought to prioritize its original mission of training officers for the British army and insisted that there must be a limit to the ‘dilution’ of its annual cohorts by Caribbean, African and Asian cadets.31 Consequently, placements at Sandhurst acquired a large premium and access was the subject of fierce competition. As an alternative to the lengthier Sandhurst training, the Ministry of Defence offered candidates from the Commonwealth shorter four-month courses at the Mons Officer Cadet School in Aldershot. British planning at the brink of independence envisaged that two to three Ugandans would train at Sandhurst annually, supplemented by the same number at Mons.32 These targets were

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not met and the lack of capacity was made still more pronounced by the increase in demand as a consequence of the extremely rapid expansion of the Ugandan army after independence. Obote turned to Israel to provide training for a new generation of recruits. Estimates suggest that in the first year of independence the Israelis trained fifteen cadets, eight whom were subsequently commissioned.33 The British commanders who still dominated the senior ranks of the Ugandan army looked on Israeli-trained candidates for promotion with brutal disfavour. This generated tensions with the nationalist government. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Felix Onama, overruled Houston when he asserted his privileges as the army’s chief of staff to veto the appointment of three Israeli-trained officers.34 The potential conflicts which arose between the old guard, the new wave of officers from Mons and Sandhurst and the Israeli trainees were exposed during the crisis years of 1966–1967. After the fighting in Buganda subsided several of the rapidly promoted Israeli-trained officers from the south were removed, demoted or redeployed. Those with experience of Sandhurst and Mons also felt threatened by the old northern martial elite. In 1967 officers who had benefitted from the late introduction of professionalized training in Britain began visiting the High Commission to complain that ‘Amin was scared stiff of anyone who had been indoctrinated in British methods at Sandhurst or the Staff College’ and intended to dismiss or kill them.35 If there were limits to Amin’s tolerance of British patronage, then the sense of disenchantment among African soldiers was even more profound. The slow pace of Africanization was the first of three factors that contributed to the mutinies or strikes of January 1964. The second of these was overstretch. The new Ugandan army formed from the 4th battalion of the KAR was too small to meet its commitments. The British Chief of the Defence Staff, Louis Mountbatten, who must have had only a glancing knowledge of Ugandan affairs, was nevertheless accurate in suggesting that one battalion would be insufficient to maintain security in Uganda after independence. Crawford, who was more intimately acquainted with the situation, endorsed this view. He noted the possibility of future conflict with Congo, Ruanda and Somalia; to this list the Colonial Office justifiably added Sudan. Discussions during 1962 about the possibility of the British government funding an expansion of the 4th battalion, which comprised just 732 officers and men, proved inconsequential because of Treasury parsimony. It was left to Obote to make provision in his first independence budget for an additional company as the basis for a second battalion.36 Repeated deployments along the western, northern and eastern frontiers after October 1962 were made less tolerable by the third factor that contributed to the mutiny, namely the deterioration in pay and conditions caused by late colonial austerity. Between 1955 and 1959 the costs of maintaining the KAR had been transferred from the British defence budget to the local colonial governments. Inevitably they imposed retrenchment which, in turn, impacted on the pay of ordinary soldiers. As commander of the 4th battalion, Bill Cheyne predicted in November 1961 that there was a ‘real danger of trouble’ if no substantial pay rise were offered.37 The material grievances of Ugandan soldiers were aggravated further by the generous treatment of their white European commanders, like Cheyne. According to Parsons’ estimates, in 1959 the 263 officers and NCOs of the KAR received nearly £600,000 in pay and allowances, while the 4,386 rank-and-

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file askaris received approximately £325,000.38 Fifteen months after independence British expatriates still dominated the upper echelons of the Ugandan army, with the exception of Opolot and Amin who had attained the rank of major. In January 1964 Ugandan forces at Jinja followed the example of Tanganyikan soldiers residing at the coastal barracks at Colito by organizing a protest. It was the experienced troops of the first battalion rather than recruits to the newly established second battalion at Moroto who went on strike. This lends credence to the notion that it was the longerterm decline in pay and conditions, and the diminished prestige associated with these reduced material circumstances, which motivated the rebels.39 Rather than seizing control of the barracks, as the soldiers in Tanganyika had done, the Ugandan askaris simply refused to obey orders. The most dramatic incident occurred when Onama was detained by the strikers and forced to eat posho, which was the bland and unappetizing staple food of the force. The key demands were for improved remuneration and Obote immediately resolved the matter by increasing basic pay as a step towards restoring the prestige and loyalty of the army.40 As Gutteridge noted a few years later, even though the grievances of the military strikers were of a kind familiar in industrial relations disputes, they had a significant impact in overturning pan-continental assumptions about the apolitical quiescence of African soldiers.41 Obote was humiliated by the circumstances that required him to call upon further military assistance from Britain. Over the next few years, his expansionist defence programme witnessed a change in the ethnic pattern of recruitment and an attempt to inculcate loyalty to the new colonial state. Increased defence spending was intended to increase the army’s capacity to manage the very large number of external and internal security threats and to secure the loyalty of the armed forces to the government. Decalo’s analysis gives some sense of the scale of the quantitative change. He estimates that after 1962 the annual rate of expansion in the Ugandan armed forces was 48 per cent. By 1967 Uganda had the seventh largest military force in Africa as a consequence of a 400 per cent increase in the defence budget since independence.42 This onerous inflation was partly caused by the recruitment of more soldiers and partly by efforts to redress deteriorating pay and conditions. Asserting authority over soldiers who had been employed by the colonial state to intimidate anticolonial rebels was a problem for all the nationalist governments of East Africa. Nyerere went furthest in overhauling the British model and replacing it with the concept of a people’s army. Rather than challenging British martial forms on the Tanzanian model, Obote relied on a new recruiting strategy and the strengthening of military intelligence to stabilize the security situation. In the 1950s the British had undertaken a modicum of ethnic reorientation by enlisting more troops from the southern kingdoms. After the strike at Jinja and the collapse of his coalition with the Kabaka Yekka, Obote reverted to the previous colonial tradition of energetic recruitment in the north. He wanted to strengthen the representation of groups who were expected to support the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) government. This meant an influx of Obote’s kinsmen among the Langi. Mazrui later recalled a conversation conducted in 1970 with Uganda’s intelligence chief, Akena Adoko, who was also Obote’s cousin. His numerous enemies gave Adoko the extravagant sobriquet, the ‘spying octopus’.43 Stressing the primacy of ethnicity, Adoko told Mazrui, ‘Some people think they can control the army. They are

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wrong. The balance of the army is of such a kind that only Obote can control it.’44 The priority given to regime loyalty was most evident in the transformation of the General Service Unit (GSU), which Adoko controlled. The GSU had its roots in one of the most significant manifestations of institutional hybridity in the late colonial period, which was the decision made by the British in the 1940s that the regular army required paramilitary reinforcement to counter potential civil disorder.45 The paramilitary recruits of the 1960s came overwhelmingly from the Langi and the GSU functioned as an intelligence and enforcement agency, which could be used to bypass the army. Although subject to justifiable criticism, new recruitment strategies and the widening role of the GSU were expedients designed to assure the loyalty of the security forces to the civilian government once the ingrained obligations of the colonial system no longer existed. Mazrui’s anecdote about Adoko was intended to demonstrate that Obote’s downfall was in large measure caused by his short-sighted policy of communal partisanship. After Amin replaced Opolot as head of the army in 1966, military appointments were increasingly subject to a game of ethnic one-upmanship. While Adoko flooded the GSU with Langi, Amin established a network of clients among those regular Muslim soldiers who classified themselves as Nubi. The failed assassination attempt against Obote in 1969 made evident just how high the stakes were in this military manoeuvring and the declining efficiency of the army appeared a price worth paying for survival. The competition between Obote and Amin also encompassed international actors, including the British, Americans, Israelis and Soviets. Although Obote was reluctant to become involved in the Cold War, he blamed Washington for the bombing of Uganda’s northwestern frontier by America’s Congolese allies in 1965 and criticized the Israeli attack on the Arab states in 1967. His most bitter condemnation was reserved for the decision of Heath’s British administration to supply arms to apartheid South Africa three years later. On the domestic scene, the UPC moved leftwards in these years in a process that culminated with the socialist orientation of the Common Man’s Charter. The nationalization of key economic assets and the re-equipment of the army from a variety of sources, including Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, alarmed capitalist interests and Western governments. As former sponsors of the Ugandan army, the British and Israeli governments were particularly resentful of Obote’s new course. There is no direct proof of British involvement in Amin’s coup but plentiful evidence of a jubilant reaction to it among the British expatriate community in Kampala and the Conservative government in Whitehall. The return of the Kabaka’s body to Uganda for reburial in April 1971 provided a suitable forum for the reassertion of old imperial ties. During the event, Mutesa’s connections to the British armed forces were illustrated by the ubiquity of retired Grenadier Guardsmen. Repeated renditions of ‘God Save the Queen’ gave the occasion an infusion of imperial nostalgia. Despite their scepticism about Obote, American diplomats took a particularly dim view of the gleeful jingoism of their British allies. The American chargé d’affaires suggested British expatriates demonstrated an almost comical mixture of triumphalism and condescension after the coup. He reported that the British government ‘were going all out to back this regime’. Heath and Home were gratified by the ejection of Obote and regarded the victory of a former officer in the KAR as an opportunity to re-establish British influence and to sell arms.46

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Amin’s behaviour in the early months of his regime seemed to validate the British strategy of pursuing indirect influence. The institutional insurance policy taken out by the British government during the last years of colonial rule had finally matured with Amin’s victory and they were ready to reap the dividends. In February 1971 the head of the Foreign Office, Denis Greenhill, instructed diplomats that Heath would be supervising post-coup relations with Uganda and would ‘want us to take quick advantage of an opportunity of selling arms. Don’t overdo the caution.’47 When in January 1972, after a year of disappointments in Anglo-Ugandan relations, Amin asked for a rescheduling of debts, Heath continued to urge a policy of generosity towards the military regime. In a reference to the overthrow of a key Cold War ally, Kofi Busia, who he believed had been offered insufficient assistance to prevent a coup in Ghana, Heath urged: ‘Don’t let the Treasury bring this regime down as well as Ghana’s.’48 What held officials back to some degree was the possibility that extravagance on arms would lead to Ugandan economic collapse but Amin was given credit to cover the purchase of thirty-six Saladin and six Saracen armoured cars valued at £2 million. They were eventually delivered in the midst of the crisis about the expulsion of Uganda’s Asian population in September 1972.49 The other imponderable in the first year of Amin’s rule was whether he would be willing to allow expatriate British officers to resume their tutorial role in Uganda. Douglas-Home exhibited high confidence in the idea that the mere presence of British advisers would bring about an improvement in martial standards. After an exploratory visit by Fleming and Houston in June 1971, which emphasized the lingering prestige which attached to British methods, Eric Le Tocq of the Foreign Office reiterated the point that Amin’s coup ought to be regarded as an opportunity to advance British influence. He noted, ‘The attitude of our Ministers was that Obote’s removal was a definite advantage to Britain and that Amin’s government should be given whatever assistance we reasonably could give it.’50 The British training unit that was established in Uganda the following year included five officers and twelve warrant officers. All were expelled in September 1972. It is surprising and a testament to the extent of the Heath government’s disillusionment with the Obote regime that British ministers were not somewhat more wary during Amin’s first year, given the accumulating evidence of his unpredictable behaviour and the reports of violent purges. The American embassy in London noted that Amin’s visit to Britain in July had generated some consternation. One Foreign Office bureaucrat reported that ‘although many at top level HMG have looked on Amin as somewhat only slightly less than the Lord’s Messenger in disguise, his appearance here has cast some doubt on his capability and caused some to worry that such a man has so much power’.51 Generally it was defence officials who were more cautious about Amin than diplomats and politicians. The Defence Adviser at the High Commission in Kampala, Ben Bradbrook, initially endorsed the view that Amin’s familiarity with British tactics, procedures and organization would incline him towards an Anglophile policy and that a generous package of training assistance would be useful in exploiting this predisposition. Recapitulating the themes of the last years of empire, Bradbrook suggested, ‘Young officers who attend courses in the UK at an impressionable age will be inclined to continue to think British when they have reached positions of influence in the Army and the Air Force and in a country with a military government the

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The End of Empire in Uganda

influence of the officer corps can be considerable.’ After witnessing faction fighting inside the army during the rest of 1971, Bradbrook became much less sanguine; he fretted over the possibility that British Saladins would be employed for domestic repression and suggested Amin was incapable of governing Uganda. Such pessimism was unwelcome in the Foreign Office and they instructed the High Commissioner to tell his defence adviser to report in a less tragic register.52 In a similar vein the Foreign Office criticized the Ministry of Defence for its dilatoriness in sending a training mission. These bureaucratic differences moderated the pro-Amin instincts of the government to some degree but Heath’s influence predominated. Evidence that the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for the new military government percolated outwards is evident from the fact that six Ugandan cadets were accepted at Sandhurst in 1972; the maximum number accepted in any earlier year was two.53 It was only after the expulsion of the Asian population that the bright vision of a new Anglo-Ugandan alliance based on close institutional ties receded from view. On 7 September 1972 Heath’s government decided to cancel the delivery of the remaining armoured cars and terminate all further offers of training in response to domestic criticisms of Amin’s persecution of the country’s Asian residents.54 During the 1970s Amin’s attitude towards the army was determined by the politics of expediency and the resulting chaos was seen by many as legitimizing the formalism of colonial methods. Whereas Obote displayed the political knack of pursuing ideological goals while tacking to the prevailing winds of realpolitik, Amin changed course constantly in order to exploit opportunities, without much consideration of the direction in which the country was being blown. He kept the ship afloat for longer than most expected but by 1979 the Ugandan state was battered, vulnerable and further away from any prospect of economic progress and social peace than ever before. No attempt at reconciliation within the army was ever attempted: Amin simply eliminated opponents whenever there was tactical advantage in doing so. After the initial killings of Langi and Acholi soldiers in 1971, he later purged the Lugbara and Madi from the army, even though they originated in his home region of West Nile.55 In the aftermath of Charles Arube’s failed coup in 1974, officers from Amin’s own small ethnic faction, the Kakwa, came under suspicion if they, like Arube, were Christian rather than Muslim.56 The constant narrowing of Amin’s base of support was symbolized by his increasing reliance in the late 1970s on a soldier from his own family by marriage, Mustafa Adrisi, before the two quarrelled and Adrisi also fled. He recalled that ‘Amin wanted all his people of Kakwa to be appointed as commanding officers, even if they originated from beyond Uganda’s borders.’57 By the time of the Tanzanian war in 1978 the army was dominated by soldiers recruited from beyond Uganda’s borders, principally from Sudan, and by the Nubi, whose identity was defined by their Muslim faith and the martial reputation of their families.58 The Langi and Acholi were wholly estranged from the regime. Pecos Kutesa testified to the bitterness generated by Amin’s persecution of these ethnic groups. After returning to Uganda in 1979 as a member of Yoweri Museveni’s Front for National Salvation he noted: ‘The Acholi and Lango soldiers hated with untold intensity anything related to Amin and Aminism. This meant anything Lugbara, Madi, Kakwa etc. and not even the people but even the livestock.’59 Alongside rampant communal conflict, the other key feature of the Ugandan army in the 1970s

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was the collapse of the formal structures of command inculcated by the British. The regular army was overrun with inexperienced officers and patronage networks and the culture was one of disarray and anomie. According to Omara-Otunnu’s figures, the number of soldiers ranked at lieutenant or higher increased from 300 in 1971 to 855 in 1977, of whom 658 had been commissioned since the 1971 coup.60 Designations such as captain and major lost currency as Amin played the arbitrary game of promoting favourites. In the absence of any formal bureaucratic procedures, Kyemba recalled that armed men who had obtained Amin’s favour ‘would simply confront the paymaster and say “I am a captain,” or “I am a major” and asked to be paid from that date’.61 New officers lacked training and experience and many seemed to owe their loyalty to rival paramilitary organizations or to answer to shadowy figures outside the formal military establishment. These groups included the State Research Bureau, the Public Safety Unit, the Anticorruption Squad and the Presidential Intelligence Unit.62 Senior officers in the regular army deferred to Amin because of his repeated success in outmanoeuvring his potential opponents and his reputation for revanchism. Many of the atrocities perpetrated by the army and paramilitary organizations were a consequence of initiatives undertaken by officer cliques about which Amin probably knew little.63 As they turned their attentions on the civilian population many more ordinary Ugandans became prey to the men with guns. The deployment of troops to intimidate dissidents and protestors had significant precedents in the colonial era and tracing these antecedents provides important context to the widespread violence of the 1970s.

Militarization and civilian protest Amin’s reliance on Sudanese and Nubi troops to quell domestic opposition in the 1970s suggests an almost cyclical pattern to Ugandan martial history. Frederick Lugard had employed Sudanese soldiers to attack the southern kingdoms in the 1890s. These wars led to the establishment of the Uganda Protectorate in 1894 and the Nubi identity itself was partly defined by their success in shaping the martial history of the colonial state. The prominence of the Nubi and Sudanese in Amin’s late army prompted many Ugandans to lament that their fortunes were again being determined by an alien, occupying force. In between these two periods was the era of the KAR. Rather than relying on mercenary forces culled from further north in the Nile valley, the British established the KAR as a permanent army manned by the martial tribes of East Africa. Many of the formalities of life in the KAR with regard to command, regulation and training deliberately replicated the methods employed in the British army, but the key purpose of the force was different. Whereas in the middle years of the twentieth century military interventions in British domestic politics were unheard of, suppressing political opposition was part of the raison d’etre of the KAR. Such a sharp distinction does need some caveats: units of the British army had been deployed against protestors in the nineteenth century, most notoriously during the Peterloo massacre, and in the 1970s troops would be deployed on the streets of Northern Ireland. But in colonial Uganda, the Peterloo role of stamping on public dissent was wholly in the ascendant,

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while the Waterloo role of engaging in warfare against foreign armies was reserved for the exceptional circumstances of world war. The 4th battalion of the KAR, which would become the new Ugandan army, was not designed for independent military campaigning. As British briefing documents from the period note, it was ‘inadequate both for internal security and also to meet external threats from the Congo, Rwanda, the Sudan and also the Turkana incursions from Kenya’.64 Crawford was sceptical that the battalion could be transformed into a war-fighting army, given that it ‘had been for internal security with the addition later of perimeter defence- the latter always being understood to be on a tribal incursion basis … it was now being proposed that the KAR should be equipped to deal with armed and organised incursion of a military nature.’65 The history of the force in Uganda to which Crawford alluded included deployments to deal with urban protest in Kampala and its environs. This entailed, on occasions, fighting with civilian protestors. When it was thought unwise to use regular units, the colonial state deployed paramilitary forces in a manner that accentuated still further the contrast with the conduct of civil-military relations in Britain and illustrated the hybrid character of late colonial institutions. In 1962 Obote inherited a martial organization which, in terms of formal organization, closely resembled the British army but which served entirely different functions. After offering some details about the army’s policing role, its impact on women’s lives will be investigated as a particularly significant feature of civil-military relations in Uganda and one which has ongoing resonance. The industrial unrest of 1945 set the precedent for the deployment of soldiers against civilians in post-war Uganda. A series of disputes about pay and conditions among transport workers and public service employees, which began on 5 January, led to attacks against property. On 15 January 1945 soldiers from the KAR were sent from their barracks at Jinja onto the streets of Kampala where they undertook a route march around the streets as a show of strength. Subsequently, the soldiers employed smoke bombs fired from mortars against striking workers. By far the most serious incident occurred at a camp for wartime Polish refugees at Koja in the Mukono area near Lake Victoria. When pickets attempted to halt a milk truck on 18 January 1945 the soldiers opened fire. Four people were killed and another eleven injured.66 After a fortnight the confrontations on the streets ended and the government launched an investigation into the strikes. The resulting Whitley report offered up a complacent conspiracy theory and marginalized the significance of wartime price inflation and the neglect of labour affairs by the colonial government.67 Four years later a new round of protests occurred which further entrenched the militarization of domestic policing. On this occasion many of the protestors were coffee and cotton producers and the key grievances concerned excessive taxation and the increase in the prices of local goods. Once again soldiers from the barracks at Jinja were deployed to intimidate those who were petitioning the Kabaka for economic relief. They were present during the largest confrontation with the protestors on 26 April but the police took the lead role in dispersing the crowds on that occasion. Two days later a second battalion of the KAR was deployed so that a more aggressive policy of patrolling civilian areas could be implemented.68 Five civilians were killed during the disorders of 1949. Some British MPs, who had not assimilated the mores of colonial government in the same way as

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imperial bureaucrats, criticized the reliance of the Ugandan government on military and paramilitary forces in suppressing political protest. Intimations by the communist MP, Phil Piratin, that the Governor must feel ‘ashamed’ of his conduct because of the five fatalities led him into a confrontation with the Speaker of the House of Commons who required him to withdraw his remarks.69 Contrary to Piratin’s assertions, the Governor in Entebbe, John Hall, was largely unperturbed by the deaths; after reviewing the cause and course of the violence, he concluded that the security forces needed strengthening to confront civilian protest. The two battalions deployed during the disturbances each consisted of three understrength companies. The paramilitary Police Service Unit numbered only 345 men. It was agreed to increase this number to 779 and to re-equip the unit with its own armoured cars and Bren guns.70 The addition of brute paramilitary force was supplemented by a panoply of legal measures to give greater licence to the security forces. These initiatives set significant intimidatory precedents and have been catalogued by Otunnu. For example, existing Orders-in-Council were amended to allow the detention of any civilian suspected of being non-resident in specified urban or trading centres. Emergency powers were also extended to provide the army and police with immunity from legal suits when civilians made allegations about the excessive use of force.71 The strengthening of the paramilitary arm of the police was intended to make the deployment of the regular army onto the streets of Ugandan towns and suburbs less necessary but in that regard it was unsuccessful. The preparations made by Cohen prior to the deportation of the Kabaka in November 1953 included a major show of force by the KAR. Soldiers of the regiment once again marched through the centre of Kampala wearing tin hats and with flags flying and bayonets fixed. The military authorities were persuaded that the visibility of soldiers had a calming effect, although in the context of the widespread anger about the Kabaka’s exile, a measure of intimidation was clearly intended.72 After the rustication of a number of the Kabaka’s supporters, opponents of the British adopted tactics of non-cooperation in the form of a trade boycott which would become the tactical weapon of choice for dissenters in Buganda for years to come. Cohen responded by declaring a new State of Emergency at the end of May 1954. Units of the KAR deployed in Kenya against the Mau Mau were held on three days’ notice for a return but this was to become one of the least eventful post-war colonial emergencies.73 The relative restraint of all parties in 1954 was in marked contrast to events five years later when the Uganda National Movement ordered a new boycott of European goods to support their campaign for Buganda’s autonomy.74 After three months of mounting tension, on 4 June 1959 fighting erupted at Katwe between paramilitary police and crowds supportive of the boycott. The police opened fire and nine of the protestors received gunshot wounds, seven of whom were hospitalized. The Labour MP John Dugdale witnessed the battle and on his return declared that, like Nyasaland, Uganda had become a ‘police state’. His testimony emphasized the contrast between the treatment of protestors in Britain and those in Uganda. He asked about those who had been hospitalized in June: ‘Why is it that if seven people in England are wounded by the police there is an inquiry, and if seven Africans are wounded by the police in Uganda it is not right that there should be an inquiry?’75 Army units were eventually deployed again in October 1959 when Crawford sent soldiers from the

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4th battalion of the KAR to patrol the Masaka region.76 In December 1960 provision was made for the deployment of two battalions to contain any potential unrest which might occur following any declaration of secession for Buganda.77 By this stage, even Conservative MPs began to express reservations about the use of regular units in a domestic policing role in Uganda.78 Much of the support for the boycott came from traditional royalists, who obtained a sympathetic hearing among right-wing British politicians. Philip Goodhart took advice from some of the Kabaka’s allies and was privately critical of the decision to deploy the KAR against civilian protest.79 In public he restricted himself to expressions of scepticism about the likely success of any attempt to win a ‘trial of strength’ in Buganda.80 Part of the British strategy for decolonization was to retain institutional influence while transferring responsibility for policing dissent to a nationalist elite. The precedents for many, but not all, of the conflicts between the security forces and the civilian population after independence can be found in the years before 1962 but the number of casualties greatly increased until, in the Amin period, Uganda became what Henry Kyemba described in his memoirs as a ‘State of Blood’.81 During the Obote years, Buganda continued to be the locus of disorder and conflict. The decision to hold a referendum in 1964 on the ‘Lost Counties’ angered the traditionalist supporters of the Kabaka’s territorial claims. In the violence that broke out before and after the vote there were dozens of casualties as Ugandan troops attempted to quell dissent caused by the administrative transfer of the counties from Buganda to Bunyoro. The worst incident involved the death of schoolchildren at Kisubi whose bus was hit by an army truck.82 It was amid this controversy that, after some hesitation, in September 1964 the Cabinet agreed to add a third battalion to the Ugandan army. The explicit justification for the expansion was to combat internal security threats.83 In the longer term the privileges given to the kingdoms in the independence constitution were unsustainable, particularly given Obote’s innate republican and centralizing instincts.84 It was the army which enforced the policy of disempowering the regional governments in 1966. The immediate causes of the battle fought at the Kabaka’s palace on Mengo hill are disputed. For Adoko it was sparked by the sound of the ‘war drums’ from Buganda and the outbreak of a civilian insurrection; in the Kabaka’s account, his subjects were wholly on the defensive against the monstrous ambitions of Obote.85 The use of emergency powers in Buganda and the deployment of the army in the environs of Kampala were familiar from the colonial period but even though the precise numbers are disputed, there were many more casualties in 1966 than there had been in 1945, 1949 or 1959. Obote’s government suggested that twenty people were killed in battle of Mengo and a further twenty elsewhere in clashes with the security forces.86 By contrast, Mutibwa largely endorses the Kabaka’s claim that this was ‘the first major bloodbath in independent Uganda’ and entailed the deaths of up to 2,000 civilians.87 Contemporaneous press reports of the conflict suggest that Kampala remained quiet throughout but that there were numerous casualties at Mengo and that violence continued in the countryside for some time afterwards, often caused by civilian attacks on local police posts.88 After the abolition of the monarchies, the prestige of the army increased but civil-military relations in Buganda remained tense until the 1971 coup which was greeted with jubilation across much of the south.

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In the absence of accurate demographic data it is impossible to offer a reliable estimate of the numbers killed in the eight years of Amin’s rule or even to get a clear sense of how many of the murdered civilians died because they were believed to pose some form of political threat, as opposed to those who were the victims of arbitrary acts of theft, rape and revenge killings by soldiers. In a cautious initial accounting dating from 1977, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) suggested that the total number of military and civilian deaths in the first two years after 1971 was between 80,000 and 90,000 and that the total by the middle years of the decade must have exceeded 100,000.89 Stories about the atrocities of the Amin years, which are often based on Kyemba’s book, emphasize that many of those who died in the early years were Acholi and Langi soldiers.90 The early civilian victims of the army have received less coverage in the historiography but it is likely that many of those murdered in 1971 had no connection to the military or to Obote’s government. At a meeting with Amin just three months after the coup, District Commissioners stated that soldiers were killing civilians either in fulfilment of personal grudges or because of animosity generated by inaccurate intelligence. Reports from Toro suggested that cooperation between the police and armed forces had ended after members of the Ugandan army murdered a police officer and that the two groups were now fighting each other.91 The British High Commission recorded in October 1971 that ‘robbery, rape, violence and terrorism were reported from many areas’.92 This anomic violence was not ended by Amin’s success in consolidating his authority in the country. In the middle years of his rule the minatory behaviour of individual soldiers ran in parallel to a more organized campaign of political violence which included the murder of civilian politicians by the army. The key event in this phase of the violence was the death of Benedicto Kiwanuka in a military prison in September 1972. Basil Bataringaya, Alex Ojera, John Kakonge, Francis Walugembe, Joe Kiwanuka and Shaban Nkutu were among the other civilian politicians murdered by the army after Amin’s consolidation of power. As a consequence of these events and the flight of other key figures such as Kyemba, Godfrey Binaisa, Wanume Kibedi and Elizabeth Nyabongo, having ushered in a Cabinet of civilians in 1971, Amin was forced to fill political posts with military men. Another frightening and unprecedented manifestation of the militarization of Ugandan life was the presiding role given to military officers, such as Juma Oris, in the tribunals which meted out arbitrary justice to civilians, as well as soldiers, after 1973.93 Subsequent investigations into human rights violations in Uganda in the 1970s confirm the impression given in contemporaneous news reports that many of the victims of army violence were women. Gender relations had an obvious salience during the entire period because women were not integrated into the Ugandan armed forces until after the victory of the insurgent National Resistance Army, which included many women, in 1986. Prior to this period, and in conformity with British traditions, recruits to the Ugandan army were all men. What this meant in practice was that a mixed civilian population of men and women was kept in check by the threat of force employed by an exclusively male organization. Two of the leading scholars of Amin’s violence have gone beyond this basic accounting to connect these circumstances to larger theories about gender relations. Their radically different conclusions give some indication of the indeterminacy of the evidence in this kind of analysis. Shortly after the military

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coup of 1971 Mazrui portrayed Amin as the embodiment of a traditional African manhood which had been emasculated by the feminized civility of colonial rule. On this account Amin’s triumph was a reaction to the civilian politics of the Obote era and ‘a partial resurrection of the warrior tradition in African political culture’.94 Whereas Mazrui was applying a somewhat slapdash Freudianism to his extensive knowledge of Ugandan history and politics in the 1970s, forty years later Stephanie Decker drew on the ideas of contemporary cultural theory to offer an antithetical interpretation. She suggests that the martial history of Uganda in the independence period can be understood in terms of the hyper-masculine culture inherited from colonialism. Rather than emerging as a reincarnation of the spirit of Shaka of the Zulus, Amin was a product of the ‘deeply gendered training’ he received from the KAR.95 Alongside this cultural explanation of military violence, Decker also demonstrated that women were present in the military history of Uganda. This insight is congruent with Parsons’ analysis of the KAR, which demonstrated that women featured in army life in their role as family members and that they also had a covert presence as sex workers.96 Parsons focuses primarily on the pre-independence era and Decker on the post-independence period and their conclusions point to the existence of continuities across the period. Resolving the different interpretations of Amin’s gender identity offered by Mazrui and Decker would require some unpicking of the knots which tie together poststructuralist history and psychoanalytic theory that are beyond the scope of this enquiry. What can be established with certainty is that women played a significant role in political protests during the period of colonial rule and in the era of independence. Inspecting the impact of the colonial legacy on the role of women’s political activism also illustrates the significance of class distinctions. In conformity with both the mores of Ganda society and the limits of tolerance imposed by the British, elite women favoured forms of political action, such as letter writing and the submission of petitions, that avoided direct confrontation with the security forces. In 1953, for example, many of the most prominent women in Buganda staged a polite but discomforting visit to the Governor’s residence to deliver a petition.97 Non-elite women who could not breach the portals of officialdom took to the streets in protest and, as a consequence, suffered at the hands of the military and paramilitary forces who targeted them because of their low status. Female activists were at the forefront of the various boycott campaigns and particularly those conducted in Buganda in the late 1950s. It was estimated that in the largest confrontation at Katwe in June 1959 female demonstrators comprised one third of the crowd. The person most seriously hurt when the paramilitary police force opened fire was a twenty-four-year-old woman whose injuries were initially believed to be life-threatening.98 Although male and female protestors generally mingled, on occasions the latter would seek to emphasize their points by organizing their own marches and demonstrations. After the violence at Katwe one hundred women under the leadership of Rebecca Mulira were prevented from marching on Government buildings in Entebbe by police armed with truncheons and riot shields.99 As they continued to organize and demonstrate after independence women suffered disproportionately from the reprisals of the Ugandan army. The most visible examples of this often invisible phenomenon occurred when unarmed female protestors encountered armed male soldiers on the campus of Makerere college. The first women

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students were admitted to the college in 1945. Gender distinctions were marked by the division of men and women into male and female halls but the campus and the classroom were a forum for elite women to express their social and political views. The paucity of secondary education for ordinary Ugandans meant that, like the men, the great majority of women on campus were from the families of the administrative elite of the south. They were therefore familiar with the assertive discourse associated with the upper reaches of Ganda society. In the aftermath of the deportation of the Kabaka in 1953 reports emerged that female students gathered on staircases to shout ‘Every Englishman is a traitor to our King! God Save Our King!’100 In 1968 they participated in protests about living conditions and in the more politically motivated campus demonstrations that followed Ian Smith’s declaration of independence for Rhodesia.101 Because of their class status, student dissidents were treated somewhat more respectfully than urban strikers or rural boycotters but after independence a latent hostility between students and the security services infected the air of Makerere campus. Latent threat became actual violence in November 1964 when a male student was beaten unconscious by policemen and in December 1969 when another was shot by off-duty soldiers in the aftermath of the assassination attempt against Obote. The former professional cricketer Hugh Dinwiddy, who taught English poetry and creative writing at Makerere, gave a description of the tense atmosphere and the tactics of avoidance which resulted: ‘The oppressive military presence in Buganda and the occasional arrival on the hill at Makerere of drunken soldiers carrying rifles continued to convince Makerere students they were safer out of sight of the army.’102 The escalating provocations of the Amin era lured students away from pragmatic but resentful quiescence towards direct protests in which women played a large role. Because of the absence of records, the misgivings of potential witnesses and the ongoing contemporary controversies associated with the rivalries of the Amin and Obote years, it is often difficult to piece together the key events of the 1970s but the Makerere protests of 1976 are well documented, even if the accounts differ over important details. The main contemporaneous sources are the testimony given to the ICJ, the journalism of Dial Torgerson and David Martin, who spoke to student informers, and the detailed but jarring narrative given by Bryan Langlands in the pages of African Affairs. These can be supplemented by later oral history evidence gathered by Frederick Kamuhanda Byaruhanga and Alicia Decker.103 The issue of sexual relations between soldiers and students played a decisive role in the events which took place before the invasion of the campus by Amin’s soldiers on 3 August. Seven months earlier a Ugandan officer, identified by the ICJ as Captain Serwagi, issued a string of insults during a visit to the campus. His denigratory comments were particularly directed against female students who he asserted were infected with venereal disease. In a separate incident on 15 February Kenyan students on campus were alarmed by the disappearance on one of their number, Ester Chesire, at Entebbe airport. The matter was taken up by Kenyatta’s government in Nairobi but never fully resolved. Finally, on the morning of 6 March another student Paul Serwango was killed because, on the ICJ’s account, his relationship with a female student had drawn the attentions of Serwagi, who was continuing to harass Makerere students. Langlands expresses some doubt about this personalization of the crime and suggests

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that the attack on Serwango was probably unpremeditated. There is agreement that Serwango’s death prompted an extemporaneous march through Kampala by almost the entire student body. According to Byaruhanga’s interviewees this encouraged representatives from the halls to plot Amin’s overthrow, including Specioza Kazibwe from Mary Stuart Hall. The leaders of the protests were prompted into further action when another warden from Mary Stuart, the mathematician Nanziri Bukenya, who was also a key witness in the Chesire case, was murdered. A further demonstration was held on the morning of 3 August and this was the proximate cause of the invasion of the campus by soldiers that evening. On some accounts, the students at Mary Stuart continued to chant their opposition to Amin, the Kakwa and the Nubi in the midst of the army’s attack on Makerere. According to Martin’s version, both the female halls on campus were targeted by Ugandan soldiers and women were forced to flee the dormitories. Testimonials from those who were there include lurid details about the rape of numerous students and the mutilation of others, including one account of a woman having her breasts slashed, and these are corroborated by the ICJ evidence quoted by Decker. As Langlands indicates these violations almost certainly occurred when students were removed to military facilities rather than on the campus itself. His own account is stained by his flippant interpretation of the sexual violence: ‘There seem to be two reasonably well-authenticated cases of rape, but hardly an event on the scale of the rape of the Sabines.’ Many students were incarcerated in the notorious prison at Makindye. Mustafa Adrisi later claimed that rescuing the student leaders from Makindye was the main achievement of his time as Chief of Staff under Amin.104 Torgerson estimated that approximately 20 students were killed and up to 700 were injured and that many were raped. But the number of those who suffered some form of abuse could not be precisely rendered in 1976 and cannot be so now. Even in the absence of an accurate audit, the violence constituted a sobering reminder of the escalating conflict between an army of men recruited from northern Uganda and southern Sudan, which had been segregated from broader Ugandan society, and a developing tradition of civil protest featuring an emergent bourgeoisie of men and women from the urban regions of East Africa.

Ugandan army operations on the imperial frontier Without knowing who the author or the subject of the following documentary extract might be, anybody with a good knowledge of the history of post-war African counterinsurgencies ought to be able to make an assured guess about the conflict to which it refers: He was contemplating clearing an area between the plains and the mountain to enable the Security Forces there to stop the people going into the forest where they were operating against the Security Forces. People would be removed from the cleared area … this would necessitate erecting temporary camps, where the people who had been removed would be housed and it would also necessitate the Government providing food for them.105

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The reference to combatting forest fighters in East Africa through a system of civilian incarceration in detention camps might suggest that the speaker was the Governor of Kenya, Evelyn Baring, and the insurgency was the Mau Mau war of the 1950s. Anybody making such a conjecture would be wrong. The text is a summary of comments made by Milton Obote in a Ugandan Cabinet meeting on 22 February 1963. His instructions were about one of the least-known wars of twentieth-century Africa, which took place in the Ruwenzori highlands of western Uganda during the 1960s and beyond. The similarities between the tactics Obote adopted and the war conducted by the colonial authorities in Kenya a decade earlier ought not to be surprising; the armed forces of independent Uganda included many veterans of the Kenyan war and after 1962 Ugandan forces continued to be commanded by British expatriates drawn from an officer class which had fought colonial counterinsurgencies across the world. Operations in Ruwenzori began shortly after independence and they are part of a wider pattern of post-colonial conflicts in defence of borders imposed in the colonial era. Places such as northern Borneo or south Yemen also witnessed British interventions to uphold the colonial settlement in the 1960s. Often such conflicts were rooted in the irrational political geography of colonialism. In the case of Uganda, the Ruwenzori borderland abuts Congo to the west and the lawlessness in that former Belgian territory provided an opportunity for the insurgents to seek refuge. An influx of people into Uganda from the other direction, as a consequence of the Simba rebellion against the government in Kinshasa, added to the instability of the region. Ethnic tensions in northern Uganda were stoked by the Anyanya insurrection in southern Sudan, which Obote and Amin exploited as an opportunity to exert influence in the Nile valley, even at the expense of aggravating Uganda’s security problems. To the east the open border with Kenya was subject to chronic low-level conflict in the form of cattle raiding. On the short southern frontier with Tanzania there was relative peace at independence, but in the following decade Idi Amin and Julius Nyerere exercised their mutual animus to violent effect in this theatre. Lastly in the southwestern corner of the country, events in Rwanda generated repeated refugee crises, which began in the late 1950s and were to have their most dramatic consequences in the 1990s when Museveni allowed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to use Uganda as a base for forays into Congo. The strong-arm regional tactics of Museveni over the last thirty years have demonstrated that, in places like eastern Rwanda and southern Sudan, the openness of the colonial frontier offered opportunities for nationalist aggrandizement. In all of this there is material for a multi-volume military history of Uganda but a good starting point for the narrower task of investigating the post-1962 history of the army is the contrast between the Ruwenzori war and the invasion of Tanzania. Although perhaps the most striking dissimilarity between these conflicts was manifest in the declining operational efficiency of Ugandan forces, they share one commonality in that both were failures. Whereas the army of 1978–1979 was bloated, disorganized and aimless, the army of 1962–1964 was small, overstretched, inflexible and vulnerable to expedient political meddling. Assessing the extent to which these features were a direct consequence of the application of the British military model in Africa requires some reference to the major historiographical controversy about minimum force doctrines. One interpretation dating back to contemporaneous accounts of these wars

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suggests that there was a distinctive British ‘hearts and minds’ tradition, which placed great emphasis on efforts to persuade the civilian population to align themselves with the government and against anticolonial rebels. These arguments have been subject to comprehensive refutation by David French who has demonstrated that coercion was a first resort when it came to the British way in late imperial warfare.106 In the case of East Africa the controversy is less significant because even advocates of the minimum force interpretation have conceded that during the Mau Mau campaign civilians and combatants suffered brutal treatment.107 The war witnessed the employment of judicially authorized execution, detention without trial and the practice of torture in internment camps. In his memoirs, Waruhiu Itote asserted that KAR soldiers were sympathetic to, or even complicit in, Mau Mau activity.108 Omara-Otunnu has also suggested that a dissenting political consciousness was fostered among some Kenyan troops but notes that Ugandan forces remained largely complaisant.109 These are large generalizations and the role of African soldiers in the Mau Mau war is a subject that has been neglected by historians. The most detailed investigation is Parsons’ analysis of the loyalty of Kenyan recruits. He found only limited evidence to support the assertions of Itote and Omara-Otunnu and concluded ‘the majority of African soldiers appear to have followed orders to suppress the rebellion’.110 The coercion of the civilian population was a matter of colonial policy and, as recruits from distant areas across a colonial frontier, Ugandan soldiers and NCOs were insulated from the consequences of the war. Certainly no instances of mutinous instincts among the Ugandan battalion of the KAR have been uncovered and African troops appear to have complied with the demands placed upon them by their British officers. Amin acquired his reputation for violent reliability while commanding a Ugandan company in the Fort Hall or Murang’a district of Kenya. Local enlistees, such as Amin, were generally reliable instruments when dealing with those the state labelled as rebels and the war in Ruwenzori demonstrated the continuation of this tradition into the era of independence. Some further investigation of historical geography is necessary to explain the causes of the Ruwenzori insurgency. The self-serving inconsistencies of colonial frontier-making in Africa, which were most notoriously evident in the carving up of the continent by the European powers, are often remarked upon but there is less awareness of the role which alliances with African collaborators had upon determining the political landscape of the continent. In the west of modern-day Uganda, the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Toro enabled the British to extend their influence up to the frontiers of King Leopold’s Congo state. This was a joint project of seventy years duration between the Babito dynasts of Mwenge and British commercial and religious interests, which began with Kasagama’s cultivation of Lugard and the emissaries of the Church Missionary Society at the end of the nineteenth century. Kasagama extended his new kingdom of Toro beyond Mwenge against the claims of the Bunyoro kingdom to the east but his westward expansion was checked by the 1910 border agreement, negotiated by the British, which recognized his claim to Bwamba but left the region of Boga in Belgian hands. The two most important geographical features of this newly established frontier between Lake Edward and Lake Albert were the Ruwenzori highlands, which run northeastwards from the former to the latter, and the Semliki river to the north and west of the highlands. The frontier in its southern section cuts

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through the highlands without exactly tracing the watershed of the Ruwenzori peaks and in its northern section follows a small tributary of the Semliki before joining the main branch of the river feeding into Lake Albert. The resulting convex line has left a substantial lower-lying salient around Bundibugyo inside Uganda. Most of the mountain region to the south is also designated as Ugandan but Congo occupies a significant portion of the western slopes of the highlands. Physical and political geography are only crudely matched and human movement across the frontier is natural. Efforts by the Toro dynasts to increase economic production and centralize political authority eventually caused a reaction in the form of demands for autonomy from those residing on this western border. The oral tradition of the Konzo and Amba who live in the region expresses a sense of cultural affinity with each other and with groups on the western side of the frontier in the Congo basin rather than with the Toro to their east.111 This distinctiveness was disparaged by Kasagama and his son George, who, with British approval, established a uniform administration across all the districts of the revived kingdom, in which the bureaucratic elite was dominated by Toro functionaries. The import given to cultural signifiers is determined by the political and economic circumstances in which people live, which is in turn influenced by politics. During George’s reign in Toro priority was given to economic development, much of which, including coffee cultivation, salt production, copper mining and fishing, took place in the environs of the Konzo and Amba. The contrast between the successful economic development of the Ruwenzori hinterland, on the one hand, and the social exclusion of the Amba and Konzo on the other contributed to demands for autonomy in the late 1950s. In 1962 the Ssembeguya Commission of Enquiry, which was ordered by the Ugandan government to investigate the causes of the rebellion, identified the contrast between the sizable tax revenues generated in Ruwenzori and the lack of services, such as schools, as a key grievance, while offering mitigation for Toro administrators on the grounds that it was inevitable that some regions should contribute more than others.112 Moderates within the nascent Rwenzururu nationalist movement called for greater recognition of Amba and Konzo culture and the establishment of some rudiments of local district government. Radicals under the leadership of Isaya Mukirane increasingly argued for the establishment of an independent Rwenzururu kingdom. At the cusp of Ugandan independence local people attacked government officials in Busongora and Bwambe. Further incidents of fighting and arson led to the declaration of a disturbed area and the deployment of troops on 30 August 1962. The Ssembeguya report noted that the major aggravating structural factor was that the imperial frontier had separated many Amba and Konzo from their kinsfolk in Congo. More immediately the neglect of the Rukonzo language and denigration of those who spoke it had incited anger. When talking about the Konzo and Amba, officials of the Toro government engaged in ‘arrogant and high handed treatment’ and would use epithets such as apes, baboons, flies and pigs.113 These enmities on the western frontier have been cast into the shade of Ugandan history by the sagas of the Ganda and Nyoro rivalry, but Arthur Syahuka-Muhindo and Joshua B. Rubongoya have made significant interventions in the historiography of the struggle for self-determination in Ruwenzori.114 While customarily ignored outside of Uganda, the conflict has been of consuming interest to

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a handful of Westerners, most notably the Norwegian anthropologist Kirsten Alnaes, the Dutch political scientist Martin Doornbos, and the British journalist and novelist Tom Stacey. To varying degrees, they have become advocates of local autonomy and generated a small and sympathetic literature about the Rwenzururu movement.115 Although beset by a wide range of problems, it was the Rwenzururu rebellion which was the security issue that most preoccupied the new Obote government during its first two years in office. After a brief lull in October 1962 fighting on the mountains escalated towards the end of the year. Obote responded by authorizing a major counterinsurgency campaign whilst offering to mediate between the insurgents and the Toro kingdom. A State of Emergency was declared on 26 February 1963 and the Ugandan army attempted to clear out the civilian population. Negotiations with Mukirane were placed in the hands of Tom Stacey because he was one of the few people from outside the mountains to know the rebel leader. Although Stacey’s contemporaneous account Summons to Ruwenzori is dedicated to Obote and the British officers of the Uganda Rifles, it is surprisingly frank in acknowledging the indiscriminate character of the military operations and the mistreatment of those caught up in the war. Stacey developed a long-standing friendship with the commander of the Ugandan army, Bill Cheyne, and in one passage in the book endorsed his view that the soldiers of the Uganda Rifles were ‘the gentlest people in the world’. A few paragraphs earlier, however, he offers an example of the kind of coercive and intimidatory measures which were integral to British counterinsurgency in the age of decolonization: The scene confronting us at the gombolola headquarters at Bwera seemed a foretaste of the turmoil in the hills beyond. A group of some forty Bakonjo prisoners were scurrying back and forth with armfuls of grass, being thwacked about the head and shoulders by Uganda Rifles askaris (soldiers) with frayedended sticks like riding switches. Another thirty were lying flat on their faces with an African sergeant standing guard over them. Opposite a European officer was clearing up a trestle table at which this miserable gathering of Bakonjo humanity had a few minutes before been handed out their six-month sentences for spearcarrying or curfew-breaking. Nobody was being hurt much and it was the job of the soldiers to strike terror.

In a later passage Stacey records that ‘the noise of the blows made my throat go dry’.116 Even during the first phase of the insurgency in August and September 1962, leaders from the Burahya and Bunyangabu territories claimed the security forces were arresting non-combatants and torturing them in makeshift prisons.117 After the issuing of Obote’s directive to clear the area and place its people in camps, the conditions for the inhabitants of the accessible lower-lying regions became intolerable. The leaders of the rebellion accused the new Ugandan army of displaying ‘human brutality of the highest degree’. This heightened language served a political purpose in delegitimizing both the local administration of Toro and the central government but the prevalence of maltreatment is evident from the tenor of Obote’s instructions, from Stacey’s account and from the physical indications of destruction on the ground. Doornbos suggests that the most eloquent testimony to

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the fear generated by the actions of the Ugandan army was the abandonment of the farms and homesteads upon which the people relied for food.118 Ruwenzori was a much less heavily populated region than the Kenyan rift valley and the flight of the Amba and Konzo to Congo in 1962–1963 was not on the scale of the Kikuyu migration to the forest in the 1950s. Despite the difference in scale there are striking similarities in the methods used to control the civilian population during the two campaigns. The displacement of people was an integral aspect of British strategy for defeating colonial insurgencies and these methods were pursued by Obote’s government. Punitive measures were enabled by the declaration of a State of Emergency and were intended as a deterrent against future insurrections.119 In another parallel with the Kikuyu war, the Ugandan government attempted to delegitimize Rwenzururu nationalism by portraying the violence as criminality. All of these features are evident in Ugandan Cabinet discussions of the period. In October 1963 ministers justified the decision to close the border with Congo and to relocate the entire population from the highlands to the lowlands on the basis that criminals were abroad in the mountains.120 There was some disagreement about where to strike the balance between coercion and conciliation. The Minister of Regional Administration Cuthbert Obwangor endorsed the punitive measures which the Toro Kingdom was eager to pursue. Felix Onama, in his capacity as Minister of Internal Affairs, favoured some form of mediated compromise.121 The pursuit of both courses together proved repeatedly unsuccessful and violence on the Congo frontier remained a feature of Ugandan politics for almost the first half century of independence. The withdrawal of the British officers who had commanded the first operations and the abolition of the Toro kingdom did not lead to an immediate change in military method, although tactics changed over time. For example, in 1970 helicopter gunships supplied by the Israelis were used as a means of finally penetrating the higher reaches of the Ruwenzori mountains.122 An apparently final peace agreement signed in 1982 proved only temporary and a new rebellion broke out seven years later, which took on an international dimension as part of the brutal ethnic wars which swirled around the lacustrine frontiers of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda in the 1990s. The recognition of the existence of a ceremonial kingship in the mountains known as the Obusinga bwa Rwenzururu has provided the basis for a more durable peace since 2009. Even though governments in Kampala were often preoccupied with the violent politics of Rwenzururu, the distance of the fighting on the western frontier from the centre of national power meant that people living elsewhere in Uganda greeted news of the conflict with detached puzzlement. By contrast the southern frontier became the source of intense violence for a relatively short period of time during the late 1970s, which culminating with regime change. The border with Tanzania was one of the many straight lines drawn on maps of Africa by European statesmen. The 1890 treaty by which Britain acquired Zanzibar from Germany in exchange for Heligoland limited the activities of the British East Africa Company to the first degree of latitude south of the equator; beyond this line, German patrimony was recognized. The frontier was drawn at a time when the signatories had limited knowledge of who lived there and it was inevitable that a geometric solution would disrupt the human geography of the area; in this case the line ran through the southernmost part of the area occupied by

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speakers of Runyankole. As a consequence, the Ankole kingdom, which was one of the monarchies of the Uganda Protectorate, had as its southern frontier a line of latitude that divided people with a common history. Physical geography was also ignored. The principal river feeding Lake Victoria, the Kagera, curves south of the first parallel. When Amin launched his invasion of Tanzanian territory on 1 November 1978, he chose to do so by invoking the history of imperialism, declaring that the inhabitants of the newly liberated territory were under the direct rule of ‘the conqueror of the British Empire Field Marshal Amin’. Beneath his customary rodomontade Amin evinced some tangential historical awareness. As The Times reported in 1978, ‘Uganda has several times in recent years said that the Kagera river is the natural boundary between Uganda and Tanzania, rather than the arbitrary land boundary fixed between Britain and Germany before the First World War, when Tanganyika was a German colony.’123 Despite Amin’s retrospective justifications, historical redress was not the immediate cause of the war between Uganda and Tanzania, which seems to have been a consequence of a mutiny at the Mbarara barracks close to the Tanzanian border in 1978. Measuring the scale of mutinous behaviour is problematic but a number of diplomatic reports at the time suggested that fighting between rebel Ugandan soldiers and loyalists spilled into Tanzanian territory.124 The Ugandan army at this late stage in Amin’s presidency illustrated what the British military model looked like after falling into decrepitude. The Tanzanian armed forces had adopted forms and methods which would be regarded as heterodox by the standards of Sandhurst. As Parsons has pointed out, Nyerere, Obote and Kenyatta pursued radically different courses in the aftermath of the military disorders of 1964. While Kenyatta sought to cleave closely to the inherited British professional model, Nyerere opted for democratization and an emphasis on civilian control, and Obote remained stranded somewhere between these two approaches. Parsons’ analysis perhaps underestimates the extent of the reformation in Ugandan military affairs entailed by expansion, Africanization and overseas training, but it highlights the significance of Nyerere’s innovations in taking the Tanzanian army further from the British model. What struck the journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey about the soldiers of the Tanzanian People’s Defence Forces (TPDF) they encountered during the course of the war was that they had been trained in ‘all corners of the earth’. One officer told them that he had learned about counterguerrilla warfare in both Britain and China. Based on their direct experience of the integration of former civilians into frontline units, Avirgan and Honey concluded that the recruitment drive among the population organized by Nyerere’s government was successful.125 This marked a difference with Uganda where the professionalization of military service had become entirely corrupted by graft. At the outset of the war the Washington Post estimated that the two sides were broadly equal in terms of manpower and equipment.126 The tactics of the armies were also similar in the sense that they followed the conventions of orthodox Western campaigning in the age of tanks, high-calibre artillery, heavily armed infantry and aircraft capable of ground support roles, although the Uganda forces were distinguished by their reliance on vehicles for transportation and their unwillingness to march. The reasons for the Ugandan defeat are easy to identify in retrospect. Low morale, inflexible tactics, poor training and inadequate command and control were the essence of Amin’s problems. Having begun

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the war with a mutiny, there is plentiful evidence that many Ugandan soldiers were unwilling to risk their lives for what seemed from the outset to be a hopeless cause. This was most evident from the lack of resistance to the occupation of Kampala and the prominence of Amin’s Libyan allies, who had arrived in force in March 1979, rather than Ugandan soldiers, in the final battles. The Los Angeles Times offered a detailed account of the occupation of Kampala which culminated with an unopposed march by the TPDF up Kololo hill spearheaded by three tanks.127 As a bilateral war between two national forces the Ugandan-Tanzanian war was an unusual event in twentieth-century African history. The occupation of Kampala by another army was almost unprecedented on the continent and more typical of the kind of warfare practised in Europe. The scale of suffering caused to civilians was commensurate with the scale of the fighting. There are no reliable estimates of the number of civilians killed during the occupation of the Kagera salient but Furley estimates that the figure may have been approximately 1,500.128 Charles Wallace of the United Press reported from Kagera, ‘Except for an occasional straggler searching for lost belongings, this once populous and productive agricultural region has been laid bare. The harsh cries of scavenging birds are all that disturb an otherwise lifeless silence.’ He did meet one refugee, with a large wound in his chest who explained in a straightforward manner: ‘If you were a Tanzanian citizen you knew you would be shot.’129 The sweeping away of resident populations is almost a universal phenomenon of warfare rather than one associated with any particular continent and once fighting reached Uganda the military collapse of Amin’s army in 1979 was not quite as catastrophic as that of Mobutu in Congo in 1997. The greatest loss of civilian life was caused by the haphazard employment of the most lethal weapons which Amin and his Libyan supporters could make operational, including MiG aircraft and the Katyusha rockets which were deployed at Lutaya.130 Amin’s retreating forces continued to cause chaos even after the evacuation of Kampala and civilians in other towns remained fearful of the reprisals of the disbanded soldiery. A company director from Mukono explained to reporters, ‘They get you at gunpoint and take your things and if you have a car they take it. When they find you shouting they shoot you.’ Among the last casualties of the war were four journalists from Sweden and West Germany who were shot and killed after disembarking from a boat they had hired to take them across Lake Victoria. One witness claimed that they were murdered on the orders of Amin’s long-standing adviser, Bob Astles, whose presence offered a final, tragic instance of the Ugandan leader’s ties to Britain.131

Conclusion In 1902 the colonial governments of the region introduced regimentalism to East Africa as an alternative to either the mercenary forces which had played a role in the original conquest or a national citizens’ militia, as advocated by European settlers. For sixty years after the founding of the KAR, Ugandan volunteers were swept up into an interterritorial force whose structure and mores replicated those of the British army. This highly formal organization of martial life was comfortingly familiar for the

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expatriate officers who populated the higher echelons of the KAR but it was designed to serve the purposes of enforcing colonial authority. The hybrid nature of colonial institution-building in Uganda was evident in the contrast between the internal organization of the KAR, which replicated metropolitan models, and how it was conceptualized, which was as a means of containing domestic unrest, rather than as a war-fighting expeditionary force of the kind which the British deployed during the twentieth century. The availability of battalions drawn from specified martial tribes across East Africa enabled Kenyan units to engage striking workers in Kampala or Ugandan units to fight Kikuyu rebels in the Rift Valley. The functioning of the KAR was predicated on notions of white European superiority and it was this, rather than the martial races theory, which constituted the great crack in the system. Although regimentalism had a universal character, in the sense that it was seen as an all-purpose tool which could discipline enlistees from the marginal areas of either Uganda or Britain, scepticism about African capacities among senior officers generated an unbridgeable divide between white officers and black soldiers which persisted into the period of independence. In 1962 the newly independent Ugandan government inherited an army which was dominated by European officers, which was too small for the tasks it was given, whose soldiers were beginning to grumble about pay and conditions, whose political loyalties were uncertain and whose most significant operations had been the suppression of anticolonial dissent on a large scale in Kenya or a small scale in Uganda. It is partially amidst these bald facts that one can find the explanation for the militarization of Ugandan politics in later years but the picture is only complete once the overcompensation against most of these trends which took place under Obote is factored in. As British officers left in the aftermath of the mutiny, the rapid expansion in the number of Ugandan battalions entailed a makeshift Africanization of the officer corps and destabilized one key aspect of the British martial concept, namely, the formal separation of military from political affairs. The potential for tragedy was further aggravated by the irrational frontiers of the newly independent state. In the case of the far west a problem inherited from the colonial era was initially dealt with on the basis of the punitive British way in counterinsurgency that had previously employed in Kenya. During the later Obote years operational efficiency declined as political expediency came to dominate defence policy and the process accelerated under Amin. When the Ugandan army engaged in conventional warfare against Tanzanian units, its inadequacies were made manifest. Despite the self-evident corruption of the military of the 1970s it would be a mistake to interpret this history as a story of decline because, as the official British documentation of decolonization in Uganda reveals and as accounts of the 1964 mutiny and the failure of the Ruwenzori campaign confirm, the force inherited at independence had never been designed to fulfil the security needs of a newly independent state but had been formed to meet the requirements of a declining colonial power.

4

The Anglican Church

Among the most unconventional of African anticolonial activists were the Trumpeters or Strivers who, from the late 1940s onwards, gathered outside churches in northern Uganda to demand reform. Their message, which was often amplified by makeshift megaphones, was an entirely spiritual one and celebrated the intimately personal reorienting of individual lives by Christian commitment; for that reason, they are not usually categorized as anticolonial activists at all. The case for considering them as political dissidents rests on the challenge their message posed both to the carefully managed incorporation of revivalist religion into Ugandan Anglicanism and to the cautious posture of the Anglican Church in Ugandan political affairs. The compromises with worldly authority made by a previous generation of Ugandan salvationists, known as the balokole, and their close association with European missionaries, were unpalatable to the preachers of the new movement such as Eliya Lubulwa. He and his supporters believed that the institutionalization of church authority risked spiritual atrophy; it was this aspect of their theology which was particularly alarming to European clerics and missionaries because it offered an alternative to the model of ecclesiastical hierarchy which had been transposed from Britain onto the landscape of Uganda.1 Recognizing that the evangelical zeal of the revival threatened the established ecclesiastical order, which had been developed in the aftermath of the Ugandan conversions of the late nineteenth century, in 1941 Bishop Cyril Stuart had fashioned an accommodation between senior Anglican priests and the balokole. One element of this reconciliation entailed finding a balance between the disputatious aspects of Protestant theology embraced by the revivalists and a delicate Anglican orthodoxy, which required a collaborative partnership with the secular state. Colonial Governors and Anglican Bishops arrived in Uganda with a common, if sometimes contested, understanding about the relationship between political and ecclesiastical authority and expected the new African clergy to conform. Adherence to these complex structures served a secular purpose in curbing radicalism. Despite the efforts of the Church hierarchy to encourage quietism, the African clergy and laity often questioned this established order. As they drew both dutiful and errant functionaries from the local pool of converts, Anglican leaders found it difficult to contain political and theological factionalism and both were aggravated by competition for power and influence within the organization. What gave a distinctive character to this jostling for position was that Anglicans enjoyed a privileged position as the established faith of the colonial

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power. Even dissenting churchmen were approached more cautiously by the state than provocative newspaper editors or labour organizers. The trend towards close association with the temporal authorities was so powerful that, having disencumbered themselves from the imperial state, the Ugandan Anglican hierarchy forged a new relationship with nationalism and became identified with the UNC/UPC as the political party of establishment Protestantism. Far from becoming a church of resistance, Bishop Stuart’s African successors followed established precedents in promoting eirenism and harmony with temporal authority. They were unprepared for the catastrophes which overtook Uganda in the Amin years. When they came, Anglicans placed their faith in providence rather than political activism and the exceptional events which led to the murder of Archbishop Luwum in 1977 only confirmed this propensity.

Factionalism and evangelism Perhaps the most important new concept which Europeans propagated in Africa was the notion of the spiritual as a distinct and circumscribed sphere of human activity. According to David Zac Niringiye, religious rituals in Uganda prior to the introduction of Islam and Christianity were marked by the seamless incorporation of the sacred into daily routines. He states, ‘Religious practice was so integrated in all of life that it could not be isolated as an object to be named.’2 While truculent non-conformists may have challenged prevailing orthodoxies before the arrival of colonialism, Protestant and Catholic missionaries required local people to consider conversion to the new religion. Integral to Islam and Christianity was the concept of personal choice and the elective character of monotheism engendered new forms of individualism that compromised the communalism of African societies. Taking as their model Paul’s message to the Athenians, as articulated in chapter 17 of Acts, European missionaries persuaded many Africans that the familiar pantheon had been superseded and that one transcendent God had previously been occluded by the multiplicity of deities.3 The rhetorical strategies and theological proofs adopted by evangelicals would have been inadequate without the assistance of African collaborators in pursuit of political goals. Kabaka Mutesa I of Buganda was the first ruler to believe that European Christians could help consolidate his authority in his kingdom and beyond. Evangelism in Buganda proceeded in fits and starts according to the proclivities of the Kabaka and his chiefs; periods of tolerance and encouragement were often followed by persecution, as the question of whether the new doctrines would promote complaisance or insubordination was subject to recalculation by local elites. Despite these tribulations, from the arrival of Anglican missionaries in 1877, the pattern was one of sustained advance for Christianity. While local chiefs often assisted European missionaries in the southern kingdoms, across the north, where chiefly hierarchies were absent, conversion proceeded more slowly. In its wake there was a requirement to serve the extant Christian population and this was met with institutionalization in the form of an imposing new ecclesiastical apparatus, borrowed directly from European practices. Two Anglican dioceses were established as the Church of the Upper Nile and the Church of Uganda and they remained under the direct authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury until 1961; in that year the Church

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of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi became an autonomous province of the international Anglican communion, inclusive of the northern Ugandan territories previously served by the diocese of the Upper Nile. Administrative independence was not accompanied by any measure of organizational innovation; within the new province, an Archbishop sat atop a hierarchy of Bishops, each of whom presided over a diocese of their own. Although the Anglican Church was more deeply entrenched in Uganda than many other Western institutions, the years of decolonization were a time of constant crisis. Among the most significant of a disturbingly long list of potential threats that preoccupied European missionaries and churchmen were the twin ideological challenges of secularism and communism, chronic indigence and the associated threadbare quality of training and facilities, uncertainty over the question of how to plan for the onset of African urbanization and industrialization, a pervasive sense that the Catholic Church was racing ahead in the quest for converts, tensions arising from the often starkly different priorities of evangelism and established order in the Church, ingrained factionalism which sometimes reflected the ethnic tensions of secular politics and sometimes took its inspiration from theological controversy, the prevalence of nominalism among the laity and, perhaps most disturbingly of all, the possibility that Ugandans would slip back towards traditional pre-Christian forms of worship. These challenges were, and were felt to be, closely intertwined. Factionalism in the aftermath of evangelism was familiar in Anglican history. In Uganda, as elsewhere, new converts divided themselves into perfunctory nominalists and fiery revivalists. When in the mid-1950s Anglican Bishops were instructed to respond to a survey about the life and work of their church, the new Archbishop of Uganda, Leslie Brown, prioritized the recruitment and training of priests in order to counter the nominalist neglect of their Christian obligations by many new parishioners and the predisposition of others to relinquish their faith entirely. Closely connected to these hazards was the pervasive fear of atavism, interpreted as the ‘tendency to conserve the past rather than to trust in the guidance of the Spirit and go forward’. The Bishop of the Church of the Upper Nile, Lucian Usher Wilson, was inspired by the same survey to offer a counterintuitive reading of the relationship between temporality and social change. Despite the overwhelmingly rural character of his diocese and the scanty evidence of economic transformation, Usher Wilson imagined that an industrial revolution on the English model could place his flock in peril. If the conditions of the nineteenth-century metropolis prevailed, Usher Wilson predicted that Ugandans would replicate ‘the semi-paganism of that country’s town-bred population of today’.4 Such a conclusion illustrated the extent to which European clerics were capable of projecting their own neuroses on to the theological landscape of Africa. The novel distinction between spiritual and secular realms was codified in the sacraments but when offered to traditional communities such tokens of commitment could be put to other uses. African Christians often confounded European expectations about the spiritual character of ‘tribal’ life by grasping the opportunities for advancement offered by the Church, in the form of the prestige which attached to baptism and the literary skills which accrued by learning to read the bible in mission schools. Figures from the Upper Nile diocese in the 1950s disclose the enthusiasm with which the prospect of baptism and education were greeted by Ugandans and the

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comparative disinterest in ongoing Church attendance and marriage rites. In Teso in the southeast of the diocese, for the period between 1953 and 1954, the Anglican clergy administered 2,744 adult baptisms, 184 infant baptisms and taught approximately 6,662 pupils in secondary school. In addition, there were estimated to be 3,776 catechumens who were undertaking instruction about Church doctrine, particularly as it applied to the sacraments. In the same period Anglican priests in the territory conducted only 113 marriages. Figures for the small neighbouring area of Tororo for the second half the 1950s also give some idea of the dwindling of commitment after baptism; while nearly 19,000 baptized Anglicans lived in the district only around 3,000 were described as communicants. The notion of a communicant was indeterminate because regularity of attendance might be measured in different ways but the very concept of a prevaricating ‘Sunday-goer’, which was prevalent in both Anglican and Catholic circles, indicated that attendance at church once a week did not necessarily entail commitment to Christian doctrine.5 Whatever their limitations, the statistics for Tororo and Teso are broadly representative of the numbers given for other territories in Upper Nile and signify the greater commitment of the African laity to Christian baptism than to Christian marriage.6 The cause of this phenomenon was assumed to be the Church’s determination to enforce monogamy in a culture in which it was common for men to become marital partners with more than one woman. Two aspects of the chronic agonizing among European churchmen about polygamy reflect on the institutional character of Anglicanism in Africa. The first was that polygamy was generally interpreted by European missionaries and churchmen not as a social phenomenon but as a key theological marker dividing Christian trinitarianism from paganism and witchcraft. Niringiye quotes a Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionary to Busoga who stated in 1923 that ‘a very large number of baptised Christians have returned to polygamy, devil possession and drinking; witchcraft is widely practised and one is forced to the conclusion that much so-called Christianity is not the real thing but a veneer’.7 The second and contrary tendency was that whereas many churchmen and missionaries strictly adhered to the Church’s injunctions about marital fidelity, at a parish level some local priests concluded that less rigour was essential to the Church’s survival. Given the relative paucity of Christian marriages, if church doctrines against the baptism of children from polygamous marriages or illegitimate liaisons had been uniformly enforced, it is unlikely that so many baptisms would have taken place. Although there was little incentive to advertise such inconsistencies, there are occasional glimpses of these evasions. In June 1968, for example, the Uganda Argus reported that the reverends Yowasi Senoga and Ernest Mpera were baptizing children whose parents were not married on the outskirts of Namirembe diocese, only for Senoga to hastily deny the suggestion that the Church’s prohibition on offering the sacrament to illegitimate children had been lifted.8 The value placed on the sacrament of baptism in Uganda suggests that it was understood as an act which legitimated affiliation to the semi-established Protestant church, which in turn promised access to clubs and social networks as well as the amenities that the Church provided. In the absence of any significant initiatives by the colonial state in the field of welfare, the most important of the social services was understood to be education. The demand for schooling almost always outstripped the

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ability of missionaries to provide it. In the large region of Acholi in the centre of the Upper Nile diocese the Church maintained eight small primary schools with three to four classes and fifteen larger schools for five to six classes in 1955. The former had 666 pupils and the latter 2,714. Only two Anglican secondary schools had been established in the region by this time, in which 195 students were enrolled.9 Precisely because of its scarcity, secondary education became an asset for ambitious young Ugandans. It was from the missionary schools that a new generation of northern Protestants emerged to challenge the dominance of the southern elites, incarnated most strikingly in the person of Milton Obote who was educated at a CMS school at Boroboro and then at Gulu High School, which was one of the most prestigious educational institutions in Upper Nile.10 More typically, bright and ambitious pupils would seek roles as ministers and teachers rather than politicians. This pattern was consistent with efforts to Africanize the Anglican Church. In its Ugandan iteration, Anglicanism obtained more success in appointing indigenous Deacons and Bishops than it did in adapting its organizational structure or forms of worship to African circumstances. Liturgical reform proceeded cautiously and radical innovations, which occurred outside formalized church settings, were greeted with scepticism. The task of designing a new liturgy for Africa was assigned to Leslie Brown because he had performed a similar task in southern India. The reforms he proposed in 1964 required the simplification of ceremony and a participatory role for the laity in the service.11 One important presupposition of reform was that services would be conducted in English but the new liturgy appealed neither to conservative traditionalists nor to radical evangelists and had little impact. Much more consequential than Brown’s reforms from above were the fellowship meetings organized from below by those revivalists who became known in the nomenclature of Luganda as the balokole; these had been taking place outside of church among the revivalists for thirty years prior to the inauguration of the new liturgy. The scepticism of the balokole about the formalism of Church services and their innovatory approach to worship might suggest that they were advocates of Africanization but their views about pre-Christian religion were often congruent with those of disapproving European missionaries. The enlightening sensibility of the balokole meant that they looked askance at what they interpreted as the licentiousness of traditional practices and were gratified by the breaking of traditional spiritual taboos.12 In these circumstances enthusiastic Ugandan parishioners could pressure Deans and Deacons to enforce conformity to traditional Anglican standards. Conventionally the origins of the balokole are traced to the meeting which took place at Namirembe in 1929 between Simeoni Nsibambi, who had been cultivating a less formal manner of worship in Kampala, and Joe Church, who was undertaking missionary work around Gahini.13 After their communion, movements of fellowship sprang up across southern Uganda and northern Rwanda and then spread to other territories, including Congo, Sudan, Kenya and Tanganyika. Ndyabahika defines the essential characteristics of the revival as an awareness of God’s presence, a new relationship to the gospels, the exercise of repentance through Christ and open fellowship with other Christians.14 Three potential problems have been presented to secular historians by the East African revival. First, much of the history of the movement has been written by members of the Anglican community in Uganda and

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has all the advantages and disadvantages of such insider accounts; most notably, they evince an intimate understanding of the essence of revival based on personal experience but also a rather narrow subjective focus which neglects questions about the broader political and economic context of the movement.15 Secondly, as was evident from the trade in spiritual practices between Uganda and Rwanda, East African revivalism spread across political and diocesan frontiers and took on a different character depending on the circumstances prevailing in particular geographical regions; as a consequence, generalization is hazardous and much of the literature specializes in particular countries or localities.16 Thirdly and closely connected to this second factor, the balokole resisted institutionalization beyond a basic network of fellowship groups. Although they retained at least nominal allegiance to the Church of Uganda, revivalists adumbrated a critique of Anglicanism which was later taken up by the adherents of independent Pentecostalist churches. Despite their different confessional affiliations Pentecostalists and dissenting Anglicans shared a discontent with the orthodoxies of establishment Protestantism in Uganda. The intermediary position of the balokole between the Church’s establishment and its radical critics has made it possible to interpret the movement either as a joint endeavour in which Africans and Europeans collaborated to secure the revival of a potentially moribund institution or as a first and decisive step towards a more Afrocentric form of spiritualism which rejected the staid formalism of European practices. The former interpretation prevails in Joe Church’s autobiographical testimony, the general tenor of which suggests that revival drew its strength from the kind of Bible reading that European Protestants had long regarded as integral to their faith.17 Although the formidable knowledge Church acquired during a lifetime’s experience of revival lends this interpretation some credence, the adoption of a more scholarly and detached perspective brings those heterodox aspects of the movement into clearer focus. This is evident from the analysis of Derek Peterson who describes the balokole experience of conversion as a moment which had political ramifications because it distanced Christian salvationists from the politics of colonialism. By adopting an entirely new identity which prioritized redemption above any form of political allegiance and by forming new fellowship groups which had no respect for the artificial frontiers constructed during the colonial era, the balokole can be regarded as radical critics of the West’s impact on African society.18 The interplay between theological innovation and anticolonial sentiment was particularly evident in the actions of the Trumpeters or Strivers of the Chosen Evangelical Revival who drew inspiration from Eliya Lubulwa’s preaching. His dissident career purportedly originated in quarrels with another prominent revivalist William Nagenda, but although this might have had the appearance of an endogenous dispute among Ganda laymen its most significant ramifications were felt in the Upper Nile diocese in northern Uganda. The ostensible source of disagreement between the two men was about what striving for atonement required. Lubulwa believed that the inward moral reform which preoccupied the balokole was insufficient without some greater outward manifestation of holiness which must entail the renunciation of worldly goods and privileges. As a consequence of his itinerant medical work at clinics in Gulu, Kitgum and Arua, Lubulwa was familiar with the culture of the north and it was there that his message resonated most loudly. His methods were unorthodox and

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included the use of a handmade megaphone to amplify his message to congregations attending Anglican services.19 Margaret Ford, who later became secretary to the Archbishop of Uganda, attested to the disruptive effect which the Trumpeters had upon orthodox Anglican worship. She recalled that they were disparaged by other parishioners as the ‘noisy ones’ and that, once gathered outside places of worship, they would broadcast their testimony of dissent before, during and after services. On Ford’s account, the loud witnessing of Lubulwa’s acolytes comprised ‘words of repentance intermingled with words of abuse’.20 The sense of impropriety with which Ford and other missionaries reacted to spiritual dissent attests to the unsettling effect which the unconstrained methods of the Trumpeters could have. The theological innovations of the movement were also consequential. The instability of Trinitarian doctrine became a source of schism in Uganda as it has throughout Christian history. Whereas the balokole attended closely to the theological primacy of Christ’s sacrifice, the first generation of Strivers and later generations of Pentecostalists responded directly to the felt presence of the Holy Spirit. Many of Lubulwa’s unschooled adherents in northern Uganda and Congo were ill-equipped to study the Christ of the gospels and sought to evangelize by expressing their inspiration in songs and dances.21 Although the Chosen Evangelical Revival remained nominally within the confines of Anglicanism, their unbounded spirituality fed the Pentecostalist movements that would present a more direct challenge to the European character of the Church of Uganda. Perhaps the clearest account of Pentecostalist reorientation of worship in the direction of Africa may be found in the advice apparently offered to the founder of the Redeemed Church of Uganda, Kefa Sempangi, by a disillusioned but pious ally of the exiled royal family of Buganda called Sabaganzi Katongole: ‘This is how we Christians in Uganda act. God has called us to himself, but our eyes have been turned to the West. Instead of hearing God’s message to us as Africans, we have a culture-bound gospel. We cannot believe that God wants to speak to us in our own language. We cannot believe that he wants to speak to us alone.’22 Although not always acting in overtly political ways, in seeking to correct this Eurocentrism, Pentecostalists were making the case for the decolonization of African life and worship. The neuroticism generated by internal disputes within Protestantism was greatly aggravated by the external challenges presented by Catholicism and secular communism. The Anglican hierarchy called on the assistance of the colonial government to combat the threats from Rome and Moscow. Leslie Brown noted that ‘Anglicans had very little mutual trust or even contact’ with Catholics in Uganda.23 The confessional landscape of the country was uneven but the middle years of the twentieth century witnessed widespread Catholic advance. According to the Catholic Church’s figures the number of their adherents in the diocese of Arua increased from nearly 200,000 (49.7 per cent of the total population) in 1959 to over 350,000 (54 per cent) in 1970, while in Masaka, where Anglicanism proved particularly vulnerable because of the ostracism of their Bishop, the statistics record an increase from approximately 137,000 (36 per cent) in 1949 to nearly 290,000 (64 per cent) in 1969.24 The extent of Catholic ambitions in the north was symbolized by the construction of St. Joseph’s cathedral at Gulu. The marking of the African landscape with this structure, which would not look out of place in Rome or Florence, was also a challenge to local Anglicanism that the diocese

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of the Upper Nile was ill-equipped to meet. One resource upon which Anglicans drew was their intimate relationship to the colonial state. Although in the name of religious freedom colonial bureaucrats had tolerated Catholic proselytizing, they often partook in Protestant suspicions of Rome’s ambitions and were alarmed at the licence that Catholic priests and the Catholic newspaper Munno took in criticizing their policies. One particularly contentious matter was the alleged complicity of Catholic envoys from outside Uganda in anticolonial agitation. The Catholic scholar Adrian Hastings, who would become one of the greatest European authorities on African Christianity, was criticized by British intelligence agencies for writing an essay for the Africa Bureau entitled ‘White Domination or Racial Peace’.25 The emergence of the Catholic-dominated Democratic Party was regarded as inimical to British political traditions. Its leader Benedicto Kiwanuka was admired for his anticommunism but his propagation of confessional politics contributed to a sense of relief when he was defeated by Obote in the election of 1962. While there were many more Catholics than Marxists in East Africa, the religious and secular authorities were nervous of the possibility that Moscow would train a small cadre of communists who could take advantage of the complex political problems caused by decolonization in order to fashion a revolution from above. As Stockwell notes in her analysis of Anglicanism in the era of decolonization, the British government ‘sought to enlist the support of senior Anglicans over foreign issues, notably against Soviet communism in the early Cold War’.26 There was a modicum of evidence to support this alarmism, in the form of the trickle of Ugandan and other East African students who travelled to Eastern Europe for the purposes of education. One of the most influential figures in the CMS, John V. Taylor, expressed this uncertainty in 1957 when he listed nationalism and ‘possibly communism’ as among the key challenges which Christians might encounter in Uganda.27 At the moment of the Church of Uganda’s independence four years later, Brown was more assertive in warning of the rising influence of godless communism.28 In the midst of their conflicts with Pentecostalists, Catholics and communists, Anglican churchmen in Uganda upheld an Erastian theology which was peculiarly obliging to policymakers, but they were also propagating complex organizational structures which reflected widely held British assumptions about the importance of hierarchy and regulation in maintaining order at home and abroad. Integral to this system of spiritual superintendence were the layers of Church authority marked out by various titles and functions from venerated Archbishops enthroned at Namirembe to lowly non-ordained catechists travelling around local Deaneries. The marking of a grid of dioceses on top of the physical features of the African landscape was closely aligned with the practices of the colonial state. At the centre of each cell in the ecclesiastical matrix was a person of authority, in the form of a Bishop, and a site of power, in the form of a cathedral. Within the diocese the carefully graded hierarchy of the Church, with its Bishops, Deacons and Deans, mirrored that of the temporal government with its Provincial Commissioners, District Commissioners and Assistance District Commissioners.29 The resulting sacerdotal structure was an example of the direct imposition of alien administrative forms upon Africa. As in Europe, the prestige and material advance that were the rewards for successful service to the Church caused competition and conflict. Such rivalry was particularly apparent during the years of

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Africanization that led to the replacement of European churchmen by Bishops and an Archbishop from Uganda. African responses to these impositions varied widely. Church hierarchies challenged the localism of clan affiliations in which sacred territory and spiritual arbiters were almost always close at hand. Dissenters from inside and outside the Church believed the preoccupation of Christians with administrative mundanities had led to its ossification. Revivalists were particularly critical of the Church’s bureaucratic inertia. The balokole fellowship meetings circumvented the requirement for rigid and fixed institutional structures. In his autobiography Henry Okullu, who had participated in the Ugandan balokole movement before becoming a Bishop in the Kenyan church, testified to revivalist suspicion of the ordained leaders of the Church. ‘If anyone else eventually spoke of ordination’, he recalled, ‘he was suspected of siding with the oppressive church leaders, and only after severe testing and exhaustive examination by the brethren would he be allowed to approach church leaders. That would happen only after he had promised to regard the brethren leaders to be spiritually superior to the Bishop.’30 Not all Ugandans rose as high as Okullu but many of those who looked to the Church for social advancement aspired to a salaried teaching or clerical post. Given that local priests could be countermanded by distant Bishops and a small local church could not match the status accorded to a cathedral, the establishment of a diocese was a means for Africans to advance their own interests and that of their community. The expansion of the diocesan network meant an increase in the number of ecclesiastical posts and enabled the accommodation of local ambitions. At present the church has thirty-seven dioceses compared to the seven established when it acquired provincial status in 1961. It might be argued that this increase has been a natural reaction to demographic growth in Uganda but the establishment of new dioceses also illustrated the often unseemly character of the struggle for power and influence. Ecclesiastical competition was not always about ethnicity, which is the factor most often cited in explaining conflicts within Ugandan Anglicanism. The diocese of Mityana emerged from a separatist campaign spearheaded by the dissident Bishop of West Buganda, Festo Lutaya. As Niringiye has pointed out, the parishioners of West Buganda were nearly all Luganda-speakers and the quarrelling between them was about where the headquarters of the diocese ought to be.31 The claimant towns of Masaka in the south and Mityana in the north were almost one hundred miles apart and the distance between them was much further if traversed by the roads in and out of Kampala rather than the dirt tracks which offered a shorter route. The seat of the Bishop established after the Church of Uganda became a province was in the Kako area of Masaka but Lutaya asserted that Mityana should have a Cathedral and a Bishop and relocated to the town in March 1962. For him and his northern parishioners, matters of prestige and convenience were at play because Mityana was closer to the centre of temporal and spiritual authority in Kampala along the main road between the capital and Fort Portal. Masaka was regarded by many Anglicans as a backwater in which Catholics predominated. Confident that he had the support of politicians and notables in Buganda, Lutaya argued that the Lukiko should be the final arbiter in the dispute. Leslie Brown and the other Bishops feared that Lutaya’s unilateral actions would further marginalize the Anglican community in the larger town of Masaka. The

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popular and charismatic Catholic Bishop of the region, Joseph Kiwanuka had just been elevated to the status of Archbishop. The ministry of his successor Adrian Ddungu was likely to benefit from the triumph of his predecessor. Lutaya’s unilateral evacuation of Masaka seemed certain to further enhance Catholic prospects and foreclose the possibility of an Anglican recovery in the West Buganda diocese. At a meeting of the southern Deanery councils in October 1962 it was reported that in one parish nobody at all was studying for Anglican rites of confirmation or baptism and that ‘the whole of the work of the Church in the Masaka district has almost come to a standstill in the last year’.32 Lutaya’s actions also challenged the Archbishop’s authority and the hierarchies which were integral to the Anglican Communion. When Brown urged Lutaya to retire, the northern Deans of West Buganda, many of whom had encouraged the move to Mityana, told the Archbishop that he ought not to interfere in the internal affairs of the diocese.33 Although opposing factions occasionally made half-hearted gestures of atonement, the partisans of either side proved irreconcilable. In 1964 Lutaya was replaced as Bishop of West Buganda by Stephen Tomusange who set about fundraising for a cathedral at Kako. In response Lutaya persuaded the Diocesan Council to effectively withdraw from the provincial assembly.34 His appeals to the Archbishop of Canterbury for assistance were pointedly ignored and his stubbornness would have had little effect without significant support for his cause among the laity. As late as 1974, when Christopher Senyonjo was enthroned as Tomusange’s successor, many priests and parishioners were still boycotting the services organized by Ezra Kamya in his capacity as Archdeacon of Mityana. With the assistance of the former Katikiro, Paulo Kavuma, Senyonjo finally persuaded the aged Lutaya to end his separatist vigil and return to his home in Kampala but demographic increase and the structural weaknesses of the large diocese generated a final victory for the northern secessionists. In 1976 West Buganda was subdivided into northern and southern portions; the former was to have a Bishop of its own in the person of Yokana Mukasa.35 After long years of fundraising by local communities there are now cathedrals at both Kako in Masaka and Namukozi in Mityana. If no other diocese had quite such a history of acrimony, the establishment of a Bishop and a cathedral in Mityana and the shrinking of West Buganda had their roots in features which underpinned the multiplication of dioceses across the country, namely, the desire of African Christians to bring the source of spiritual authority closer to the places where they lived. Unlike the controversies in the West Buganda diocese, arguments about the enthronement of the Archbishops of the Church of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi witnessed the kind of ethnic partisanship which featured in political relations between Buganda and the other regions. The choice of Erica Sabiti to replace Leslie Brown and become the second Archbishop of the province formed a cornerstone of Buganda’s resentment on top of which many further grievances were piled, until they threatened a schism in the Church. Sabiti was the son of a chief from Ankole and the wife of a teacher from Toro, who became Bishop of Ruwenzori in the far west of Uganda.36 In Buganda this gave him the character of a marginal figure, particularly in comparison to the Ganda cleric Dunstan Nsubuga, who had been appointed assistant Bishop at Namirembe by Brown in March 1964.37 Although in terms of the established Provincial hierarchy, Sabiti, as a longserving Bishop, was senior to Nsubuga, in Buganda the

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latter’s closeness both to the seat of authority at Namirembe and to Brown as the leader of the Church made him the natural successor.38 Particularly irritating to Nsubuga’s supporters were reports that all of the Bishops from outside Buganda had voted for Sabiti. Ganda discontent was aggravated by Obote’s decision to end the Kabaka’s term as the country’s president, which seemed to suggest secular and spiritual politics were running in parallel. The Namirembe Diocese Christian Organisation wrote to the departing Brown to demand an explanation of his role in Sabiti’s appointment but also to make clear that the Kabaka should be regarded as the true head of the Church. ‘If somebody talks about tribalism, sectionalism, divisions etc.’, they asseverated, ‘the victims of these elements are Baganda.’39 Sabiti was elected in November 1965 and enthroned in January 1966. Four months later the Ugandan army attacked the Kabaka’s palace at Mengo. A story emerged, recounted by, among others, Henry Okullu, the recently appointed editor of the New Day Anglican journal, that Mutesa instructed Nsubuga before he left, ‘Dunstan look after Buganda’.40 Inspired by this legend the two dioceses of Buganda regarded themselves as free from the authority which Sabiti was attempting to exert as Archbishop. The diocese of Namirembe refused to host Sabiti and he was required to repeatedly undertake the arduous journey from west to east and back in order to fulfil his duties. The proposed resolution of this matter, which entailed establishing a diocese of Kampala for the Archbishop, fuelled the controversy by carving away at the spiritual jurisdiction of Nsubuga in the capital.41 The author of this proposal, John Bikangaga, was regarded as sympathetic to the UPC. His recommendations for rationalizing Church administration were interpreted in Buganda as extending Obote’s secular policy of centralizing authority into the realm of Church affairs. Sabiti was condemned across Buganda for his unwillingness to criticize Obote’s authoritarianism and this raised broader questions about the Erastian orientation of the Church’s theology which will be considered later. More immediately, the privileges of land ownership were at stake. Bikangaga’s plans to enhance the power of Church Commissioners extended to its territorial holdings and it was the dioceses in Buganda that had entitlements to lose.42 While the Bishops from outside Buganda supported Sabiti and Bikangaga, many foreign missionaries remained sympathetic to the people of Buganda as their original allies in the historic project of evangelism. Roy Billington, who had worked in Uganda for over thirty years, told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, that Buganda contained a third of Uganda’s population and that Anglicanism was ‘deeply rooted’ in the territory. The differential impact which Bikangaga’s approach to provincial assets would have was evident from the fact that Namirembe owned 25 square miles of land while the dioceses of Soroti and Northern Uganda owned less than one square mile each.43 The conflicts over Erastianism, sacerdotal appointments, church administration and land brought Buganda’s Anglicans to the brink of estrangement with the Church. If Obote had stayed in power during the 1970s, there may well have been a permanent schism. At the provincial assembly in 1970, Sabiti condemned the trend towards ethnic exclusivity inside a Church devoted to the idea of unity.44 After refusing to attend this first meeting, delegates from Namirembe and West Buganda did participate in a second assembly later in the year but only to register their rejection of Bikangaga’s proposals. In January 1971 Sabiti wrote to Ramsey to complain that delegates from

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Buganda ‘were only able to state their unqualified opposition and would not make constructive proposals for alternative measures or for a compromise solution’.45 Matters escalated still further when a synod of the Namirembe diocese voted to secede just one day after Amin’s coup. On 31 January the wardens of Namirembe refused to allow Sabiti to enter the Cathedral but, in taking such radical measures, the secessionists overstepped the boundaries of acceptable conduct and lost support. After the coup other new factors favouring reconciliation began to prevail and as Mudoola has noted, the divisions in the Anglican Church even played a role in legitimizing Amin’s coup.46 The exile of Obote assuaged some of the grievances of Anglican parishioners in Buganda, while Amin’s interest in promoting Christian unity was regarded by all parties as encouraging. In the context of this new political dispensation both Sabiti and Nsubuga agreed on the requirement for compromise.47 Ward suggests that Nsubuga was relatively moderate on many of the issues in dispute and notes that by the end of the year the cause of separatism was in decline as a moderated version of the Bikangaga’s reforms was implemented.48 In the longer terms the reconciliation was little more than a styptic. The return of Obote in the following decade would cause yet more controversy inside the Church as Yona Okoth was accused, like Sabiti before him, of loyalty to the UPC.49 Okoth’s defence was similar to that of both Sabiti and his immediate predecessor Silvanus Wani, which was that the Anglican Church ought not to become an overt critic of government because to do so would be to jeopardize its authority in spiritual matters. Such arguments had a history as long as Christianity but were differently inflected when applied in the context of Uganda during the transition from colony to independent state.

Activism and erastianism Christians have been considering their relations with temporal authority for two millennia and the debates conducted in Uganda in the twentieth century featured references to the letters which St. Paul wrote to the nascent churches of the Mediterranean in the first century. Although Paul’s writings opened a long tradition of exegesis, he was plain in urging Christians to obey the governmental authorities in the territories in which they were residing and this was consistent with Jesus’s message in Matthew’s Gospel to render unto Caesar that which belonged to Caesar. As this phrase resonated through the centuries it sparked debates about how Christians should react to the injustices of state power. One response required the thoroughgoing submission of spiritual to civic authority in political matters. During the Reformation this notion became associated with the person of Erastus and the doctrine of Erastianism. The Protestant innovations that had led to the establishment of the Church of England in the sixteenth century were consistent with developments elsewhere in Europe but granted to English monarchs a particularly large role in the functioning of a national Church. After the Elizabethan settlement many writers and preachers within the Anglican tradition chafed at the status accorded to Kings, Queens, Archbishops and Bishops in England. These distant predecessors of Eliya Lubulwa wanted to insulate the politics of personal salvation from a hierarchical establishment whose affairs were

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intimately tied to quotidian politics and whose ambitions often seemed to mirror those of worldly politicians. Debates over Erastianism were not the foremost concern of early Anglican missionaries in East Africa but, as Protestant Christianity endured, the status of the monarchs of Buganda came into question. The final conversion of the Kabaka and his court to the Protestant cause was a striking victory that made Anglicanism a semi-established religion in Buganda but the indeterminacies of that designation were to contribute to many later controversies and to a prevalent sense of uncertainty arising from the grafting of European religious traditions on to African modes of life. Among the primary innovations of colonial Christianity in Africa were the promotion of bookishness in the form of Bible study as integral to salvation and the teaching of a new theology in which spiritual matters were kept distinct from temporal affairs. One key obstacle to the missionaries’ task of persuasion was that, after centuries of argument, there was still no agreement among those propagating these concepts about where the formal boundaries between Church and state should be located. These imponderables did not halt the spread of Christian doctrine but they repeatedly generated disagreement and uncertainty within Ugandan Anglicanism. Hesitancy before state power continued after the establishment of the Church of Uganda as an independent province in 1961 and played a role in the failure of Protestants to mobilize against Amin in the 1970s. After his appointment in 1934 the longserving Bishop of Uganda Cyril Edgar Stuart found himself disconcerted by the expectation of Anglican parishioners that he should play a large role in political affairs and the view of colonial Governors that churchmen should not meddle in affairs of state. He later recorded that ‘Africans were still expecting their Bishop to have great political influence but also rather resenting that he had’. Stuart proved to be a conservative but somewhat maladroit practitioner of politics and admitted, ‘I suppose it was true too that at times I was an awful nuisance to Government.’50 Despite this self-perception he prioritized the alliance of colonial government and Church even when this was disobliging to citizens and congregations. Structural factors beyond Stuart’s lack of tact were at work in generating a sense of disorientation and even alienation among Anglican parishioners during his tenure. The semi-established status of the Church obliged Stuart as Bishop to offer counsel to the royal family at a time when it was struck by domestic turmoil. The duties of advising royalty proved particularly tricky when in 1941 the Queen Mother or Namasole, Irene Drusilla, sought to remarry after the death of her husband, and then again in 1948 when her son, Mutesa, married Damali Kisosonkole, despite the fact that Ganda custom militated against the Kabaka taking a woman from her clan as a bride. On both occasions Stuart was criticized by traditionalists in Buganda for solemnizing marriages which were regarded by some as illegitimate.51 In the view of even many Protestants in Buganda Christian intolerance of polygamy sat oddly with the licentiousness practised by the church hierarchy in many matters which were sacred to local religious observance. Others, who were not committed to the politics of cultural conservatism, most notably the balokole, supported Stuart. Perhaps even more problematic than such cultural conflicts was the gathering impecunity of the Church of Uganda in the 1930s and the 1940s, which Stuart sought to resolve in part by exploiting its key resource of land. In his capacity as trustee of the territory acquired by

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the Church under the colonial settlement, he negotiated with foreign companies about mineral rights and this in turn drew him into the controversies generated by fears that white Europeans would benefit from the alienation of land in Buganda as they had in neighbouring Kenya. In 1948 parishioners from Namirembe signed a memorandum listing Stuart’s inadequacies, at the head of which was the statement that ‘he works diligently in co-operation with the British Government in their secret scheme for the acquisition of Africans’ land’. Ward suggests that the document was probably authored by the political activist Semakula Mulumba in furtherance of his anticolonial project but it also reflected more widely held sentiments about the collaboration between British and local elites in projects which threatened the dignity of life and culture in Buganda.52 In many respects the most consequential and perplexing dilemma confronted by European clerics like Stuart was how to react to the rise of nationalism. As Ugandan politicians made use of their Christian schooling to articulate a critique of colonialism, missionaries and churchmen feared that evangelism would be hindered by nationalist discontent. If the Church was perceived as an auxiliary arm of colonial government, Anglicanism would suffer from the anticolonial backlash. Missionaries were even more sensitive and defensive about anticolonialism than local clerics. They were eager not to alienate an emergent class of politicians who confessed Protestant Christianity even if they were critical of government. In the case of Uganda the most prominent of the mission-educated anticolonialists was Ignatius Musazi who had studied at St. Augustine’s College in Canterbury. When threatened with deportation in 1950 Musazi turned to the CMS for support. Its General Secretary, Max Warren, was a key adviser on African affairs to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, and proved an energetic and influential lobbyist around Whitehall and Westminster. He wanted the Church to distance itself from the secular authorities in Africa, particularly when the latter were engaged in acts of repression.53 As Sarah Stockwell has noted, two of the key themes of Fisher’s tenure were his willingness to devolve ecclesiastical authority away from Canterbury and towards the colonial churches and his frequent and often intense engagement with the politics of decolonization, as instanced in his interventions over the Mau Mau war in Kenya, the treatment of Makarios in Cyprus and the exile of the Kabaka.54 Following correspondence between Musazi, Stuart and Warren, Fisher wrote to the short-lived Labour Colonial Secretary, James Griffiths, to suggest that a degree of tolerance in Musazi’s case might avoid greater trouble in the future.55 The requirement to distinguish the Church’s position from that of the secular authorities was an even stronger imperative when Cohen exiled the Kabaka. In retrospect the conflicts over royal marriages, land rights and the emergence of nationalism have the appearance of warning signs marking the way towards the Kabaka crisis. From the perspective of the Church hierarchy all of the potential threats to Anglicanism appeared to be enfolded within the many layers of the controversy which followed Cohen’s withdrawal of recognition from Mutesa in November 1953. For Protestant parishioners in Buganda the Kabaka’s exile provoked questions about the relationship between civil society and political power and this interrogation confirmed some of the disturbing if tentative conclusions they had already reached.56 As Mutibwa noted, ‘The fact that the Church of Uganda was an offshoot as it were of the Anglican Church of England which itself

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was part of the British Establishment, placed it in an extremely embarrassing position among its followers in Uganda.’57 Although Anglican churchmen intervened continuously during the course of Mutesa’s exile, the meliorist character of their interventions did not impress those in Buganda who had been outraged by Cohen’s actions. Warren met the Lukiko delegation when they travelled to London in the wake of the deportation. He subsequently offered a plausible account of their differing views about Church-state relations. Warren recalled: ‘They were all quite obviously deeply perturbed at the Church’s loss of influence through nothing being said’. In reply, Warren ‘stressed the obvious point that the Church in politics should normally be represented by Christian politicians, and I tried to show something of the limits on intervention that are imposed on the Archbishop and others in our English setting.’ Amos Sempa, who was one of Warren’s interlocutors and an archetypal member of the Buganda oligarchy, later wrote to Warren to explain the requirement for a more forceful approach given the context of colonial history. ‘The Church invited the British government to take over the administration of Buganda’, Sempa stated, ‘and the British government, rightly or wrongly has shown the highest disrespect in dealing with our Kabakaship. Here the Church must take a stand until the position is rectified.’58 Paulo Kavuma, who was sufficiently sympathetic to British policy to act as one of the regents during Mutesa’s exile, provided some sense of the reaction of local congregations in his memoirs. He recalled that many Christians ‘argued that if the members of the protectorate administration had been God-fearing men they would never have committed the injustice they had done in deposing the Kabaka’. Pews thinned out across Buganda and for some services the only attendees were children.59 At the forefront of the pessimists who believed the Kabaka crisis could lead to the unravelling of decades of Protestant advance in Buganda was the recently retired Stuart. In a letter published by The Observer just two days after Christmas 1953, Stuart described Lyttelton’s speech about East African federation, which had helped provoke the crisis with the Kabaka, as ‘crassly stupid’, asserted that Mutesa had, as his supporters claimed, only been voicing popular opinion and concluded with a further personal attack on Lyttelton for acting with ‘incredible folly’ in testing the loyalty of Protestant communities in Buganda. A longer, unexpurgated version of Stuart’s letter published in the vernacular newspaper Ebifa suggested that violence was likely and that the episode would greatly benefit the Russians. The counterattacks against Stuart for his injudicious commentary suggested that, when its legitimacy was disputed, the colonial state was more capable of pressurizing the Anglican Church than vice versa. The public defence of Lyttelton was contracted to the Conservative MP Cuthbert Alport who lamented that ‘it seems a pity that a distinguished representative of the Church, who must be aware of the background of the Kabaka’s position in Uganda and of the dangers springing from Buganda separatism, should employ the weapon of personal abuse’.60 The Minister of State in the Colonial Office Henry Hopkinson warned Fisher that the government had considered the possibility of legal action against Stuart and refrained only because it would cause further unwanted publicity. Fisher wrote to Stuart in Worcester to deplore the tone of the letters, while Warren told Hopkinson that Stuart had a labile personality, subject to ‘emotional extremes’. Stuart agreed to make no further statements and expressed regret to Fisher about his intemperate language.61

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While their loudest ally in the metropolis was being forcefully silenced, the Protestant laity in Buganda were confounded by the notion that that the lessons they were taught in Church were intended to be applied to the private, domestic realm and that politics constituted a formally distinct sphere of action in which Christian principles did not necessarily operate. Buganda’s Anglican oligarchy responded with tactics that exploited the fragility of British class and gender assumptions. Elite women were aware that female activism could be particularly potent in the context of their membership of a Christian church. Carol Summers’s analysis of the campaign to end Mutesa’s exile demonstrates that relentless expressions of love, loyalty and grief by Ganda women were intended to expose the inconsistencies evident in Cohen’s unilateral decision to exile the Kabaka.62 Christian norms of marital behaviour differed on some key points from those expressed in traditional Ganda practice, most obviously in the case of husbands taking more than one wife. While Summers acknowledges this distinctiveness, she also offers significant examples of congruence between Ganda and British norms, which could be exploited for political purposes. Expressions of fidelity embedded in the sacrament of Christian marriage proved effective because they derived from Church teaching. In a letter to Warren, the Kabaka’s wife, Damali Kisosonkole, recontextualized the crisis in terms of the requirement to save her unhappy marriage: ‘I have never given up the hope that through God’s grace he may one day mend his ways … All those who love Mutesa have had this hope … This sudden tearing away of a person whose change of heart we are looking forward to is a severe blow.’63 She publicized the case for her husband’s return in letters to the British Queen, Nehru, Nkrumah and the UN General Assembly and these were published in the vernacular press.64 Damali’s allies among the Anglican women of Buganda drew on similar ideas in their campaigns. In local discourse the Kabaka’s relationship with his female subjects was that of a symbolic husband or Omufumbo and protests in his defence could therefore be articulated in terms of marital fidelity. Rebecca Mulira had formed a group called the Africa Uganda Women’s League just prior to the Kabaka crisis and in February 1954 they made a memorable demonstration of their commitment to Mutesa during a visit to Government House. It was significant that they did so in alliance with the local Mothers’ Union, whose less overtly political character and associations with a homely form of Anglicanism were unmistakable.65 Contemporaneous observers and later historians have both noted that Cohen was perturbed by the comportment of the female delegation who refused to be reconciled by his equivocations. Attired in traditional barkcloth, the African women did not conform to the expectations which usually accompanied domestic interactions with elite European men. They made their emotive pleas for the return of Damali’s husband from a sedentary position on the floor of Cohen residence.66 The disconcerting impact of the women’s protest drew part of its force from their status as part of a local establishment rooted in Protestant conversion. The mixing of pragmatic politics and spiritual devotion evident in the actions of the Women’s League also influenced their metropolitan lobbying. In their entreaties to Warren they framed the drama of Mutesa’s exile in explicitly Christian terms. In November 1954 they praised Warren for supporting the Kabaka’s cause and then recalled a meeting with the secular authorities represented by the Resident who ‘wanted to impress on us the fact that the Kabaka would never return’. As good

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Christians, they told Warren that they were not downhearted and when questioned about their reasons for optimism declared ‘because we worship the living God’. They greeted news that the government was reconsidering its decision with the feeling that ‘the living God has worked a modern miracle’.67 Despite these plaudits for Warren, the Anglican Church challenged the colonial state on matters of high policy only with great wariness. Brown attempted to navigate between the defence of the British political authorities and the appeasement of many bitterly critical parishioners. He knew that most residents of Buganda correctly regarded the Bishop as a figure of political influence. Assimilating the attitudes of many of his flock, he evinced some resentment that the Governor did not consult him more regularly. In his memoirs he recalled that Cohen ‘was not a man who would have thought it proper to abdicate his own responsibilities in no matter how small a degree, by associating the Bishop with his policy decisions’. From a defensive strategic perspective, it was in the Church’s interest to explain its limited political role by upholding the separation of Church and state and this was the course that Stuart pursued.68 Proclamations of ecclesiastical helplessness were somewhat disingenuous given that Fisher frequently intervened in political affairs in Britain, most famously during the course of the Suez crisis of 1956.69 Shortly after Mutesa’s arrival in London, Fisher phoned him to suggest he might seek solace at Canterbury during the Christmas celebrations.70 The offer was politely declined but this did not prevent the Archbishop taking up his cause. He wrote to Lyttelton on 6 January 1954 with some precise recommendations for constitutional reform which he evidently hoped might assuage Ganda resentment of British imperialism generally and Anglican Protestantism specifically. The Archbishop proposed that Cohen should appoint ten African cross-bench representatives to the reformed Legislative Council as part of a broader programme of training Africans for government.71 Much of the import of this intervention was lost amidst the scandalized reaction to Stuart’s letter but Fisher maintained his interest in the affairs of Buganda. The various Ganda delegations which flew to Britain nearly always met either Fisher or Warren or both. As the crisis rumbled on without resolution, Brown became concerned that Anglicanism had reached a turning point after which Buganda might repudiate the novelties of Christian worship and embrace atavistic and ungodly practices. He recalled ‘there was a resurgence not only of tribal feeling but of divination and pagan sacrifice’.72 When a prophet called Kiganira began preaching in the name of traditional Ganda deities from Mutundwe Hill, Brown suggested it could mark the beginnings of a Mau Mau movement in Uganda.73 He grumbled in February 1955, ‘Our little pocket of pagan pus erupted last week.’ Brown’s conclusion was that ‘the sooner the Kabaka comes back as far as I am concerned the better’.74 Anglican churchmen also feared that the Catholic Church would benefit from the crisis at the expense of Protestantism. Stuart informed Warren that ‘very clever’ Catholics were making advances as a result of the controversy.75 He shared the view that Uganda’s Catholic hierarchy would ‘pull a fast one’; this might entail either claiming credit for any final return of the Kabaka or, should such an eventuality not arise, seeking to manoeuvre a member of their community into a position where he could become the new Kabaka.76 While signalling their sympathy for Buganda’s cause, the Church hierarchy urged Mutesa’s allies to moderate their criticisms of British colonial policy and this tendency became still more

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pronounced after the resolution of the crisis. In May 1955 Fisher advised the Kabaka’s representatives to approach the Colonial Office with tact and gentleness rather than ultimatums.77 By the end of the decade the Anglican hierarchy was exasperated by the anticolonial tenor of politics in Buganda. In the midst of the boycott campaigns of 1959–1960, Fisher found himself squeezed between the competing claims of the Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod, and the Katikiro in Buganda, Mikaeri Kintu.78 He chose loyalty to British colonial authority and adopted what he described to Macleod as a ‘standoffish’ attitude towards Kintu. This did not end the fretting among ecclesiastical authorities that resentment at British policy would alienate Ganda parishioners. Brown warned Macleod that unless the question of Buganda’s relations with the rest of the country was finally resolved, local politicians would ‘sit back and refuse to cooperate with anyone’.79 The hazards encountered by the Anglican Church during the Kabaka crisis and its aftermath demonstrated that the spiritual and utilitarian aspects of promoting the group’s welfare were merged in a shared communal identity. While European Protestantism stressed the intensely personal character of individual salvation, affiliation with a Christian creed in Uganda was the expression of a holistic group identity in which the separation of religious and political affinities made little sense. Such tendencies had many precedents in Protestant history but in the Church of Uganda the politics of communal empowerment were particularly pronounced. It was this attachment to a group identity which accentuated anticolonial feeling among congregations in Buganda during the Kabaka crisis and which the Anglican hierarchy expended much effort in trying to mitigate. Protestant parishioners insisted that the Church had an obligation to secure Mutesa’s return in order to heal the damage Cohen had caused to the sacred fabric of Buganda’s society. A further manifestation of African unwillingness to observe colonial distinctions between temporal and spiritual affairs, and one which was regarded as particularly transgressive by the British authorities, was the support which Protestant Ugandan clergymen gave to the UNC. From the outset the leadership of the party was predominantly Anglican. Welbourn is perhaps overly definitive in attaching confessional labels to the members of the party’s first Central Committee but his assertion that it consisted of fourteen Protestants, one Muslim, two lapsed Catholics and one confirmed Catholic indicates why it was thought of as representing the country’s Anglican elite.80 The most anomalous figure in the early leadership was Abu Mayanja whose status as a Muslim Muganda did not prevent him from becoming one of the most influential and effective figure in the UNC during the mid-1950s. When Mayanja and his southern allies were challenged later in the decade by a new generation of modernizing politicians from the north the party split. The strong regional affiliation of its members was a key cause behind the merger of the Obote faction with the Uganda People’s Union (UPU) under the banner of the UPC and the eventual incorporation of many former UNC supporters from Buganda, including Abu Mayanja, into the Kabaka Yekka (KY) party. The newly formed UPC remained a highly factional organization and sometimes its only unifying principles appeared to be its Protestant confessionalism, as manifest in the party’s hostility to Catholicism. UPC criticisms of the DP were evident from the claim that what the initials really stood for in Luganda was ‘Dini yi Papa’ or, in English, ‘Religion of the

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Pope’.81 Success for the Democratic Party in the 1961 elections prompted a grouping together of non-Catholics in the UPC and KY to secure victory for the Protestant coalition in the second and final national elections before independence in 1962. Although they had anti-Catholic prejudices of their own, the expatriate leadership of state and society in late colonial Uganda was alarmed by the confessionalization of politics and this was most evident in the joint efforts of the Governor, Frederick Crawford, and the Bishop of the Upper Nile, Lucian Usher Wilson, to prevent young African clerics in the north from sponsoring UNC politicians and hosting party gatherings. While many of the African clergy in this diocese evinced support for the UNC, Usher Wilson regarded nationalists with hostility, particularly when they expressed opposition to efforts to collect money to support Cathedral building and maintenance.82 Crawford was exposed to the dissident character of local Protestant elites in the north when he was cross-examined about political matters during a visit to Gulu High School, which was under the administration of the Anglican Church. The incident was interpreted as an act of impertinence by Crawford who suggested to Usher Wilson that Christian institutions in territories such as Acholi had been helping to disseminate UNC doctrines. He demanded that the CMS replace the African headmaster Nyanzi with a more reliable English churchman.83 Usher Wilson signalled his willingness to cooperate with Crawford by rebuking those ministers who were identified as offering succour to the UNC.84 Crawford also authorized covert surveillance of Christian churches in a manner which anticipated the monitoring of worship in the Amin years and much of the evidence about the overlap between religious practice and political campaigning comes via the jaundiced eyes of colonial intelligence operatives. They were particularly alert to the indiscreet clerical campaign in favour of Obote’s election in Lango. A meeting of the UNC on 26 April 1958 was preceded by a Church service in which, according to intelligence reports, Reverend Ogwal endorsed Obote’s candidature and suggested that a government led by the UNC’s Ignatius Musazi was divinely ordained.85 In pursuit of their common goal of conserving the colonial order, Crawford and Usher Wilson sought to formalize the distinction between spiritual affairs and party politics. When they met they agreed that clerics were entitled to scrutinize political developments under the light of Christian teaching. The unspoken assumption was that such inspections would enable the Church to combat atheistic communism. By contrast nationalist campaigning in the name of political parties was impermissible. ‘It is wrong’, Usher Wilson stated, ‘for a pastor to take sides by speaking in public and in the pulpit in favour of one party against the others.’86 Ogwal’s response demonstrated robust scepticism about the moral rectitude of the colonial authorities and a degree of confidence in challenging the formal distinctions which Crawford and Usher Wilson were attempting to impose. He insisted that his advocacy of political causes was not greatly different from the instructions that clerics had received during the Second World War to pray for peace on the recommendation of King George VI. His theological justification for endorsing particular candidates rested on a reading of Judges in which Gideon was chosen by God for a position of leadership because of his exemplary personal qualities. Perhaps most significantly of all, Ogwal asserted that the news that Special Branch was monitoring his sermons made his ‘hair stand’ and resembled the conduct of the state in Soviet Russia.87 What became of Ogwal is unclear

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but his approach to Church-state relations contrasted significantly with the balokole and the Strivers whose spirituality required a distance from contentious, quotidian political struggles. Ogwal’s support for the UNC’s anticolonial message reopened the frequently visited question of Erastianism and under what circumstances opposition to the civil power was justified. In his centenary essay on the relationship between the Church of Uganda and the independence movement, Mutibwa noted: ‘The Church was often accused of being “foreign” in the country; it was often accused of interfering in politics and thereby causing a lot of confusion in Uganda; and it was castigated for its tendency to be preoccupied with the affairs and fortunes of Buganda at the expense of the rest of the Protectorate.’88 Many of these aspects were evident in the Obote years but they do not provide a complete list of the overlapping political, social and theological factors which influenced relations between Church and state between 1962 and 1971. Among the most significant of these were the Church’s Cold War anti-communism, which was consonant with British foreign policy but which generated tension with Obote during his ideological move leftwards; the requirement for Africanization which remained a live matter for the UPC government even when the first African Archbishop, Erica Sabiti, replaced Brown in 1965; the many divisions within the Church of Uganda which brought to the fore some prominent advocates of Erastian ideas, including Sabiti and the future Archbishop Yona Okoth; a theological orientation towards providentialism among the clergy, which subsisted alongside a contrary inclination towards political critique among many southern clergy and laity after the destruction of the kingdoms; and, lastly, the ongoing denominational competition with the Catholics that buttressed the UPC’s hostility to the Democratic Party. It is possible to subsume some but not all of this complicated history under the wider phenomenon of persistent tensions between the worldly, political inclinations of many churchmen in Buganda and the spiritual, redemptive cast of mind of the revivalists who eventually came to dominate the senior Church leadership. While the former were inclined to resist Obote, the latter, many of whom shared his scepticism of Buganda’s claims to supremacy, were eager to remain on good terms with the UPC government. The controversy over the baptism of Obote’s children encapsulated some of these tensions. Sabiti and other church leaders regarded the bestowal of sacraments upon the children of Uganda’s political leader as a means of symbolizing the historic status of Anglicanism, while many Baganda regarded it as an explicit endorsement of the UPC leadership at a time when it was becoming increasingly intolerant of religious and secular opposition in Buganda.89 Although it was perceived as the party of Ugandan Protestants, the programme of the UPC was uninfluenced by traditional Anglican pieties. Obote followed the established nationalist orthodoxy in Africa, which required that citizens owed their primary loyalty to the state. In return for popular obedience, nationalist governments would pursue egalitarian policies which did not distinguish between people on the grounds of ethnic or religious affiliations. Inevitably fractures appeared once this theory was tested in practice and the UPC leaders identified one ethnic group, the Ganda, and one confessional group, the Catholics, as potentially dissident members of the new nation. Obote combined a moderate scepticism about the large role of Christianity in Uganda with a particular antipathy towards the Catholic Church, which had often sought to

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portray the UNC as a Cold War client of the Soviet Union.90 In 1961 he told members of the British Movement for Colonial Freedom that ‘Uganda is a creation of the missionaries’; but added, with his usual eagerness to dig at the clerical connections of the Democratic Party, that they were ‘mainly Roman Catholic’ and that they had caused trouble by accusing the UPC of communism.91 The defining conflict between Obote’s government and the churches in the early years of independence was about the role of religion in education. The future historian of Uganda Sam Karugire wrote to the Argus in January 1962 to suggest that the establishment of government schools would be an antidote to the sectarian prejudices which were inculcated by missionary education.92 Such sentiments aligned neatly with the priorities of the UPC. Obote and his ministers regarded state control of education as essential to the task of nation-building and feared the influence of the Christian churches in perpetuating divisions within the country and resisting any form of radical politics. The state takeover of Ugandan schools which took place in 1963–1964 was incomplete because, while teachers effectively became employees of the state, the land and buildings remained in control of the churches who also retained the right to open new schools. Nevertheless, the secularism of the UPC’s policies discomforted the Anglican hierarchy. In the immediate aftermath of the new government’s educational reforms, Brown complained: ‘We are suffering from growing pains at the moment in our nation and the Church, which very much wants to cooperate with government, but is rather suspected of being in opposition to it … It is easy to react in the wrong way when one is falsely accused.’93 Carney has identified cooperation between the Churches in resisting the secularization of schooling as one important cause in the rise of ecumenical sentiment in Uganda in the 1960s.94 This took institutional form with the establishment of the Joint Christian Council (JCC) in 1963. The JCC made unavailing attempts to ensure that the staff in the new state schools were required to confess the religious sentiments of their founding denomination, so that formerly Protestant schools would be staffed by Protestants and Catholic schools by Catholics.95 In his memoirs Brown suggested that the Catholic Church adopted a more confrontational stance on educational reform because ‘they wanted to retain complete control while most Anglicans thought it right that government should acknowledge its responsibility for the education of its children, but should cooperate fully and fairly with the voluntary organizations’.96 This retrospective view accurately captures some of the tensions arising from the UPC’s critique of the Democratic Party’s intimate connections with Catholicism. In executing its reforms the UPC government may have been keener to target Catholic schools but the policy of secularism had a universal character which reflected the notion that all of the churches were tainted by complicity with colonialism. In the 1967 constitution the policy of secularization was consummated by restricting the ability of schools to offer religious instruction. At this time the UPC also foreclosed the possibility of Christian denominations opening new schools.97 As discussed earlier, Amin’s coup temporarily resolved some of the endogenous partisanship within the Church of Uganda caused by Ganda exceptionalism and ended debates about the necessity to either resist or appease Obote, but the brutality of the army in the 1970s eventually raised the Erastian question in even more urgent terms. As prominent non-state institutions the Church, the press and the trade unions were

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unable to moderate a political system based on brute force and arbitrary decree. What was distinctive about the Church’s position was that while no secular institutions would have regarded the 1970s as a time of flourishing, many Churchmen did. Providential beliefs sustained the Church of Uganda and also contributed to Protestant disinclination to resist Amin. With one enormously consequential exception which culminated in the murder of Archbishop Janani Luwum, the Anglican Bishops interpreted their role as offering counsel to political leaders rather than expressing public dissent. This constituted a somewhat unlikely triumph for the kind of formal distinctions which the British had championed during colonial rule. The balokole, who came to dominate the higher echelons of the Church of Uganda during the 1960s, prioritized individual spiritual renewal and eschewed the notion that they should take on an overt role of political leadership.98 These trends and ideas were instantiated in the work and writing of the influential Bishop of Kigezi, Festo Kivengere. The title of his book about the period I Love Idi Amin is startling but also offers a useful encapsulation of the theological position adopted by many members of the Church of Uganda.99 Despite his actions, Amin, like Saul, was a potential subject of divine grace and also the actual object of Christian providence. In 1981 Kivengere recalled that the Church of Uganda had sought ‘to help the President not to destroy him. They wanted him to wake up, use his authority grasp the situation, save precious lives.’100 Immediately after fleeing the country, Kivengere had compared the Christian victims of Amin’s terror to early African converts who were tortured and killed on the orders of the Kabaka of Buganda. He predicted that the persecutions would eventually have a positive outcome by contributing to the revival of the ‘gloriously moving church’.101 Assessing the situation after Amin’s final defeat in 1979, Kivengere’s sense of the working of divine providence was confirmed as he reported: ‘Not only have we found a community which passed through suffering but since we went back, God has used His wonderful Word to bring many thousands of people back to Himself.’102 While the Church hierarchy proceeded cautiously in offering advice to, rather than criticism of, Amin during the early 1970s, many writers have portrayed Amin as a Muslim tyrant whose persecution of Christians was motivated by a desire to establish a confessional landscape dominated by the mosque and minaret.103 In her memoir of life in Uganda during the period, Jennifer Nyeko-Jones recalls that ‘at every level Christians were vilified while Muslims were placed in strategic positions of power’.104 Accounts such as this, which emphasize Amin’s purported Islamic fervour, often omit to mention that in expelling Uganda’s Indian population Amin also persecuted members of the Muslim Umma. Although historians constantly bump up against imponderables when assessing Amin’s motivations, it seems unlikely that he was motivated by religious zeal either for Islam or against Christianity. Responding to accusations that he was hostile to any non-Muslim groups, Amin recalled in the mid-1970s, ‘a great number of my relatives belong to many different religions but I love them all equally. My wife’s father is a devoted Catholic. Some of my children are schooled in Christian schools.’105 Amin’s formative years were spent in the King’s African Rifles where there was little evidence of religious tension between Christian and Muslim soldiers. He would not have been promoted had he not cultivated friendships with Christian officers. Outside of the ranks of the military, he was on good terms with the most

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famous female Christian missionary in Uganda, Phoebe Cave Brown. Noel O’Cleirigh, who later subscribed to the ‘madman’ interpretation of Amin’s character, nevertheless recalled that Cave Brown provided him with an amicable introduction to Amin in 1971. During one conversation, Amin apparently told O’Cleirigh that Ireland was a ‘sad place’ because of the violence which pitched Christians against one another.106 This anecdote is both plausible and a useful piece of evidence because what seems to have irritated Amin most about the Christian churches were their almost unfathomable factionalism and the outright failure of ecumenicalism. When Amin came to power, Ugandan Anglicanism was in the midst of one of its most toxic internal splits and his early forays into religious affairs were devoted to securing greater unity. The devout James ‘Engineer’ Zikusoka, who later became a canon in the Church, was appointed by Amin to the Cabinet as Minister of Works and given the task of healing the split in the Church of Uganda.107 The failure to secure rapid solutions to the complex issues in dispute soon disillusioned Amin and Zikusoka fell from favour but Amin continued with various clumsy initiatives designed to promote Christian unity. If Amin did not harbour any pronounced animosity towards Christian doctrine or Christians qua adherents of those doctrines, he would not tolerate interference by the church in politics. The majority of the many thousands of Christians killed during the 1970s were targeted because they were identified with ethnic groups who were seen as a potential threat to the regime; this applied first to the Langi and then to the Acholi who were both regarded as harbingers of rebellion. Amidst this constraining instrumentalism, Amin’s thinking did encompass the possibility of stubborn and overtly Christian resistance to his rule. Two factors exerted a grip on Amin’s consciousness in this regard: one was that Christian enthusiasm was sufficiently prevalent and sufficiently zealous to provoke hostility to him as a Muslim ruler and the other was that the foreign origins of the churches potentially made them a conduit for the transmission of disobedience from overseas. These considerations placed Protestant Anglicans in an ambiguous position. To some degree the Church of Uganda benefitted from its prominence as part of the religious establishment in contradistinction to the novel and heated revivalism of the Pentecostalists. When Amin finally issued discriminatory religious ordinances in September 1977 they were targeted against the younger denominations, including the Seventh Day Adventists and the Salvation Army. In the aftermath of the ban, Anglican churches welcomed new congregants from proscribed organizations as another display of providence.108 Imposing a similar ban on the Catholic or Anglican churches would have elicited unprecedented international protest and Amin was both fearful of and dubious about the transnational character of Christian organizations. Foreigners participating in religious missions were particularly suspect. The remaining British community, most of whom were Christian evangelists, was singled out for its potentially subversive character during the Amin years. The first confrontation occurred in November 1972 when Amin declared that he would Africanize the Christian churches and that this might entail the deportation of all expatriate missionaries.109 Nothing followed from this but the ongoing diplomatic crises with the British government increased the vulnerability of CMS missionaries because the establishment character of the Anglican Church made it, in Amin’s view, potentially complicit in efforts to undermine his

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regime. In the midst of the international controversy over his threat to execute Denis Hills, Amin denounced the British community as ‘spies’ and warned that he was putting the army on alert to deal with the threat.110 Once again he stopped short of acting but Anglican services were placed under intermittent and haphazard surveillance. Emmanuel Twesigye recalls that ministers were alert for the presence of furtive new congregants wearing dark glasses and would offer a more anodyne sermon when they suspected that Amin’s agents were engaged in such clandestine monitoring.111 Despite the intimidation and surveillance, the establishment character of the Church of Uganda offered a degree of protection to Christians working in the Anglican tradition until the murder of the Archbishop of Uganda Janani Luwum in 1977. Luwum’s position on the Erastian question was more nuanced than that of either his predecessor Sabiti or his successor Silvanus Wani, both of whom were content to keep a lengthy distance from political affairs. Luwum’s secretary Margaret Ford and John Sentamu, who had befriended the future Archbishop during the time they spent together in Gulu, give different accounts of his attitude to politics. Ford intimates that Luwum was reluctant to engage with overtly political issues and that protests about matters such as the army’s invasion of Makerere campus were exceptional. Sentamu, by contrast, goes as far as to suggest that Luwum ‘strongly believed that it was the abdication of power which had resulted in yielding to other forces in the country that were too ready to flex their muscles: from the World Bank and tribalism to the President of Uganda, Idi Amin.’ On Sentamu’s account, the flexing of the Church’s political muscles manifested itself in a greater willingness to publicly criticize the military regime but did not extend to organized resistance. Both Ford and Sentamu note that, like Kivengere, Luwum’s first instinct was prayerfulness for the safety and redemption of Amin as the leader of the country. The touchstone sentiment was: ‘We must love the President. We must pray for him. He is a child of God.’112 Only after spiritual guidance had manifestly failed did the Church, under Luwum’s leadership, begin to offer public criticism of the military regime. On 30 January 1977 Kivengere, during a sermon inaugurating a new Bishop for West Ankole, warned that the authorities had become too reliant on force to get their way. A week later the police raided church properties, including the Archbishop’s residence, and on 10 February the Bishops of the Church issued an open letter publicizing the extent of the intimidation used in that individual instance, while also suggesting that Muslims were intimidating Christians more widely.113 Kevin Ward, who attended Kivengere’s sermon and was impressed by it, suggests that it was inadvisable to have opened up this wider sectarian question by identifying Muslims as aggressors.114 After the assassination the full text of the letter was published in The Observer under the headline, ‘Letter That Cost Archbishop’s Life’.115 There was and remains some uncertainty regarding the exact circumstances of Luwum’s murder, which featured both public ritualized humiliation and furtive backstage violence. The Bishops of the Church were called to attend the Nile Mansions hotel and conference centre on 16 February; there they were required to stand in the hot sun and endure public denunciation. Amin’s ostensible motive for intimidating the Church leaders was that they were plotting with his opponents. Luwum and Bishop Yona Okoth were accused of smuggling arms into the country in order to abet a coup which would return Obote to power. Accounts of the day by three of the Bishops,

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Christopher Senyonjo, Festo Kivengere and Silvanus Wani, describe events up to the moment of Luwum’s separation from his fellow Bishops and the aftermath of the discovery of the body, but the question of how exactly he was killed and by whom remains open.116 Whether Amin directly ordered Luwum’s execution or not, he was primarily responsible for it, having both staged the initial ceremonial humiliation and organized the subsequent cover-up. The motive behind the Nile Mansions ceremony was anger about the existence of plots to overthrow the government. Ethnic identities almost certainly played a part in generating suspicion of Luwum because the Acholi group to which he belonged had suffered more under Amin than perhaps any other. His intimate knowledge of this grim history provided a rationale for participation in a conspiracy against the regime. After conducting a scrupulous survey of some indeterminate evidence, Kevin Ward concluded that it was impossible to establish definitively whether Luwum was implicated in plots against Amin; on the balance of the probabilities he suggests that the Archbishop may have known of plans to organize a coup but that he would not have risked becoming implicated in any conspiracy.117 What is clear is that it was only possible for such events to happen because the norms which regulated relations between state actors and civil society had been dismantled during six years of personalist military rule. Luwum’s death demonstrated again the arbitrary character of martial rule but the events at Nile Mansions also expressed a sense of Amin’s petulant frustration with the autonomy exercised by organizations with long-established links beyond Uganda. Among those groups that could potentially be identified with colonialism, the Church of Uganda, with its connection to the international Anglican Communion, was particularly prominent. Although Mujaju suggested in the year before Luwum’s death that there was an element of religious zealotry in the persecution of the Christian churches in Uganda, he gets closer to the essence of the matter when he states that, in Amin’s case, ‘the concept of boundaries between institutions within the political system and society does not exist in his image of Presidential functions’.118 Among the many abhorrent acts committed by the Amin regime, the abasement and then murder of Luwum attracted the loudest condemnation in the West. An editorial about Amin in the New York Times concluded, ‘This is the moment of common peril, of universal corruption. If we do not rage against him, his poison will have touched us all.’119 Such heightened rhetoric was inevitable given the increasingly lurid events in Uganda on which journalists were attempting to report but historians are required to pay some attention to context. Amin’s increasing suspicion of the Christian churches in the late 1970s was founded on the presupposition that non-state institutions which had been implanted in Uganda during the colonial period could be used by external actors to destabilize his government. What legitimacy Amin retained among Ugandans depended on his pragmatic adoption of an ideology of Africanization which suited his purposes when confronting domestic opponents with intimate ties to the West. Writing while Amin was still in power, Mittelman noted, ‘Amin’s actions to remove the vestiges of colonialism symbolized the limitations of great power attempts to work their political will in the Third World.’120 While churchmen and journalists criticized Amin from outside the country, his actions and rhetoric were effective in once again subduing the Church in Uganda. Faced with the alternatives

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of continuing criticism and further persecution or reverting to a quietist position in the aftermath of Luwum’s death, the Anglican hierarchy chose the latter. The new Archbishop Silvanus Wani was solicitous on the question of Church-state relations and resumed the policy of cautious engagement with the military government. Wani was a committed Erastian who stated, ‘When the Church is connected with politics then it will no longer be spiritual.’ Although he did on occasions express misgivings to Amin about the murder of Ugandan citizens, Wani also admitted that he followed the advice in Romans regarding the requirement to submit to governing authorities. He prayed for Amin and later characterized their relationship as ‘not bad’.121 The differing attitudes to Amin among the Anglican Communion inside and outside Uganda were evident from an exchange between Wani and the Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan about the 1978 Lambeth Conference. Typically, when Wani sought permission for a Ugandan delegation to attend, Amin suggested that, in return for his consent, an Anglican deputation should visit him to promote ‘some kind of understanding’ between Uganda and the West. Wani dutifully passed on the proposal. Coggan’s reply echoed the ongoing reverberations caused by the murder of Luwum: he refused to respond to Amin’s suggestion that an Anglican mission ought to visit Kampala and instead asked Wani to convey ‘the assurance of my continuing deep concern for the welfare of his country and the Church of Christ in it’.122

Conclusion There were no unprecedented events in the history of the Church of Uganda. State persecution, government sponsorship, bureaucratic gamesmanship, theological disputation and liturgical absorption are all familiar in the long history of Anglicanism and the even longer history of Christianity. The possibility of finding resemblances to past events suggests that the repertoire of responses to Christian inspiration is finite. New iterations of old phenomena were not identical to their antecedents and the specific historical circumstances in which events took place mark the key differences. Lubulwa belonged to a tradition of iconoclastic preachers who have expressed disgust with the trappings of worldly success and Ogwal has much in common with clerical predecessors who campaigned on political issues but both were seeking to adapt what was perceived as the Western character of the Christian church to African circumstances. For Lubulwa the flaw in Ugandan Anglicanism was that it had corrupted a popular and natural African spirituality, while for Ogwal the silence of the Church about the question of colonial exploitation was indefensible. Inevitably, these religious dissidents attracted the disapproval of the Church hierarchy which was self-conscious to the point of neuroticism about its historical ties to the colonial power. As the crisis over the removal of the Kabaka illustrated, the shadow that followed the apparent advance of Protestantism in Uganda was a foreboding that new parishioners would abandon belief in a transcendental God and slip back towards atavistic beliefs in animism. The establishment of an autonomous province in 1961 testified to the eagerness of Church leaders to shed some of the encumbrances associated with its origins in England. For all its significance, what was more striking about what happened after the establishment

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of provincial autonomy was how much stayed the same. The propagation of Anglican doctrine remained the ultimate responsibility not of popular preachers but of ordained priests operating within the confines of a system of apostolic authority delineated by a grid of dioceses governed by Bishops. This may have been the most radical of all the formal innovations which accompanied colonial institution-building in Uganda, given just how rigid the system was and how markedly different it was from the forms of worship tied to locality which had gone before. Its full import can only be judged in the context of the second feature of post-1961 continuity which was the Anglican tradition of deference to state power in civic matters. When Fisher and Brown approached Cohen and Lyttelton during the Kabaka crisis they did so with wariness, and when Stuart overstepped the customary constraints on criticism of government he was chastised. The Erastian question proved particularly vexing once new African Bishops were ordained amidst the nationalist victories of the 1950s and 1960s. Anglican churchmen in Buganda grew ever more suspicious of Obote’s UPC government and then the wider Church was confronted with the horrors of Amin’s dictatorship. Some Christians interpreted these events as the working of providence. As Festo Kivengere emphasized in his sermons and writings, the tribulations of the Church were salutary in providing an opportunity for Christian witness and revivalism. While the resilience of faith during a perilous period was striking, what is only hinted at in Kivengere’s account is the pragmatism of Church strategy. The idea that Anglicans should continue to render unto Caesar what belonged to him offered theoretical warrant for efforts to placate and appease the Ugandan government and prevented outright suppression. This was also a matter on which Kings, Governors and Presidents took a view and, while the penalties for Christian opposition to governmental policy were enormously greater in the Amin era, the notion that the Church should act as a supporter rather than a critic of government was one with deep roots in the colonial period.

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The Press

As well as the era of British imperial decline, the mid-twentieth century was the golden age of British newspapers. Economic recovery after the Second World War, the advance of literacy among the working classes and the emergence of a fully democratic politics in the aftermath of full women’s suffrage were foundations for the triumph of papers such as the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express. Recalling these circumstances is useful to any assessment of the Ugandan press, not merely because British newspapermen were despatched there to propagate Fleet Street methods but because the similarities and differences in the social and political circumstances of Britain and Uganda were reflected in their institutions. In both countries the press were squeezed between the push of state power and the pull of popular politics. This commonality was also the germ of a discontinuity because the heightened pitch and straining torque of governmental relations with the press in Uganda were unmatched even by the lively, agonistic environment of metropolitan newspaper culture. Colonial and independent Ugandan governments were willing to exile and imprison their press critics, while local pressmen such as Joe Kiwanuka and Ateker Ejalu used newspapers as vehicles for political propagandizing. In theory, imperial policymakers were eager to see independent journalism flourish but, in practice, they imposed a hybrid system of regulation which mixed liberal and coercive elements. The most prominent newspaper in the country, the Uganda Argus, was the product of cooperation between government and independent publishers. If the ostensible purpose of the colonial administration in fostering the Argus was to cultivate an authoritative and edifying counter to local gossip, its status as a retailer of objective news coverage was compromised from the outset. Expatriates were the paper’s most important audience, as was evident from the many column inches devoted to the latest county cricket scores and local election results from Britain. More significantly, governmental influence over the paper’s content precluded critical journalism. It was the vernacular press, which was dominated by publications in Luganda, which took on the role of challenging colonialism. Without the resources required to sustain investigative journalism, papers such as Gambuze traded in hearsay and opinion and this increased their vulnerability to state suppression. Independent journalists continued to adopt a sceptical stance towards government after the installation of nationalist politicians in power but, after a slackening of controls in the early Obote era, the Transition trial of 1968 marked a return to a punitive press policy. While Transition was suppressed, the Argus continued

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its role as a sympathetic observer of government. Rather than closing it, Obote installed his ally Ateker Ejalu as its editor with the task of cultivating a new African readership. Amin renamed it Voice of Uganda and ensured it was filled with laudatory coverage of his military decrees. Before tackling this history in detail, it is necessary to examine the commercial, journalistic and social context in which Ugandan journalists operated.

Ugandan newspapers in a colonial context The contemporary newspaper scene in Uganda has been fed by two traditions of East African journalism dating back to the era of decolonization. These approaches stood on an unequal footing. The first and more durable model was associated with the periodicals of the Standard Group in Nairobi whose titles resembled British newspapers and were intended to bring the sober tone of The Times to East Africa. In the case of the East African Standard itself the conservative editorial stance of the paper was determined by its key audience who were largely expatriates. This journalism was relatively well funded, written in English and presented in a manner familiar to readers of The Times or The Daily Telegraph. The Uganda Argus, which was established in 1955, was a relative latecomer to this market but soon surpassed its local rival the Uganda Herald to become the authentic representative of establishment opinion in the country. The second tradition was that of local African journalists, publishing in local languages, such as Kikuyu or Luganda. Their journals tended to be published weekly rather than daily and were funded by local entrepreneurs with political ambitions, in the hope that a mixture of gossip, opinionizing and polemic would appeal to a large audience. Newspapers such as the Kikuyu-language Mumenyereri of Henry Muoria or the Luganda-language Gambuze of Yafesi Tabula epitomized this tradition.1 The vernacular industry was commercially fragile and smaller scale but Gambuze survived for nearly thirty years after its first edition in 1927. Although they offered substantive anticolonial critique in indigenous languages, the vernacular press should not be regarded as the antithesis of papers such as the Standard or the Argus. Their presentational style was modelled on that of Western newspapers and they were capitalist ventures which often took advertising. This dissident tradition was the subject of suppression but it exerted some influence over the Anglophone press, which was gradually forced to tack away from reactionary politics and also to Africanize their staff and their news coverage. The ongoing success of the current newspaper Bukedde represents a merger of the two forms: it is published in Luganda, focuses sharply on local issues and was the product of Ugandan entrepreneurialism, but has sought training for its journalists in Britain, adopted Western formats and, despite increasing suspicion of its editorial line from Museveni, has historic ties to government. Museveni’s attacks on titles such as the Daily Monitor and Red Pepper also have precedents dating back to the colonial era but, despite the precariousness and danger associated with Ugandan journalism as a profession, the general trend since independence has been towards liberalization. This loosening of restrictions is partly a consequence of the difficulty in maintaining the level of state scrutiny and prohibition which marked the colonial years. Sympathetic oversight by the local judiciary and international

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monitoring of press freedoms have helped shelter independent journalism. A judicial ruling in a case brought by the Daily Monitor in 2004 stated that provisions inserted in the penal code during the colonial era were incompatible with the 1995 constitution.2 The codes which were struck out by the courts dated back to British efforts to muffle hostile coverage of the Kabaka’s deportation in the vernacular press in the mid-1950s. Andrew Cohen had declared Buganda’s independent newspapers to be ‘a thoroughly bad influence’. He revised the law to criminalize any person disseminating information which was likely to threaten peace and good order. The British press was sometimes stirred into action by the hypocrisies which enabled colonial Governors to impose restrictions upon their colonial counterparts that would have been unacceptable in the metropolis. In the case of Cohen’s laws of 1954, the Guardian blamed the influence of reactionary expatriates such as Handley Bird, a former chairman of the Uganda Chambers of Commerce, who had a seat on the Legislative Council.3 An earlier press ordinance, issued in 1948 under the Governorship of John Hathorn Hall, caused a particularly sharp reaction in Britain. Hall’s measure required newspapers to carry a correction written by government functionaries if the executive judged that misleading information had been disseminated. The Daily Express was sufficiently suspicious of the justifications offered by the Colonial Office to send a reporter to Uganda to record the outraged reaction of the vernacular pressmen to the Governor’s attack on their freedom.4 J. J. Astor, publisher of The Times and President of the Empire Press Union, sent a delegation to the Colonial Office to register twelve objections to Hall’s measure; the tenth and most significant noted that the ordinance placed the onus on editors to prove that their coverage was factually correct, while the Government had to answer to no one in forcing any newspaper to carry their corrective copy. Astor and his allies claimed Hall’s policies were harsher than those implemented elsewhere in the empire and had unfortunate precedents in French, rather than British, history. In response, the Colonial Secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, asserted that the papers against which the measure was directed fell outside the traditions of Fleet Street and ‘would not be tolerated by readers in Britain’.5 There was a degree of plausibility to Creech Jones’s suggestion that Ugandan newspapers at mid-century were substantially different from those read in Britain but his arguments were misleading because the kind of reading culture that had been established in Uganda was not the expression of an alien tradition but a consequence of the impact of British colonialism on Ugandan society and the reaction of Ugandans to that intrusion. In this regard, the limited attention paid by the colonial state to the promotion of literacy was the most significant factor. Popular literacy was estimated at 40 per cent by the Ugandan government in 1980 and has improved further due to the extension of schooling and the rising currency of English. The United Nations Human Development Report of 2016 indicates that approximately three-quarters of Ugandan adults now have basic literacy skills.6 Such figures potentially mask disparities in reading fluency in different languages. As Matovu has noted, ‘literacy rates vary with each language and this variability precludes any possibility of a national newspaper which could command a significant readership level’. Even allowing for these indeterminacies, the efforts of independent governments mark a dramatic advance on the colonial period when most Ugandans did not receive any form of schooling.

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At that time the colonial state deferred to the churches in the provision of education. The founding of a patchwork and rudimentary system of Christian education turned some illiterate adherents into aspirant readers and the growth of minority literacy had a large effect. Although the primary purpose of mission schools was to enable a new generation of parishioners to study the Bible and to train the most promising of them as priests and proselytes, the mixing of established oral and nascent literary cultures contributed to the creation of a market for newspapers in Uganda. Even before 1962 public readings in bars or at social gatherings in private homes amplified the impact of press reports. Drake Sekeba described the process as he remembered it from his childhood: Often the buyer of a political newspaper was very willing to go around houses reading stories of interest aloud to individual families. Most people could not afford to buy newspapers yet there were some who bought them regularly and were always ready to read for friends. As one visiting reader finished his turn, another one would appear with a different newspaper, equally anxious to read.7

Aside from playing a role in the emergence of an audience for newspapers, the Christian churches directly participated in the dissemination of news and were inadvertently responsible for inaugurating the critical vernacular press tradition. Expatriates belonging to the Church Missionary Society produced a four-page newspaper targeted at fellow missionaries in 1900, first as Mengo Notes and then as Uganda Notes. With some rapidity both the CMS and the Catholic White Fathers turned their attention to the production of religiously inflected news for Buganda’s converts. The Anglicans began publishing Ebifa in Luganda in 1907 and the Catholic journal Munno followed four years later.8 In 1959 New Day was founded in an attempt to create an Anglican title which would have appeal beyond Buganda. Its editor Norman Hart was a former journalist on the Liverpool Daily Post and regarded English as the only practicable language for a periodical with national ambitions. He explained: ‘If we printed it in several languages, people who could read any one of them would not get much for their thirty cents. So we decided to print it all in English. We are really very sorry that this means many people who would like to read it cannot.’9 Although the first generation of Anglophone converts were intended to be pious and complaisant Christian devotees, an elite who obtained secondary education from the CMS at King’s College, Budo were able to turn their advanced literary schooling to political and professional advantage. In the 1920s a number of Budo’s graduates pursued personal advancement and political reform through the medium of newspaper publishing.10 This first generation of local journalists directed their editorial animus against the conservatism of Buganda’s establishment. Their modernizing impulses and ingrained hostility to the older generation sometimes shaded into sympathy for colonial rule. Of the two pioneering figures, Daudi Bassude attacked the inequities of the land settlement of 1900, which had concentrated economic and political power in the hands of an oligarchy, while Zefaniya Sentongo evinced a chauvinist hostility to the increasing mercantile dominance of Indian migrants in Buganda. The vehicle for their dissent was a monthly journal named after the local grey heron, Sekanyolya, which,

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as Twaddle explained in his analysis of the title, was ‘a bird with a neck long enough to enable it to peer over a neighbour’s fence before quickly flying off somewhere else when necessary’.11 Sentongo died in 1925 but Bassude continued to campaign for land reform in other vernacular newspapers, including Munyonyozi and Matalisi, until in 1929 he was offered land and a minor chieftaincy; from this point he was coopted into the Ganda establishment he had spent a decade criticizing.12 Scotton identifies the later 1920s as the period when vernacular journalists began to launch more direct attacks on the Protectorate government. As editor of Dobozi lya Buganda, Yusufu S. Bamuta was in the vanguard of this anticolonial tendency. His criticisms focused particularly on financial maladministration and, according to Scotton, his editorials ‘represented in effect a call for Buganda nationalism’.13 The influence Sentongo, Bassude, Bamuta and their journalistic successors exerted was not solely determined by the slow progress of literacy. Other structural obstacles to the advance of the newspaper industry in Uganda have included the inadequacy of the country’s transport infrastructure, the scarcity of capital for investment and a lack of consumer spending power. During the colonial era, transport policy was driven by the commercial imperative to connect, first the areas of coffee and cotton production in Buganda and then the copper mines at Kilembe to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. The resulting East–West orientation of roads and railways did not map effectively on to the geography of the modern Ugandan nation-state. The underdevelopment of infrastructure has hampered civic institutions, and particularly the press, from developing a truly national character. Even if an audience had existed for a Luganda or English language newspaper in the north of the country in the 1950s and 1960s, it would have been troublesome to get the newspapers from the presses in Kampala to potential readers. Establishing an extended distribution network also required financial resources but, after the capital costs of purchasing and maintaining a printing press, the vernacular newspapers struggled to afford adequate premises or basic communication tools, such as telephones.14 As a consequence of this undercapitalization, although these newspapers did have a weekly day of publication, such as Thursday for Eyogera and Friday for Gambuze, they often missed a week or came out on other days. Uganda’s potential community of newsreaders also struggled financially. Outside of the urban centres and even inside much of the city economy, the demand of workers was for a wage which would provide basic subsistence for a family. Few even among the constituency of literate workers had the disposable income to spend on a weekly or daily title. The circulation figures of all Ugandan newspapers have always been low compared to many other African countries but, in a very crude way, the increases in circulation of the most popular titles do map on to advances in reading skill among the general population. In recent years Bukedde has sold around 30,000 copies a day in Buganda and the rival Daily Monitor approximately half that figure. In the early independence period the two leading rivals were the Argus with a circulation of around 20,000 and the more demotic People with a circulation of approximately 15,000.15 Figures for the vernacular press of the colonial period must be treated with caution, but the Department of Information estimates for 1953 indicated that the weekly edition of Gambuze had the largest circulation at approximately 8,000 copies, followed by Eyogera at 6,000.16

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There were some countervailing factors which amplified the prominence of independent Ugandan print journalism. The first was the culture of public reading already alluded to. The second was the fact that the written word retained a striking degree of prestige. Journalists carried with them a degree of status in their relationship with other media outlets and because the emergent radio and television industries often had no reporters capable of covering the news they were dependent on copy from the press. As the editor of the People noted in a self-laudatory but accurate estimate published in 1967, newspapers in Uganda ‘should be a platform for debate on important issues: this is particularly vital, as the radio and television make no attempt to do this.’17 For press entrepreneurs there was also a positive corollary to the colonial government’s failure to establish the kind of infrastructure which supported newspaper reading in Britain because this laissez-faire approach extended to information policy; as a consequence there was relatively little public competition even if the market was small. The dull, technocratic Ministry of Information newsletters of the colonial era appeared in a variety of African languages, including Iteso and Lwo. They offered basic commercial information and were continued in a variety of forms by the Obote and Amin governments. Printed in Kampala, they could take weeks to reach the outlying areas of the north where their audience resided. Amidst the chaos of the Amin era, plans were made but not realized for the establishment of governmental press facilities in rural areas.18 Exogenous capitalist investment by established media companies could also be advantageous to local journalists because they offered training, equipment and news gathering expertise. For example, under the direction of the former editor of the News Chronicle, Michael Curtis, the Nation Media Group (NMG) played a large role in training journalists across East Africa in Western techniques.19 The risks associated with these external investments were that the Ugandan media became enmeshed in global networks over which, as a marginal territory, it had little influence. Parochial efforts by Ugandan entrepreneurs to stimulate the industry were overshadowed by overseas investors, whose primary interests were in Kenya. Claude Anderson of the Standard Group, Tiny Rowland of Lonrho and Aga Khan IV, who spearheaded the NMG, all fell into this category. Anderson started the Argus almost half a century after his family had acquired the Kenyan Standard and Rowland inherited it as a consequence of his acquisition of the Standard Group. The Aga Khan’s Nation offered a rival view to the reactionary politics of the Standard but his interest in Uganda was intermittent. He sponsored the Luganda-language Taifa Empya but his English language Ugandan edition of the Nation lasted for only three years after its launch in 1960.20 In 1992 NMG achieved a successful return to the Ugandan market with the launch of the weekly Monitor title. Operating still further behind the headlines than Tiny Rowland and the Aga Khan were the global news gathering agencies. Brennan’s analysis of their role in the region states: ‘It is an irony of East Africa’s decolonization that it opened the political and economic doors for increased western control of information, particularly by the British news agency Reuters.’21 The Standard Group took on Reuters as its main supplier of overseas news in the 1940s and renewed the relationship during the 1950s. The extensive coverage of British and world affairs in the Argus’s pages was not just a consequence of the commercial requirement to satisfy expatriates but also the wide editorial scope

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offered by one of the world’s largest news agencies. When Obote’s government signed its own contract with Reuters to supply news to the Ugandan market, it enabled the success of the UPC’s People newspaper but at the expense of endorsing colonial precedents.22 As Obote’s engagement with Reuters suggests, nationalist governments adopted a protean attitude to these external influences: alliances with large media organizations had practical and presentational advantages but the autonomy of financial investors and the mobility of capital made them undependable friends whenever political tides turned. The former factor proved rather more pressing than the latter in post-independence Uganda and, despite the move towards nationalization of other commercial assets, Obote left Kenyan and British media companies largely unchallenged. Like the British Governors who preceded him, Obote was more suspicious of the indigenous vernacular press than globalized media companies. There were great advantages in promoting a less parochial journalism, even if this required the employment of Western news agencies, at a time when Luganda newspapers were preoccupied with contentious matters about land distribution, commodity prices and the status of the Kabaka. Both independent and colonial governments traded the hope that external media organizations offered in countering this intransigent localism, against fear about what better funded externally sponsored journalism might uncover. Cohen worried the Standard Group might bring the rancorous politics of the Kenyan settlers, which had been faithfully rendered in the East Africa Standard for decades, to Uganda. The nationalist sympathy of the Aga Khan’s Empya was also unwelcome to the colonial government. Obote’s courting of Reuters and Lonrho did not translate into a wider tolerance of Western reporting inside Uganda. In the midst of his investigations into arms smuggling across the Congo frontier, Peter Forbath of Time magazine became the first Western journalist to be expelled from independent Uganda in January 1965. In April of the following year Ted Jones, a Western freelancer, and Billy Chibber of the Kenyan Nation were forced out because of their reporting about the Kabaka’s final exile.23 When Amin began to attract disobliging media coverage, a full-scale assault on the Western press began. Some reporters were threatened with death, notably Amin’s leading journalistic critic David Martin of the Observer. The two key measures in Amin’s broader offensive against press criticism were the government takeover of the Argus in 1972 and the banning of Kenyan and British newspapers in 1974. Despite the drama which accompanied these events, there was some continuity with the past to the extent that efforts to establish a voice for government under the cover of an independent press and suppress domestic criticism dated back to the colonial period.

The conservative press: The Uganda Argus and Voice of Uganda The Uganda Argus was launched in January 1955. According to its first editor, Mark Barrington-Ward: ‘The paper was in a way in the middle. It did not want to be just part of the government and seemed radical to some old hands at the start. Yet to the rising political leaders it seemed cautious and part of the local establishment, as events moved even faster than I did.’24 Although in keeping news largely insulated from comment and in offering occasional outlets to dissenting opinions in its letter

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columns, the pages of the Argus during its first years offer some corroboration for this idea of a median role for the newspaper, any closer analysis of its style and content suggests that the ‘rising political leaders’ had the stronger case in regarding it as the mouthpiece of conservatism. Despite Barrington-Ward’s later disavowals, the Argus became the semi-official voice of government. It viewed national and world affairs from the same perspective as the secretariat in Entebbe: the principal global threat was communism, many dangers arose from the interference of non-British foreigners in Uganda, the transition to independence must proceed slowly and incrementally, peace and order were constantly jeopardized by potential disorder, Africanization should be a priority but a priority which took account of practicalities, and the workers were at fault in industrial relations disputes. An early editorial on the expulsion of Kenyans from Uganda set the tone of the newspaper in endorsing the punitive policies of the British and foregrounded the dangers posed by external influences: ‘It is a difficult problem but in this country they are immigrants and in view of the persistence of Mau Mau in spite of existing controls and the danger the most law-abiding may be terrorised from Kenya, the Government is right to play for safety. It is the price these tribes must pay for their identification with terrorism and destruction.’25 The Argus was not just conservative politically but was initially impervious to acculturation. In style, format and tone, the newspaper replicated British newspapers as closely as possible. The elements of hybridity which marked a divergence from British practices were those that were congenial to the colonial authorities. For example, the Argus contained less critical, investigative journalism than British newspapers and was more dependent on news agencies, which were a dependable source for countering local gossip about political matters. The first striking aspect of the Argus’s coverage of British and international news is the extent of it: most of its closely typeset broadsheet pages offered detailed factual information about affairs outside Uganda. This coverage had the dual purpose of appealing to Uganda’s small expatriate audience but was also intended to have an edifying effect upon an aspirant indigenous middle class. The tenor of coverage of the Cold War and industrial relations, for example, was conducive to good relations with colonial officialdom. The Argus was launched during a brief détente in Cold War relations but, despite its distance from the locus of East–West conflict, the paper pressed on its Ugandan audience the requirement for vigilant Atlanticism. On 12 October 1955 under the front-page headline ‘Growing Soviet Might Exposed’, Moscow was portrayed as the ‘greatest submarine power ever known’. In an editorial a day later Barrington-Ward offered an appraisal of the summit meeting in Geneva which argued that détente was a consequence of Western military preparedness and that ‘it would be foolish to be beguiled into unilateral disarmament at a moment when NATO has begun to have its effect’.26 The implications of the Cold War for Africa often featured in editorials. The advance of Soviet influence across the world imperilled the West but, according to the Argus, also endangered the possibility of orderly decolonization. An editorial from 1961, which looked backwards at the accelerated advance towards independence made during the previous year, concluded ‘there is no doubt of the growth of Russian and communist influence in Africa; this is one of the factors behind the increased effort which America is making to help the emerging

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territories.’27 Closer at hand than Soviet influence was the nascent Ugandan trade union movement and the industrial relations coverage of the Argus offered lessons which colonial officials would regard as salutary. In the language of much of the British press and of the Argus, industrial disputes at the docks and on the railways threatened to bring chaos to Britain in 1955. From the distance of Kampala, Barrington-Ward issued pleas for all parties to show moderation, while suggesting that the workers were most culpable. In his editorial about the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) of 1 June 1955 he suggested: ‘Many people would agree that in a country such as Great Britain with a highly organised and strongly developed system of industrial relations the strike weapon is an anachronism. It seems quite certain that ASLEF will gain nothing by it and be credited with an attempt at dictatorship.’28 While acknowledging that the sources of the dispute were complex, the Argus’s coverage served as a warning about the economic damage caused by union militancy. Five years later the same views were applied to the local East African railway dispute. The Argus concluded that the primary cause of the strike was that ‘the Unions have not been willing to compromise on a claim which must be regarded as virtually impossible for the railway administration to meet in full’. The best antidote to industrial strife was, the editorial suggested, greater willingness on behalf of the unions to accept the assistance of the colonial government.29 Recommendations by the Argus that unions should stay out of politics and close to government were intended to reinforce the formal distinction between the management of state affairs and the fractious discussion of national politics. Under the conceptual dispensation of colonialism, Governors and Colonial Secretaries were best placed to determine policy. Institutions could enhance administrative efficiency and combat tendencies towards disorder by keeping on good terms with policymakers. British editors and British administrators were engaged in a common project, as the role of the Argus in disseminating officially sanctioned interpretations of political controversies demonstrated. The extent of covert liaison between the Argus’s senior staff and colonial officials is evident from a 1959 editorial about Buganda and a 1962 feature item about the Cold War. The subject of the 1959 editorial was an offer by the Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd to open negotiations with Buganda’s leaders following the Lukiko’s rhetorical abrogation of the 1900 agreements with Britain in protest against the Ugandan Legislative Assembly’s infringements on their privileges. In support of Buganda’s constitutional demands a trade boycott was organized. Almost no controversy in his four-year editorship of the Argus exercised Barrington-Ward as much as the boycott and it proved the inspiration for ever closer collaboration between the Argus and the colonial government. At the outset of the campaign, Barrington-Ward wrote to Lennox-Boyd to remind him of a conversation they had conducted when he took up the post of editor. The Colonial Secretary had invited Barrington-Ward to write to him on matters of importance. In May 1959 he took up this opportunity to explain that the boycott was a potential turning point in Ugandan history because it was being used by agitators as ‘an instrument of political warfare by economic means’. If the Ganda politicians defeated the national Legislative Council, he warned that separatism would spread across the rest of the country and the orderly transfer of power would be jeopardized. British politicians and colonial officials

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needed little prodding to acknowledge the dangers of exceptionalism in Buganda but the exchange revealed the intimate relationship between establishment journalism and establishment politics: Lennox-Boyd read the letter and found it very persuasive, while Governor Crawford was ‘grateful as ever’ for Barrington-Ward’s intervention.30 As might be anticipated given these exchanges, the Argus denounced the trade boycott in its news, editorial and letters pages. On 3 June Barrington-Ward advertised the deleterious effects caused by the intimidation of people and the suppression of trade. His editorial concluded: ‘It must already be clear that the trade boycott has done far more harm to Africans than it can possibly do good.’31 The choice of front-page headlines also reinforced the government’s message that the boycott hurt black Africans more than anybody else. A story in the 18 May edition under the banner headline ‘Crowds Urged to Beat the Boycott’ reported on a meeting of unemployed people who were told by a speaker called G. W. S. Kakembo that workers were losing their jobs because of the campaign.32 Ordinary Ugandan readers reinforced these messages in the Argus’s letters pages. Perhaps the most inflammatory of these letters appeared on 2 October; in it, B. K. Zirabamuzale suggested the only possible motivation for the boycott was some combination of commercial ignorance and petty jealousy of the success of Asian traders.33 Some occasional variation was allowed as long as it did not amount to an endorsement of the boycott. For example, a letter from Olive Nabakoza published on 1 September complained about the inability of the British government to provide a plausible explanation of how the Ganda monarchy was to be preserved in the midst of destabilizing constitutional change.34 Given the tone of its reporting on the boycott even the most scrupulous reader of the Argus would have had difficulty in identifying anything unusual about its edition of 9 September 1959: the style of bloodless didacticism was typical of its tone and its careful endorsement of government policy appeared habitual. Yet the editorial of the day illustrates the role of the colonial government in directly inspiring the Argus’s content. After four months there was a mounting panic about the economic impact of the boycott and the rising risk of serious unrest. In this context Crawford opted to negotiate with the Kabaka directly in order to resolve the constitutional controversy. This initiative was undertaken with some reluctance because concessions to Buganda usually sparked protests from politicians in other areas of the country who resented such special treatment. What was required was some tactful publicity to frame the talks and it was in this regard that the country’s leading newspaper was a dependable resource. On 8 September Crawford briefed Barrington-Ward on his planned meeting with the Kabaka. They rehearsed the question of what might appear in an Argus editorial and Crawford later intimated that the editor ‘appreciated fully our difficulties with the rest of the Protectorate and will do what he can to help’.35 The editorial issued the following day emphasized that the latest moves by the Colonial Office made Buganda’s participation in the central legislature ‘even more necessary and desirable’, suggested that only the ending of the boycott could ‘create a propitious atmosphere for constitutional change’, indicated that Kampala was ‘a better place’ to hold talks than London because it promised to generate Ugandan solutions to Ugandan problems and recapitulated the reassurances offered to the rest of the country by the Governor that their interests would not be jeopardized. Every one of these points was

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raised by Crawford as potentially useful during his discussion with Barrington-Ward and the editorial as a whole offered a highly flattering interpretation of the colonial government’s strategy for constitutional change.36 The paper’s audience could not have known that this detailed endorsement of the colonial government’s policy was effectively authored by the Governor himself. By contrast the long feature article about the Cold War which appeared on 31 March 1962 might have struck Argus readers as anomalous. The piece appeared under the headlines: ‘Uganda Man Tells How He Was a Student “Stooge” in Moscow: “I Was a Pawn of a Red Conspiracy”’. Aside from this extravagant start, the article had other unusual features: covering over half of one broadsheet page, it was much longer than most news items or comment pieces, the breathless style in which it was written was out of keeping with the usual sober prose of the Argus, while the combination of a named author and the copyright acknowledgement of the Readers Digest provided some hint as to how it might have found its way into the newspaper. This obtrusive item was an outcome of cooperation between the British colonial state, the Ugandan churches, the intelligence services and the press. The nominal author of the ‘Red Conspiracy’ feature was Everest Mulekezi and the piece, which constituted perhaps the most ardent and personal denunciation of Soviet communism ever to appear in the Argus, had been published in a slightly different form in the July 1961 edition of Reader’s Digest.37 It was part of a new Cold War journalistic genre of its own, which began with Victor Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom in 1946, in which disillusionment with communism and flight from the East were the central themes.38 Unlike Kravchenko, Mulekezi had gone to the Soviet Union voluntarily in response to the financial assistance offered by Moscow to Africans who wished to pursue tertiary education and whose opportunities to do so in the West were limited. An adviser to Ugandan students in London complained that, because that the British government was not incentivizing ambitious young Africans to study in the imperial metropolis, they ‘find the Russians are offering them so-called scholarships and although they have no communistic leanings they clutch at the offer’.39 Among the key intermediaries in advertising such scholarships was Obote’s ally and future Ugandan Prime Minister Otema Allimadi. The Uganda National Congress (UNC) activists and their recruits for Eastern Europe were monitored by British intelligence. Uganda was the nodal point in a student ‘pipeline’ running from East Africa to the communist states. Prospective students would travel to the northern frontier, cycle across the Sudan border and proceed up the Nile from Khartoum to Cairo before flying to Eastern Europe. On investigating the details in Kampala in June 1958, Charles Hartwell stated that ‘very grave issues’ arose and demanded further preventative measures.40 Andrew Stuart, who was one of the colonial officials monitoring the pipeline, recalled that ‘this worried the colonial authorities almost to the point of hysteria’.41 Mulekezi was swept up the pipeline to Russia in late 1959. His circumstances were typical. He travelled east because he could not obtain sponsorship for his studies from any other source and he was assisted by UNC activists. In Mulekezi’s case it was John Kalekezi in Cairo, rather than Allimadi, who acted as an intermediary. Mulekezi’s circumstances attracted the interest of the colonial authorities when a Catholic priest ministering in Kigezi reported to the Ugandan government’s security officials that

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his family believed he was miserable in Moscow. There followed a dispute about the subject of quite how unhappy Mulekezi might be, in which intelligence operatives in Kigezi, who apparently intercepted and read the letters Mulekezi wrote to his family, suggested he was reasonably content and thereby contradicted intelligence emanating from Moscow that seemed to confirm his profound disillusionment. The fact that Mulekezi eventually fled to the United States suggests the latter were more prescient. American intelligence agencies pursued Mulekezi as a potential asset to their propaganda and he was spirited out of the country to take up a new course of study at Washington State University (WSU).42 The Argus first reported on these events in its 29 December 1960 edition which carried the details of an interview Mulekezi had conducted with a WSU student newspaper called the Daily Evergreen. He explained that he had been rescued from indoctrination at Moscow State University and was in receipt of money from the State Department.43 The experiences of African students who travelled to Eastern Europe during the Cold War are beginning to attract the interest of historians and even novelists.44 Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi dispatched one of her Kintu characters to study in Moscow as a means of foregrounding British complacency about the provision of education to ambitious African students.45 In Mulekezi’s case, care needs to be exercised in judging the extent to which the accounts presented to a popular audience were tailored to meet the demands of his sponsors. Although he clearly was alienated by his Russian experience, when judging the coverage in the Argus it is necessary to keep in mind that the ‘Red Conspiracy’ feature had its antecedents in the Cold War networks of the Western intelligence services and that, at the time the feature appeared, the author was dependent on the largesse of the American State Department. In the midst of discussions about how to curtail the flow of students along the pipeline, one Foreign Office diplomat commented that it was ‘clearly necessary that we should try and put out counter-propaganda whenever the opportunity presents itself ’.46 Such a useful episode could not be allowed to lie dormant. The reappearance of the story in the Argus under the ‘Red Scare’ headline on 31 March 1962, its prominence on the page and its content testified to the same convergence of interests between Western journalists and colonial administrators which had underpinned the coverage of the 1959 boycott. In this case rather than domestic Ugandan politics, the subject was the Cold War and the requirement for black Africans to be alert to Soviet deceit was the theme. Most significant of all was the message that the Soviets could not be trusted on race. In the most dramatic anecdote offered by Kalekezi, he recalled an occasion when a student from Togo found himself in an argument with a Russian. During the course of the row, the Russian shouted, ‘What right do you have to speak? You’re a black monkey not a human being.’ The import of this incident did not really require a gloss but from his desk at WSU, Kalekezi placed his experience of Russian racism in a Cold War context: ‘True there is racial discrimination in the United States but they are trying to eliminate it; in the Soviet Union the evil is official policy … I am here because of the generosity of the American people … It is important for the world – and especially the world’s neutrals – to know how Moscow treats its visiting students. Our formal charges against the communist will, I hope, serve to put other students on their guard.’47 Explicitly, the audience for this story was potential African university students but the account offered by Mulekezi had an implicit message for the

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wider Ugandan public at the brink of independence: the game of Cold War politics was dangerous and the Soviet Union was not to be trusted. In terms of outward appearance little changed at the Argus in the immediate aftermath of independence: it was still eight pages long, the Moomins cartoon continued to appear, the back page featured sport with prominent coverage of cricket, rugby and football and a range of consumer goods were still advertised on its pages. Charles Harrison, who had replaced Mark Barrington-Ward as editor in 1959, stayed on until 1970 and became a symbol of continuity. What the end of empire did force upon Harrison and his staff was the question of whether the intimate relations between government and Argus should continue, now that Obote and the UPC had control of the executive. In the 1950s Argus editorials had been marked by a scepticism about  the UPC, in its previous incarnation of the UNC, and this was continuous with the disapproval which colonial officials expressed about the radicalism of African nationalists. In the early 1960s the newspaper continued to shadow the policies of the British government, in the sense that earlier antagonism towards Obote and his party was set to one side and a tone of cautious optimism was seen as appropriate to the new era of independence. The decisive test for the Argus came in 1968 as Obote began the ‘Move to the Left’. The question of how to respond to the nationalization of key assets and the reorientation of foreign policy towards the Soviet Union provoked an existential crisis at the Argus which forced it into close alignment with the UPC. From around June 1968 the Argus began to feature increasingly overt pro-government propaganda. Just as Barrington-Ward had provided the colonial administration with an outlet for its views about the trade boycott in the late 1950s, a decade later the Argus began to advertise the virtues of Obote’s Common Man’s Charter. What did change was that there was a significant variation from British press models as the formal division between news reportage and editorializing became increasingly blurred. Although it is not possible to erect an impregnable wall between these two aspects of a newspaper’s journalism because writing of wholly disinterested news reports is an unattainable goal, it is usually evident when stories become opinion-led rather than news-led. Coverage in the Argus of the UPC conference of 1968 suggested that the barriers constructed around the editorial as the forum for the venting of opinion were fracturing. On 10 June the Argus offered in its news pages three pages of praise for Obote’s government under the pretext of reporting on the UPC conference. The banner headline of the day was ‘How UPC Won Through and Achievements Since Independence’; this was followed with further front-page headlines on 11 June and 14 June commenting on the accomplishments of the party since independence.48 A few months later the Argus celebrated Obote’s decade in parliament with a feature ‘Thoughts of a Great Mind: 10 Years in Parliament’, which comprised twelve pictures of him, one of his wife and another of a crowd carrying his photographic image. The rehearsal of his eleven signal achievements and the rendition of thirty-three quotations from his speeches were introduced with the comment that Obote’s sayings evinced ‘profound thought and a deep awareness of the consequences of what he is saying’.49 Despite the obsequiousness on display on this occasion, the Argus was not yet simply a vehicle for UPC propaganda; it still offered room for dissent. For example, in May 1968 it included letters critical of the government, such as one from a correspondent called Mukasa-Ssalongo accusing

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the UPC of pursuing a ‘deplorable’ policy in Buganda where emergency powers were being constantly extended by Obote’s government.50 The Argus’s sympathetic, and occasionally sycophantic, attitude to government in the late 1960s can be explained in terms of a number of contextual factors, although in the absence of documentary or testimonial evidence about the activities of Harrison and his staff, it is difficult to precisely identify which had the greatest priority. Undoubtedly pressure from government played a large part. Obote adopted the common position of African nationalists after independence, which was that the scale of economic and social problems inherited from colonialism and the persistent threat of neo-colonialism required the mobilization of the resources of the nation. In such a situation the press was required to play a different role than it did in Europe. Less euphemistically, publishers and journalists faced the risk of arrest and prosecution should their views give the appearance of sabotaging the goals of national development set by the Ugandan government. The trials of Mayanja and Neogy on charges of sedition offered a dramatic instance of this phenomenon. Tabaire has criticized the Argus for failing to support the Transition trialists and attributed this reticence to government intimidation.51 What Tabaire does not acknowledge is that the Argus’s hesitancy on this occasion was continuous with a long history of abetting government in the realm of information policy, while standing aside from or actively endorsing measures designed to silence the vernacular press. Apprehensions among the press corps about government coercion were undoubtedly a significant factor in promoting journalist caution. Commenting on the Nairobi conference of the International Press Institute in June 1968, an Argus editorial made judicious reference to the importance of press freedom and the avoidance of nationalization. Such sentiments were qualified by the statement that it was ‘obvious that the Press in Africa has developed under quite different conditions from those in the European countries, and while it has benefitted from the technical advances pioneered elsewhere it has frequently had to adapt them to different needs’. The nature of this divergence was identified later in the editorial which explained that African newspapers ‘constitute one of the most important means of helping sound development, and form a channel of communication that has not been seriously challenged by the development of radio and television’.52 From this point nationalist exigencies began to scratch the varnish of formalism that had disguised the Argus’s role in promoting colonial self-interest. Argus editorials of the period often featured evidence of political pressure but government inspiration was not the only influence on editorial policy. In May 1967 the Lonrho conglomerate bought the Standard Group. The old Standard had been associated with European colonial interests to the extent that when the owner, Claude Anderson, proposed establishing the Argus, the Governor, Andrew Cohen, was initially ‘disturbed’ that the publishers’ propagandizing in favour of East Africa’s white settlers might stir up racial conflict in Uganda. The countervailing advantage that the Standard Group offered was that it could be relied upon to offer a conservative counter to the vernacular press and this was the task the Argus performed for government.53 By contrast, the Lonrho group represented a new form of commercial imperialism, unattached to the old colonial project and attuned to the ever-louder voice of nationalism in independent Africa. Its origins were in the mining sector but

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under the direction of R. W. ‘Tiny’ Rowland it became ever more expansive in its ambitions during the course of the 1960s.54 A key element of Rowland’s strategy was to establish alliances with the new political elites of Africa; in East Africa he did so through the agency of Udi Gecaga, who was married to Jomo Kenyatta’s daughter. The shift in stance of the Argus towards sympathetic coverage of a nationalist government was not solely determined by government pressure on editorial staff but was a natural consequence of the interests of the new ownership in cultivating nationalist leaders.55 Related to the question of ownership was the matter of readership. The Argus had always had the largest share of a small audience of readers literate in English but a large portion of the 14,200 people who purchased the newspaper in 1962 were expatriates whose future in the country was insecure.56 Government, the churches, business and the army all underwent rapid Africanization in the 1960s but in the case of the press this required new content as well as new staff. Among the rising class of black African administrators there were some critics of Obote but they were probably outnumbered by those supportive of the UPC. The more populist, red-topped tabloid newspaper The People found success by ensuring its coverage gratified this group under its slogan ‘The National Newspaper for, about and by Ugandans’.57 The alteration in the Argus’s editorial line towards a more pro-Obote position was designed to protect the Argus’s position among a new African middle class. On both narrowly commercial and wider strategic grounds it was prudent for the Lonrho group, including the Argus, to cultivate the nationalist victors in the struggle for independence. The final step necessary to the reorientation of the Argus was the replacement of its British editor Charles Harrison by an African newsman. According to his journalistic comrade John Osman, Harrison left the newspaper because he was persuaded of ‘the near impossibility of publishing an independent-minded newspaper’.58 Such a view begs the question of the extent to which the Argus had ever been independent of government but the sense of frustration at the pressures exerted by the UPC and the proprietors is almost certainly authentic. Harrison was replaced by Ejalu who was, according to the chronicler of Ugandan press history Drake Sekeba, ‘more of a politician than an editor’ and remade the newspaper into ‘a mouthpiece of the UPC’. This is a persuasive critique to the extent that Ejalu was an ally of Obote who went on to a successful career in politics culminating in ministerial office under Museveni, but he was also representative of a tradition that developed in late colonial Africa in which political and journalistic ambitions were intertwined. Across the continent Kwame Nkrumah was the most famous example of this phenomenon. In Uganda Joe Kiwanuka set the precedent for the joint pursuit of journalism and politics. Ejalu’s interest in newspapers dated back to his days as a student in Britain and he had edited The People before his appointment to the Argus. There were no striking changes to the format or the content of the paper after he took the editorial chair but the Amin coup constituted an obvious moment of crisis for Ejalu. Having previously offered full-throated support for the UPC, the Argus changed its tone almost immediately after Obote’s government was overthrown. Within a week this ideological reorientation was evident from two editorials in praise of the new military regime.59 Had the Argus persisted with its support for Obote, Amin would certainly have acted against the paper; instead, its coverage of the new

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government’s policies moderated between the anodyne and the sycophantic. In the former vein, an editorial published on 10 January 1972 reflected on the difficulties of delivering reliable information in rural areas and the importance of this task in securing the modernization of the economy.60 It could have been written in the era of Cohen or of Obote and expressed the long-standing concern of the paper with the themes of social and economic development. Another long-standing proclivity of the paper was to promote the requirement for responsible journalism to counter gossip and rumour but the Argus editorial of 19 October 1972 expressed this message in a new, unvarnished form when it stated: ‘Our leaders know exactly what is going on and we cannot do better than place our supreme confidence and faith in the Government. Let us steadfastly refuse to spread any fantastic story whose veracity is in no way guaranteed.’61 More significantly, the Argus offered exculpatory coverage of the military regime’s suppression of dissent. A year after the military takeover, an editorial stated: ‘It goes without saying that the nation should appreciate the move to suspend politics for the moment. With the military government now engrossed in the mopping up operation of the stains created by the former regime, it would have been impossible to run politics concurrently with the operation.’62 The extent of coercion involved in shifting the editorial line of the Argus after the Obote’s overthrow is unclear but the sense of physical threat became manifest in March 1972 when Ejalu was attacked by armed men in the offices of the newspaper and fled the country.63 Given the Amin government’s preoccupation with the danger of a counter-coup by pro-Obote forces and that Ejalu and his colleagues had previously backed the UPC, it is perhaps surprising that it took nearly two years for the military regime to turn its full attention to the transformation of the Argus. The decision to relaunch the paper as the Voice of Uganda in December 1972 was to some degree a defensive reaction to the portrayal of Amin in the international media as a tyrannical and comical dictator. Although the outline of this portrait had begun to emerge in his first year in office, it was the decision to expel Uganda’s Asian residents that lent this imagery greater vividness. In an attempt to mollify Amin’s anger at the ongoing criticism, the Argus columnist Dent Ocaya-Lakidi dutifully denounced overseas journalists under the headline ‘Mischief Makers’ and identified the British Financial Times as particularly delinquent.64 As it was impossible for Amin to control overseas coverage, he acted vicariously against anything in the domestic press which carried even implicit criticism. On 30 November 1972 the Argus reported the cause of its own demise in a story about government objections to the newspaper’s coverage of sugar shortages in Jinja.65 Two days later, the Voice of Uganda appeared and in its first edition made two points forcefully and repeatedly: first, that the takeover of the newspaper’s offices and the appointment of new journalists did not constitute a nationalization because the government did not approve of such terminology, and secondly that the new iteration of the journal ‘will now, more than ever, be in the vanguard of explaining to the people Government policies in all fields in the running of the country’.66 Ocitti has suggested the establishment of the Voice in place of the Argus was for Ugandan journalists ‘another death knell against whatever was left of their fast eroding freedom of expression’.67 Given the venial transgressions which had led to the axing of the Argus title, this is a persuasive view but it should also be recognized that pro-government sentiment had always been a central part of

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the paper’s identity. The Voice conveyed what had once been a subtle message wrapped in the externally validated form of a British broadsheet, in the much blunter form of propaganda screeds shorn of any nuance or distractions. As Ocitti acknowledges this happened incrementally: the first editor of the Voice was the respected journalist Horace Awori and many of the adjustments made during his tenure were consistent with the evolution of the Argus prior to the government takeover. Africanization was one area in which changes were slow but significant. The greater number of column inches devoted to national affairs in the 1970s was a change from the 1950s when the Argus sometimes seemed more concerned with local council elections in Britain than with the affairs of Uganda’s regions. In a parallel development, the Voice carried less British sports news than the Argus once had; instead it championed the country’s first Olympic gold medallist, the hurdler, John Akii-Bua, in the nationalistic manner familiar from sports journalism across the world. The politicization of sports news was more overt in the instance of Uganda’s success in an African hockey tournament which was reported as demonstrating the errancy of ‘imperialist allegations’ that the team had been weakened by the Asian exodus.68 On the inside pages the Voice no longer featured the internationally ubiquitous Moomins cartoon to which the Argus had long subscribed. It was replaced with a strip called Ekanya, which offered a depoliticized satire of everyday life in Uganda, with a particular emphasis on the humorous and sometimes perilous situations which gather around the strip’s eponymous, and often inebriated, protagonist. The Africanization of the Argus, in its new incarnation as the Voice, can be interpreted as one aspect of the continuous efforts of nationalists to challenge the institutional manifestations of colonial influence that lingered long after formal independence was obtained. Despite often expressing fondness for the empire and imperial institutions, for most of his Presidency, Amin found it more convenient to present himself as part of the continental and global struggle for black empowerment in a system designed and maintained by white Westerners. Under such a dispensation, the old Argus, which incarnated the alliance between British colonial government and Western capitalism, was overdue for renovation in the light of decolonization. In the case of the Voice, the entire enterprise of renewal was fatally undermined by the intimidation of the editorial staff. Instead of fashioning a new kind of newspaper whose form and content expressed Ugandan interests and opinions, they were obliged to turn the Argus into a daily propaganda bulletin for the government. The most notorious of Amin’s interventions was his treatment of the Voice’s editor Horace Awori, who became an inadvertent victim of the Ugandan government’s shifting position on the Arab-Israeli conflict. When Awori asked an Israeli visitor an apparently innocuous question about the Yom Kippur War of 1973 during a press conference, Amin took offence and chastised him in person. Awori quickly arranged a permanent return to Kenya. Cartoons and sports coverage were not immune from Amin’s caprice. In 1974 he purportedly insisted on the sacking of the sports editor of the paper, Sammy Kabarega, because of his disobliging comments about the national football team.69 The writers of the Ekanya strip also became targets for Amin’s anger. The original author Tumusiime Rushedge fled Uganda after attracting criticisms from the President, while one of his successors, James Tumusiime, had the misfortune to set Ekanya’s adventures in a butcher’s shop on the day of the murder of the archbishop Janani Luwum in 1977.

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According to Tumusiime, when he discovered that the security services had interpreted this as an implicit attack on the President, he was ‘scared to death’ and went into hiding for a fortnight. Unlike many of those targeted by Amin, he survived and on his return apparently negotiated a bonus of ‘danger money’ from his editor.70 The military’s intimidatory tactics were largely successful in securing the complaisance of Ugandan journalists but Amin was comparatively disinterested in the printed word. Although his literacy was of a fairly basic kind, Amin was skilled in oral communication and had been used to issuing orders to soldiers in a mixture of English, Swahili and northern Ugandan argots. Some Western journalists reported that it was his habit to listen constantly to the BBC world service on the radio. He was generally more preoccupied with what overseas news outlets were saying about him than with the domestic press.71 His preference for the directness of speech meant that much of his propaganda was aimed at the airwaves rather than newsprint. Consequently, for much of the 1970s it was Amin’s Ministers of Information, Michael Ondoga and Juma Oris, who had the greatest influence over the Voice’s content. Both were military men from the West Nile region and their interventions marked a further erosion of the formal barriers that the British had attempted to erect around Ugandan institutions.72 Judging from the Voice’s coverage, the prosecution of Amin’s economic war became a priority under the superintendence of the Ministry of Information. An early front page from December 1972 urged Ugandans to mobilize in support of the policy under the banner ‘Economic Emancipation Requires Concerted Efforts’, while a news report from two months later suggested success or failure in the trade war would set a precedent for economic decolonization across the rest of Africa.73 In the mid-1970s the paper also fostered a cult of personality on the President’s behalf. On 9 August 1975 all six frontpage stories in the Voice were about Amin’s activities.74 Editorials from the period portray him as a strong-willed and benevolent leader. One such item about crime and punishment stated: General Amin has often times shown that he can be as tough as he is kind, as angry enough to bulldoze something going wrong as he can be amiable and jovial. The fact that he is a compound of all this and a man of immense benevolence has been shown first by granting clemency to Cecil [sic] Hills, sentenced to death for treason.75

The Voice was still allowed to cover some foreign news and social events, particularly weddings, which offered inoffensive diversion from national affairs. By the later 1970s, the paper was becoming increasingly subdued. Reduced from eight pages to six, the editorials and news reports were less political and more didactic. The content often focused on topics associated with wellbeing, including personal hygiene and road safety. Foreign news continued to feature but sensitive topics, such as the dangers posed by Tanzanian infiltration, were largely ignored. The Voice did not survive the chaotic events of 1979 but Obote continued to see the virtue in a national English language newspaper under government influence and in the 1980s the Uganda Times became the latest iteration of a tradition begun by the British colonial government a quarter of a century earlier. Given the turbulence of Ugandan politics

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across this period it was inevitable that the Argus, then the Voice, then the Times, should be challenged in their interpretation of events by a different kind of journalism representing a tradition of dissent.

The dissenters: Gambuze, Uganda Express, Transition and Munno In the survey of the African press that he wrote at the end of the 1970s, Frank Barton contrasted the decisive impact which West African newspapers had on the politics of the region with the marginality of the dissenting press in East Africa. With only a modicum of caution, he stated: ‘It is probably true to say that one of the principal reasons Britain’s major West African colonies achieved independence before their East and Central African lay in the lack of a virile nationalist African press.’76 Keeping in mind the success and significance of Azikiwe’s West African Pilot and Kwame Nkrumah’s Accra Evening News, there is some merit to this analysis when applied solely to English language papers but, in the case of Uganda and other East African territories, it is not sustainable as a general thesis applied to titles written in African languages. Such was the extent of the criticism which the vernacular press directed against colonial rule in Uganda after 1945 that Governors in Entebbe enacted some of the most restrictive press laws in the British empire. The measures taken by Hall, Cohen and Crawford against Ugandan journalists, which included fines, imprisonment and exile, established the foundation for later restrictions on press freedom, although the kind of views which were suppressed and the sanctions imposed varied over time. In the post-war period the colonial government employed criminal laws pertaining to sedition and restrictive press regulations in order to silence critics in Buganda. Leading anticolonial propagandists, including James Miti, Ignatius Musazi and Spartas Mukasa, had adopted a totalizing strategy which entailed infiltrating the new and old institutions of Ganda life from local Miruka councils to the Lukiko, cultural and sporting associations, nascent labour organizations and the vernacular press. Much of this activity was focused on Katwe, which was sandwiched between central Kampala and the hub of Ganda royalism on Mengo hill. Sekeba has described Katwe as the Fleet Street of Uganda and ‘the African centre for almost everything, the good, the bad and the ugly’.77 The visiting traveller Harold Ingrams described it as a ‘fascinating place’ where journalism and politics mixed in the dance halls and bars around ‘Joe’s Joint’. The intimations of both sociability and seediness in Ingrams’ account suggest a degree of commonality with the convivial habitus of British journalism. Ingrams was also impressed that serious political issues, such as the redistribution of freehold mailo land, were the focus of journalistic attention.78 The reporters and budding politicians of Katwe had developed from the relatively conservative stance of Sekanyolya to articulate a comprehensive critique of the partnership between the oligarchs of Buganda and the colonial government. Subjects of heated press debate included questions of land alienation, European migration, the morals of the royal family, the exile of dissidents from their homes, East African federalism, the suppression of wages and the inadequate prices offered to agricultural producers. From the point of view of the administration in Entebbe, the most contentious topics were the linked matters of land, federalism

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and relations between Europeans and Africans. One issue that was certain to agitate readers was the possibility that Africans might lose their land to white settlers. The disturbing context for these concerns was the ongoing process of European migration to Kenya, Southern Rhodesia, Katanga, Angola and South Africa. The journal most likely to pick at these sores was Gambuze. Originally published in Nairobi from 1927, in 1933 Gambuze’s publishers moved the production of the paper to Kampala. Its weekly editions constantly pushed at the colonial boundaries of acceptable comment. The Gambuze sedition trials of the late 1940s do not feature largely in the historiography but they are perhaps the most pronounced example of the colonial government’s punitive approach to the press. The first trial was triggered by an article with the innocuous title ‘Back-Ground to the News’. The piece was polemical and concerned the exploitation of native people and their lands by Europeans. The anonymous author turned out to be a carpenter working in Katwe. Yafesi Nsubuga Tabula, C. N. Masembe and G. A. Lukonge, as publisher, editor and author, respectively, were convicted of sedition in February 1947. Intelligence reports of the period suggest that the hypocrisy of colonial policy in stifling press freedom in Africa was noted by readers of the vernacular papers. They recorded comments such as ‘Europeans are bad in that they introduce newspapers to the country and then prosecute the editors. People should be able to write what they like to the papers and should be published without fear of prosecution.’ Despite the ongoing threat of legal action, the owners and writers of Gambuze persisted in sharpening still further their criticisms of the administration of Buganda. In March 1948 Tabula and his new editor Constantine Musoke faced two trials for publishing seditious and false statements and were sentenced to nine months hard labour, in the first, and a further six months, in the second. Although they were given the option of paying a fine in the second case, in the first they were not and the two were despatched to Luzira prison after their appeal failed. In their absence the battle between the law and Gambuze continued. In October the authorities stretched their prosecutorial net wider. After Gambuze published material authored by the itinerant Ugandan dissident Semakula Mulumba, four partners in the publishing company were placed on trial, one of whom received a sentence of eighteen months, while the others were given shorter terms.79 The manner in which Gambuze irritated the colonial authorities was evident from its coverage of the issue of press freedom itself. In October 1949 the paper condemned the arrest of the editor of the Uganda Star for reproducing yet more propaganda written by Mulumba. Placing the episode within the context of federal union with Kenya and Tanganyika, Gambuze speculated, ‘Had Mulumba been as complimentary as some natives on the subject of handing over Uganda to the Europeans, he probably would have been awarded the OBE and made President of the East African Republic.’ For these comments the latest editor and the current partners were again found guilty of sedition and ordered to pay fines or face imprisonment on the last day of 1949.80 Some other journalists faced even tougher penalties. The editor of Mugobansonga Mathias Lule-Sonke, who was a particularly outspoken opponent of colonialism, was sentenced to three years hard labour in September 1949 for publishing threatening letters addressed to one of the saza chiefs who upheld indirect rule in Buganda.81

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Although Gambuze was written in Luganda, the trials of its journalists and owners were not a provincial matter. The Uganda Star’s admiring coverage of Semakula Mulumba’s international campaigns demonstrated that arguments about journalistic freedom in Uganda had much wider resonance. Mulumba was the international envoy of the Bataka Union, which was devoted to the defence of Buganda tradition against the intrusions of British colonialism. Summers characterizes him as a pioneer of a new kind of polemical media campaigning and ‘one of the most energetic practitioners of this sort of inflammatory information politics’.82 In February 1948 the Russian delegation to the United Nations, headed by Andrei Gromyko, received a petition from Mulumba attacking the British administration in Uganda for the ‘domination, exploitation and discrimination, which are the three fetters by which they bind the  Africans in political, economic and social slavery’. The New York Times described the document as ‘the  most scathing denunciation of a colonial power yet to come before the United Nations Trusteeship division’. The unfavourable comments in the Trusteeship Council about British efforts to promote East African federation demonstrated the impact which interventions from the region could have at a global level.83 These events sparked some debate in the Colonial Office about whether Mulumba could be labelled a communist.84 What preoccupied Hall as Uganda’s Governor was the reproduction of Mulumba’s scattershot accusations in the vernacular press. Local papers raised money for his campaigning abroad, advertised his successes and republished his invective-laded denunciations of colonial rule. Police reports for March 1948 noted that tales of Mulumba’s movements constituted a ‘best-seller’ for the local press.85 In response, the colonial administration prosecuted more newspapers for sedition, including the official organ of the Bataka Union, Munyonyozi, and sponsored legislation obliging newspapers to publish corrective statements by the Governor under penalty of imprisonment if they did not.86 It was the publication of Mulumba’s letter denouncing both the press laws and restrictions on public meetings that led to the sedition trial in which the Gambuze partners were given prison sentences. Mulumba wrote to Hall to comment on the suppression of press freedom and to ask a number of facetious rhetorical questions, including ‘Do you want the Africans to welcome your self-arrogated dictatorial powers in Uganda, which is merely a Protectorate, not a British Colony?’87 As a means to divert attention from economic grievances the Uganda Police report about the riots of April 1949 underscored the collusion between Mulumba, the Bataka Union and the vernacular press.88 Hall regarded efforts to portray Mulumba as an influential global figure in the Luganda press as particularly irksome and potentially effective because, for cultural reasons concerning status and prestige, the ‘Baganda are particularly susceptible to this kind of propaganda’. The Secretariat in Entebbe repeatedly asked the Colonial Office to supply them with damaging information on Mulumba for the purposes of counter-propaganda.89 This information effort extended to the House of Commons. On 3 November 1948 Creech Jones responded to an inspired question from a Labour MP by denouncing the ‘abusive communications’ which Mulumba was circulating and declaring that their contents ‘do not merit serious consideration’.90 In Uganda the journals on which the British relied prior to the launch of the Argus were the Anglophone East Africa Standard and Daily Herald and the Luganda newspaper

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Matalisi. Warnings from the last of these to beware of false news were denounced by other vernacular newspapers as pro-British disinformation.91 The British authorities regarded the promotion of the Bataka Union’s cause by Gambuze and other Luganda titles as inimical to the maintenance of their control over Ugandan politics. The degenerate character of these newspapers was, from the colonial perspective, intimately tied to the distorted form in which they appeared. In some respects, the vernacular press met the professional expectations of the day: most of them comprised six to twelve pages of clearly presented text interspersed with photographs, advertisements and sometimes cartoons. These standardized elements were of little account because these titles infringed on formal expectations by not employing teams of reporters and this made it impossible to separate news from comment in the manner of the Argus. The press law of 1948 was expressly designed to counter inaccuracies in reporting. The Information Department commented on this feature: ‘Although lively and hard-hitting the commercial newspapers are, for the most part sadly deficient in the gathering and presentation of news: it would be more accurate describe them as viewspapers.’92 One publisher to whom this applied with particular force was Joe Kiwanuka. After initially siding against the Bataka Union in the 1940s, in the following decade he absorbed the anticolonial critique established by Tabula in Gambuze, and gave it an Englishlanguage spin in the Express. Lamenting the decline of the locally produced press after independence, Nelson recalled that the Express ‘was poorly produced but was aggressive and comparable to the fire-eating West African Pilot of Nigeria and Ghana’s Daily Graphic. The Express was tremendously popular and there was always a rush to buy it whenever it appeared – which was somewhat irregularly.’93 As Sekeba suggests Kiwanuka became a popular but contentious figure in the Ugandan public sphere who ‘was very argumentative and would create debate from nowhere’.94 Whereas Gambuze had attacked the alliance between Ganda elites and the colonial authorities, Kiwanuka’s Express made its reputation by aggressive comment on the exile and eventual return of Kabaka Mutesa II. After only a few weeks of publication, in an edition of 30 December 1953, the Express described Mutesa as the second victim of the Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton, who had ousted Jagan’s purportedly communist government in Guiana just a few months earlier. Most provocative was Kiwanuka’s framing of the dispute in terms of European exploitation of black Africa. His newspaper stated: The economic disabilities under which the Baganda live – heavy taxation, limited education and social facilities, absence of civil liberties and democratically elected political representation in the Protectorate Government – are responsible for much of the present discontent and frustration on the one hand and the emergence of virile African nationalism on the other … In Africa neither king nor peasant has an [sic] rights which a white man is bound to respect if they stand in the way of what he considers his vital interest.95

When charges of sedition were brought the following month, Kiwanuka was indicted for stirring up racial antagonism and received a fine.96

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The penalties imposed by a magistrate against Kiwanuka in January 1954 were merely the first of many governmental efforts to silence him. Alongside his career as a publisher, Kiwanuka was a leading figure in the nascent UNC which had taken up the issue of Mutesa’s exile as the most potent propaganda weapon of the period. His newspapers soon returned to the topic. At the end of March 1954, he was arrested and exiled to the distant West Nile province. This enabled the 5 May edition of the Express to conjoin the cause of Kiwanuka and the Kabaka: The reality of the crisis in Buganda today is that the Protectorate Government is determined to kill every manifestation of popular expression. Our King was banished. Why? Because he refused to betray the national cause … Joseph W. Kiwanuka was banned. Why? Because he would have given guidance to national expression … Obviously our rulers are not ignorant of the methods used by Adolf Hitler to get rid of political opponents.97

Later in the month, the Express was banned under emergency regulations and in June its editor Appollinari Ddamba was charged with sedition for comments criticizing the repressive character of the colonial state.98 The Uganda Eyogera and Kiwanuka’s other title, the Uganda Post, were also forced to cease publication. On 19 February 1954 the Eyogera had encouraged its readers to demand ‘with one voice that we want independence’. On 2 April it asked a facetious and speculative question about the attitude of the Ganda chiefs to the visit of the newly enthroned Elizabeth II: ‘Will they drink the Queen’s tea?’ Most provocatively of all it campaigned for a boycott of European goods. The 23 April edition explained: ‘If you are an African who feels for his country you should fight with your money.’99 By contrast with Kiwanuka, who was regarded as irredeemably hostile, the colonial authorities believed that the latest editor of Eyogera Aloysius Lubowa was malleable. As a precondition for the lifting of the ban, they hoped that they could negotiate a deal with him that would enable the Ministry of Information to exert greater influence over his newspaper. On 23 June Lubowa signed a written undertaking to offer more responsible news coverage. A few days later he led a delegation of journalists to protest against the restrictions imposed on them by the State of Emergency. They expressed their willingness to cooperate with government and emphasized that they had been scrupulous in refraining from any incitement to violence. In return they received a lecture from Cohen, in which he insisted that freedom of the press was a British principle that could not be applied in Uganda because ‘liberty had been allowed to degenerate in to licence’.100 The vernacular newspapers subsequently moderated their coverage but the exile of Kiwanuka and the ban on the Express and Post continued for another six months. With the resolution of the Kabaka crisis at the end of 1954, Cohen lifted the State of Emergency in January 1955. Kiwanuka returned to Buganda and the ban on his newspapers was lifted. Precisely because the State of Emergency was temporary and because it was impossible to capture all of the critical commentary which the Governor wanted to ensnare in a net of illegality, Cohen enacted further restrictive legislation. He justified the new measures on the pretext that, although the press as a whole often inflamed racial tensions, individual newspapers ‘have stopped short of actual sedition

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and criminally libellous statements, although the general effect of what they have published has been very near sedition’. His foundational argument was that it was ‘not consistent to allow the vernacular press the full licence which it has at the moment to poison the public mind as it is doing’. After extended debate, Lyttelton agreed that the grounds for prosecution under the new law should be the publication of material which endangered peace and good order.101 It was perhaps inevitable that Kiwanuka’s publications would be the first to be targeted under this new legal dispensation. Within a few months of his release, it was evident that neither Kiwanuka’s combativeness nor the instinctive authoritarianism of the colonial state had been curtailed. In May 1955 Kiwanuka’s newspapers called for the exclusion of Cohen from constitutional talks, in June they suggested that Buganda’s negotiators were being ‘played with’ by the Colonial Office and in October they condemned those chiefs who had collaborated with the British during the Kabaka’s exile.102 These were the sort of contingencies for which Cohen’s new regulations were designed. In November 1955 the Ugandan AttorneyGeneral’s office presented to the courts sixteen articles and letters drawn from seven editions of the Post, which were said to demonstrate a threat to peace; a month later, the presiding magistrate ordered Kiwanuka to forfeit a bond of £100.103 Even before independence it was evident that the history of anticolonialism was tied to wider global processes and one of the most important strategies adopted by the British government for insulating the colonies from the Cold War was the restriction of movement of money, literature and people. Much of the colonial intelligence effort was devoted to identifying students who were preparing to travel to Eastern Europe and finding means of preventing them from doing so. It was more important still to prevent communist literature from entering Uganda. According to plausible British intelligence reports, Kiwanuka received funding for his publishing enterprises from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Support for political dissidents in East Africa during the colonial period was the beginning of a long process that culminated in the enormous investments made in the region over the last two decades. While people like Kiwanuka could still visit China in the 1950s, items of Anglophone propaganda emanating from the PRC were banned from entering the Protectorate, including the Information Bulletins of the All China Youth Federation and All China Students Union and all publications issued by the All China Federation of Trade Unions, the most significant of which, in a Ugandan context, was ‘Africa Belongs to the Africans’.104 Publications from youth organizations with close or loose ties to the communist bloc beyond China were also proscribed: Ugandans were banned from reading any literature issued by the World Federation of Democratic Youth or the International Union of Students.105 The capaciousness of these restrictions was briefly raised by John Stonehouse in the British parliament. He complained about the banning of an Indian magazine called Forum, only to be told that just one issue had been suppressed because of its coverage of the Kenyan war.106 New items were constantly added to the proscribed list and the vernacular papers grumbled about these restrictions up until the end of colonial rule. At the start of the 1960s a pamphlet entitled ‘To Our Dear Friends’, which the American authorities sourced back to a satirical Soviet magazine called Krokodil, began to circulate across the continent and caused alarm to the Western powers; its polemical content focused on racial violence in the United States and sought to

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associate the Western cause in the Cold War with the beating and lynching of black people.107 The intelligence agencies sourced copies found in Uganda to Ethiopia and, to the derision of the vernacular press, the pamphlet was banned in February 1961.108 After Obote took power in 1962 hostile scrutiny of journalists continued but in a new context provided by his government’s different approach to the Cold War. The Transition affair has been the subject of some detailed investigation as an instance of the illiberalism of the Obote era.109 By contrast, the significant liberalization of information policy at independence has gone almost unnoticed. Obote appointed Godfrey Binaisa to head an investigatory commission into the proscriptions the Ugandan government had inherited. Their report noted three significant factors about the press regime of the colonial era: materials with potential educational merit for students were often targeted; some of the bans were applied to anticolonial literature published by the UNC, which was now in government; and many of the journals which Ugandans could not read were freely available in Britain. Binaisa concluded that the colonial government had been conducting an ‘ideological war’ through the medium of press censorship. The Interior Ministry treated Binaisa’s report with a degree of caution but agreed to the low-key unbanning of fifty publications. While restrictions on political literature were eased, bans on pornographic material were retained. It might be argued that this liberalization was simply a matter of opening up the country to international socialist literature at a time when the new government had set a leftward direction for the country but there would be a degree of anachronism about such an interpretation. The liberalization occurred at a moment when Obote’s foreign policy was still in flux and for a number of years after 1963 he continued to act cautiously before the marked turn to the left five years later. Even Ali Mazrui, who emerged as one of Obote’s leading critics, asserted that Ugandan readers enjoyed a more liberal atmosphere in the 1960s than many other countries. ‘People were not taken to court for reading certain books as they were in Kenya’, he noted, ‘nor were they legally liable for importing certain newspapers, as they were in Tanzania for as long as the Nation newspapers were banned.’110 It was the question of Cold War neutrality which offered a portent of what was to come in the discussion of the Binaisa report: the Interior Minister suggested that Ugandan Special Branch would continue to monitor journalistic output and ‘to keep out any publication which made a determined effort to alter our present position of non-commitment’.111 Fashioning a degree of divergence away from non-alignment and towards sympathy for the West was precisely the goal of the cultural diplomacy which was such a marked feature of American Cold War strategy. The damaging picture of the United States as a brutally racist, exploitative society drawn in the pages of ‘To Our Dear Friends’ presented a challenge to the strategy of containing Russian influence and one which had to be met indirectly. In May 1967 a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative called Tom Braden revealed the circuitous routes by which American intelligence services had sought to influence global intellectual debates by sponsoring literary and cultural production via front organizations, such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). When Stephen Spender discovered that the literary magazine Encounter had received CIA funds via the CCF he resigned its editorship to avoid gaining a reputation as a Cold War dupe.112 Transition, which was published in

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Kampala, was another recipient of CIA funding via the CCF. Like Spender’s co-editor on Encounter, Melvin Lasky, the young founder of Transition, Rajat Neogy, denied any knowledge of these disbursements and asserted they had no influence over the content of the magazine which he had first published in 1961. He had immediately encountered the common problem experienced by the dissident press corps of Uganda, which was a lack of funding. Whereas Joe Kiwanuka was willing to go as far as China for assistance, Neogy found it closer at hand in the person of the Director of the CCF’s African Programme Ezekiel Mphahlele. With the additional capital provided by the CIA Transition expanded its coverage of African politics and culture. Neogy suggested that Transition was a victim of its own liberal policy because its willingness to publish a range of views had made it vulnerable to CIA subversion. He insisted that ‘of all the magazines aided by the CCF, Transition is perhaps the most left-wing orientated’.113 Despite these disavowals, much of the content of Transition, and especially the work of contrarians like Ali Mazrui, Abu Mayanja and the anthropologist and poet Okot p’Bitek, was gratifying to American Cold Warriors and disobliging to the Obote government. Previously implicit criticisms of the UPC became increasingly explicit during the constitutional controversies of 1966 to 1968. In the same edition in which Neogy offered an apologetic account of the CIA’s role in the journal, p’Bitek flung some inflammatory and provocative material into Transition’s pages. Arguing that most African problems were endogenous rather than a product of neo-colonialism, p’Bitek stated: ‘The most striking and frightening characteristic of all African governments is this, that without an exception, all of them are dictatorships, and practice such ruthless discriminations as make the South African apartheid look tame.’114 The indictment of all post-independence regimes as worse than South Africa clearly encompassed the Obote government. Abu Mayanja added salt to the wound by directly attacking the ‘illiberal, authoritarian and dictatorial’ changes to the constitution that the UPC were proposing. While offering some retrospective criticisms of Obote’s State of Emergency in Buganda, Mayanja focused primarily on the many clauses of the new constitution that strengthened executive power at legislative expense.115 These views were published at a time when Transition was still in the midst of a highly charged discussion about the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah that had ramifications for Ugandan politics. In an article published in 1966 under the title ‘Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar’, Ali Mazrui claimed that the Ghanaian leader had welded Leninist revolutionary doctrine on to the sort of cult of personality more often associated with kings, emperors and caesars, for the purpose of justifying a one-party state.116 The deluge of commentary which followed the article’s publication coincided with, and was partly prompted by, the military coup which overthrew Nkrumah. In replying to his critics amidst the resulting acrimony, Mazrui made a contentious reference to apartheid to sit alongside p’Bitek’s. ‘To protest against African dictatorship’ he wrote, ‘is to be obscenely liberal; and what is liberalism but disguised capitalist colonialism? As a firm believer in comparative political analysis, I cannot but see the analogy with South Africa.’117 Perhaps more than any other African leader, Obote had followed the Ghanaian model of political centralization and it was evident to many readers that the row about Nkrumah was actually a proxy for discussion of the UPC government’s efforts to strengthen the hand of executive government in Uganda. The Cold War implications of Transition’s commentary on Nkrumah’s legacy

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became more pronounced when Neogy ran an interview with K. A. Busia, who was the front-man for the new military regime in Ghana that was developing a more sympathetic policy towards the West. When pressed for his views about Nkrumah, Busia was restrained but his comments that socialism often bred authoritarianism offered further evidence of the pleasing consequences for the CIA of the funding they gave to enterprises like Transition.118 After two years of debate among Transition’s contributors about Nkrumah’s legacy and the new Ugandan constitution, on 18 October Abu Mayanja was arrested, alongside Neogy, and another contributor Daniel Nelson. The reasons why Obote waited for so long before acting remain obscure but there was clearly a sense of foreboding in the Kampala government about the threat posed by the CIA in light of the coup against Nkrumah. The pattern of government action replicated that of the colonial period in the sense that Obote tolerated a series of criticisms with mounting resentment and then sought a pretext for action when the encouragement of dissent seemed intolerable. Mazrui told the author Peter Benson that Neogy was arrested because he was planning to publish another letter by Mayanja which implied that the government’s attitude to judicial appointments was underpinned by tribalism.119 The retrospective accounts offered by the protagonists in later editions of Transition emphasized the reprehensible and incompetent conduct of the security forces in misidentifying and briefly gaoling Nelson and mistreating Mayanja, Neogy and another young writer detained later in the affair, Davis Sebukima. Rather than acknowledging that Transition was only the latest target for government ire, with understandable partiality, Neogy suggested that the events marked a break with ‘Uganda’s long tradition of the rule of law’.120 As with the publishers and editors of Gambuze and the Uganda Express, Mayanja and Neogy were charged with sedition but, in contrast to Tabula and Kiwanuka, they were found not guilty. It was Obote’s subsequent actions in ignoring the legal victory of his opponents and keeping Neogy in gaol until March 1969 and Mayanja until August 1970 that gave force to the notion that press liberty was being squandered by the exercise of arbitrary executive power. In the aftermath of the arrests, Transition relocated to Accra in West Africa where, on Benson’s account, Neogy was received as a ‘conquering hero’.121 Unsurprisingly, the first issue published in 1971 after a threeyear hiatus lauded the overthrow of Obote by Amin. The editorial recorded, ‘We share the joyousness of the people after the events of January 26.’122 The journal remained committed to publishing iconoclastic writers and rapidly took account of the appalled reaction of many Africans to Amin’s brutality. Three issues after celebrating the coup and still under the editorship of Neogy, Transition acknowledged that Amin’s rule had generated ‘a reign of terror the likes of which Uganda has never experienced in her history’.123 This was Neogy’s antepenultimate issue before handing over editorial duties to Wole Soyinka. After declaring that he was drawing a line under the matter of the journal’s past links with the CIA, Soyinka’s iteration of the magazine showed itself more sympathetic to critics of neo-colonialism. In 1975 he published a striking onepage indictment of Amin’s regime by Horace Campbell which offered an undiluted Marxist analysis of the plight of the country: ‘The peasant grew coffee and cotton to be processed in the capitalist countries. In their subjugation the peasants rose up to challenge colonialism. The colonial army was used to suppress the uprisings of the

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peasants. This is where Idi Amin received his training, fighting the African peasants of Uganda and helping the imperialists to fight the Mau Mau in Kenya.’124 Rather than systematic repression, what characterized Amin’s policy towards the press was a mixture of brutality and inattentiveness. The Aga Khan’s Taifa Empya, for example, was still available to Ugandan readers throughout the various crises over Tanzanian incursions, army mutinies, the Asian expulsions and the Entebbe raid. This had advantages for Amin to the extent that it enabled the Ugandan government to proclaim the ongoing existence of an independent press.125 There was an element of truth to this propaganda because Amin’s military regime fell some way short of incarnating the totalitarian states which emerged in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The Voice of Uganda represented approved opinion, as did Ugandan radio and television, but a corner of the media remained outside of official state control. Particularly striking was a minor renaissance in Christian periodicals. Partly this was a consequence of Amin’s attitude towards Catholicism and Anglicanism. He was hostile towards Pentecostalism but displayed some deference towards the churches of the establishment. In 1976 the New Day newspaper was successfully relaunched as the New Century in anticipation of the centenary celebrations of the Anglican Church. A number of new vernacular Catholic periodicals also began to appear in the 1970s.126 The most long-standing of Catholic titles, Munno was reportedly selling 10,000 copies in 1976.127 Yet it was the journalists of Munno who were among the most prominent journalistic victims of the arbitrary violence of the military government. Munno, or ‘Your Friend’, had been founded as a monthly title in 1911 by the Catholic White Fathers, who wanted a journal which could rival the Anglican Ebifa newspaper. They took advantage of the modern print facilities established at the Bukalasa seminary in Kalungu to produce around 2,000 copies in the paper’s earliest days. At the end of the 1930s production moved to the hub of Ugandan publishing in Kampala.128 As a greater degree of partisan confessionalism entered politics during the 1950s and 1960s, Munno’s ‘bold editorial policy’ amounted to propagandizing for the Catholic Democratic Party (DP). In another example of the relatively liberal press policy of the Obote years it remained comparatively unscathed by the anti-clericalism of the UPC government.129 Munno’s journalists propagated anti-communist politics in its pages and frequently sounded alerts about the dangers arising from the visits undertaken by prominent Ugandans to China or the Soviet Union.130 Although it had a lively tradition of scepticism directed towards the authorities, after 1971 it was circumspect in its treatment of Amin and the death of its editor Clement Kiggundu in January 1973 has never been adequately explained. His body was found in a torched car and Western journalists speculated that he might have been killed by freelancing murderers from the Public Service Unit or another paramilitary force.131 There is circumstantial evidence suggesting that Amin had a motive for killing Kiggundu because he was apparently investigating the torture and murder by the army of the former DP leader Ben Kiwanuka.132 It was difficult to predict what would offend Amin but he was preoccupied at this time with the idea that the Catholic cardinal Emmanuel Nsubuga was conspiring with foreign governments and these accusations had implications for Munno.133 After his death, Kiggundu’s successors were required to attend the Ministry of Information to be issued with indeterminate threats about the inaccuracy of their reporting.134 The Munno

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journalist George Muwanga-Kamya recalled the cautious methods required of the newspaper during the Amin era: ‘We heavily censored “sensitive” stories from our reporters, although the coverage seemed reliable. We also had to be seen to be fair in the coverage given to government statements, much as they were hollow on a number of controversial issues.’135 Military neuroticism eventually led to the closing of Munno and to further violence. When the police found dissident material in the paper’s offices in August 1976, its staff were imprisoned; one of those arrested, John Serwaniko, was killed in gaol. Even after this apparently fatal, final confrontation, the tense ambiguities persisted. The journalists were released in 1977 and told they could reopen Munno but regular publication was almost impossible in such conditions.136 The story of Munno in the 1970s serves as a final and pronounced instance of the persistent pressure on Ugandan journalists not to engage in direct confrontation with government.

Conclusion The means by which governments influence the press are among the most closely guarded secrets of the modern state. Episodes in which ministers and officials persuade or cajole editors into including news stories in their papers tend not to appear in telegrams, minutes and memoranda and rarely feature in memoirs and autobiographies. As the history of the Uganda Argus demonstrates, in colonial states of the late imperial era the content of newspapers was not determined by the autonomous judgements of a free press. The existence of a well-funded independent title which could draw on the experience of an established media group and yet was willing to take direction from government was a boon to colonial government and the model was nurtured in the Obote era in the more populist form of The People. It was in the Amin period that the veil that could disguise government propaganda as newspaper copy became transparent and the workings of the Ministry of Information were plain to see in the Voice of Uganda. A similar process of decay in a colonial tradition was evident in the suppression of dissenting journalism. The striking and distinctive feature of colonial attitudes to the vernacular press was that, although it was rational political calculation which inclined British administrators to harass journalists in a way which was not feasible in the metropolis, there was also an underlying sense of outrage at the refusal of the nascent Ugandan press corps to emulate the model of a Western newspaper. Imperial bureaucrats christened the products of the vernacular press ‘viewspapers’ because proof reading was sometimes rudimentary, editorializing spilled across every page and the weekly polemical articles were too unvarnished in their political partisanship. In the absence of effective political parties, the press often appeared as the leading opponent of colonial rule and, like anticolonial politicians across the empire, they frequently found themselves imprisoned or exiled. After a brief liberal moment at independence the Transition trial demonstrated that Obote was willing to use the sedition laws of the colonial era and signalled a return to a period of entrenched warfare between state and press. Yet both Obote and Amin tolerated the ongoing influence which external capitalists such as Tiny Rowland and the Aga Khan were able to exert in the country’s media affairs. Whereas both the colonial

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regime and the Obote government had used the laws of sedition and the possibility of imprisonment or exile as the main disincentive to radical dissent, in the Amin era legal countermeasures were abandoned and replaced by minatory harangues from the Ministry of Information and the possibility of torture or murder by Ugandan soldiers. The deaths of Kiggundu and Serwaniko marked the abandonment of legalism, but they ought not to erase the history of those journalistic dissenters, such as Yafesi Tabula and Joe Kiwanuka, who had repeatedly fallen foul of the imperial double standards which were evident in the minatory regulation of the colonial press.

6

Trade Unions

It is well known that missionaries took their bibles to Africa but few people remember that trade unionists took their rule books. British union officials of entrenched obscurity in the metropolis, such as Len Hicklin of the Heating and Domestic Engineers’ Union (HDEU) and Jim Brandie of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), played a large role in the founding of new labour organizations in countries across Anglophone Africa. Differences from Britain were immediately apparent to these emissaries: Uganda had low wages and, even more significantly, few wage-earners, and the first generation of African trade unionists were preoccupied with the apparently insuperable financial obstacles caused by an insufficiency of subscribing members. Ugandan labour organizers were often obliged to follow the lead given by their British sponsors but, from their perspective, the preoccupation of Western trade unionists with establishing elaborate administrative and regulatory frameworks seemed a secondary matter compared with the primary question of how such an organization could sustain itself in the long term without a regular source of income. Worse still for the future of industrial relations, most Ugandan politicians did not regard alliances with a small number of industrial workers as an integral part of their political strategy, while trade unions were inhibited from cultivating political alliances by laws designed to depoliticize them. Colonial officials and British trade unionists collaborated to expunge political unionism and export a modified version of the British system of industrial relations. The British elements of the hybrid union model included a hierarchy of officials, independence from management and strict proceduralism, while the divergent, colonial elements comprised the thoroughgoing insulation of unions from politics and the encouragement of small sectoral unions. These principles were encoded in the 1952 Trade Union Ordinance that banned political activity and general unions. Some local labour organizers such as Humphrey Luande sought advancement by close adherence to the narrow, meliorist goals set by the British, which entailed negotiating over conditions of employment, wage rates and individual grievances; others, such as John Reich and James Ojambo, resisted British methods and sought to reconfigure labour organizing to meet nationalist criteria. In numerical terms trade unionists were a small constituency but they were strongest in two sectors vital to the maintenance of export income, namely transport and cash crop production on plantations. Fears that strike action by workers might endanger economic development and political stability were shared by colonial Governors and

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nationalist politicians. Such misgivings were amplified by the plausible belief that the international links which local unions had established left them beholden to external sponsors and eager to pursue what John-Jean Barya has labelled ‘Cold War unionism’.1 From Obote’s perspective the establishment by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) of a labour training college in Kampala prior to independence imperilled both industrial peace and the nationalist credentials of his government. After considering the imposition of the hybrid British model in the early years of Ugandan trade unionism, this chapter will offer an overview of transnational themes before examining the origins and development of the crisis of Ugandan unions in 1968, which effectively neutered their remaining influence and left workers bereft of institutional defences when the crisis of living standards hit them during the price inflation of the Amin era.

Registering trade unions Often historians find themselves castigating figures from the past for their lack of foresight but in the case of labour policy at the end of empire the portents of what was to come were writ so large that they were unmissable. Both the policymakers of the past and subsequent commentators have recognized that by the 1940s the trends towards increases in permanent employment, wage earning and urbanization across the Caribbean, Africa and Asia were unstoppable. There was a measure of consensus inside the Colonial Office about what measures were required to sustain British interests in these new circumstances. The emergence of a colonial proletariat was interpreted as a threat to colonial order. A discontented workforce could provide the inflammatory matter from which rabble-rousing demagogues and external agitators might set the colonial empire aflame. The burning of cane fields by rebellious workers across the Anglophone Caribbean at the end of the 1930s seemed to epitomize the prospects for future conflict across the empire. With this precedent in mind and with some dissent registered by reactionary settlers and expatriate officials in the colonial territories, it was generally accepted that the colonial state would have to become more involved in regulating labour affairs across the empire. Perhaps the most important element of this reorientation would be the establishment of trade unions to inoculate the empire empire against the virus of labour unrest. While this policy was proclaimed on a universal basis in Whitehall, some imperial outposts proved resistant and argued that while the broad trend towards a new African proletariat was unstoppable, it was better to resist it for as long as possible. With the partial exception of Andrew Cohen, British Governors and Colonial Secretaries in Entebbe were in this school and often evinced truculent oppositionism on labour matters. Partial justification for the conservatism of colonial officialdom in Entebbe was provided by the paucity of local interest in Western traditions of labour organization. It could be argued that the economic setting of Uganda in the mid-twentieth century was about as unpropitious as it was possible to imagine for the growth of trade unionism. Agriculture was by far the largest sector and most workers were engaged in subsistence farming. Those who produced cash crops tended to do so on a small scale and some coffee and cotton growers employed only one or

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two workers.2 Much of the work was seasonal and those labouring for wages usually did so for part of the year before returning to their homes, which were sometimes beyond Uganda’s frontiers in Kenya or Rwanda-Urundi. Subsistence farmers, enterprising cash crop producers and seasonal workers were unlikely recruits for a nascent trade union movement.3 Despite all these structural obstacles, wage-earning was becoming a more important feature of employment by mid-century, particularly in transport, the civil service and plantation agriculture. Although one of the two major parties in Britain had been organized by trade unionists, one thing that British envoys from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and colonial administrators agreed upon was that the first principle of colonial labour organizing was that trade unions should not pursue political goals. One scholar who had close contacts with colonial trade unionists noted in 1966 that the TUC ‘reproduced the forms of industrial relations existing in Britain. In fact, they went further than this. One of the areas of compromise reached with the colonial administration was TUC insistence that trade unionism in the colonies should be non-political.’4 East Africa was a region in which colonial functionaries were particularly preoccupied with the notion that industrial relations matters would be absorbed into nationalist politics and the early history of Ugandan trade unionism was disfigured by official neuroses about political strikes.5 The administration in Entebbe reluctantly cooperated with the empire-wide initiative of the late 1930s and early 1940s to provide a legislative framework for trade union organizing. In 1937 they issued an ordinance enabling trade unions to register. An initial tentative attempt to organize transport workers the following year, under the banner of the Uganda Motor Drivers Association (UMDA), soon became mired in controversy.6 British administrators suspected that the first generation of labour organizers were propelled forwards by political grievances directed against the system of indirect rule and there was some plausibility to this charge. The UMDA aimed to mobilize support among urban workers for some of the most voluble critics of the colonial system of indirect rule, including James Kivu and Ignatius Musazi. For their part, the first generation of local labour organizers resented the restrictive character of colonial legislation. In 1943 the President of the UMDA complained about the burdens imposed on the new organization by British obsessions with the formalities of registration and bookkeeping. He singled out article 17 of the ordinance, requiring every rule change to be registered with the government, as particularly troublesome, given that ‘alterations of Rules are very inevitable as far as the country advances in thought and ideas’. It was not merely the tedium of form filling which was at stake; the cost of this bureaucracy to the new organization was identified as damaging to the union’s prospects. The demand for 5 shillings on every occasion that a new document was filed with the registrar was described as ‘very harsh’.7 The UMDA’s anticolonial politics reflected popular discontent among workers caused by the economic impact of the Second World War in East Africa. The 1943 Trade Unions and Trade Disputes Act was directed at containing labour militancy at a time when low wages and high prices were causing resentment among wage-earners. It entitled Ugandan workers to organize for the purposes of dispute resolution and negotiation with employers but strictly forbade union officials from pursuing political causes. Such legislation was inadequate to deal with workers’ grievances and in 1945

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transport workers and civil servants went on strike. Norman Whitley’s official report into the violence which accompanied these disputes suggested that the unrest was caused by political conspiracy and occasional mismanagement. Historians have been thoroughly unimpressed by Whitley’s analysis. T. V. Sathyamurthy argued that in omitting the decisive economic and ideological motivations, Whitley’s conclusions were ‘breath-takingly naïve’.8 Gardner Thompson has suggested that the violence was the result of official inaction in managing the shortages and price inflation of wartime East Africa.9 That was also how union organizers saw the matter. K. B. Maindi of the UMDA wrote to Rita Hinden of the Fabian Colonial Bureau to explain: ‘The causes were economic, higher wages, pure and simple.’10 Even the initial police reports acknowledged that the disorders ‘began as an industrial dispute and then in Buganda, developed a political bias’.11 It was not simple ingenuousness which motivated the Ugandan government to attribute the 1945 strikes to political conspiracy rather than economic grievance. Framing the disputes as the outcome of venial errors of administration and the activism of a handful of malcontents served a useful purpose in justifying the suppression of the UMDA and the arrest of political leaders such as Ignatius Musazi. Continuing inaction in the field of Ugandan industrial relations proved alarming to the advocates of progressive labour policy in Whitehall. The key early critic of immobilism in Entebbe was the guru of British labour policy in the 1930s and 1940s, Granville St. John Orde Browne. Although a figure often relegated to the footnotes of books and articles, Orde Browne played a decisive role in late imperial labour policy. Clayton suggests it may well have been his experience of the appalling suffering endured by people dragooned into forced labour during the East African campaign of the First World War which encouraged his reforming zeal.12 His investigation of East African working conditions took place in the midst of the 1945 disturbances and was issued in the following year. In contrast to Whitley, Orde Browne emphasized economic factors and the inadequacies of the Labour Department.13 Responding to these criticisms the Governor, John Hathorn Hall, recapitulated Whitley’s analysis and insisted that ‘artificial stimulation’ of trade unions would be premature and would endanger political order. Hall recoiled at the thought that trade union leaders might replace the reliable chiefs who acted as agents of colonial authority. He asserted: ‘The danger of trade Unions becoming associations of detribalised and masterless men and the willing tool of the professional politically minded agitator suffering from a real or imagined personal grievance, is a real one at the present state of progress of the African population.’14 It would take another five years, and further prompting from Whitehall, before Orde Browne’s analysis would gain traction in Uganda and, even then, labour reform was diluted by the determination of officials in Entebbe to enmesh unions in a tight framework of regulation. Although the disorders of 1949 were largely motivated by rural hardships, they again demonstrated that economically motivated challenges to political order were a present danger rather than a future prospect. In response to more prompting from a new Colonial Secretary, James Griffiths, in 1951 the Uganda Secretariat drafted a highly restrictive labour relations bill. The Legislative Council of the post-war era was incapable of challenging the executive on such matters but a sterner audit of the prospective law awaited in Whitehall. Metropolitan officials gawped at the provisions, which they described as ‘one of the strictest trade union

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laws in existence in British territories’.15 In their view, the planned legislation gave too much power to the Registrar to ban organizations that did not scrupulously attend to the conditions of registration, while offering too little hope to the first generation of Ugandan labour organizers. Some modifications to the proposed bill were accepted in Entebbe but one key stipulation remained central to the finalized 1952 Trade Union Ordinance: under threat of deregistration and hence suppression, trade unions were required to restrict their activities to the field of industrial relations and to refrain from any political activity.16 Aside from the legislative context, the limits of progressivism were also illustrated by the alliance that colonial officials established with British trade unionists to coordinate strategies for decolonization. Orde-Browne’s East African report had stated that ‘the most satisfactory development will take place under the care and guidance of an experienced union official from England’. Collective bargaining, on his account, could be taught and if taught effectively would reduce the prospects of labour unrest.17 In line with Orde-Browne’s vision, the broad aim of the British TUC was to replicate their own model of trade union organization in the expectation that this would produce a more harmonious relationship between workers and employers, but they were susceptible to the argument that Cold War conditions required adaptation in the colonies. To some extent the emulatory aspect of the TUC’s colonial policy reflected the notoriously insular traditions of British labour about which Karl Marx had fretted in the midnineteenth century. More to the fore in the mid-twentieth century were ongoing battles within British trade unionism between communists and non-communists. Post-war TUC leaders came from the latter group. When the General Secretary, Vincent Tewson, looked to the colonies his first thought was to ensure that communist influence was excluded. One of the African leaders regarded by Tewson and the TUC as a reliable anti-communist was Humphrey Luande. His career illustrated both the structural dependence of the Ugandan labour movement on Western sponsorship and the local hunger for autonomy, even amidst the frantic strategizing of external actors. As the first Ugandan to become a full-time labour organizer, Luande initially devoted his energies to establishing the Ugandan branch of the Railway African Union (RAU) as a significant voice in national affairs. The extent of his dependence on the West was evident from that fact that his salary was paid first by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITWF) and then by the British TUC. At the end of 1958, the Colonial Advisory Committee of the TUC agreed to provide a grant of £360, half of which was to cover Luande’s salary for six months. These subventions continued for two years and, aside from Luande’s pay, they were used to purchase office equipment, stationery and a motor scooter for the Ugandan branch of the RAU.18 Such largesse came at a price and Luande’s tendency to vacillate between declarations of industrial war and demands for discipline in the labour movement was an attempt to triangulate between his own ambitions, the militancy of workers and the constraints imposed by his external sponsors. The last of these vectors was apparent in Luande’s long-standing defence of the role of Western labour organizations in Ugandan affairs. He was sufficiently successful in appeasing his external sponsors that the TUC’s key envoy to the colonial unions, Walter Hood, was still willing to endorse him as ‘the outstanding trade unionist in Uganda’ in 1966.19

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The End of Empire in Uganda

While tutting at the reactionary character of many colonial governments, advocates of labour reform in the Colonial Office, like Orde-Browne, purportedly liberal governors, including Andrew Cohen, and British trade unionists dispatched to superintend colonial labour organization, such as Jim Brandie, all insisted on the need for a paternal guiding hand to steer colonial workers into safe channels. As Hall’s replacement, Cohen epitomized the liberal bureaucratic approach to reform. Although keen to stimulate political organization in the form of parties and labour organization in the form of trade unions, he was as punctilious as his predecessors in ensuring that the two streams of activity did not cross. According to Brian Nicol’s figures, the number of trade union members in Uganda expanded from 259, represented by two unions, in 1952 to 26,300, represented by forty-seven unions, in 1960.20 Cohen and the Colonial Office expected the British TUC to teach the new unions how to establish branches, collect contributions and negotiate with employers. Len Hicklin of the HDEU played a pioneering role in making contact with prospective union leaders but his significance was overshadowed by Jim Brandie of the TGWU who acted as Industrial Relations Officer or, as Roger Scott described him, the ‘stormy petrel’ of Ugandan labour affairs in the late 1950s.21 His energy and his criticisms of Ugandan employers gained him some credit with Ugandan trade unionists but his determination to enforce British methods generated resentment. Luande wrote ruefully to his sponsors in the British TUC: ‘Although Jim Brandie helps a great deal, he is beginning to be tough with the Executive Committee and after he examined our accounts and wrote them all up again he was very tough about the union administration. It seems the more we learn the more he tells us we still don’t know a lot but this is maybe to keep us busy.’22 Despite his stern superintendence of administrative matters, Brandie had better relations with Ugandan trade unionists than colonial officials. Where there was little organization, such as on the tea plantations and in the textile factories, Brandie set about establishing unions and where they existed already, notably on the railways, he encouraged expansion. Colonial officials were disconcerted by Brandie’s proprietorial attitude to the unions he helped establish and advise. Frustration at Colonial Office efforts to hem in his latitudinarian approach burst out in a letter Brandie sent to the TUC’s Assistant General Secretary, George Woodcock, in April 1959. He declared, ‘I was sent here to build a trade union movement; not be a civil servant, the latter was merely incidental to the former.’23 The person Brandie regarded as most responsible for obstructing him was the Labour Commissioner, Martin Byers, who was, on his account, an exponent of the outdated idea that the cultivation of trade unions ‘in a country which is not ready for them’ was counter-productive. After castigating him for his ignorance of the protocols of colonial administration, in 1960 Byers attempted to force Brandie to resign. When he refused to do so he was dismissed.24 The Colonial Office asserted that Brandie’s abrasive manner had caused many of the problems, while acknowledging that the cautiousness and conservatism of the Labour Department had also played a part.25 News of Brandie’s dismissal reverberated across Africa and revealed more of a sense of comradeship within the nascent Ugandan labour movement than in British trade unionism. Luande told Tewson that he was grateful for Brandie’s organizing work on the plantations and reported that the question of his dismissal had become a ‘national issue’.26 Such phrasing suggested a pragmatic as well as an ideological component in

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these pro-Brandie sentiments: the issue of his dismissal illustrated the reactionary character of the colonial hierarchy in Entebbe and this, in turn, provided a rare opportunity to mobilize a wider Ugandan public in support of trade unionism. Labour leaders, in alliance with political parties, organized a one-day strike on 15 February to support Brandie’s case for staying in the country.27 Although eager to suggest that the strike was a failure, British intelligence reports grudgingly conceded that it was effective in Jinja, which was where most industrial workers lived.28 The Labour Party’s colonial spokesman Jim Callaghan was reluctantly roped into the Brandie affair when Kenyan newspapers reported that he and Tewson were sympathetic to his grievances. Such reportage contained a good measure of wishful thinking: Callaghan thought Brandie was reckless and Tewson studiously ignored his campaign to return to Uganda through the ‘back door’ of a teaching position at the ICFTU college.29 One Labour MP, Alf Robens, did suggest to the Governor, Frederick Crawford, during one of his visits to London, that the affair had been ‘mishandled’, but that was as far as the party’s protests went.30 The policy matters that motivated Brandie’s dismissal were his embroilment in the long industrial dispute on the East African railways and his encouragement of unionization in the agricultural west of Uganda. In both cases the possibility of utilizing trade unions to secure better pay for workers gave labour organization a degree of momentum despite the structural obstacles. As Frederick Cooper has demonstrated, African workers were anxious to seize control of the development agenda of the colonial state at a time when wage-earning and wage-earners had been assigned a central role in programmes of economic advance.31 Recognizing that this state of affairs offered them advantages in their confrontations with capital, workers hoped that decolonization would provide an opportunity to improve their material circumstances. This was not simply a matter of betting on the possibility that African politicians and bureaucrats would prove more generous than their colonial predecessors but of shaping, or attempting to shape, the economic circumstances accompanying political liberation. In East Africa, employees of the East African Railways and Harbours (EARH), whose labour was integral to the functioning of economies that required access to external markets, were in the strongest strategic position. Railway workers dominated Ugandan trade unionism in the 1950s. Colonial Office estimates for 1956 suggested that of the five constituent members of the Uganda Trade Union Congress (UTUC) only the RAU, with approximately 1,500 members, could be regarded as a significant force in local industrial relations. The Ugandan branch of the RAU established its reputation by campaigning on behalf of the lowest paid workers for a wage sufficient to support a family. They stated explicitly in their submission to the 1953–1954 commission investigating public sector labour in East Africa that ‘the present salaries for subordinate group employees are totally inadequate to support a man with a wife and child’.32 In September 1957 the Ugandan, Tanganyikan and Kenyan branches of the union submitted a joint demand to the EARH for across the board pay increases. During the next two years discontent over wages and conditions rumbled onwards, culminating in strikes across all three territories in November 1959. During the six months of intermittent industrial stoppages which followed, the RAU struggled to coordinate action across the three territories and it was notable that the leadership

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had difficulty containing the militancy of their members. David Hyde has suggested that the level of politicization among railway staff demonstrated the emergence of ‘a “working class movement” seeding within the womb of what passed for national movements’.33 Pressure on the shop floor led to splits in the Ugandan branch of the RAU and forced Luande to repeatedly toughen his position with employers. By March 1962 the British TUC’s protégé had diverged so far from their cautious advice as to threaten ‘industrial war’ in support of the RAU’s pay claims.34 Whereas the key issue for railway workers in Uganda, qua public service employees, was wages, for agricultural workers in the commercial sector the even more fundamental rights to organize and bargain collectively were at stake. In view of the significant precedents for rural unrest in the empire, colonial bureaucrats and British trade unionists were disturbed at the potential for violence on Uganda’s tea and sugar plantations. Initiatives to sponsor agricultural unions in Africa in the 1940s and 1950s were at least partially a response to labour rebellions by workers in the sugar fields of the Caribbean a decade earlier. In East Africa the militant actions of Tanganyikan sisal workers illustrated that exploited rural labourers could challenge the colonial order. Ugandan conditions were significantly different from those in Tanganyika but in the west of the country in Toro some Europeans had settled and established, in miniature, a version of the plantocracies of the Caribbean. The politics of all these groups were defined by reaction against modernizing trends which included, par excellence, the organization of labour. In February 1959 the Toro European Association (TEA) wrote to the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, to warn him that ‘foreign institutions’, if brought to the region, ‘may disturb the quiet tenor of Toro life to the great disadvantage of all’. They were particularly emphatic that workers should not be allowed to bargain collectively. This kind of special pleading was not received sympathetically in Whitehall; one Colonial Office bureaucrat noted that the reactionaries of the region tended to conspire in a dingy drinking establishment in Fort Portal called ‘The Glue Pot’.35 Such metropolitan disdain for the tiny colony of settlers did not translate into support for unionization in Entebbe where the Labour Department was suspicious of the potential impact of a national agricultural workers union. This was the project of local labour leaders George Sekibala and James Ojambo. Their attempt to organize tea and sugar workers under the banner of the National Union of Plantation Workers was supported by Brandie much to the irritation of Byers. The latter blamed the union for labour unrest on the Kijura and Kiamara tea estates in Toro in March 1960.36 During the conflict one of the workers was shot and fatally wounded by the police. In Brandie’s absence a visiting TUC envoy, Walter Hood, refused to make a judgement about who was responsible for the violence.37 Among the injustices identified by the agricultural workers were the failure of employers to implement a promised increase in daily pay and the lack of grievance procedures to deal with cases of intimidation and mismanagement.38 Perhaps the most significant problem was that, in contrast to the railways, there was no effective negotiating mechanism because the plantation owners refused to recognize unions or accept the principle of collective bargaining. Offering a corrective to the views of Byers and Hood, the area’s representative in the Legislative Council, George Ruguma, reported that managers ignored the representatives of the workforce. He explained: ‘Workers who are sympathetic to the cause of collective

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bargaining are being victimised under the guise that they are incompetent in their jobs.’39 The underlying tensions over union recognition were not resolved in the aftermath of the tea strike and over the next few years conflict spread to other sectors of the agricultural economy. In August 1961 the colonial administration grumbled over the ‘tendency of industrial disputes on the sugar estates to degenerate into public disorders’.40 The independent Ugandan government inherited a rudimentary industrial relations framework that could not contain rising labour unrest. They also had to deal with a labour college, whose ostensible purpose was to rectify the inadequacies of training but which played a larger role in bringing the Cold War to Africa in a manner wholly unwelcome to local nationalists. Despite its marginality in terms both of union organization and enthusiasm for regional integration, Uganda was on the frontline of a ferocious struggle over the future of continental labour.

Cold War unionism When, during the first phase of his distinguished academic career, the anthropologist Ralph Grillo set about studying the culture and society of the railway workers of Kampala he found that they were isolated from the Cold War trends which dominated the politics of the global labour movement. On investigating the ongoing arguments within the Ugandan branch of the RAU, he concluded ‘the issue of affiliation to external trade union movements can be discounted as a serious issue in dispute’.41 Such a view seems incongruent with the interest historians of Cold War labour diplomacy, including Opoku Agyeman, Yevette Richards and Anthony Carew, have shown in Uganda.42 This apparent discrepancy can be resolved by attending to the politics of the ICFTU and its choice of Kampala as the location for its continental labour college. As a consequence of this decision Ugandan labour leaders, who presided over one of the smallest and most divided trade union movements in Anglophone Africa, found themselves operating at the interface between local squabbling over the allegiances of Ugandan wage-earners and the gigantic global forces set in motion by superpower confrontation. Although often overlooked in the general historiography of the Cold War, trade unions played a large role in the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. The number of labour organizations engaged in Cold War politics, from the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs) to the global labour conglomerates like the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), may induce acronym ennui but in the broadest terms four distinct factions were represented across three labour confederations. The first of these, the ICFTU, had the largest impact in Uganda but was divided by transatlantic faction fighting. The American unions, represented under the masthead of the merged American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), had traditions of determined anticolonialism and strident anticommunism. Stoner suggests that they ‘sought to capitalize on the mythos of American anticolonialism to gain a foothold in Africa at the expense of European unions … which had been present (and in some cases complicit with the colonial apparatus) during the colonial period’.43 European, and particularly British, trade unions believed that the anticolonial critique of the AFL-CIO incentivized a

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troublesome form of radical nationalism. They also feared that the excessive Cold War partisanship of American trade unionists could be counter-productive in Africa. When not confronting one another, the Western unions were engaged in countering the influence of the WFTU, which represented those unions that endorsed Moscow’s stance in the Cold War. In 1953 the Colonial Office indicated that ‘in areas where political parties were not well developed it was extremely difficult to keep the unions out of politics and this helped the WFTU’. According to this analysis, the relentless anticommunism of the ICFTU was likely to have damaging effects. Labour diplomacy required sensitive handling because overt Cold War propagandizing could play into the hands of the WFTU by introducing an unwelcome ideological component into trade union activity. On this matter the British government aligned seamlessly with the TUC; both believed that the best way to keep communists out of colonial trade unions was to exert subtle influence rather than offering overt Cold War propaganda. With regard to WFTU penetration of the colonies, the TUC suggested ‘the Middle East and Africa are the really dangerous areas’.44 The third party to these conflicts was the All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) which was not fully institutionalized until 1961 but which was the subject of ongoing discussion from December 1958 and represented a labour iteration of the concept of Cold War non-alignment. The decision of the ICFTU to locate its African training college in Uganda was the most significant external challenge to the British way of institutionalization since the arrival of the first Catholic missionaries. It was resisted by the British Colonial Office and would also prove disobliging to most of Uganda’s politicians whose sympathies were with the AATUF. Imperial bureaucrats and nationalist activists feared that Uganda would be dragged into the dangerous frontline of Cold War conflict in Africa by a powerful alliance of Kenyan trade unionists and their American backers. The Cold War activism of these parties brought into question the legitimacy of Ugandan unions in the eyes of both colonial and independent governments. Visiting Uganda in 1949 Parry described the small Ugandan trade unions ‘as rather ineffective branches of Kenya unions’.45 At that stage the railway workers were the only significant force in Ugandan labour and it was significant that union officials in this sector, including Humphrey Luande and Peter Okatch, had links to Kenya. Luande was born into the frontier Samia ethnic group, while Okatch was from the sojourning Luo class of expatriate workers. What gave this matter of national origin greater impact during the next decade was the success of African-American labour envoys in fashioning a close relationship with Kenyan trade unionists. The first General Secretary of the Kenya Local Government Workers Union, Tom Mboya, valued the American connection because it provided funding and training for East Africans. Furthermore, the AFLCIO was willing to validate anticolonial causes in ways that the British TUC would never countenance. As his biographer has noted, ‘the AFL-CIO were very much concerned to build up the power of Mboya as anti-communist leader and usually made contributions to him’.46 After establishing himself as the rising figure in Kenyan labour politics, Mboya visited Uganda in July 1955 and stated, ‘I am convinced that if there is a country in need of trade unions it is Uganda.’47 Mboya’s key international supporters were the African-American labour diplomats Maida Springer and George McCray. Springer first met Mboya when he visited the United States in 1956 and was

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impressed by his steadfastness amid the repressions of the Kenyan war.48 McCray, who was eventually appointed to the Kampala labour college, insisted that Mboya was the ‘best hope for the development of a strong pro-Western labour leadership in Africa’.49 Zeleza has estimated that the Kenyan unions received $35,000 from the AFL-CIO after Mboya’s American visit. Large subventions to Kenya from the AFL-CIO and the ICFTU continued during the late 1950s and early 1960s.50 As far as British policymakers were concerned, the activities of Springer and McCray constituted an infringement on the TUC’s monopoly of labour training in Africa. It was only after years of bickering that a modus vivendi with the AFL-CIO was established in the form of the Atlantic City agreement of December 1957. From the perspective of the Colonial Office the Atlantic City deal was satisfactory because it required American unions to suspend their independent training programmes for Africa; this, it was believed, would prevent the ‘gangster bosses’ of the AFL-CIO sponsoring trips for African trade unionists to the United States.51 On the other hand, the deal did not curtail attacks on British colonial policy by American trade unionists and this continued to greatly offend Tewson. In February 1959 he set out the position of British trade unionism in a long breathless sentence of mounting indignation and incoherence: In theory, practice and experience we know more about the social development of African trade unions than either the ICFTU or the Americans and our task is made all the more difficult by the attitude and propaganda which these multiple helpers adopt in order to assure the Africans of their sympathy and by a certain lack of frankness, particularly on the part of the Americans, in showing the Africans their weakness is the lack of unity, lack of leadership or lack of integrity in cases where basic obstacles have prevented effective organisation.52

The Colonial Office was even more preoccupied than the British TUC with the destabilizing consequences of ICFTU interference in the colonies. The idea of an ICFTU labour college was first mooted in January 1957 at the organization’s African Regional Conference in Accra. The magnet which attracted the ICFTU to Uganda was the prestigious college at Makerere, which it was expected would offer administrative assistance. Makerere was admired for its non-racial character and the ICFTU viewed Uganda as a haven from the racial tensions that surrounded it. This confidence was later shaken when some students from the first cohort were locked in some public toilets by an enraged white official who objected to encountering ‘Africans in a white lavatory’ during a trip to Owen Falls.53 Unaware that such problems would arise, the ICFTU gave final approval to the project in March 1958 and allocated an annual budget of $60,000.54 The quid pro quo for the American retreat at Atlantic City had been the prising open of opportunities for AFL-CIO representatives to play a role at the ICFTU college. American tutors would, they hoped, be able to maintain contact with their allies in the African trade union movement. This consequence of the Atlantic City deal was enormously displeasing to the Colonial Office who vented their frustration that the British TUC were not doing more to combat the incursions of anticolonial AFL-CIO envoys under the guise of the ICFTU. Lennox-Boyd described the ICFTU’s decision to install itself in Uganda as ‘indefensible’. He twice complained to Tewson about the

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matter. On the second occasion he warned him that the TUC should be under ‘no illusion about the importance which he and the African governments did in fact attach to the TUC exercising as much influence as they could and not leaving everything to the ICFTU’.55 Even senior Colonial Office functionaries, such as Hilton Poynton, who could see advantages in cornering ICFTU envoys in Uganda rather than having them infiltrate the rest of the continent, admitted to sharing ‘the anxieties that this kind of Ruskin College may develop into a sedition factory’.56 When news that the ICFTU was coming to Kampala reached him in April 1958, Crawford protested unavailingly about the disruptive effect the presence of American trade unionists would have on labour affairs. He stated that he ‘would much prefer our Trade Unions to grow up under the influence of the British TUC than under this suspect International’. In later months he grumbled that with the College would come the arrival of ‘some pretty rum characters’.57 Underlying Crawford’s specific reference to ‘rum characters’ and the general anxiety that the College would bring unsavoury foreigners to Uganda were racist neuroses about the chaotic results that would accrue once African-American labour organizers came into contact with the raw recruits of the Ugandan trade union movement. Anglo-American antipathy on this matter went to the top in both countries. George Meany, the famously hard-nosed leader of the AFL-CIO, gave unstinting support to McCray, Springer and Mboya. Tewson and the leaders of British trade unionism attacked Meany for seeking to extend American influence at their expense. When in 1957 Maida Springer visited East Africa at the behest of local unions she was greeted with the kind of official hostility which one might have associated with a mission from the communist bloc.58 Springer later recalled: ‘I was not the kind of American person that a colonial government would look kindly on. I looked like every other African … My very presence created hostility with the colonial government.’59 In the case of the ICFTU College, the first tutor sent by the ALF-CIO was another AfricanAmerican George McCray. He was a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees from Chicago and had imbibed the Anglophobia of that city’s politics; perhaps for that reason, his role at the College had Meany’s personal endorsement.60 McCray was interested in geopolitical issues, including the character of African nationalism and its relationship to the Anglo-American alliance. His time in Kampala confirmed his opposition to British colonialism and solidified his conviction that African nationalism was a supremely important development in world affairs which could ramify to the benefit of American Cold War campaigning, provided the AFL-CIO distanced itself from the colonial powers.61 Writing to Springer after two years in Kampala, he noted, ‘Certain people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean seem to regard me and you as particularly objectionable and dangerous.’ With regard to the politics of Africa, he told Springer ‘we American negroes have a seemingly pre-ordained roll [sic] to play’.62 The suspicions of Springer and McCray about British racial hostility were warranted. When after two years the possibility arose that McCray might leave Uganda, officials complained that even in this eventuality ‘there is a distinct possibility that Mr. McCray will be replaced by another American negro’. The matter of the race and nationality of the staff proved an abiding interest of the Colonial Office and was amplified in their complaints about the recruitment activities

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of another ICFTU envoy to Africa, Albert Hammerton: ‘We can’t help contrasting the philosophical way in which Mr. Hammerton is prepared to accept another American negro, and his passing over of the United Kingdom’s claims in favour of a Canadian.’63 Hostility in London to any form of racial alliance between African and North American labour was matched by a positive determination to ensure that British methods of trade union organization were applied in undiluted form. Britain’s first representative at the Labour College, Bert Lewis of the British TUC, regarded himself as the enforcer of the rigid protocols of British trade unionism which he believed were a model of social democracy in action. He disliked his time in Africa but during his short tenure attempted to impose the traditions of metropolitan trade unionism in the finest detail. He stated, ‘It is going to be an uphill drive to keep the TUC’s point of view firmly entrenched in this College, and I intend to see that it happens that way.’ As an example of his efforts to secure this entrenchment he reported that he had spent an hour explaining to his students that the executive council of a trade union should not vote at the annual conference. Complaining that the class seemed unreceptive to the significance of these procedural niceties, he nevertheless felt he was making some progress: ‘Now and again I see a chink of light … oh well press on.’64 As far as others were concerned Lewis’s intolerance of his students was typical of the racism and paternalism which had long underpinned British rule in Africa. When Mboya visited Kampala, he recorded that Lewis ‘made remarks about race to which I took strong exception’. Mboya suggested to Lewis ‘that if he did not want to work with Africans then he had no business accepting a job at the College’.65 What Lewis’s behaviour demonstrated was that he was less concerned with the danger that British influence would be supplanted by communists than that an alliance between African nationalists and American trade unionists would triumph in Uganda. Even when they put the racial issue to one side British trade unionists took an extremely dim view of American labour traditions which they associated with gangsterism and corruption. Inevitably the main object of British irritation was McCray and for the first year of the College’s operations the Principal, Sven Fockstedt, proved unable to dampen the hostility between the British and American teachers. From the outset, Lewis complained that Fockstedt tended to side with McCray because of a naïve commitment to colonial freedom.66 Lewis’s anger was echoed by Brandie, who accused McCray of ‘ramming America down everybody’s throat’.67 The College was monitored by the colonial authorities and intelligence reports indicated that Fockstedt dutifully prevented McCray from offering assistance to Ugandan unions.68 Such close surveillance was resented and Fockstedt complained that although they never provided him with any evidence of misbehaviour, McCray attracted ‘constant suspicion against him from the Government side here’.69 The first evidence of McCray’s wider allegiances was uncovered when he was found to be carrying copies of proscribed literature produced by the UNC in Cairo. The status of this Egyptianquartered branch of the UNC was a subject of much uncertainty but the key figure in its establishment was John Kalekezi who was identified by British intelligence as one of the most dangerous anticolonial propagandists in Africa. They were particularly concerned about a pamphlet he wrote entitled ‘Colonialism Is Incompatible with Peace’, which was one of the three objectionable items discovered in McCray’s luggage when he returned to Uganda from a visit to Ghana in December 1958.70

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The animosity between Lewis and McCray expressed differences over a key principle: the former believed he had a responsibility to cordon off the activities of the College from the politics of decolonization at a time when the advance towards independence seemed to gather pace every day; the latter believed that fostering connections between nationalists and labour leaders was vital to Western victory in the Cold War. Hostility to McCray did not abate after Lewis left Uganda in February 1959 and the ongoing disharmony at the College featured in the American press. On 7 July 1959, the New York Times reported a comment from Fockstedt that the colonial government ‘always suspect that we are doing more than we are’. The sort of things Fockstedt was alluding to were engagement with the local trade union movement and the article emphasized that British administrators had prevented college officials advising the Ugandan African Posts and Telegraph Union.71 McCray’s forays into journalism were taken as confirmation of the apprehensions expressed before the opening of the College that it would be utilized for the dissemination of African liberationist ideas. In September 1959 McCray supervised the launch of a College newspaper called The Labor Organiser, which the British regarded as ‘sheer propaganda’.72 The most provocative item in the first issue was a report that unions in newly independent Ghana were taking the lead in protests against the ‘massacre of unarmed Africans in Nyasaland’. The second issue focused on the case in favour of economic sanctions against apartheid South Africa, which was a policy the Conservative government in Britain opposed. A few months later the sacking of Brandie as labour adviser initiated a new round of conflict. McCray reported, with a sense of triumph, that first Lewis and then Brandie had been outmanoeuvred after ‘scheming to get me thrown out of the country’.73 From McCray’s perspective British tutelage had created a farcical situation in which the Ugandan unions were ‘completely under the thumb of the labour department’.74 Back in London the Colonial Office were gloomy about the prospects of getting rid of McCray. Even though he had enemies inside the ICFTU, he had a firm ally in George Meany. When the British finally raised the matter of McCray’s anticolonial activities at ICFTU headquarters in Brussels, Irving Brown, who was one of the AFL-CIO’s jetset Cold Warriors, reasserted the prerogatives which the Americans had accrued as ICFTU paymasters. Another of Meany’s labour diplomats, Jay Lovestone told McCray that Brown ‘let your traducers have it good and plenty!’75 The reliable sponsorship of the ICFTU’s American funders enabled McCray to outlast his colonial opponents and he continued teaching at the College into the era of independence. The longer McCray spent in Uganda the more committed he became to the politics of black empowerment and African emancipation. After two years in Kampala he wrote to Brown: For the first time in my life I have escaped the awful life-long psychic pressure of being black. Now because I am what I am – including my priceless American heritage – I am enjoying unprecedented freedom to participate in building a new world. Need I say each day is one of quiet ecstasy. God what a debt I owe to Meany & AFL-CIO.76

Once the transatlantic antipathy of labour politics is mapped on to the Cold War conflict in Africa, its detrimental consequences for Uganda’s labour movement

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become evident. While the British TUC had strict views about labour discipline which forbade the formation of alliances between labour organizers and the political class who were about to attain national power in Uganda, the AFL-CIO was so consumed with the politics of anticommunism that association with them risked dragging local unions into a partisan Cold War position at a time when a new African politics of nonalignment was in the ascendant. Irving Brown mentioned Uganda, along with Nigeria, as one of two British colonies that were witnessing the advance of communism in the nascent trade union movement.77 McCray argued that the alliance with colonial Britain under the ICFTU affiliation risked damaging the reputation of the United States in Africa. He told Lovestone, ‘If the British could afford it they would have broken with the United States long ago. The Anglo-American alliance is one of convenience not of love … the biggest anti-Communist move we could make here in Africa is to have the American government break openly and clearly with the colonial powers on the issue of African freedom.’78 Matters were not so simple because in the late 1950s African nationalists were becoming as suspicious of American neo-colonialism as they were of British colonialism and the trend became manifest in labour affairs through Kwame Nkrumah’s sponsorship of a non-aligned continental trade union confederation. Paralleling the influential role which Nkrumah and Ghana played in pioneering diplomatic non-alignment, John Tettegah of the Ghana Trade Union Congress (GTUC) promoted the continental non-alignment of labour. Taking over the mantle of pan-African trade unionism which had been incubated in Francophone West and North Africa, in 1959 the GTUC disaffiliated from the ICFTU and began what Zeleza has described as ‘a new chapter in the chequered history of Pan-African Trade Unionism’.79 What was so significant about this move was not merely that the Ghanaian unions were taking a vanguard position with regard to African unity and Cold War neutrality but that they were also expressing hostility to the colonial model of labour organizing, which required the depoliticization of trade unions. After years of painful negotiation the AATUF was finally established at Casablanca in May 1961. It was dominated by unions from states critical of American foreign policy, including Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Guinea and Mali, with Nigeria striking an anomalous position as the one Western-aligned national trade union centre. As the influential American labour diplomat, Maida Springer recalled, the AATUF’s radical positions on African unity, non-alignment and labour-state relations ensured that it ‘would have nothing to do with the AFL-CIO’.80 This hostility extended to the ICFTU and it did not require a mastery of social science theory to predict what impact this rivalry would have on the politics of countries with smaller trade unions movements, such as Uganda: those in receipt of the largesse of Western unions came into conflict with those who were denied it and the latter group turned to the WFTU and the AATUF for assistance. In Uganda the strategic manoeuvres of the WFTU successfully exposed the vulnerabilities of the ICFTU at the Kampala labour college. Acknowledging that communism within the labour movement was weaker in Africa than in Asia, the WFTU yielded precedence to the non-aligned AATUF. The rationale for this retreat was cogent: the communist unions recognized that the AATUF’s policy that African workers should free themselves from Cold War constraints would serve the

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purpose of encouraging disaffiliation from the ICFTU among the labour unions of newly independent countries. The relative passivity of the WFTU also threw the unremitting anticommunism of the ICFTU into greater relief; this tendency was still more pronounced in East Africa because Kenyan trade unionists, who were already mistrusted by many Ugandan nationalists, were the main supporters of ongoing affiliation with the ICFTU and this placed them in the frontline of the dispute with the Ghanaian unions. It was a former bus driver from Jinja called John Reich who championed the cause of non-alignment in Uganda. His attendance at the West African conferences that led to the formation of the AATUF was interpreted by Luande and the UTUC as a threat to their relationship with the ICFTU, which was still the national centre’s principal source of funding. Attempts to discipline Reich precipitated a split and the establishment of a rival national centre, the Uganda Federation of Labour (UFL).81 Ethnicity played a role in the UFL’s formation because many UTUC leaders were from the eastern frontier region and some had been born in Kenya, while the Jinja unions represented themselves as indigenous Luganda speakers. Such factors also encouraged the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) to support Reich’s breakaway. Obote suggested that the UFL ‘has plenty of support especially in the industrial area around Jinja but they are faced with lack of funds and lack of trained union organisers’. This, he noted, was in marked contrast to UTUC, which had the financial backing of the American unions and the ICFTU.82 These views were registered during a meeting with Ian Page of the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF) during Obote’s visit to London in October 1961. The MCF appears to have played a surprisingly large role in the search for sponsors for the UFL. Page met Reich at the founding AATUF conference in Casablanca and subsequently acted as a diplomatic intermediary with potential backers for the UFL. Reich and his key lieutenant and then successor, Ali Wagoina, appealed to Page for financial assistance to counterbalance the efforts of the colonial government which, he stated, was ‘doing everything possible to destroy us’. The UFL was as incapable as UTUC of solving the problem of putting Ugandan unions on a secure budgetary footing. Page duly complied with the UFL’s requests and contacted intermediaries in Prague and East Berlin representing WFTU interests. He also wrote to John Tettegah of the GTUC. Unsurprisingly, British intelligence attempted to monitor and interrupt the correspondence between MCF and UFL officials, much of which went astray.83 From the perspective of the ICFTU the Ugandan labour scene in the early 1960s was, as one of their functionaries noted, a ‘vacuum which must be filled by work by the ICFTU and ITSs to prevent, or, at least, make it more difficult for other and anti-ICFTU bodies from stepping in’.84 They clearly had Ghana in mind and the task of countering Tettegah’s influence was contracted to Humphrey Luande who had his own interests in undermining Reich at a time when his powerbase among the clerical workers in the EARH depot at Nsambya in Kampala was under challenge from Reich’s new unions in Jinja. Inside the Ugandan branch of the RAU, Luande effectively contained breakaway groups organizing under the heading of first the Uganda Railway Workers Congress and then the National Union of Railwaymen.85 On the larger stage the ICFTU expected him to challenge Ghana’s advocacy of Cold War neutrality and UTUC received quarterly instalments of £500 to serve this purpose.86 Even before the UFL was

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formally constituted, Luande warned that Reich would almost certainly seek Ghanaian assistance for a breakaway confederation.87 At the College Fockstedt endorsed Luande’s position and characterized Reich as an immoral opportunist.88 While the Brussels bureaucracy of the ICFTU was initially disoriented by the split in what was an already small national centre, they soon assimilated Luande’s view that the divisive tactics of Reich and the UFL could best be explained by the ‘hidden backing’ that the Jinja group were receiving from an unlikely combination of Ghanaian agents and Indian employers who were disgruntled with the expansion of UTUC.89 A combination of indigence and factionalism, which were the two besetting features of Ugandan unionism generally, caused the early collapse of the UFL and the Jinja group of unions were corralled back into the ambit of UTUC during the course of late 1961 and early 1962. The reconciliation proved temporary and the history of the UFL set precedents which would eventually prove fatal to the Ugandan trade union movement. What was significant about the UFL as a rival national centre to UTUC was that it established the dividing lines on which the Ugandan movement would split again and again: industrial workers in Jinja pitched against white-collar workers in Kampala; stronger alliances with nationalist politicians set against the tradition of a carefully circumscribed and autonomous role for trade unions in the field of industrial relations; advocacy of an African model of labour organization as part of a wider politics of non-alignment pitched in opposition to adherence to Western models and a Western orientation in the Cold War. After a short interlude, and with the approach of independence, the possibility of a revival of the UFL under Reich’s leadership emerged once more amid the rash of strikes which broke out in anticipation of political independence.

The independence strikes and industrial relations in the Obote era In the view of the newly established UPC government the strikes which took place at independence proved that the British model of trade union organizing was illfitted to Ugandan circumstances. While European labour historians tend to turn to European precedents, for Obote, whose ideology was closely modelled on that of Nkrumah, the most important context for industrial unrest in Uganda in 1962 was the violent Ghanaian strikes at Sekondi-Takoradi in 1961, after which the Convention People’s Party (CPP) government demanded that African trade unions should become partners with the state in development, just as many of them had been in the struggle for independence. What this meant in concrete terms was a considerable curtailment of their autonomy.90 The application of the hybrid British model of industrial relations in Uganda had prevented UTUC establishing alliances with any political party and the potential for conflict between unions and government was exacerbated by the continent-wide optimism about the financial consequences of liberation from colonial rule. Jubilation at independence in the new nation-states was not just fuelled by an abstract enthusiasm for nationhood but embodied a belief that the unshackling of Africa from the constraints and restrictions of European rule would mean better living and working conditions for ordinary people. Such was the anticipation in Uganda that workers took swift action to fortify their position during the transitionary period. The

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resulting uhuru strikes exasperated the UPC government. In their view trade unionists were ruining the joyful occasion of independence. Although the irresponsibility of the labour movement became an early theme of Obote’s government, it was not seen as the primary cause of the increase in strikes. From a nationalist perspective the wave of stoppages that accompanied independence was a final demonstration that the elaborate formalities imposed by the Colonial Office and their allies in the TUC had failed. The system pivoted on an unrealistic system of registration designed to insulate trade unions from politics, while doing nothing to address the financial weakness of domestic unions, which depended on outsiders for assistance. This last feature had the appearance of a boon to the old colonial regime but constituted an impediment to good relations with the new state. Obote sought to reconstitute the Ugandan trade union movement and, as part of this programme, he turned his attention to the most conspicuous manifestation of Western influence over Ugandan labour, namely the ICFTU college. There is no historically grounded and comprehensive overview of the uhuru strikes and this historiographical lacuna reflects the inattention paid to contemporary African labour history. In the case of Uganda, the Argus provided ongoing commentary and the most significant events can be garnered from its pages. Official estimates for 1962 indicated that there were 161 strikes; in no previous year had the number exceeded 100.91 There was some variation in the demands presented by the workers in these disputes. On the plantations, lack of recognition, intimidation of union officials and victimization of employees remained an important source of grievance, but in urban centres people saw the ushering in of national self-rule as an opportunity for individual economic emancipation which ought to be accompanied by an increase in pay to enable workers to support their families. In April 1962 waiters, attendants, kitchen-hands and cleaners employed by the Imperial Hotel in Kampala demanded a doubling of their wages from the paltry monthly sum of 75 shillings and the provision of a  housing allowance. That same month workers at Nile Breweries in Jinja submitted a claim for a monthly 250 shillings minimum wage.92 Over the succeeding months the brewers and hotel staff were joined in industrial action by workers at the Pepsi bottling factory at Lake Victoria, bakery employees in Kampala and the staff of the Tororo asbestos manufacturing plant. The strikes which had the most dramatic effect in the run-up to independence were stoppages for ‘uhuru wages’ by busmen and the staff of the Kampala municipal government. The Argus reported that 80 per cent of the employees of the Kampala bus companies went on strike on 17 June in support of demands for a pay rise of 75 shillings. They eventually settled for a backdated increment of 15 shillings and arbitration on the larger claim but threatened further action during September.93 The strike by Kampala municipal workers, which began among cleaners and porters on 17 September, and then spread to other categories, was particularly alarming to the government because it endangered the impending independence celebrations. When the Minister of Labour, Felix Onama, went to discuss matters with these groups, he was met with cries of ‘uhuru na pesa’ or ‘Freedom and Money’.94 Four features of the uhuru strikes were particularly significant: they were driven by the demands of workers, they amplified the pre-existing rivalry between union leaders who were uncertain how to respond to labour militancy, they raised the prospect of

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new legislation to extend state control of labour affairs and although there was almost no evidence of foreign instigation, they drew renewed attention to the possibility that external interests might stimulate labour unrest and thereby hobble the UPC government’s economic plans. The extent of labour militancy among wage-earners in 1962 was evident from the willingness of workers to act independently of their trade union representatives. In the case of the Imperial Hotel strike, the President of the Uganda Hotel and Domestic Workers Union admitted that the leadership had not been consulted about the action.95 In a similar vein, officials of the Amalgamated and Transport and General Workers Union described the busmen’s actions in Kampala as a ‘wildcat strike’.96 Other union leaders perceived that collective action was proving effective and interpreted the uhuru strikes as an opportunity to reassert the importance of trade union autonomy and stake a claim to national leadership. Three weeks after independence, Halonyere Wamalwa of the Uganda Breweries and Beverage Workers Union advanced the argument that poor working conditions were the cause of the problems: ‘In a country where the people are underpaid, where the employers treat the workers as slaves, strikes cannot be avoided.’97 Despite his nominal allegiance to the UPC, Luande became one of the most conspicuous critics of the Obote’s government’s attitude to labour affairs. He went as far as to claim that he would take a vanguard role in an industrial war. One factor that potentially motivated Luande was recorded by the colonial intelligence services in August 1962; after noting that other UTUC leaders had criticized his exploitation of industrial relations grievances to advance his career, they also reported widespread rumours that John Reich might reactivate the UFL in Jinja, with possible assistance from Tettegah and the GTUC.98 When Reich’s faction did resurface, it was branded as the Federation of Ugandan Trade Unions (FUTU) and presented itself as an alternative national centre to the UTUC, which Reich claimed was too reliant on external sponsorship. Perhaps the most important defector from the UTUC ranks to FUTU was James Ojambo. In explaining his decision to leave UTUC he articulated a history of Western interference that originated in the 1950s with the effective capture of UTUC by Western labour organizers and continued with a decade’s worth of interference by ICFTU agents. Ojambo was confident that independence would offer an opportunity to ‘get rid of ICFTU epidemic disease’.99 Obote’s government responded to the strikes of 1962 with flashes of anger, interrupted by offers of reconciliation, and the consequence of this prevarication was an aimlessness in labour policy that lasted for two years. Adoko Nekyon, the acting Minister of Labour in the months before independence, complained that the actions of irresponsible trade union leaders would cause foreign investors to flee.100 The UPC were also concerned about the ethnic and confessional orientation of the unions. Whereas, at least in part, the electoral success of the UPC was a consequence of northern resentment against the domination of the country’s political life by the southern kingdoms, those indigenous trade union leaders who did emerge in the 1950s, such as Frances Pulle, tended to be Catholics from Buganda. Furthermore, while in principle Obote was eager to enlist the backing of Uganda’s small industrial working class, in practice the organization of those workers had fallen to sojourning Kenyans. Despite the fact that they were less than 0.1 per cent of the country’s population, they formed nearly 12 per cent of the workforce outside government service and tended

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to stay longer in their jobs, which gave them both the motive and ability to pursue claims for better wages and conditions.101 Nekyon repeatedly claimed that the Kenyan leaders inside UTUC were disloyal to Uganda. On 6 October 1962 he asserted that they controlled most of the unions and were sabotaging the country’s independence celebrations. One of the leaders to whom Nekyon was referring was Wamalwa of the brewers’ union; he responded by asserting that the leaders of the transport, hotel workers and clerical unions, who had been the among the most militant, were all Ugandans and that only four out of twenty-two UTUC affiliates had Kenyan General Secretaries.102 The unavoidable question for Nekyon’s replacement as Minister of Labour, Felix Onama, was whether to amend colonial legislation in order to strengthen his own hand in dealing with labour disputes. Central to the arguments in favour of such action were the ones already rehearsed in Ghana and which echoed across Africa: trade union militancy would make it difficult to address the abject shortage of capital for investment, which was perhaps the largest obstacle to the diversification and growth of the economy. Strike action in pursuit of wage claims was doubly troublesome because it both gave the appearance of instability and reduced the portion of any surplus which might go to external investors. Onama’s rhetoric emphasized that the unions could potentially cripple the economy of independent Uganda. On 26 October 1962 he asserted that he had an open mind about whether to introduce legislation but suggested further strikes would make it more likely. Two weeks later he declared that the UPC’s disputes with Wamalwa and other union leaders were a symptom of ‘independence fever’ and that new laws were not required because he had the power to deal with any further wildcat strikes under extant legislation.103 UTUC’s leaders anticipated that Obote’s government might follow the pattern established in Tanganyika of state control and restrictions on the right to strike, which they asserted in language that was consistent with the Cold War rhetoric of the ICFTU, were the instruments used by the communist governments of Eastern Europe to control the workers.104 Worse still for the prospect of amicable relations between state and trade unions, the role of expatriate Kenyan labour leaders in Uganda was associated with Mboya, the ICFTU and their American sponsors in the AFL-CIO. Cold War factors may have had a slightly less adhesive grip on Ugandan labour politics were it not for the political context in East Africa. Despite initially expressing a willingness to consider regional political integration with Kenyatta and Nyerere, Obote proved a captious and reluctant participant in federal talks during 1963–1964. His concerns about overbearing Kenyan influence were based on his reading of the history of East African trade unionism which, in his view, established a precedent for unwelcome interference from beyond Uganda’s frontiers. At the centre of these concerns was Tom Mboya; his alliance with the American unions was regarded as damning evidence of the influence of actors from outside of Africa on continental labour affairs. As a Luo speaker, Mboya shared the ethnic background of most Kenyan workers and labour organizers in Uganda and his status overshadowed that of many Ugandan trade unionists, who came to be regarded as his acolytes. His position towards the ICFTU was ambivalent: on the one hand he regarded it as a potential ally against communist penetration and a vital source of funding, and on the other hand he believed the organization was too sympathetic to imperialism and was tinged

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with the racist colours of European supremacy. From the perspective of Obote and the UPC, Mboya’s friendship with the Cold Warriors of the ALF-CIO, including Springer and McCray, was ominous. Reflecting these associations, Mboya was the leading continental critic of the Ghanaian labour movement’s campaign to persuade national centres to disaffiliate from the ICFTU and embrace the non-aligned labour politics of the AATUF. As the historian of the AATUF Opoku Agyeman has explained Kenya was the ‘pivot of the western counterpoise to Ghanaian radicalism’.105 ICFTU influence in Uganda dated back to the request of UTUC to become an affiliate in 1956. The opening of the labour college two years later brought the Western-oriented Cold War politics of the ICFTU and its AFL-CIO paymasters to Uganda in full force. All of these threads came together when Fockstedt was replaced as principal of the college by an acolyte of Mboya, Joseph Odero-Jowi, who would later become Kenya’s ambassador to the United Nations. Odero-Jowi warned the ICFTU leaders in Brussels that Ugandan ministers and employers were under the misapprehension ‘that the College has directly involved itself in promoting strikes’.106 The ICFTU’s local representative in East Africa, Ed Welsh, endorsed this analysis and described the unhappy atmosphere after Onama’s visit to Europe in November 1962: ‘We have no way of knowing what took place during the conversations in the UK but he returned to Uganda in a belligerent and menacing mood, brandishing the big stick at unions in general and Kenyans in the Uganda labour movement in particular.’107 British TUC records confirm that Onama emphasized the ‘irresponsibility’ of the UTUC leadership during talks with them.108 At the root of this charge was the willingness of Luande and others to take direction from George Meany’s labour diplomats. Onama’s successor George Magezi went as far as to state ‘if dictatorship comes to Uganda it would be through the trade unions who were organized by the Americans’. When the American ambassador protested, Magezi replied, ‘Condemnation of government policies and direct attacks on leaders of the Government by the products of ICFTU or the UTUC cannot be ignored by us nor can we separate the master from the pupil in this case.’109 In April 1963 Obote announced that he would soon deal with the ‘foreign hands’ who were manipulating Ugandan trade unionism.110 Despite the minatory tone adopted by first Onama and then Magezi many imponderables gathered around the future of industrial relations in the aftermath of the uhuru strikes. For the first two years of independence, the Ministry of Labour hesitated. Indecision on the question of how to revise colonial legislation reflected the vulnerability of the UPC government, which was apprehensive that industrial relations reforms might fuel factionalism within the labour movement and thereby imperil the stability of the country. In August 1964 the Cabinet discussed these dilemmas. Magezi suggested that because ‘the actions of the workers directly affected the economy of the country, the Government could ill afford to have no say in their organisation and activities’. On the other hand, a dirigiste policy had hazards of its own, most notably the likelihood that ‘any open support by the Government of any one of the factions of the TUC would certainly drive the other factions into opposition to the Government and might make them join hands with the Opposition party’.111 The key priorities, as far as UPC ministers were concerned, were economic advance and the unshackling of the country from Cold War conflicts. Magezi said he wanted to overcome ‘the difficulties

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which his Ministry had encountered in trying to ensure that there was industrial peace and a healthy atmosphere to attract investment’. Although the ensuing legislation did not explicitly address the influence of external actors, the Cabinet encouraged the Minister to ‘find ways of stopping foreign intervention and interference in the labour movement’. The resulting 1964 Trade Disputes (Arbitration and Settlement) Act envisaged a significant role for the national government in labour affairs, including the power to force employers and unions to refer any dispute to either a standing Industrial Court or an ad hoc arbitration tribunal for resolution. It also established a complicated but more restrictive framework for industrial action in essential services which limited the opportunity for stoppages in these sectors.112 Magezi’s proposals were intended to empower his Ministry of Labour but in the context of the colonial past, in which a powerful registrar had been able to outlaw dissident unions, the 1964 legislation did not mark a significant break with earlier episodes in Uganda’s labour history. In other respects, Obote’s government gave the appearance of wanting to cultivate a working class constituency. Two further acts of 1965 and 1970 entrenched rights to organize labour and the requirement of employers to recognize trade unions. Despite the legal protections offered to unions under these later acts, by the end of the Obote period wage-earners had been left in a vulnerable position by the effective collapse of the trade union movement due to ongoing interference by government and chronic factionalism. The two issues were inseparable as the UPC’s interventions were both cause and consequence of the numerous splits. The growing hostility between unions and government was evident from Luande’s decision to resign from the UPC in 1964 in protest at its role in sowing dissent within UTUC.113 His largest grievance was that Obote and his allies had sponsored a rival national centre to the UTUC, in the form of FUTU, which, after Reich abandoned the labour movement, was led by E. R. Kibuka. The FUTU faction’s advocacy of disaffiliation from the ICFTU and a greater degree of integration with the Ugandan state were interpreted by Luande as evidence that the UPC was prejudiced against UTUC. The powerbase of Kibuka and FUTU was in the Uganda Public Employees Union (UPEU), which did not affiliate to the ICFTU. Strife between UTUC and FUTU embodied a proxy conflict between the ICFTU and the AATUF over whether the Ugandan labour movement should adopt the anticommunist politics of the AFL-CIO. Obote’s sympathies were with the AATUF and he sought to end the penetration of local unions by Western money and influence.114 The collapse of plans for East African federation and the strengthening of Obote’s domestic position following the dissolution of the Kabaka Yekka coalition in 1964 established a firmer base for a decisive intervention. Rather than simply outlawing UTUC, in 1966 Obote enforced a merger between the two rival organizations, which led to the establishment of a single national centre, named the Uganda Labour Congress (ULC). His aims were to bridge the split between the factions, end foreign interference and bind existing unions more closely to the state. The merger did not end the feuding between Luande, who was the President of the ULC, and Kibuka, who was its General Secretary. The hostility between the two most prominent union leaders in the country was impossible for the government to ignore. At the end of February 1968 the Minister of Labour, Lameck Lubowa, plaintively instructed the two men to stop quarrelling with each other.115 Rather than do so, Kibuka induced a final

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crisis with his announcement on 22 April that he had formed a revolutionary council to seize control of the ULC from the old UTUC faction. Two days later his supporters occupied Luande’s office. On 28 April the UPC government took action that marked the demise of the independent labour movement in Uganda: they closed the ULC, seized its assets and, for good measure, announced the closure of the ICFTU college.116 The commission of enquiry which investigated these events became a forum in which Kibuka’s acolytes reiterated long-standing complaints that erstwhile UTUC officials were the hired hands of overseas interests. They were particularly keen to emphasize that Luande was still attending ICFTU conferences. Given that in his May Day speech of that year Obote also suggested that some trade union leaders ‘think that Uganda’s labour movement is in another country’, the possibility of collusion between Kibuka and the government arises.117 The documentary record is insufficiently complete to offer a definitive judgement as to whether Obote himself precipitated the crisis. It is likely that Kibuka’s long-standing hostility to Luande provided motivation enough for the establishment of the ‘revolutionary council’ without any prompting and that Obote exploited the moment to come to a final reckoning with the old labour movement and its ICFTU sponsors. The closure of the labour college was the natural corollary to these domestic developments and after much toing and froing in July 1968 a delegation from the ICFTU was given the definitive decision that they must leave Kampala.118 Allowing the labour college to remain open threatened to place Obote precisely where he did not want to be in terms of continental politics: alienated from African radicalism and implicated in the American–Kenyan Cold War alliance. Year by year pressure on the college intensified. In a further demonstration of the salience of Kenya’s role in Ugandan labour politics, Joseph Odero-Jowi’s successor as principal was another Kenyan associate of Mboya, Reuben Mwilu. He attempted to alter the college’s image as a front organization for Western interests by accepting a visit from WFTU delegates in 1964. Mwilu justified the decision to an extremely suspicious ICFTU secretariat by explaining that there was a widespread belief in Uganda ‘that we are too biased towards the West and while we know that we have a separate Orientation from the Communist areas we, nevertheless wish to make it clear to the Government in Uganda that we are not consequently directed from the West.’119 This proved a fruitless task. When Mwilu defended the reputation of the college in the Argus, his intervention merely attracted further criticism from Magezi who predicted that the college would suffer ‘a natural death’.120 Even British diplomats acknowledged the significance of the Cold War and the colonial legacy for Ugandan unions. Martin Reith reported from Kampala in September 1964 that ‘the ICFTU is seen by Africans, or can easily be represented to them, as a western orientated and therefore neo-colonialist body. The [Ugandan] TUC has been dependent on the ICFTU for funds and has often taken guidance from them on matters of policy.’121 The grant from the ICFTU for that year amounted to $7,801 and was justified on the grounds that UTUC was suffering from ‘Ghana and communistinspired attacks’.122 The end of UTUC and the establishment of the unaffiliated ULC were a clear signal that the College was unlikely to be tolerated for much longer. Leaders of the ICFTU in Brussels eventually acknowledged that the position of the college in Kampala was not tenable at a time when most of Africa’s unions had embraced the

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non-aligned doctrine of opposition to Western and Eastern labour confederations.123 Matters were made still worse by scandals at the college which culminated with the deployment of police to the building following the expulsion of twenty-five students in April 1967.124 This imbroglio focused on hostile comments directed towards women trainees at the College and coincided with a crisis in the Ugandan union movement in such a way as to force a final resolution of the industrial relations questions which had remained open since 1962. The final expulsion of the Cold Warriors of the ICFTU in 1968 and the new alliance between trade unions and the state also facilitated Obote’s move to the left between 1969 and 1971. To a very significant degree these developments mirrored the pattern which had been established in Ghana and it is noteworthy that they ended in the same way, with a Western-approved military coup. By the late 1960s Ugandan trade unions and employers ceased to observe the formalities of labour organizing and dispute resolution. The collapse of the industrial relations regime almost mirrored that of the military in the following decade in the sense that the organizational carapace of titles and regulations remained but could not disguise the anomie evident in the actual conduct of affairs. As Nicol has pointed out, the Obote government of the late 1960s made almost no effort to enforce the requirement it had set for employers to recognize trade unions or to establish the check-off system, which was essential to maintaining their financial viability.125 In this context workers themselves became increasingly militant and in 1969 there were ninety-five strikes during which 66,327 days of work were lost.126 Examining these disputes Ralph Gonsalves noted that the workers’ actions were all unofficial and took place outside of the framework set by government legislation and trade union rules. The sources of dispute were broadly the same as those of 1962: they were about the perpetuation of the low wage labour regime inherited from the colonial era. In 1969 it was workers in the export-oriented industries who proved particularly militant with the most significant strikes occurring at the Kilembe copper mines and on the estates of the East Africa Tea Company.127 The culmination of Obote’s labour policies was an event almost entirely forgotten in the history of East Africa: the de facto expulsion of thousands of Kenyan workers in 1970 as part of a plan to indigenize unskilled work in Uganda. The inability of the unions to protect these workers, many of whom had been involved in the organization of labour, illustrated the extent to which trade unions had become marginalized. Once the migrant workers lost their jobs they had no alternative other than to cross the frontier and return permanently to Kenya.128 Reports from The Times suggested that as many as 30,000 workers may have recrossed the frontier by the middle of October.129 To note that the historiographical silence on the matter of the harsh treatment meted out to Kenyan workers in 1970 is in marked contrast to the ongoing interest in the expulsion of the predominantly bourgeois Indian population of East Africa during the same period, is not to suggest that the latter was not a tragedy worthy of discussion but does provoke the thought that a new contemporary East African labour history, which extends further into the period of independence, ought to bring such matters into the historical light. Viewed from the perspective of the 1971 coup, the expulsion of the Kenyans was the final chapter in a series of events that cowed the Ugandan trade union movement. The uhuru strikes had marked a small step forward in the incomes of some wage-

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earners nine years earlier but the 1970s were a decade of losses for workers. Amin tinkered with the legal framework by amending Obote’s trade unions laws and this in theory provided them with renewed freedom. He also gave yet another name to the national centre, which became known as the National Organisation of Trade Unions (NOTU).130 The latter innovation did stick but the organization was largely irrelevant. Disputes between employers and employees in the private sector were often resolved on the basis of the arbitrary whim of military officials.131 One thing that did not change after the coup was that working for wages could still not guarantee financial security for a family. The surging price inflation of the 1970s washed away any minor gains of the previous decade and increased the economic vulnerability of Ugandan families. Although records for the period are extremely patchy, a few crumbs from the remaining archival record give an indication of these pressures. During August 1973 the Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour argued that, after deductions, the salaries of civil servants were rendered nugatory by the rising cost of living.132 In the same year prison workers requested salary increases of between 10 per cent and 50 per cent in order to counter the pressures on their incomes caused by rising prices. They also expressed a desire to revive the Uganda Public Employees Union which had once been one of the most effective unions in the country. Both proposals gave a sense of workers’ ongoing interest in the establishment of a workable industrial relations regime.133 Ugandan unions were unfit to survive the irregularities of the Amin years, although NOTU endured into the post-Amin era and it currently claims over twenty affiliates.134 In a further echo of history in 2014 a new Labour College of East Africa was opened in Kampala, to much less controversy than accompanied the arrival of its ICFTU predecessor.135

Conclusion Trade unionism along with ‘tribalism’ was identified by colonial officials as one of two ongoing threats to the stability of Uganda at independence.136 What they had in mind was the possibility that external actors would seize control of the Ugandan labour movement. This assessment reflected habitual British preoccupations about the dangers of external agitators instigating unrest in colonial countries, but Obote and his ministers were as neurotic as any Governor in Entebbe about overseas subversion of the labour movement. While the British feared WFTU interference, the newly independent government believed that the AFL-CIO would promote Cold War partisanship either indirectly, via Kenyan labour organizers in Uganda, or directly through their envoys to the ICFTU labour college. In the absence of a committed and well-paid force of wage-labourers to provide dues, external organizations became a vital source of funding for aspirant leaders of otherwise penniless unions, including Luande and the UTUC and Reich and the UFL. The currencies of this trade were subventions for salaries, office equipment, motor vehicles, travel grants and training opportunities. These material and ideological exchanges with international labour confederations aggravated the inherent factionalism of Uganda unionism which could be traced back to the 1940s and 1950s. It was both politically convenient and entirely

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plausible for the Obote government to argue that the industrial relations environment in 1962 had already been warped by undue pressure from the partisans of the ICFTU and by the model of trade unionism imposed by the British Colonial Office. The most significant of these formalities was a system of union registration which gave power to central government while denying trade unions a role in the political life of the country. In theory, this guaranteed trade unions their autonomy but, in actuality, it exposed their vulnerability. As Ioan Davies noted, British Governors and their labour departments had ‘a real or potential power rare in Britain’s own industrial relations experience. At independence this power was used by the new governments to establish a structure of industrial relations that was very different to that advocated in Britain.’137 Ugandan trade unions never grew clear of their roots in this hybrid colonial model, which required them to channel industrial grievances without participating in wider political processes. The channels overflowed during the uhuru strikes of 1962. Miners, hotel porters and cleaners, tea pickers, clerks, railway engineers and bus drivers, among many others, interpreted decolonization as an opportunity for them to improve their material prospects and the lives of their families. In response the Obote regime sought to camouflage continuities with the colonial era and recast the labour scene into a pan-African framework that required the termination of UTUC and the abolition of the ICFTU college as institutional manifestations of dependency. Despite some initial successes in securing recognition and improved working conditions, the failures of the Ugandan labour movement can be traced back to the rigid state enforcement of a formal and artificial distinction between industrial relations and national politics.

7

The Commonwealth

Uganda has played a singular role in Commonwealth affairs and Commonwealth affairs have had an unusual impact on politics in Uganda. In 1977 it was Idi Amin’s military regime that became the first member of the organization to be subjected to formal condemnation at a meeting of its leaders and three years later the country was the first to have an election observed by Commonwealth-sponsored monitors. Aside from the setting of these precedents, Uganda’s history was entwined with the Commonwealth in other significant ways. In 1971 Amin seized the opportunity provided by Obote’s attendance at a Commonwealth summit in Singapore to initiate a coup against him, while Amin’s expulsion of the country’s Asian residents provoked a crisis that required its members to consider how the homeless refugees could be accommodated and whether Uganda should be expelled or suspended. While the exceptional character of Uganda’s foreign policy in the 1970s reflected the international publicity given to the human rights abuses of the Amin era, in the first nine years after independence, it had followed a course in Commonwealth affairs more typical of other new African states, although one that was predicated on the importance of institutional reform. Obote was one of a group of African leaders who conceived of the Commonwealth as a means to influence politics in the old imperial metropolis and his diplomacy revealed much about the mechanisms of power politics in such international institutions. In order to maximize their leverage, it was necessary for new states to clear the fog of customary deference and informal amiability which enabled Britain to play the role of primus inter pares. Recalling that in 1943 Winston Churchill had told an American audience about the importance of ‘fraternal association’, the quondam Secretary-General of the organization, Sonny Ramphal, stated that ‘with new Commonwealth leaders like Nehru and Nkrumah being leaders as well of the rapidly developing Non-Aligned movement, the Commonwealth “Club” needed more than even structural adjustment if it was to find a sufficient basis of commonality to bolster those historic elements of oneness that Churchill had mentioned at Harvard’.1 Such organizational reordering provoked British resistance and, in the case of Ted Heath, a great deal of resentment. Whereas for the British managing decolonization entailed greater formalism in the institutional affairs of the old colonial periphery as a means to entrench their ideas, procedures and organizational structures, dealing with the Commonwealth required an entirely different approach, precisely because its diplomacy might impinge on British politics. All parties were keenly aware that the end of clubbishness and the codification of norms as advocated by African and Asian members would generate a more egalitarian form

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of Commonwealth politics which would nudge Britain away from the centre of the organization’s affairs. Much of this has gone unremarked upon in the historiography because the interesting and provocative literature about the Commonwealth which has emerged recently has been principally concerned with its past and present role in British life.2 Although Olusola Akinrinade has twice surveyed the significance of the Commonwealth for African states, the historiography on countries beyond the old white dominions, including Uganda, remains thin.3

The emergence of the new Commonwealth and Ugandan membership The Round Table is the leading journal of Commonwealth affairs, and for two decades it was edited by Peter Lyon who, as a consequence of long and effective service, gathered authority to his name when commenting on the fortunes of the institution. When asked to introduce Krishnan Srinivasan’s book about the rise and decline of the Commonwealth, Lyon highlighted a quotation from a senior Whitehall official, Andrew Snelling, which encapsulated British attitudes to the Commonwealth in the era of decolonization. Expounding in 1959 on fears that the older white dominions might lose a degree of status as a consequence of being outnumbered by the influx of tyros from Africa, Snelling announced that he did ‘not despair of our being able to fudge up something when the time comes … but I do not believe we should bring down hard and fast rules in advance. This is a situation in which we can best play by ear as we go along … let us continue with our admirable and efficient ad-hoc-ery’.4 Aside from the display of ingenuity in finding different idioms in which to say exactly the same thing, Snelling’s words are a reminder of the official British view of the Commonwealth for most of the twentieth century was that it would work better without too many rules or too complex a structure. There were occasional countertrends to this informalism such as the intermittent enthusiasm for greater unity among what became the Dominions. During the First World War, for example Lionel Curtis had offered a manifesto for greater integration between the territories of British settlement. Rather than pursuing such federalist schemes the British governments of the 1920s accepted the concept of the Commonwealth as a free association of equal and autonomous nations owing allegiance to the British crown. This formula, which was devised by Arthur Balfour and inscribed in the Statute of Westminster, was largely a codification of existing norms.5 When it was decided to extend membership of the Commonwealth to India two decades later, Nehru’s insistence on a republic offered a major challenge to the monarchism which underpinned existing doctrines but, in the ongoing tradition of ‘ad-hoc-ery’, the requirement for allegiance to the crown was simply dropped. In his survey of the late 1940s and 1950s Christopher Prior offers a useful summary of the prevailing mood among post-war commentators on the organization’s ethos: ‘The whole was kept together by goodwill and personal connections, and might fall apart were its aims or modus operandi too tightly defined.’6 Alongside the ideological challenge posed by republicanism, the extension of Commonwealth membership beyond the old Dominions raised the question of race. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka joined at a time when some Commonwealth

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members, most notably South Africa and Australia, were upholding systems of racial injustice within their own countries. While the long-standing members remained in the majority and the Asian states were a relatively quiescent minority, the potential conflicts remained latent but the status quo was unsustainable once the consequences of accelerated decolonization began to be felt. Uganda joined the Commonwealth in the midst of the accession of numerous newly independent countries with black majority populations. This process began when Ghana became the first state from sub-Saharan Africa to join in 1957 and continued apace until the accession of Barbados and Guyana in 1966. Uganda was an uncontroversial candidate for Commonwealth membership and, although the status of its Asian residents would later become exceptionally contentious, in 1962 it was believed to be free from the racial antagonisms of those territories that had been subject to extensive European settlement. The two matters which did arise from Uganda’s application illustrated the relevance of status in British governmental thinking about Commonwealth affairs. The first concerned the perennial question of republicanism that was raised by Nehru fifteen years earlier. Concern for the monarchy prompted a rare intervention into Ugandan affairs by the British Prime Minister. On 19 May Harold Macmillan scribbled a minute to the Colonial Secretary Reginald Maudling on the subject of Uganda’s application to join the Commonwealth; it read, ‘Are you really happy about this? Do they intend to retain a monarchy? Or are we to subject the throne to all the humiliation of their going Republican later? If later, why not?’ Maudling attempted to reassure Macmillan that the Kabaka of Buganda would remain an influential pro-monarchical figure after independence who would almost certainly resist the establishment of a civilian head of state.7 Like Macmillan, the Commonwealth Secretary Duncan Sandys also feared the consequences of Ugandan republicanism.8 In the event, Macmillan and Sandys proved more prescient than Maudling. Rather than defending the British Queen’s prerogatives, the Kabaka replaced her as head of state by accepting the role of president in 1963. Another matter of status raised by Sandys was the requirement that parliaments in candidate countries should formally request Commonwealth membership before the British government undertook the supererogatory task of sponsoring their application. In the light of this tradition, Sandys vetoed a suggestion that the Commonwealth Relations Office might make do with an expression of opinion from the Governor that Ugandan parliamentarians wished to join. On 6 June 1962 the Ugandan legislature unanimously endorsed membership of the Commonwealth and thereby paid due deference to the procedures and perquisites the British government prescribed as de facto leader of the Commonwealth.9 The quantitative expansion of the Commonwealth led to a qualitative transformation in the concepts that underpinned it. For Prime Ministers in the newly independent states, such as Obote, institutional reform was conceived as a means of providing a measure of advantage in relations with Britain. It is difficult to determine which of them has the best claim to original authorship, but several Commonwealth leaders proposed the establishment of a more permanent organization, in the form of a Secretariat, including Obote, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Eric Williams of Trinidad and Ayub Khan of Pakistan. Obote was certainly among the first to advocate this idea during a meeting with British MPs visiting Uganda.10 Different versions of the proposal

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were considered at the Commonwealth summit in July 1964. British strategy at this time was to fend off major structural change with proposals designed to expand the Commonwealth’s functions in matters of technical cooperation, such as development and education. A divide emerged between those British ministers and officials who accepted that a strengthening of Commonwealth institutions was inevitable and those keen to resist any measure of formal innovation. The Commonwealth Relations Office was in the latter camp. The first person to occupy the post of Secretary-General, Arnold Smith, complained in his memoirs that a number of unnamed senior CRO officials ‘caused many difficulties in the evolution of the Secretariat’.11 Among the pragmatists there was an acceptance that, given the extent of support for organizational reform among members, the best course was to channel the proposals into acceptable bounds. The Cabinet Secretary, Burke Trend, was responsible for keeping members’ ambitions for the Secretariat ‘within prescribed limits and preventing it from becoming a political pressure group’.12 The text finally agreed at the next Commonwealth summit in June 1965 explicitly prohibited an executive role for the Secretariat. The narrow purpose of the new Secretary-General would be to facilitate consultation between members. From the British perspective the choice of Smith for the job was unfortunate. He took a maximalist approach to his role and thereby stretched to breaking point the restraints imposed by Trend.13 In instrumental terms there was good reason for both British scepticism about and African advocacy of Commonwealth reform; while the informal conviviality of the Commonwealth had usefully masked the continuation of Britain’s status as primus inter pares during the 1950s, after 1965 the Secretariat would prove a valuable ally to the new members of the Commonwealth in a series of unprecedented controversies, in which Obote and Uganda would play a large role. The increasing racial tensions manifest in Commonwealth affairs were evident from the short quarrel which accompanied the departure of one long-standing member, South Africa, and the much longer conflict about the moratorium on Rhodesia as a potential new member. Perhaps the most fortuitous event in the organization’s history was the decision by the South African Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, to hold a referendum about whether the country should become a republic. The affirmative vote in 1960 fulfilled the Nationalist Party’s long-standing goal of separating South Africa from the British monarchy but it was not intended to signal an end to Commonwealth membership. In that sense, South Africa left inadvertently as a consequence of the country’s obligation to reapply for membership after the vote. It immediately became evident that a transcontinental coalition of Canada, Ghana and India would prevent a successful reapplication. The Conservative governments of the 1950s regarded Pretoria as a key Cold War ally partly because, as Srinivasan has commented, they ‘enjoyed a mutually advantageous economic relationship and shared an anxiety about UN interference in colonial questions’.14 Macmillan spent a good deal of time trying to avoid the eventuality but finally advised Verwoerd to withdraw South Africa’s reapplication.15 He expressed ‘deep regret’ to the Cabinet that South Africa had effectively been expelled.16 If the egress of South Africa was necessary to the maintenance of Commonwealth unity, the potential entry of Southern Rhodesia was a latent cause of permanent schism. The Prime Minister of the white settler government, Ian Smith, requested to fully participate in the Commonwealth summit of 1964 on

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the grounds that Rhodesia enjoyed by far the largest measure of internal autonomy among the remaining territories of the British Empire. He complained to the new British Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home, ‘I feel it is a poor return for Southern Rhodesia’s loyal support of the Commonwealth to be denied its conventional right to attend meetings of Commonwealth Prime Ministers’.17 The simple matter of potential attendance was soon overshadowed as a consequence of Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in November 1965. The black African members of the Commonwealth, including Obote, developed a programme of opposition to Smith, under the banner of ‘No Independence before Majority African Rule’, which turned Commonwealth summits into arenas of confrontation. If Obote was willing to generate diplomatic tension in order to obtain the advance of racial equality, it did not prevent him from coming to be regarded as an extremely dutiful member of the Commonwealth club during the 1960s. In contrast to Nyerere and Kenyatta, he attended every Commonwealth summit between the proclamation of Ugandan independence and the coup which overthrew him in January 1971. Three factors underpinned this commitment. The first was that, as O’Neill has noted, the Commonwealth granted the leaders of the new African states an opportunity of ‘making an early impact on international politics’.18 In contrast to the crowded platform of the United Nations, it was a relatively straightforward matter to chalk up substantive achievements in the name of African nationalism on the Commonwealth stage. Obote became a prominent voice on continental affairs partly because of his participation in Commonwealth summits. The second related factor concerned Obote’s domestic position, which was weaker than that of Nyerere or Kenyatta, who were the most prominent figures in the anticolonial struggle in Tanganyika and Kenya. In 1962 Obote was still attempting to establish his authority in his party and the country and his mere attendance at a summit symbolized his paramountcy to a domestic audience. His trips to Commonwealth summits gained front-page publicity in the Argus and the People and cast rivals inside and outside the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) into the shade. The Ugandan businessman and future ally of Museveni, Martin Aliker, has gone as far as to suggest that ‘in order for Obote to rule the country he had to show interest in the Commonwealth’.19 The final factor at work in drawing Obote to the summit meetings related to his personality, which was more suited to conference rooms than political rallies. He usually prospered in formal round-table settings such as the plenary sessions of summit meetings; like the Ugandan legislature, they were amenable spaces in which to exercise his sharp-edged rhetoric. This engagement with Commonwealth issues also gathered a momentum of its own. If Obote liked the Commonwealth, it is evident that the Commonwealth was partial to Obote. Arnold Smith and Sonny Ramphal, who were Secretaries-General during the first and second Obote governments respectively, were friends and admirers. The effusive character of the former’s praise for Obote was somewhat disconcerting in its focus on his physical attributes. According to Smith, Obote was ‘tremendously handsome with Nilotic bone structure and midnight-blue skin’.20 Even those with a different estimate of Obote’s personal attractiveness recognized his political allure in a Commonwealth context. By the time of the Singapore summit of January 1971 he had become a fatally indispensable figure in the organization’s diplomacy.

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Rhodesia, South Africa and the road to Singapore The African country whose independence mattered most to other African countries was Rhodesia. Luise White has recently pointed to the slippery indeterminacies of Rhodesian history that extend as far as the difficulty in identifying or naming a territory with multiple identities.21 Ian Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 added further constitutional complexities to the country’s tangled colonial history. Despite the refusal of other states to recognize it, Smith’s regime was exercising some form of domestic political authority. The question of why other states in Africa reacted with hostility to Smith’s government is more straightforward, although the story contains nuances which are sometimes overlooked. Smith’s government represented not some established European colony, such as the Boers in South Africa, but a group of relatively new arrivals. The majority of white adult residents in Rhodesia in 1965 had been born somewhere else and migration to the country continued after UDI. As an ongoing project of European colonization in Africa, Rhodesia’s demographic experiment represented a current rather than an historical threat to the newly independent states of the continent. This challenge was made more potent by the somewhat uneasy alliances the Smith regime forged with Portugal and South Africa, both of whom were still engaged in their own projects of appropriation in Africa.22 Although there were some differences in the way in which the Anglophone African countries reacted to Smith’s provocations, for the majority of them, UDI was an archetypal colonial project because it welded the racial injustices of political exclusion to the economic exploitation of African resources and people. The domestic aspects of UDI diplomacy were particularly significant. Having schooled Africans in a new form of citizenship, which entailed asserting their political and economic rights, nationalist politicians risked undermining their own credentials if they failed to publicize their fierce opposition to the claims of European settlers. Despite their outward success, nationalist political parties in Africa, particularly the UPC, were often fragile and vulnerable to immanent critique from their radical wings. Any sign of compromise on Rhodesia would have split parties such as the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in Ghana, the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in Zambia and the Kenyan African National Union (KANU). Confronting the settler regime in Rhodesia was a matter of maintaining the political principles of African nationalism and of pragmatic management of domestic affairs. Obote’s diplomacy after UDI provides plentiful evidence of these intersecting motivations. Initially Uganda was one of the African states that was somewhat less critical of Harold Wilson’s decision not to send a military force to Rhodesia to overturn UDI. Instead of outright confrontation, Obote accompanied moderate pressure on the Rhodesian issue with persistent demands for institutional reform. Ugandan restraint was first evident when the Obote government suggested that they would not object to a Rhodesian representative joining the British delegation at the July 1964 Commonwealth conference.23 When Obote met Douglas-Home, amid loud grumbling from Smith about his exclusion, he did not raise any contentious racial issues. He even offered some Cold War comfort to Home by promising that Chinese efforts ‘to gain

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a foothold in Africa would be resisted by African nationalists’.24 At the next meeting of Prime Ministers the following year, Obote garnered praise from the British for his ‘thoughtful contribution’ which tactfully avoided pressing too hard on the matters of South African apartheid and warfare in Lusophone Africa.25 Even once the Rhodesian issue became unavoidable after November 1965, Obote did not follow the critical lead of Tanzania and Ghana and comported himself as a concerned friend of Britain. Wilson welcomed his presence at the hastily arranged meeting of premiers in Lagos in January 1966. On this occasion, rather than demand immediate military intervention, Obote suggested ‘that force might have to be used at some stage to crush the rebellion’.26 When Rhodesia was discussed at another Commonwealth conference in London seven months later, the atmosphere was considerably more rancorous, as Wilson recalled in his memoirs.27 The Ugandan delegation joined with other African states in a united front to pressurize Wilson but they did not walk out as the Zambian delegation did or reject the final communiqué as the Tanzanians did.28 Instead Obote declared himself broadly satisfied with the outcome and during a speech to Commonwealth writers on 14 September made the pragmatic argument that the institution could be a useful ally for Britain in the Cold War.29 One reason for Obote’s caution was that he believed Wilson was vulnerable to the right-wing press in Britain and that any Conservative successor government would be more sympathetic to Smith’s rebel settler movement. The Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard were identified by the Ugandan Cabinet as newspapers which were hostile both to Wilson and to the Commonwealth. International divisions were also of concern in Kampala. Given the willingness of Malawi under Hastings Banda and Malaysia under Tunku Abdul Rahman to support the British line, it was thought prudent not to force matters to a point of crisis.30 After four prime ministerial Commonwealth summits between 1964 and 1966, there were none at all in 1967 or 1968; by the time regular meetings resumed in London in January 1969, Obote had become disillusioned with British tolerance of Smith. This was partly a consequence of Obote’s anger at British criticism of him as an authoritarian in the aftermath of the move to the left. Such resentments were greatly aggravated by the willingness of the government in London to shelter an expatriate community of Ganda dissidents committed to the overthrow of the UPC and the restoration of the Kabakaship. In domestic terms, by 1969 Obote was closely aligned with radicals in the UPC, who required public demonstrations that his government was committed to anticolonialism. Most significantly of all, just three months before the gathering of Commonwealth leaders, Wilson had met Smith aboard HMS Fearless and offered him further concessions. Sitting beside the British Prime Minister at the conference table in January 1969, Obote said the Fearless proposals were incompatible with commitments made by Britain to Commonwealth members because they did not guarantee the right of the majority black population in Rhodesia to have the final say about any settlement. He stated, ‘Rhodesia was like an occupied territory with the mass of the people having no role in its affairs and this would continue if the Fearless proposals were accepted.’31 The atmosphere at the conference also soured as a consequence of a quarrel with Wilson’s Home Secretary, James Callaghan, whom Obote had once regarded as an ally. The spark for this confrontation was a press conference on 8 January which was reported in The Times under the headline, ‘Callaghan Plans Talks to Check Flow

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of Asian Migrants’.32 Viewed in the context of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968, which had restricted the rights of Ugandan citizens to enter Britain, this was a grave provocation. From Obote’s perspective it raised the prospect that Callaghan might eventually disclaim responsibility for those Asian residents of Uganda who had retained British citizenship after independence and therefore held British passports. As they sought to arrange a bilateral discussion in the midst of the conference, Obote and Callaghan exchanged peevish letters.33 In public Obote offered the sardonic comment that it was a ‘matter for the British government whether they would like to go round the world openly discriminating against their citizens on no other ground but colour’.34 Along with the delegations from Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, the Ugandans boycotted multilateral discussions about migration during the conference.35 Despite the ratcheting up of arguments about Rhodesia and the free movement of people, Obote continued to transmit signals of commitment to the Commonwealth cause. Before travelling to the conference, he defended his decision to attend in person on the grounds that it provided a unique environment for discussion between nations.36 On arrival he had an amicable meeting with Wilson and during the formal sessions offered praise for Commonwealth institutions.37 Despite the bad feeling generated by his feud with Callaghan, on his return Obote told the British High Commissioner that, aside from the immigration row, the conference had been successful in containing disagreement about Rhodesia.38 Anglo-Ugandan relations reached a nadir with the decision of the Conservative government elected in 1970 to sell naval equipment to South Africa. Although it can be a mistake to place too much emphasis on human personality when analysing international affairs, it is evident that Heath’s arrival in Downing Street had a significant impact on British diplomacy. Whether socially maladroit or merely rude, Heath was not disposed to lavish time on the niceties of personal statecraft. In ideological terms his overwhelming priority was to tilt British foreign policy away from Atlanticism and towards Europe. Unlike Wilson and Callaghan, he evinced little nostalgia for old imperial ties and it would be a difficult task to overstate his lack of interest in Commonwealth affairs. Partly this indifference was a corollary of his sympathy for Portugal, South Africa and Rhodesia, who he estimated to be on the front line of the fight against communism in Africa. Heath also shared the wider distaste which many Conservative politicians had for the arriviste politicians of the old empire who had achieved power by deploying unvarnished anticolonial rhetoric. To Heath and many others on the right such criticism was galling in light of the continuation of aid programmes to the former territories of empire. Soon after assuming office, he demanded to know why Britain was paying 30 per cent towards the costs of Commonwealth programmes.39 In terms of narrower diplomatic strategy, Heath preferred bilateral diplomacy to summitry. The possibility that the Caribbean, Asian and African states might use their combined influence within the Commonwealth to shift British foreign policy, which was the prime attraction of the organization to politicians such as Obote, was precisely the matter which made the organization suspect in the eyes of British politicians like Heath. In his first meeting with Arnold Smith after his election victory, Heath announced that he would not allow ‘the impression to be gained that the Commonwealth were determining their policies on matters such as Rhodesia, arms for South Africa or

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Europe’.40 Almost immediately on entering office, the Conservative Cabinet overturned the Wilson government’s moratorium on arms sales, in order to enable the supply of maritime equipment to South Africa and thereby strengthen their naval presence in the Indian Ocean. The new ministers anticipated that the sale of equipment would be criticized in Britain and that Commonwealth countries might boycott the forthcoming summit in Singapore.41 When the outlines of the decision were announced on 22 July, Labour MPs were enraged and a cacophonous and rancorous debate in the House of Commons ensued.42 Diplomatic reports from Commonwealth countries indicated that Tanzania and Zambia might leave the organization in protest at the decision.43 In Uganda, Obote was dismayed by the return of the Conservative government and exasperated by the decision to sell arms. The UPC government interpreted Heath’s new course in the context of Uganda’s deteriorating bilateral relations with Britain. Because only the first of them delivered the fatal blow to his government, it is not always recognized that Obote was facing three potential challenges at the start of the 1970s; they comprised spiralling ethnic tensions in the officer corps of the army, bitter faction-fighting within the UPC and the destabilizing activities of monarchical exile groups in Britain, who still hoped to discredit Obote’s government and stage a comeback. The significance of the last of these was given renewed emphasis when a bullet from an assassin injured Obote in December 1969. This prompted some commentators to speculate that the plot to kill the President might have been linked to the death of the Kabaka in London a month earlier. The Observer suggested that the assassination attempt might be interpreted as ‘a sign for his more stalwart Buganda supporters to intensify opposition against the man who overthrew their king’.44 These considerations had wider ramifications because Obote knew the Kabaka’s allies had the backing of many British Conservatives. One often forgotten feature of decolonization, which offers some corroboration for David Cannadine’s theories about the natural sympathy that existed among the British establishment for the hierarchical societies which they encountered in Africa and Asia, was that right-wing politicians frequently offered aid and assistance to those princes, sultans and kings who had been exiled by the republican and nationalist victors in the struggle for decolonization.45 Uganda provided a significant example of this phenomenon. To Obote’s chagrin, the Kabaka’s cause was taken up by a number of aristocratic and Conservative luminaries.46 Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, for example, urged the government to grant exile to members of the Kabaka’s family in the aftermath of the 1966 crisis.47 Something of the conspiratorial character of these allies is captured in V. S. Naipaul’s Booker Prize-winning novella In a Free State. One of the protagonists in this disorienting tale opines that the ‘smart London friends’ of the King of the Southern Collectorate had ‘put him up to all this talk of secession and so on’.48 The exile politics of Buganda, which was rife with rumours that the Kabaka had been murdered, were given a boost by the Conservative electoral victory in Britain. A further complicating factor in Anglo-Ugandan relations was the baffling circumstances surrounding the temporary disappearance of a British diplomat, Brian Lea. A Ugandan commission of enquiry concluded in August 1970 that Lea’s apparent kidnapping was actually a bungled conspiracy designed to discredit the Obote government.49 A final factor looming over Anglo-Ugandan relations was the hostility evinced by Western investors in the aftermath of the nationalization

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programme outlined in Obote’s Nakivubo Pronouncement. Sensitivity to the machinations of Ganda exiles, the embarrassments of the Lea affair and the criticism of capitalist interests formed the context for a neurotic discussion of foreign policy by the Ugandan Cabinet’s Security Committee on 11 August 1970. Ministers concluded that it was ‘surprising that a big country like Britain should see fit to try and run down a smaller one like Uganda’.50 The key elements in this campaign of denigration included the Heath government’s willingness to countenance a new investigation into the Kabaka’s death and the decision to keep Lea in government employment despite the fiasco of his ‘bogus self-kidnapping’.51 Even the proposals to sell arms to South Africa could be interpreted as having destabilizing domestic consequences for Obote because, if he proved insufficiently tenacious in opposing the policy, he would expose himself to criticism from radicals inside his party. Although in retrospect, and given the internal power struggles in the army which led to the coup, Obote’s decision to travel to Singapore for the Commonwealth summit in January 1971 may appear reckless, there were a number of countervailing factors which persuaded him to take the risk of travelling. The first of these was that attendance had become almost habitual for him and that he revelled in international diplomacy. This inclination was welcomed by his fellow African statesmen and by Arnold Smith who worked to persuade Obote that his personal participation in efforts to prevent British arms sales to South Africa could be decisive. Smith recalled that he ‘telegraphed Obote saying I still had hopes of persuading Britain to back off its strategic folly and I badly needed his help’.52 Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia was also persistent in his importunings and later told Sonny Ramphal that, in light of the opportunity which Singapore gave to Amin, he regretted his part in encouraging Obote to leave the country at a time of potential turmoil.53 Mark Chona, Kaunda’s long-standing foreign policy adviser, also recalled that ‘a lot of pressure was put on Obote to attend’.54 The belief that a coalition of African states could alter the course of British diplomacy was another instance of the tendency of the newly independent states to believe that the Commonwealth provided an opportunity to subvert old colonial inequalities; whereas in the past their affairs had been directed from London, under the auspices of the new Commonwealth they hoped to exert pressure in Westminster and Whitehall. With the assistance of a sympathetic Secretary-General, a coalition led by Zambia, Tanzania and Uganda might force Heath and Home to alter their diplomatic course. The Argus suggested all African heads of government ought to attend the Singapore meeting in order to coordinate policy towards apartheid South Africa. On 8 January the newspaper devoted its front page to an investigation of public opinion on the question and declared in a banner headline ‘People Back the President’.55 One of the Argus’s interviewees was a representative of the Family Planning Association called Mrs Galukande. Unlike some of the other people quoted, she opposed Uganda’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth. What was particularly interesting about her comments was that she suggested that the Commonwealth ought to be regulated more tightly so that misbehaving members could be expelled. She explained: ‘I would like to see Britain forced out of the Commonwealth. Quitting, I think, would be to our own disadvantages.’56 Such coverage was useful for Obote in what was intended to be an election year and, had Amin hesitated, then his forthright diplomacy at Singapore

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would have been interpreted as an astute means of consolidating civilian support at a time when the UPC still contained a strong left-wing caucus that would have been outraged by any suggestion of appeasement of South Africa. The hostility between Britain and the African members prior to Singapore suggested a bleak future for the Commonwealth. During some exceptionally badtempered preparatory meetings with Kaunda in London in October 1970, Heath reiterated that he would not compromise over the sale of frigates and helicopters to South Africa. As The Times of India put it, the British Prime Minister ‘did not wish the British public to get the impression that he was acting under outside pressure’.57 Fearing the potential breakup of the Commonwealth, at the start of 1971 Smith issued an ill-disguised rebuke to Heath which stated, ‘It would be erroneous to interpret multilateral consultations as an attempt to bring undue pressure upon one group or a group of members, or to regard them as in any sense an invasion of the sovereignty of member countries.’58 This was somewhat disingenuous because the African members of the Commonwealth were precisely preoccupied with the best means of shifting British policy and regarded coordinated multilateral action as a means of achieving this. Kaunda was at the forefront of demands for a formal Declaration of Principles, with Obote close behind. According to Chona, these proposals were a direct response to Heath’s cultivation of white settler interests in Africa. He stated, ‘When Heath said he would resume arms sales to South Africa, we thought that Pretoria, Salisbury and Lisbon were winning the West, whom we thought we were beginning to woo to come on board with us.’ Under this analysis, the aims of African diplomacy at Singapore were to isolate the British and ‘lock up Ted Heath in the prison of principles’. After inspecting these proposals Heath reached the same conclusions from the opposite point of view. He recognized that the leaders of the former colonial states were attempting to constrain British actions and was wary of any formalization of Commonwealth principles for that reason. In his memoirs he went as far as to suggest that African countries ‘were determined to force their own will on British policy … It was an attempt to bully Britain out of carrying through the European policy on which we had embarked’.59 As expected Obote took a leading role in the attacks on British South African policy at Singapore. Zambia and Tanzania regarded support from Uganda as vital in obtaining what became the Singapore Declaration.60 Obote reminded the delegates that South Africa received more Western capital investment than any Commonwealth member and was using its financial power to pursue an aggressive policy of regional expansion.61 Privately, he appealed to British self-interest by arguing that support for South Africa would destabilize the West’s allies on the continent and thus increase the diplomatic and strategic leverage of the Soviets.62 Heath batted away all criticism and, in some senses, Singapore was a triumph for what Ramphal described as his obduracy and Smith called his insensitivity.63 He rebuffed criticisms of British foreign policy while avoiding any resignations from the Commonwealth that would assuredly have been blamed on him personally. When his advisers commented that boredom and frustration had settled over the delegates at Singapore, Heath smirked that this was because they ‘realised they were not going to get their own way’.64 The New York Times reported that Singapore ended with a ‘new Heath success’, the Los Angeles Times described a ‘crisis averted’, while The Times noted

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under its headline ‘Commonwealth Leaves Mr. Heath Free to Sell Arms to S Africa’ that ‘the Commonwealth Conference has ended happily after all’.65 Despite their failure to alter British policy towards South Africa, the African Commonwealth leaders did succeed in obtaining a greater measure of regulation of the organization at Singapore. At the outset of the conference Heath had set out his defence of diplomatic informality: ‘The Commonwealth was not a formal relationship. It was not a deliberative assembly or a market place or a joint enterprise. It was not even a court of appeal, with the prescriptive right to sit in final judgement on the policies and actions of its members.’ Inevitably this statement was offered as a prelude to the customary assertion that the organization was a ‘body of friends’, but the other members were no longer satisfied by rhetorical appeals to amity. Only John Gorton of Australia backed Heath’s conservative approach and the meeting ended with the issuing of a Declaration of Principles which included a commentary on the question of racial prejudice. The British rejected an initial Zambian draft which stipulated that, in order to demonstrate opposition to the politics of racial prejudice, members would ‘deny all regimes which practice them any assistance which would consolidate or strengthen them’.66 These words had too much currency as a thinly disguised attack on British policy towards South Africa to succeed. The finally agreed text stated, ‘No country will afford to regimes which practise racial discrimination assistance which in its own judgement directly contributes to the pursuit or consolidation of this evil policy.’67 While the allowance for nations to make their own judgements provided a suitable refuge from external interference in foreign policy matters, the denunciation of racism and the broader commitments to human rights did offer a more secure base for future discussions of Commonwealth policy. In the context of his distaste for multilateral interventions, this was a minor setback for Heath which was overshadowed by the events that occurred as the delegates began flying out of Singapore. The British Prime Minister was gratified by the news that the Ugandan military coup had prevented Obote from returning to Kampala. The future Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku, who attended the summit as an official, recalled Heath’s ‘virtually undisguised glee’ at the news.68 Heath’s cheerfulness found an echo in the relief expressed by Britain’s ambassador in Kampala who recorded ‘I had reached the end of the road with Obote’.69 Paradoxically, at the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) Heath would seek to exploit the Declaration of Principles, which he had opposed at Singapore, in order to condemn the Amin regime, which he had welcomed in January 1971; and in doing so, he would finally find himself aligned with the exiled Obote.

Amin’s Repression and the CHOGMs Whereas Obote was a peripheral figure in Britain during the 1960s, in the 1970s Amin became a familiar presence in the media and a subject of discussion and ridicule among the wider public. Much of the coverage was tinged with racism but the serious journalism that exposed the atrocities of the military government was important in placing public pressure on the Heath government to abandon its early support for Amin. Although human rights abuses were reported in the immediate

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aftermath of the Ugandan coup, it was not until the expulsion of the country’s Asian population, which was announced in August 1972 and completed by November, that the Heath government reversed its diplomatic course. The British government claimed international credit for their generosity in providing refuge to many of those who fled but Yumiko Hamai has pointed out that their policy was to do the minimum necessary to meet international legal obligations.70 While some of the refugees had British passports, many others did not, and Heath made it clear in his minutes of the day that, while they were obliged to allow residency to those in the former group, ‘we will not accept a single one of the others’.71 In dealing with those who were legally stateless, the onus was placed on other countries, including Canada, India, the United States and Switzerland, to provide a haven for the refugees.72 Outrage at these events triggered a campaign to suspend Uganda from the Commonwealth. On 19 December 1972, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, declared Amin to be a ‘black Hitler’ and asked Home if he was willing to ‘make it plain to our Commonwealth partners that, so long as the Commonwealth professes to be non-racial, Uganda under its present leadership, is unlikely to be a welcome partner in that organisation for very much longer’. Home offered the insipid reply that Ugandan affairs would be discussed at the next Commonwealth summit.73 Privately, he suggested sending a message to the Commonwealth Secretary-General expressing the British Government’s desire for some formal condemnation of Amin. Foreign Office officials advised against this proposal on the grounds that it was likely be interpreted as an unwelcome reminder of past British paramountcy and because they had always opposed extending the powers of the Secretariat to interfere in controversial matters. By the middle of February 1973 the idea had been dropped.74 Preparations for the next CHOGM in Ottawa were made turbulent by news reports detailing the violence of Amin’s regime and the diplomatic waters were made still more choppy by many other factors including the economic crisis in Britain, which prompted a closer examination of aid to Commonwealth countries, ongoing disagreements about racial questions, Britain’s entry into the EEC, poor personal relations between Conservative politicians and many African and Asian leaders, and a sense of disenchantment with Commonwealth affairs that Heath incarnated. In parliament the Labour MP George Cunningham urged that Uganda’s Commonwealth membership should be suspended before the summit began in order to avert the possibility of Heath sitting down with Amin at Ottawa.75 Unhelpfully for the government, this drew a response from Amin who suggested that if Cunningham’s suggestion was pursued he would make life uncomfortable for British expatriates in Uganda.76 In May, after months of diplomatic silence, Obote published accusations about the conduct of Uganda’s military regime. At a time when the extent of the atrocities was still difficult to gauge he estimated that 90,000 people had been killed and named many of the victims, including William Kalema, John Kakonge, Alex Ojera and Basil Bataringaya.77 Heath’s scepticism about the Commonwealth infected British planning for Ottawa. His main concern was how to prevent a public relations disaster in the event of Amin attending. Conservative ministers favoured an offensive strategy, which would placate domestic opinion even at the expense of good relations with the other Commonwealth states. As host of the conference Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, sent his

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foreign policy adviser Ivan Head around the Commonwealth to smooth the diplomatic waters prior to the summit. Head had first noticed Amin when attending the Ugandan independence celebrations and would later write a book about him.78 During his London stopover, the Foreign Office warned him that the British delegation would raise the question of Ugandan human rights abuses because if they ‘did not people in Britain would wonder what the Commonwealth was supposed to be about’. This assertion was not just for Canadian consumption and Foreign Office briefings were predicated on the notion that the tactics adopted in dealing with Amin would ‘necessarily be conditioned by presentational needs to Parliamentary and public opinion in this country’.79 Home predicted that there would inevitably be diplomatic ‘scraps’ and distilled the Ugandan situation to just four words: ‘Amin is a murderer.’80 He told Smith on 18 July that Amin was a ‘killer’ and that the conference ‘would not be an easy one if General Amin turned up’. In response, Smith suggested a conciliatory strategy. He correctly predicted that Amin would not attend and emphasized that the most difficult issue was the likely embarrassment for other African leaders who felt private criticism was more appropriate than public odium.81 By this stage the Commonwealth Secretariat had noted that officials in 10 Downing Street were giving a ‘negative’ impression to the press about the forthcoming meeting. Heath’s preference was to attend the conference for as few days as possible and to occupy whatever time he was obliged to spend in Ottawa chastising other governments for their underappreciation of past and present British generosity. The matter of the timetable proved particularly frustrating to Heath who pressed for a short meeting in September.82 When the majority of the other countries expressed a preference for August, Denis Greenhill, as the British representative in the discussions, stated that parliamentary business made this impossible.83 An even more pertinent consideration was that Heath intended to race his yacht Morning Cloud in the Fastnet Race, which took place in that month.84 Once August was confirmed Heath suggested he might absent himself for the second half of the conference.85 A further point of contention was the determination of Heath and Home, despite the reservations of Foreign Office advisers, to include Uganda as a separate agenda item.86 Smith’s memoirs suggest that British diplomacy was intended to lead to the expulsion of Uganda from the Commonwealth. He advised against this because the African leaders ‘would sense hypocrisy and racialism in the British attitude’. When, in one preparatory meeting, Smith tried to reassure Heath that the tide of Commonwealth criticism of Britain was abating, Heath tartly replied, ‘He hoped Mr. Smith was right. If he was not it would not make any difference.’ During the course of this ‘tightlipped conversation’, Heath also suggested that many other countries would envy the level of assistance which Britain provided to the Commonwealth.87 On the eve of the Ottawa CHOGM the Foreign Office were instructed to prepare statements that would enable Heath ‘to say something about all that Britain has done develop Uganda from the primitive state the area was in when we first colonised the territory’.88 In order to sustain relations with the Commonwealth Secretariat amidst this acrimony, the head of the Foreign Office’s East Africa section, Martin Le Quesne, told one of Smith’s lieutenants that Heath had not assimilated advice that pressing the Amin issue could be counter-productive. He explained that talk of expelling Uganda was ‘a political compulsion for Heath’; with the matter of white settler rule in Rhodesia no doubt in mind, Le Quesne added that

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‘on almost every point concerning African affairs the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary realised that his personal views were noticeably to the left of theirs [but that] he and the other senior officers of the FCO had to pay attention to maintaining their credibility with Ministers’. Heath’s irritability was partly determined by the success of institutional reforms which had robbed the British of their ability to control the agenda or timing of summits or to prevent Commonwealth leaders using them as a platform for anticolonial critique. It was a relief to all parties that Uganda’s delegation to Ottawa was led by the tactful Foreign Minister, Paul Etiang, rather than by Amin, but this did not prevent an airing of grievances. It is difficult to comprehend what kind of encounter Heath might have had with Amin but it may well have been sufficiently bitter to generate a Commonwealth schism. Instead, Amin delivered the speech he had intended for the ears of the Commonwealth leaders in Ottawa on Ugandan radio instead.89 His message from Kampala demonstrated that, despite evidence of widespread governmental disorganization, the Ugandan bureaucracy was still capable of fashioning anticolonial barbs and of directing them at the most sensitive parts of the British establishment’s diplomatic armour. On the subject of colonial history, Amin reminded his audience that the British had brought indentured Indian labourers to Uganda and were therefore responsible for the class and demographic conflicts that led to the Asian refugee crisis. Turning to wider foreign policy questions, he noted the controversial character of Britain’s support for migrants from Europe to Palestine and Southern Rhodesia. On the matter of Heath’s diplomacy, attention was drawn to the encouragement the Conservatives offered to denigratory press coverage of Uganda and to the contrast this offered with the treatment accorded to Portugal, whose Prime Minister had been granted a state visit to the UK, even while his armies were conducting imperial wars in Africa. The overarching theme of Amin’s speech was that the perquisites of sovereignty now applied to the former colonial territories as well as to the former colonial masters and that Uganda would utilize them to protect its own interests. The final sentence read: ‘Lastly we in Uganda recommend that if the Commonwealth has got to continue, the respect of the sovereignty of each member State has got to be strictly observed in accordance with the Commonwealth declaration.’90 In his counterattack on 8 August, Heath shifted attention away from concepts of sovereignty and the equality of nations and on to those sections of the Singapore Declaration that condemned racial prejudice. He argued that, in contrast to British efforts to promote racial harmony, Amin had callously exploited antagonisms between Indians and Africans. Some delegates offered a degree of sympathy for Heath’s arguments. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania endorsed the idea that Amin was practising racialist politics. By contrast, speaking on behalf of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi suggested that in the framing of its immigration policies the British government was more racist than Amin. For Nigeria, Gowon split the difference between Tanzania and Kenya by suggesting that the row was a bilateral matter for Uganda and Britain to resolve.91 Despite his failure to score a decisive victory on the matter before the Commonwealth delegates, Heath’s performance was sufficiently assertive to prevent an upsurge of criticism in the British press or in parliament. Preparations for the Kingston CHOGM in 1975 were less fraught than those for Ottawa because most observers, including the Foreign Office, expected that Amin

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would not attend and press interest in Ugandan affairs had abated to some degree. Furthermore, Wilson had now returned to office and was regarded as a much more sympathetic figure than Heath by other Commonwealth leaders. Conditions had changed again by 1977. Once it was decided to hold a CHOGM in London to coincide with the Queen’s silver jubilee, the question of what to do about Amin became ever more perplexing to the organizers. The metropolitan processions and provincial street parties which accompanied the royal celebrations offered reassurance to conservatively minded Britons amid the rising tide of domestic and international turbulence, but it was not entirely possible to insulate the jubilee from the loud, disturbing echoes of deindustrialization and decolonization. At home, punks were on street corners and the sound of John Lydon’s raucous rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’ could not be entirely muffled by the band of the Grenadier Guards, whilst abroad Idi Amin incarnated a particularly disturbing version of post-colonial disorder. The murder of Janani Luwum and the issuing of another condemnatory ICJ report about Uganda formed an ominous backdrop to Anglo-Ugandan relations during preparations for the summit. Just a month prior to the meeting Amin informed Ramphal that he intended to bring a party of 250, including a troupe of dancers, to London. If his chosen destination of St. Ermin’s hotel in Westminster had insufficient space, he suggested, then the entire delegation might stay at Buckingham Palace instead.92 Subversive interventions of this kind were grist to the mill of the British press but it was not always clear who was satirizing who or where the butt of the joke lay. John Bird’s record of disobliging impersonations of Jomo Kenyatta laid the groundwork for Alan Coren’s preoccupation with issuing voluminous ‘bulletins’ as an ersatz Amin in the pages of Punch magazine. The racist stereotypes of British satirists were only one manifestation of the prejudices of post-war Britain but they contributed to an unwelcoming atmosphere for the visit to London of Commonwealth leaders, all of whom were conscious of the damage Amin had done to the image of Africa and the Commonwealth. In the months before the 1977 London CHOGM British politicians and officials were preoccupied with what the domestic press might say if Amin was shown the courtesies that the protocols of Commonwealth summitry might oblige them to offer. In solving the puzzles which Amin presented, Wilson’s government relied on a mixture of carefully calibrated and often disingenuous public rhetoric, backstage diplomatic manoeuvring and clandestine action to undermine Uganda’s military regime. In November 1976 the possibility of Amin’s travelling to London was aired in a meeting at the Foreign Office. It was suggested that, in considering such an eventuality, they ‘would have to exercise considerable ingenuity in evading questions in Parliament and elsewhere’.93 The press campaign began with a Daily Mirror article which appeared under the typical headline ‘Don’t Let Big Daddy Come In’; this sentiment was further abridged in The Sun when it offered the imperative ‘Ban Big Daddy’ two days later. The Foreign Secretary, Anthony Crosland, initially tried to appease public opinion by articulating the government’s distaste for Amin’s regime, while deferring to Commonwealth sensibilities by recognizing that, in the last resort, he was entitled to a seat at the table in conformity with the rules of the organization.94 This compromise was immediately tested to the brink of destruction by news of the murder of Janani Luwum. Two Labour MPs, Greville Janner and Ted Leadbitter, were vitriolic in their criticism

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not just of Amin but of the government’s failure to ban him from entering the country. Janner had two connections to Amin because he was a friend of Dora Bloch’s family and his constituency was in Leicester, where many of the Asian refugees from Uganda had settled. After declaring Amin a ‘genocidal maniac’ of the ‘Hitlerian’ stamp in a parliamentary speech on 1 March, Janner focused attentions on the knotty connections between the CHOGM and the jubilee, which the Foreign Office were attempting to untangle. With a reference to the presence of Asian refugees from Uganda in Leicester, he stated: ‘The thought of President Amin being allowed to come to this country sends shudders down my spine and down the backs of my constituents, who on this issue are united. It is monstrous that we should say that there is a distinction between allowing him to come into this country to see Her Majesty the Queen for the Silver Jubilee and allowing him in for the purpose of attending the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference.’95 In light of these backbench interventions, almost the first initiative of Crosland’s successor as Foreign Secretary, David Owen, was to suggest a strengthening of the public line against Amin but this was rejected outright by Wilson’s successor as Prime Minister, James Callaghan.96 During a trip to Canada, Callaghan chastised the press for obsessing about the question of Amin’s attendance and thus giving him the publicity that he wanted.97 Unfortunately for Callaghan and Owen, when the Conservative MP Michael Brotherton had the opportunity to introduce a motion to the Commons in May 1977 he chose as his subject Amin’s impending arrival. Owen was obliged to rehearse the ‘extremely delicate matter’ once again and make clear that Uganda would not be excluded from sending representatives, while suggesting that it would be better if Amin was not one of them.98 The motion, which proposed that Amin would be unwelcome, was passed but the oddity of the matter was that Callaghan and Owen had already secretly decided that if Amin tried to fly into the country he would be immediately flown out again.99 The final decision to disallow entry to Amin was motivated largely by domestic pressures but it was also the culmination of months of diplomatic fencing in which British policynakers had failed to reconcile their own preconceptions that Britain was primus inter pares within the Commonwealth and the absolute formal equality which the former territories of the empire were now demanding in their capacity as sovereign nation-states. As soon as planning for the conference began officials fretted over the possibility of a complete African boycott of the CHOGM in response to any attempt to prevent a Ugandan delegation attending. One much touted hope was that a Ugandan minister might come to London to act as a proxy for Amin at the conference.100 Such a ploy drew credence from the fact that Amin had not attended either the Ottawa or Kingston CHOGMs but it was far from squaring the circle formed by the principle that heads of state ought to be invited and Amin was a head of state. As Secretary-General, Ramphal, like Smith before him, regarded himself as the guardian of Commonwealth equity in this matter. He told Crosland in November 1976 that ‘his formal position must be that all heads of State should be invited but he recognised President Amin’s capacity to wreck the conference and steal the limelight with the press’.101 In a second conversation with Crosland two months later, Ramphal insisted there was ‘no way’ to persuade the Ugandans to send a less controversial figure as head of their delegation.102 Ramphal had already been vexed by press coverage of his visit to Uganda in 1976 and

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feared an overreaction in the British government to hostile newspaper coverage of the preparations for the summit.103 His discussions in Uganda had persuaded Ramphal that Amin was ‘a good Commonwealth man’.104 He was reportedly ‘nervous’ that any British move to exclude Amin would force African delegates back towards the politics of racial solidarity at the expense of Commonwealth amity. He told Owen that any talk of suspension ‘would be a dangerous road for Britain to embark on’ and that this scenario would cause ‘real anxiety’ among member states.105 Amin’s own correspondence with Ramphal demonstrated that he believed his two trump cards in the game of Commonwealth diplomacy were the shared colonial legacy of all the states other than Britain and the priority which these states gave to formal equality. His perception, Amin explained to Ramphal in one of the letters, was that ‘the British Government seems to believe that her former colonies which are members of the Commonwealth are inferior and can only attend the meetings when the British Parliament accepts to invite such countries’. He added that he ‘totally rejected any form of British imperialism in Uganda or any part of the world’. As an expression of his commitment to Commonwealth egalitarianism, Amin expressed his intention to offer the British government advice on domestic affairs including about what he claimed was the undue influence that Asians and Zionists were exerting over the British economy.106 Aside from his tendency to disseminate absurdities of this kind, some of the themes upon which Amin dwelt had resonance across Africa. His great problem was that Commonwealth tolerance of his regime had worn thin by 1977. Callaghan gave the former Commonwealth Secretary, George Thomson, the task of auditing views about Amin’s attendance during an exhausting two-stage international tour of fifteen Commonwealth countries in April and May 1977. As well as gathering an estimate of how many states were sufficiently alienated to endorse Amin’s exclusion, Thomson was also required to persuade any waverers that they should not regard AngloUgandan controversies as a potential breaking point at the summit. His assessments proved of decisive importance in the final decision to exclude Amin because he proved less pessimistic than Ramphal about the probable consequences of disallowing him entry. Thomson believed that the Australian delegation might refuse to sit at the same table as Amin and, at the other extreme, only Nigeria was likely to express any private hostility to the Ugandan President’s exclusion. The key danger was that public criticism of British policy might start an anticolonial bandwagon rolling that other African and Commonwealth states might feel obliged to join.107 When Thomson met with a small group of ministers on 19 May to make a final decision, Owen, as well as the Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, and the Lord President, Michael Foot, agreed that Amin should be kept out of the country but warned that the implementation of the decision ‘would pose very serious risks both to the CHGM and the Commonwealth itself ’.108 To ameliorate these dangers, a package of ancillary measures was necessary; the most important of these was that the decision to ban Amin should remain secret for as long as possible. In the interim, a final diplomatic initiative was undertaken to persuade Amin not to travel to London. After the meeting Owen informed Ramphal of the decision. Taking advantage of the growing importance of international Islamic solidarity in Ugandan foreign policy, the Saudis were employed as intermediaries to deliver a confidential letter from Callaghan to Amin on 26 May, which explained

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why it would be unwise of him to attempt to gain entry to Britain for the summit.109 Amin responded five days later with a letter to Ramphal which again highlighted the breach in Commonwealth protocols entailed by British highhandedness. He sought to place Callaghan’s missive in the context of the ‘two thousand mistakes made by Britain during her colonial rule’.110 Although Amin did not publish the text of the letter, Ugandan radio confirmed the existence of the exchange, while reiterating that the British were abusing their role as hosts and setting dangerous precedents for the future of the Commonwealth.111 The essence of Amin’s critique was that Britain was operating as a neo-colonial state and had he known of the backstage collusion in which the Callaghan administration was embroiled, he would have had a great deal of additional propaganda material in this vein. Alongside its efforts in public relations and diplomacy, the British government contemplated covert intelligence operations inside Uganda. Although the available documentation provides a fuller picture of this than was available at the time, the relevant files have been redacted and those belonging to the intelligence services have not been released at all. After piecing together what remains, the balance of probability appears to be that, in order to avoid the diplomatic crisis which would be caused by a confrontation with Amin at the airport, British agents or their proxies in Uganda were tasked with disseminating black propaganda to the effect that if Amin did travel he was likely to be overthrown in a coup. This disincentivizing possibility gained credence from the precedent set by the removal of Obote just as he was about to travel back from the Commonwealth summit in Singapore. Inevitably, clandestine operations of this kind were controversial in government and, in this instance, it was Callaghan who was most sceptical about the use of subterfuge, while a number of ministers and officials championed covert action. The first to raise the idea was Crosland. Just before his death, he suggested that the government should examine ‘private deterrents’, which might include promoting the impression that a coup was imminent in Uganda and that Amin would be in danger of some physical harm in Britain should he travel to the summit. Callaghan’s foreign affairs adviser, Tom McNally, favoured an exploration of these schemes but the Prime Minister ignored his advice and rejected the proposal in February 1977.112 After this initial setback, Foreign Office officials, most notably Beryl Chitty, continued to press the point that the majority of Commonwealth states would object to any overt attempt to keep Amin away and that such action ‘would endanger the future existence of the Commonwealth and would be damaging politically’.113 News of the death of Luwum increased both the likelihood of domestic protests and the attractiveness of any solution that would give the appearance that Amin had chosen not to attend of his own volition. In Cabinet Peter Shore questioned the decision to allow Amin to participate in the aftermath of the Archbishop’s murder but Callaghan reiterated the point that it was the responsibility of the Commonwealth Secretariat to invite heads of government to the conference.114 By early March Foreign Office advisers were predicting that Amin probably would attend the CHOGM because there was ‘enough assurance of internal stability to enable him to leave the country without undue risk’.115 The Minister of State, Ted Rowlands, insisted that the prospect of Amin visiting London in the midst of the silver jubilee was ‘untenable’. After a meeting on 15 March Antony Duff, the head of African affairs in the Foreign Office,

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requested a new paper on the subject. This rehearsed the options already aired by Crosland, namely the dissemination of ‘misinformation about a possible coup during his absence’ and ‘misinformation about a possible attempt on his life in this county’; in addition, a third, even more secret and subsequently redacted idea, which some unspecified ‘friends’ were contriving, was included as a further potential expedient.116 These subjects were addressed in a letter from 10 Downing Street written by Patrick Wright on 19 April, the contents of which have been withheld. From this point the documentary trail runs cold as the evidence in Prime Ministerial and Foreign Office files disappears entirely.117 The documents that are available demonstrate that there was strong support among ministers and officials in Callaghan’s government for a misinformation campaign in Uganda to stimulate fears of a coup replicating the events of 1971. On the basis of circumstantial evidence, it is likely that the British intelligence services conducted special operations in Uganda entailing, at a minimum, the dissemination of black propaganda regarding Amin’s prospects should he attend the summit. Despite the regular reiteration of official denials, the use of agents to undermine foreign governments was a means commonly used by successive post-war British governments to compensate for military decline and diplomatic weakness.118 The argument for this kind of action in 1977 was particularly compelling because a public confrontation with Amin at a London airport would have had potentially catastrophic consequences. Under the codename Operation BOTTLE, the Home Secretary had made plans to deploy anti-terror and special forces to bundle Amin out of the country, should he arrive by plane. If BOTTLE had been implemented, it would have posed a grave threat not just to the Commonwealth conference but to the lives of the remaining British expatriates in Uganda.119 In this instance, the absence of evidence is also revealing. Although the sort of historical interpolation which rests on the absence of evidence in order to infer the occurrence of events is usually bad scholarly practice, in this case the incomplete record is suggestive. Extant documents demonstrate that officials met to discuss covert action on 15 March and that the Prime Minister’s private secretary wrote a letter about the use of special operations to deter Amin on 19 April. All of the details have been erased. Lastly and most significantly, June 1977 was a time of turmoil inside Uganda. Press reports of unrest in the country were common during the eight years of military rule but it was unusual for newspapers to report on possible assassination attempts, or on the fact that Amin had gone missing entirely, as occurred during this period.120 According to journalists working for the South African magazine Drum the ominous silence about Amin’s movements was a response to a well-organized plot which nearly succeeded in killing him.121 In his first public speech after his reappearance, Amin declared that he had been enjoying a belated honeymoon and had captured the imperialist agents of the West who had tried to assassinate him.122 One final shred of evidence overlooked by the Foreign Office’s documentary pruners is the record of a meeting between David Owen and Kenyan Foreign Minister, Munyua Waiyaki, in which they discussed the secret history of attempts to overthrow or kill Amin at the exact time that rumours about such conspiracies were current.123 Even with these factors in mind, the question of whether British intelligence agents were implicated either in

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spreading rumours of an assassination plot or cooperated with others in an attempt on Amin’s life in June 1977 cannot finally be resolved without further evidence. Despite the intrinsic interest which attaches to this sort of intrigue, from the perspective of the history of the institution it is more important to assess Commonwealth reactions to overt British efforts to discourage Amin from attending than to resolve the indeterminacies associated with his June disappearance. Such an appraisal suggests that other Commonwealth nations were unwilling to allow British diplomats to reassert the privileges they had once exercised in Africa. Nigeria under Olusegun Obasanjo was the country most hostile to British efforts to exclude Amin. Obasanjo’s policy partly reflected official anger that one of his predecessors, Yakubu Gowon, had been granted exile in Britain, from where he continued to participate in the politics of military factionalism. Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, Joseph Nanven Garba, met Callaghan at the start of the London CHOGM and demanded to see the letter which he had sent to Amin. Although the Prime Minister attempted to appease him by insisting that he had acted in accord with advice received from Lagos, Callaghan refused to allow the Nigerians to see the text of the message which the Saudis had delivered.124 In a press conference on 10 June Shehu Yar Adua, the head of the Nigerian delegation, declared that it was inequitable and would set a bad precedent that ‘any one member of the Commonwealth should exclude another from the Commonwealth which was a free and independent association of countries’.125 While the Nigerian delegation drew on the concept of formal equality between members, the British emphasized other principles which were enshrined in the Singapore Declaration, which they had once criticised, including respect for human rights. The Foreign Office was keen to remind Callaghan that Heath had opposed the measure at Singapore and the other governments ‘will not have forgotten our attitude towards the Declaration’.126 However, the balance of forces had changed substantially since the days of the Heath government’s confrontation with Uganda over the Asian expulsions. The great tactical advantage which the British had in the London discussions was that many Commonwealth leaders now regarded Amin as an embarrassment to Africa, whose behaviour gave succour to the racist regimes of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Amin’s most outspoken critic was Kaunda. On his arrival in London he told television reporters, ‘As you know he worships Hitler; he has the same mentality. Those of us who condemn racism and fascism, which leads to the destruction of human life in southern Africa, must have the same moral strength to condemn the atrocities committed by that man.’127 Although not as outspoken as Kaunda, most of the other attendees were willing to countenance the denunciation of Amin for his brutal treatment of the Ugandan people. The final communiqué referred to the Singapore text and stated that the governments attending the conference ‘looked to the day when the people of Uganda would once more fully enjoy their basic human rights which were now being so cruelly dented’.128 By the time of the next CHOGM in Lusaka in 1980, Amin had been removed from power and the attendees returned once more to the issue that had consumed Commonwealth diplomacy for fifteen years and which had exercised Obote in the 1960s, namely the establishment of majority rule in Rhodesia. After that matter was resolved, it was in the interest of all parties to forget the threats of expulsion and withdrawal which had dominated the diplomacy of the 1960s and 1970s.

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Conclusion While Commonwealth diplomacy has often presented leaders of the newly independent states of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean with opportunities for domestic and international advancement, for British politicians multilateral discussions with the new nations of the old empire have been littered with potential pitfalls. Obote and his peers thought of the Commonwealth as a stage on which they could perform the affirming rituals of national foreign policy, but for Wilson, Heath and Callaghan engagement on a basis of equality with the territories over which Britain had once ruled was a potential reminder of how far Britain had fallen from its position of global pre-eminence. By the 1960s most of the imperial romantics in the mode of Leo Amery or Winston Churchill had left the political scene but public and media expectations remained problematic because equitable dealing with African leaders was commonly interpreted as further evidence of a loss of status. In the case of Uganda, while the British government initially applauded the replacement of the statesmanlike Obote with the unschooled Idi Amin, it was the latter who was most successful in exposing Britain’s post-colonial diplomatic dilemmas. Matters reached such a pass during preparations for the June 1977 Commonwealth summit that unorthodox methods had to be employed to prevent a diplomatic disaster. By contrast, in Africa the Commonwealth tended to enhance the autonomy and authority of nationalist governments. Obote’s regular attendance at summits was applauded in the Ugandan press, while the inordinate attention paid to the question of whether Amin would attend any of the CHOGMs made him a consequential figure in world affairs. This asymmetry in perceptions of Commonwealth diplomacy was intimately connected to questions about how institutions should conduct their business; in this regard, the study of the Commonwealth provides an illuminating contrast with other institutions fostered under colonialism. The legislature, the army, the press, trade unions and the Anglican Church in Uganda were all subject to elaborate regulation and their organizational structures were marked by the kind of complex tiered hierarchies which had taken shape in Britain. While the ethos of these domestic institutions was one of formalism, in the case of the Commonwealth the British prized informalism. The explicit justification for this was that it promoted friendliness in personal relations and flexibility in negotiations but the implicit rationale was that it denied other Commonwealth states any mechanism by which they could influence British policy. The determination to prevent the Commonwealth Secretariat taking on a substantial executive role, Heath’s irritable performance at Singapore and the general disapproval of Arnold Smith’s handling of affairs provide ample evidence of this defensive aspect of British thinking. In seeking to give greater shape to the management of Commonwealth affairs through the establishment of a secretariat and the Singapore Declaration of Principles, Obote and the other leaders from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean were shrewd enough to recognize that one of the keys to controlling and managing the empire had been the regulation and codification of institutions; now that they could conduct an independent foreign policy, such methods could be turned to diplomatic advantage. Within the Commonwealth framework, politicians and officials from Uganda had an opportunity to practise on the British government what they had been taught by decades of colonial control.

8

Conclusion

In the early 1970s, the critic and writer Taban lo Liyong composed an essay enumerating ‘Twenty-Two Confusions about the Future of Africa’. Having previously exposed what he claimed to be the barrenness of East African literature, he turned, on this occasion, to the aridity of continental politics. Lo Liyong was familiar with Ugandan affairs and much of his analysis, including his reference to the role of soldiers in African coups and the pressing need for multi-party democracy, was pertinent to developments since Idi Amin’s 1971 victory. While some of the ‘Confusions’ identified seemed primarily designed to sustain his reputation as a contrarian, when lo Liyong turned to the question of institutions he made comments which resonated into the future. Rather than expressing disinterest in institutions, he noted that Africans had a ‘mania’ for establishing them; this energy, he suggested, emanated from the influence of ‘our external instigators who might have thought our institutions would be animated by the spirits within the institutions, that they forced upon us’.1 This reference to the numerous African institutions created at the end of empire offers a useful counterpoint to past preoccupations about the failure, in the abstract, of institutionalisation but lo Liyong’s text did not resolve the matter of how best to characterize the ‘spirits’ in which imperialists exported European social and political models or how the African ‘us’ was to be defined. This final audit of the Ugandan parliament, army, Anglican Church, press, trade unions and the Commonwealth may help to clarify the first of these questions. To put the argument in its essence, the general character of late colonial institution-building was formalist and the institutions themselves were fabricated from self-serving and utilitarian adaptations to British cultural models. They did not emerge from a fusion of European and African cultural identities but were hybrids in the sense that the colonial contrivances added to serve the purposes of British decolonization generated variations from the original prototypes. If, as Sarah Stockwell has suggested, metropolitan institutions retained their liberal and autonomous character at home as the empire dissolved, then their imperial manifestations constituted a dark mirror in which some resemblances could be discerned but in which the shade cast by powerful colonial executives produced a sombre and incongruous image.2 After elaborating on these themes in the first half of this conclusion, the second half will address the nature of the African ‘us’ conjured up by lo Liyong. If history in this instance cannot provide a comprehensive ontological accounting, it can at least give a sense of the nature of African reactions. The notion of a collective response to institution-

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building is warranted by the possibility of identifying some common themes: almost all Ugandans who were affected by the emergence of new institutions identified the inconsistencies between British practices at home and abroad and recognized that institutional politics could be either detrimental or beneficial to their sectional or individual interests. Most then followed British precedents by calibrating their views and attitudes towards institutions on the basis of instrumental calculations. For a few, these utilitarian considerations required the perpetuation of the status quo; for many, they necessitated resistance; and for still others, the most judicious course was the fostering of moderate or radical reform. Once the sum of all these estimates was made, Ugandan institutions were left to serve the narrow ambitions of groups and individuals rather than any wider national or transnational purpose.

Auditing Uganda’s institutional infrastructure British officials and politicians sometimes claimed that the efficient and technocratic administration of institutions could somehow levitate above the grubby mundanities of political conflict. One wartime Governor of Uganda, Charles Dundas, encapsulated the apolitical function of parliaments under this implausible dispensation: ‘There was no politics; the members of the Legislature held it to be their duty only to advise and devise for the good of the country without distinction of race interests.’3 If nothing else, the election of nationalists to the Legislative Council forced the strategists of British decolonization to recognize the realities of agonistic politics. The rowdy debates which ensued as government officials were replaced by politicians in the newly enlarged parliaments of Anglophone Africa made them appear more like the democratic assemblies of Europe. Elaborate rules of parliamentary procedure were imposed in order to constrain the conduct of elected representatives. In close imitation of the Westminster model, a small cadre of unelected clerks were empowered to orchestrate debates and divisions. The design and appurtenances of the Ugandan parliamentary chamber visibly resembled the House of Commons and were intended to accommodate confrontational two-party politics. Those sitting on the opposing benches were chosen through a system of constituency elections which also followed British practice. While the organization of Uganda into electoral units was familiar to colonial administrators, they tinkered with the system when political expediency demanded it. Significant constitutional adaptations included unicameralism, nomination, qualitative franchises and secondary voting. In Uganda a unicameral system was adopted and the system of nomination became integral to ensuring that the executive had a majority willing to pass the laws on which the orderly politics of decolonization purportedly depended. Although the practice of nomination persisted in British politics, it applied solely to the House of Lords, which had been effectively neutered by the middle of the twentieth century. More striking still as a variation from the British model were the formal innovations designed to prevent the invasion of the chamber by rabble-rousing politicians and the most significant of these were electoral colleges, which required secondary voting. This experiment was tried on the assumption that, in combination with restrictions on the franchise that had long been abandoned in the metropolis, it might filter out radical

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candidates whether they represented Ganda reaction or radical African nationalism. It was ended only because it failed to keep out critics of government in local and provincial elections, most especially in the case of the Lukiko in Buganda, where indirectly elected representatives persisted in their challenge to British entitlements. Although the election of party politicians to the Ugandan legislature came late, it still predated the appointment of Ugandan officers to the higher reaches of the professional army. In both cases the institutional hierarchies of the organizations were directly borrowed from the methods which had developed in Britain over a period of centuries. While the Ugandan parliament only required a small number of officials, the country’s army needed hundreds of NCOs and officers to assume traditional British military ranks. The mismatch between the expansion in the number of Ugandan recruits and the availability of trained captains, lieutenants and colonels to lead companies, battalions and regiments was a key feature of the country’s martial history after 1945. This departure from British norms regarding command readiness was rooted in the racist presuppositions of colonialism. Black soldiers were excluded from the officer ranks until the very brink of independence had been reached. Even a politician such as Grace Ibingira, who was relatively sympathetic to Western practices, looked back ruefully on this legacy of colonialism. He suggested that if the British ‘had trained an officer corps of educated Ugandans to lead the army, even if only in the last five years of their sixty-eight year rule in Uganda, there would have been no room for an Amin in the officers rank when Uganda gained independence in October 1962’.4 The failure to train a new cohort of African officers in preparation for independence reflected the misapprehensions of civil and military authorities who believed that the transition to political independence would take longer than it did and that afterwards a further period of military dependency would ensue. The other signal aspect of the military history of Ugandan decolonization also marked a key difference with metropolitan history. While the British army were being carefully removed from their nineteenth-century Peterloo role of domestic policing, Ugandan soldiers were repeatedly deployed to counter political protests inside the country’s borders. Whether patrolling the streets of Kampala, attacking cattle raiders in Karamoja or fighting with rebels demanding autonomy in the west, first the King’s African Rifles and then the Ugandan army were frequently in conflict with civilians in the years between the wartime deployment to Burma and the military coup of 1971. The escalation of violence after 1962 cannot be separated from the colonial legacy as the Rwenzururu campaign amply demonstrated. While the internal policing role of the British army had atrophied in the metropolis, it continued in Uganda. The ongoing role of Britishofficered forces against insurrectionists after independence parallels the similar postimperial role they played in countries such as Jordan, Oman and Malaysia. Confidence that this militarization of Ugandan life could be constrained by the disciplines of the traditional British regimental system was misplaced. Once the military was given responsibility for maintaining domestic order, a professional culture of subordination did not prevent, and may have done much to enable, the use of extreme violence against civilians during the 1960s and 1970s. New recruits to the Ugandan army had a less demanding task learning British practices of martial conduct than trainees for the Anglican ministry who were

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required to master an elaborate theology. The most radical doctrinal discontinuities with the African past introduced to Uganda by Anglican Protestants were the association of worldliness with sinfulness and an ancillary Erastian ideology which necessitated submission to political authority. These notions hardened a previously barely identifiable distinction between the mundane and the material, on one side, and the godly and spiritual, on the other. This Christian break with immanent, pantheist ideas was resisted by many Ugandans. Yoweri Museveni, who embraced evangelicalism in the 1960s, later concluded that the meekly apolitical doctrines urged upon him by pastors served the clandestine ideological purposes of pacifying the poor and inhibiting criticism of the powerful.5 For others, Christian worship was readily and permanently incorporated into their daily lives. In all cases institutionalization of the Church of Uganda and its doctrines yielded significant consequences. Establishment Protestants of the Church emulated the British pattern of essential loyalty to the state and government combined with a circumscribed tolerance of political and theological dissent from individual ministers and parishioners. They were a group with their own sectional interests and priorities and, in offering a model of collaboration between metropolitan envoys, such as missionaries, and Ugandan elites, became useful allies of the colonial state. While a degree of tolerance was occasionally exercised for behaviour that would have been regarded as irregular in a European context, most notably polygamy, the trend was towards conformity to Western spiritual practices. As an institution the Anglican Church prioritized opposition to traditional belief systems, now reconceptualized as pagan heresies, rivalry with Catholicism and antipathy to communism. All of these were consistent with the priorities of the British Colonial Office. Beyond the political consequences of theological doctrine, the elaborate organizational form of the Church generated other narrowly utilitarian forms of conflict. After the initial period of evangelization conducted by missionaries and converted chiefs, the Church authorities imposed the familiar ecclesiastical hierarchy whose most important feature was the diocese. The establishment of a new episcopal geography transferred spiritual power from familiar neighbourhoods to distant cathedra and the eagerness of Ugandan churchmen to tighten the network of dioceses by increasing the number of bishops was rooted in a desire to return to more local forms of worship. Bishop Lutaya’s long, bitter conflict with many of his parishioners in West Buganda provided ample demonstration of the failure of the Anglican Church to moderate the resentments and rivalries that its organizational forms had inculcated. Just as Ugandan clergymen were expected to know how to organize a church service which conformed to Western models, Ugandan newspapermen were supposed to understand what a newspaper should look like and what it should and should not contain. Thought of narrowly in terms of the expectations of design, surprisingly little separated the Uganda Argus from vernacular newspapers like Gambuze or Uganda Eyogera. Copies of each generally comprised six to twelve pages with the text arranged in columns and interspersed with photographs and advertisements. According to British colonial critics of the vernacular press what distinguished the Argus was the care which its editors and staff took to compartmentalize news and comment. Mark Barrington-Ward and Charles Harrison could be depended upon to restrict their views to a daily column written by the editor, or his proxy, and to set one or two

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authored opinion pieces alongside letters from readers to provide a range of views. The remainder of the newspaper was filled with reporting delivered in the judicious style of The Times. What this kind of analysis deliberately disregarded was the complex politics of news gathering and editing which slanted newspapers towards particular stories and particular interpretations. In the case of the Argus the apparently disinterested accumulation of copy masked the role of colonial government and intelligence agencies in inspiring editorials and sponsoring news stories. As well as being designed to conceal the intimate relations between journalism and politics, the purported objectivity of the Argus was intended to provide a model against which the local press could be judged a failure. The colonial state employed threats and persuasion to steer the vernacular press away from its anticolonial orientation. When informal measures failed, the government was prepared to ban newspapers and rusticate or imprison editors. The hebdomadal irritations caused by opinionated newsmen, such as Yusufu S. Bamuta, Constantine Musoke and Joseph Kiwanuka who were unabashed in allowing their personal prejudices to seep across every page of every issue, were regarded as so degenerate as to require a larger measure of state intervention than was practised in Britain. Under these constraints, as the Ugandan journalist Jim Occitti later noted, ‘it was not surprising that journalism, though having emerged by now as an attractive and prestigious profession, was one of the most difficult under colonial rule’.6 The adversities experienced by Ocitti’s predecessors also drew the attention of British reporters and proprietors who echoed the criticism of double standards made by Ugandan newsmen. The early history of the press and trade unions in Uganda had some common features. Just as vernacular newspapers were chastised for not reporting the news, the first trade unions were labelled illegitimate because they were preoccupied with political matters at the expense of managing labour disputes. In both cases regulation, with the threat of imprisonment for errant functionaries, served as a means of enforcing discipline but the colonial government was hesitant to prosecute because overt suppression threatened to expose discrepancies with British practices and attract the attention of metropolitan and international critics. In the case of labour, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) was alert to colonial inconsistencies and their scrupulousness on such matters was particularly irritating to colonial administrators, especially once they were able to send envoys to their labour college in Kampala. Despite the neurotic reaction of Crawford and his staff to the arrival of ICFTU teachers and organizers, the criticisms made of Ugandan labour policy by international organizations were muffled beneath the stentorian and hectoring tones of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC). When despatched to Uganda trade unionists like Bert Lewis demonstrated an unmatched passion for the British institutional model before becoming exasperated with local resistance to their way of doing things. Despite the small pool of wage labourers, the first generation of trade unionists were expected to organise on a sectoral basis rather than to form general unions and this inevitably led to fragmentation. The elaborate regulations that unions were required to adopt and administer also hindered aspirant trade unionists. Attempts at indigenous institutional innovation almost always led to conflict and the greatest paradox in the otherwise unyielding application of the British model was the determination to prevent trade unions from assuming a political

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role as they had in the metropolis. Although the requirement for detailed regulation of labour affairs is explicable as a matter of cultural predispositions, the history of the Labour Representation Committee as the progenitor of one of Britain’s two major political parties was a matter to be forgotten in countries such as Uganda. Jim Brandie pressed on the local TUC the urgent requirement ‘to formulate the basis of a sound trade union movement’ as a means to insulate labour politics against the apparently inevitable rise of political demagogues.7 In this spirit of fretful anticipation, the Uganda Motor Drivers Association, which constituted the first attempt by Ugandans to form a local blue-collar union, was judged wanting and banned. In many respects trade unions were the institutions upon which the British imprint was deepest. The attempt to enforce a strict separation between the industrial relations of different sectors of the economy and national political affairs was a further marker of the significance of formalism in the institutional infrastructure of decolonization. This formalism was manifest in the prevailing concepts, organizational structures and rules which guided institution-building in colonial Uganda. Conceptions of what an institution should be prescribed the relations that should obtain within institutions, between them and with the state. The British strategists of decolonization favoured compartmentalization in order to maintain institutional autonomy. Fixed and inflexible demarcations were justified as a means to protect the army, the church and the unions from the vagaries of national politics but this was a rationalization; the purpose of the very thick lines dividing executive government and institutional politics was to insulate the colonial state from domestic dissent, rather than to protect institutions from state intrusion. Journalists, soldiers, clergymen and trade unionists should abstain from political causes in order to enable the orderly management of state affairs by a technocratic elite in the sheltered environment of Executive Council or Cabinet. Such ideas were made explicit in the Erastian doctrine propagated by Anglican Protestants but they were evident too in the discourse that enabled officials to denigrate the products of the vernacular press as ‘viewspapers’ and in the attempt to purge trade unions of leaders with political ambitions. Left to dangle in the abstract sphere of political theory these concepts would have had limited impact but the complex, hierarchical and segmented organizational structures configured during the last years of empire engraved a politics of subordination into institutions. This was the sphere where there was greatest congruence between the established metropolitan culture and the process of colonial institution-building. The national parliament, Anglican dioceses and military command structures of late colonial Uganda were thoroughly familiar in a British context and their wholesale export to the imperial periphery was celebrated as an expression of triumphant universalism. Although such forms might have first flourished in Britain, colonial officials were confident they could have an improving effect wherever they were implanted. When rooted in colonial ground, the elaborate hierarchies of the army, the church and the trade unions served two purposes: they offered models of subordination intended to smother protest from below and, by giving hope of social and economic advance to aspirant members, they functioned as a vent for energies which might otherwise be spent in the field of anticolonial nationalism. Organizational emulation did not, however, entail exact replication. Colonial circumstances required hybridity and the

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divergence from metropolitan practices was evident from the larger measure of formal regulation applied to Ugandan institutions. Complex rules were contrived to conform with the strategy of decolonization. For example, British hesitation in applying the metropolitan system of universal adult suffrage to Ugandan parliamentary elections led to the adoption of complicated electoral colleges and elaborate qualifications for the franchise. The permissive regime in which the British press operated was thought to be unmanageable in Uganda and coercive sedition laws were employed against the vernacular press. Dissident trade unionists were weeded out in a similar manner through the strict requirements for registration and the empowerment of a registrar to police the boundary between industrial relations and nationalist politics. The propagation of formalism was a means of managing decolonization and the nature of these relations was exposed by the contrasting manner in which international affairs was conducted after the end of empire. Power was not distributed in the same way in the Commonwealth as it was in the colonial setting of Uganda and it was for this reason that the British were opposed to greater formality in its affairs. As an international institution in which one European imperial power was outnumbered by numerous former colonies, the Commonwealth appeared vulnerable to the rise of anticolonial firebrands. While British Governors were confident they could prevent Ugandan institutions falling prey to political agitators by the enforcement and imposition of codes and structures, British diplomats could not directly impose their will on the newly independent member states of the Commonwealth. The maintenance of informality in that organization was regarded as a boon because it served British interests. During the 1950s the intangible force of precedent and deference accorded Britain a much larger role in the organization’s affairs than any of its other members. Formal innovations which would intrude on the exercise of British paramountcy were regarded as unwelcome by statesmen and officials in Westminster and Whitehall. Once the entry of numerous African and Asian states laid open the possibility of greater radicalism in Commonwealth affairs, the discourse of clubbiness and amiability was promoted as a means to inoculate the organization against anticolonial infection. As an exceptionally shrewd politician with an innate scepticism about British probity, Milton Obote accurately interpreted the relationship between informality and the exercise of influence. Where British statesmen saw a threat, he saw an opportunity. Obote and his African peers believed that the redesign of institutional structures, including the establishment of an independent secretariat and the formulation of rules of conduct, would make the Commonwealth a more congenial forum for nationalist politicians from the old imperial periphery. Once a SecretaryGeneral was in place and a declaration of principles was promulgated, it was easier to corner the British government over matters such as the sale of arms to South Africa. Ted Heath’s undisguised pleasure at Obote’s overthrow in the aftermath of the 1971 Commonwealth summit provides an indication of accumulated British resentment about the shifting balance of power. The Amin coup proved that Obote had failed in his efforts to grapple with the domestic institutional inheritances of decolonization. Along with many other Ugandans, he had believed that colonial institutions could be adapted for national purposes but he had not challenged the narrow instrumentalism inculcated before 1962.

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Ugandan trajectories Measured in terms of the ups and downs of institutional life, the trajectories of the Ugandan national parliament, army, Anglican Church, the press and trade unions were broadly similar. Each had achieved a measure of success by 1962. Trade unions had made the least progress in entrenching their influence and the army and church, whose origins stretched back furthest into the colonial period, had shown the most, but all of them had found significant constituencies within Uganda that had an interest in perpetuating their influence. Even before independence, they were subject to challenge as imperial contrivances likely to perpetuate neo-colonial influence. During the very final years of imperial rule and the early years of independence, critics questioned whether institutions could be redesigned to suit the purposes of liberation. By the final years of the Obote era, the Church, the press and the trade unions were all under suspicion as potentially subversive forces under foreign direction, while the army and the legislature appeared to be in conflict with one another. During the Amin era the power of the army emasculated that of all other domestic institutions. Even the Commonwealth followed a similar pattern with a spate of enthusiasm in the moment of independence followed by a growing scepticism and a final period of disillusion and then irrelevance. As this chronology suggests, Ugandan reactions to institutionbuilding varied and the fate of each institution rested on the balance of forces between protagonists and antagonists. The protagonists can be subdivided between the mimetic enthusiasts, who hoped to replicate Western traditions as closely as possible, and the modifiers, who believed that some artful alterations to inherited designs might make them fit for the era of independence. The antagonists may also be divided between meliorists and diehards. The meliorists overlapped with the modifiers to the extent that they were willing to engage in reform rather than abolition but they adumbrated a politics of toleration rather than encouragement. Diehard critics of colonial institutions were convinced that Ugandan circumstances were so different from those of Britain that it was imprudent and unjustifiable for them to be exported. What most of these groups had in common was a habitude of utilitarian calculation, which was inherited from the colonial progenitors of these institutions. Personal enthusiasm for institutions, or the lack of it, was determined by the likely impact that such organizations would have on the economic, social and political prospects of particular individuals and their key allies among different ethnicities and classes. Cultural misunderstandings played an insignificant role. Broadly speaking both institutional pioneers from outside Uganda and the Ugandans who adopted, adapted or rejected these new forms understood institution-building as a strategic game which had to be played carefully. Obote and Amin were the most prominent examples of Ugandans who, for a time, played the game successfully. If a Western-style army and a Western-style parliament had never been introduced to Uganda, it is unlikely that anybody outside of their localities would have heard the names of Idi Amin and Milton Obote. A comparison of their attitudes to the institutions that fostered their careers gives some sense of the differences between the mimetic and modificatory approach. For the illiterate and unschooled Amin, British martial culture, where assertive character was valued and ersatz sophistication

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disparaged, offered opportunities for advancement that were unavailable anywhere else. He ascended through the non-commissioned ranks and was eventually made an effendi on the basis of his enthusiastic embrace of the written and unwritten codes of the King’s African Rifles. Amin’s anticolonial critique was reserved for the political and economic legacy of empire. Even when preparing for economic warfare with Britain, his affection for all aspects of British militarism was undimmed. Amid the chaos of his years in office, Amin continued, often unsuccessfully, to try and uphold the traditions of the institution that had borne him upwards through the ranks of Ugandan society. One of the few surviving shards of paperwork from the highest levels of his government in the Ugandan National Archives attests to Amin’s enthusiasm for martial imitation. During a Cabinet meeting devoted to the discussion of budgets and governmental security, Amin announced his intention to dress one regiment of the Ugandan armed forces, and its regimental band, in kilts.8 It was often those who, like Amin, were at the margins of Ugandan society that were alive to institutions as vehicles for self-advancement. Some women and some of the working class were able to take advantage of these opportunities. A handful of female politicians achieved national prominence in Parliament including Sugra Visram who, as an Indian woman, campaigned on the same kind of feminist issues that were being debated by politicians such as Barbara Castle in Westminster. Despite their exclusion from ministry, female Protestant parishioners, such as Rebecca Mulira, played a significant role in Anglican affairs by imitating the tropes of respectability associated with churchgoing in Britain. Generally, the women who seized on institutional opportunities were highly educated. The urbanized working-class minority, who were frequently cast to the margins of Uganda’s politics, were also able to obtain some success by entering institutions. Even in a society with a relatively small cadres of wage-earners, trade unions, closely modelled on those of Britain, scored some material victories. As Frederick Cooper noted, ‘African workers forced colonial planners who wanted to think about development to think instead about the labour question.’9 The drivers, inspectors and station staff of the East African Railways, in somewhat fragile alliance with clerical workers, achieved better pay and conditions than non-unionized employees by strike action of a kind familiar in post-war Britain. Obote’s skills and predispositions fitted into the national parliament almost as snugly as Amin’s did into the army: his articulacy, adaptability and cleverness enabled him to thrive in the competitive, highly structured and regulated environment of a Western-style legislature. Success in this context depended on rhetorical fluency and a command of complex institutional rules. Like Amin he prized the experience that had carried him upwards but, unlike Amin, he was rather more eager to modify those practices that appeared unsuited to Uganda. When in 1968 his acolytes organized a ten-hour barbecue and dance to celebrate his decade in Parliament, Obote took the opportunity to propose ideas for institutional reform. Noting that many Ugandans wanted to ape the Westminster model in every exactitude, he distinguished himself from these cultural conservatives by quoting an unnamed parliamentarian who had told him, ‘Parliament must be an expression of public will and an instrument which has to be indigenous to the soil and climate of opinion in which it functions.’ Among the unimplemented reforms he aired at the barbecue was the abandonment of

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English as the sole means of communication in Parliament.10 Local adherents of other institutions also sometimes bemoaned the inflexibility of Western institutional forms and promoted Africanization as a solution. For example, the balokole challenged the stiffness of British modes of worship from within the church. They were followed by the even more radical iconoclasts among the Trumpeters. Their instruments and megaphones were used to question whether Anglican parishioners should listen to ordained priests or ordinary fellow Christians. Resting their claims on charismatic authority, the followers of Lubulwa exercised local, unofficial leadership without undergoing the training required by the ecclesiastical authorities. Joe Church described Lubulwa as an ‘ambitious man’ and commented: ‘Jealousy over leadership seemed to be at the back of this break-away.’11 Such an analysis was freighted with the prejudices of Western Christian mission, but Church’s concern that his own brand of revivalism might be outflanked by African rivals captures the competitive spirit of evangelism. Although qualified by scepticism, irritation and doubt, the Church and government tolerated religious radicals. This pragmatism can be attributed both to the existence of recognizable precedents for holy enthusiasm in European Christian history and to the fact that preternatural salvation was much more of a priority for Protestant radicals than seditious political activity. Both the colonial and post-colonial states were much more hostile to combative Ugandan journalists, especially when they gave their backing to ideological opponents of government. Editors such as Joe Kiwanuka utilized the press as a platform for political campaigning and personal advancement. They were unreceptive to sanctimonious hectoring about the need to keep editorial comment off the news pages. Just as churchmen would later seek assistance from fraternal institutions beyond Uganda’s frontiers in the 1970s, Uganda’s journalists found allies among proponents of press freedom in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s and then later across the world. Eventually such external influences contributed to the taming of the rowdy Ugandan press, as the wider international community of ownership and newsgathering imposed its own forms of orthodoxy. Nationalists were the most prominent of the meliorist critics of Western institutions: they recognized that one of the purposes of these organizational exports was to perpetuate foreign influence into the era of independence but did not foreclose the possibility that they might be adapted to meet local ambitions. What was required to obtain this reconfiguration was Africanization. Such matters were particularly urgent for the new unions established in the late colonial period, which were squeezed between the pressures exerted by the independent government and the international labour confederations. With encouragement from the Obote government, a handful of trade union activists, such as John Reich and James Ojambo, sought to restructure the movement on the basis of the nationalist ideology pioneered by Nkrumah in West Africa. Their aims were to establish close cooperation with the state and replace those leaders, most notably Humphrey Luande, who had been funded by British and American unions on condition that they cultivated the norms governing industrial relations in the West. By 1971 the activities of the labour movement had been curtailed by a combination of chronic factionalism, underfunding and legislative restriction. Amin’s nostalgia for the colonial legacy did not extend much beyond the army. He believed other Ugandan institutions were vulnerable to external subversion and

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promoted a concept of Africanization that extended from matters of personnel to policies and procedures. The Argus, for example, was transformed into the Voice of Uganda and the balance of its news coverage shifted from foreign towards domestic news. The legislature was abolished entirely and the Church of Uganda was cowed. The Commonwealth, for which both Obote and Amin demonstrated some initial enthusiasm, also became caught up in the tradition of anticolonial institutional critique. Obote contributed to reforms that strengthened the African voice in its affairs but, when Amin grew tired of his inability to reshape its politics to suit his purposes, he utilized the publicity that accompanied Commonwealth summitry to disseminate his grievances against British foreign policy. Conservatives proved the most intractable opponents of institutional innovation as evidenced by the actions of two groups: the neo-traditionalists of Buganda and the European and Indian settlers across the southern kingdoms. In both cases the innovations of the period appeared to jeopardize the advantages that accrued to economic elites through the operations of deferential cultural traditions on the one hand and unrestricted capitalist enterprise on the other. In offering a potential means of advance for some marginalized groups, institutions posed a threat to established interests. Of the many measures that were taken as an insult to Ganda traditions, the decision to build a new national parliament in Buganda was among the gravest because, as the Kabaka’s supporters insisted, they already had their own parliament in the shape of the Lukiko. Even though the Lukiko of mid-twentieth-century Buganda was much more a product of colonialism than of ancient African tradition, the privileges it assumed under the 1900 agreement were regarded as the most important defence for Buganda against encroachments from elsewhere in Uganda. Fears that the rise of national politicians would entail the fall of the Ganda elites proved entirely prescient as Obote’s attack on the Kabaka’s palace at Mengo demonstrated in 1966. The deep imprint of economic self-interest also influenced the institutional conflicts of the period. Employers’ groups were often successful in their acts of resistance to the organization of workers into trade unions. Nowhere was this more evident than in the areas of the countryside where commodity production had replaced food production. Conflicts between plantation workers and the European and Indian estate owners proved particularly rancorous; they also resonate into the present. Whereas contemporary resistance to unionization of the agrarian sector in Africa frequently implicates multinational corporations, in the 1950s and 1960s it was independent settlers who were unbending in their determination to prevent the organization of labour. The irreconcilability of the small European colony in Toro to trade unions during this earlier period constitutes important evidence that the economics of colonialism were not always tied to a project of modernization. Settler resistance to unionization was an ominous reminder of the impact which old practices of forced labour and indenture had pressed into the architecture of colonialism. Much of the strategy of decolonization was also tied to the perpetuation of old economic hierarchies and the effect of these efforts continued to ramify after 1962. Few historiographical questions have retained quite so much currency as the matter of whether political failure and economic underdevelopment in Africa are tied to the colonial legacy. Looking backwards at the wreckage of Uganda’s institutions in 1979

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the sins of those charged with civic, ecclesiastical and state leadership in the first two decades of independence, including Obote and Amin, loom large. To some degree this is a matter of parallax: the history of African dictatorship occupies a central position in contemporary controversies but, as we travel backwards in time, the infrastructure of decolonization moves from the margins of the panorama to a prominent intermediate position between the pre-colonial and post-independence eras. Delve yet further into early 19th century Ugandan history and these features recede to invisibility as a new landscape marked by other kinds of local, regional and transcontinental networks occupies the historian’s field of view. To thoughtful readers such an imaginative journey through Ugandan time may suggest one of two conclusions. Those who are persuaded that the European project generated a great deal of noise and activity without resonating deeply into African society will note that the late establishment of many of these institutions and their early ruin are further evidence that historians ought to take the longue durée as their means of orientation. What may strike others, and the thought that has animated the foregoing analysis, is that the transitionary period between colonialism and independence is rich in connections and colligations. In the case of institutions these years featured the refinement of new concepts that demarcated institutional roles and responsibilities, the configuration of hierarchical and segmentary organizational structures and the imposition of detailed regulations that constrained the conduct of citizens. The matter can be rendered in less abstract terms by returning to the inheritances of some of the Ugandan actors mentioned at the outset of the book. The journalist Ateker Ejalu assumed the editorship of a newspaper whose established ethos was one of service to executive power, the priest Erica Sabiti became the leader of a church riven by factionalism between and within dioceses and the trade unionist Humphrey Luande attempted to direct the labour movement amidst the cramping effects of tight governmental restrictions. The narrow formalism of the late colonial model was intended to ensure institutional subservience to executive power; it turned institutional management into a strategic game that many Ugandans became adept at playing. In his much-admired analysis of post-independence Africa, Paul Nugent expressed qualified scepticism about neo-colonialist arguments. ‘At the very least,’ he suggested, ‘the thesis should be able to identify specific areas in which old power relations were perpetuated, as well as mechanisms though which neo-colonial relationships were reproduced.’12 The institutional infrastructure of decolonization is one of the most important places to look for these connections.

Notes Chapter 1 1 Emeka Anyaoku, The Inside Story of the Modern Commonwealth (Ibadan, 2004), 29. 2 Bakama B. BakamaNume, ‘The Political Geography of Uganda’ in Bakama B. BakaNume (ed.), A Contemporary Geography of Uganda (DarEsSalaam, 2010), 185–209. 3 G. W. Kanyeihamba, Constitutional and Political History of Uganda (Nairobi, 2010), 9. 4 Shane Doyle, Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro: Population and Environment in Western Buganda (Oxford, 2006), 65. 5 A. B. K. Kasozi, The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda (London, 1994), 26–27. 6 Thomas Mockaitis, ‘The Minimum Force Debate: Contemporary Sensibilities Meet Imperial Practice’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 23/4–5 (2012), 762–780. 7 Michael J. Macoun, Wrong Place, Right Time: Policing at the End of Empire (London, 1996), 60–61; David Martin, General Amin (London, 1974), 18–20. 8 R. M. A. Zwanenberg & Anne King, An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda 1800–1970 (London, 1975), 108. 9 Jan Jelmert Jørgensen, Uganda: A Modern History (London, 1981), 108–111. 10 T. V. Sathyamurthi, The Political Development of Uganda (Aldershot, 1986), 11–12. 11 Jørgensen, Modern History, 107–109. 12 Sathyamurthi, Political Development, 35. 13 This is the term used by Parsons in his analysis of the military unrest. See Timothy H. Parsons, The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa (London, 2003), 137. 14 The Kabaka of Buganda, The Desecration of My Kingdom (London, 1967), 115. 15 Chad Rector, Federations: The Political Dynamics of Cooperation (London, 2009), ch. 6. 16 For an overview, see Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back?: The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Abingdon, 2005). 17 The Spectator, 2 February 2002, 14 [archive.spectator.co.uk, Accessed 24 June 2019]. 18 Two notable critiques of Western press coverage at the time are Renée Sabatier, Blaming Others: Prejudice, Race and Worldwide AIDS (London, 1989) and Richard Chiramuuta & Rosalind Chiramuuta, AIDS, Africa and Racism (London, 1989). 19 Samuel Okiror, ‘Minister Condemns Plans for Uganda’s First LGBT Centre as Criminal Act’, The Guardian, 9 October 2018 [theguardian.com, Accessed 12 April 2019]; Sarah K. Dreier, ‘Not All Christian Leaders in Africa Are Opposed to LGBTQ Inclusion’, Washington Post, 7 March 2019 [washingtonpost.com, Accessed 12 April 2019]. 20 General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait (1974), Dir. Barbet Schroeder, France: Le Figaro Films, 1974. 21 Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland (London, 1998); The Last King of Scotland (2006), Dir. Kevin Macdonald, USA: Fox.

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22 Evelyn Waugh, A Tourist in Africa (London, 1960); Elspeth Huxley, Forks and Hope: An African Notebook (London, 1964); Alberto Moravia & Angus Davidson, Which Tribe Do You Belong To? (London, 1974); Shiva Naipaul, North of South: An African Journey (London, 1978); Ryszard Kapuściński & Klara Glowczewska, The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life (London, 2001); Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland From Cairo to Cape Town (London, 2002); V. S. Naipaul, The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (London, 2012). 23 Doreen Baingana, Tropical Fish (Cape Town, 2005); Moses Isegawa, Abyssinian Chronicles (London, 2011); Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Kintu (London, 2018). These are the most readily accessible iterations. It is notable that the first editions were published outside Britain; in South Africa, the Netherlands and Kenya, respectively. 24 Patrick Walker, Towards Independence in Africa: A District Officer in Uganda at the End of Empire (London, 2009); Alan Forward, You Have Been Allocated Uganda (Poyntington, 1999); Andrew Stuart, Of Cargoes, Colonies and Kings: Diplomatic and Administrative Service from Africa to the Pacific (London, 2001); Douglas Brown & Marcelle Brown, Looking Back at the Uganda Protectorate: Recollections of District Officers (Dalkeith, WA, 1996). A good starting point amidst the growing secondary literature on the role of expatriate officials in Africa is provided by Christopher Prior, Exporting Empire: African Colonial Officials and the Construction of the Imperial State (Manchester, 2013). 25 Joanna Herbert, ‘The British Ugandan Asian Diaspora: Multiple and Contested Belongings’, Global Networks 12/3 (2012), 296–313; Emma Robertson, ‘“Green for Come”: Moving to York as a Ugandan Asian Refugee’ in P. Panayi & P. Virdee (eds), Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke, 2011), 245–267. 26 Robert H. Jackson & Carl G. Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa: Prince, Autocrat, Prophet, Tyrant (London, 1982). 27 Jean-François Bayart, ‘Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion’, African Affairs 99/395 (2000), 243. 28 David E. Apter, The Political Kingdom of Uganda: A Study of Bureaucratic Nationalism (London, 1961), 3. 29 Glenn H. McKnight, ‘Land, Politics and Buganda’s “Indigenous” Colonial State’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 28/1 (2000), 84. 30 Gardner Thompson, Governing Uganda: British Colonial Rule and Its Legacy (Kampala, 2003), 17, 343. 31 Ali Mazrui, Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda: The Making of a Military Ethnocracy (London, 1975). 32 Richard J. Reid, A History of Modern Uganda (Cambridge, 2017), 9. 33 Kasozi, Social Origins, 27. The periodization 1964–1985 suggested in Kasozi’s title is misleading because many of the book’s pages are taken up with the pre-1964 period. 34 Phares Mutibwa, Uganda since Independence (London, 1992), 5. 35 Tarsis B. Kabwegyere, The Politics of State Formation (Kampala, 1974). 36 Samwiri Lwanga-Lunyiigo, ‘The Colonial Roots of Internal Conflict’ in Kumar Rupesinghe (ed.), Conflict Resolution in Uganda (London, 1989), 24–43. 37 Mahmood Mamdani, Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda (London, 1983); Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, 1996).

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38 Onek C. Adyanga, Modes of British Imperial Control of Africa: A Case Study of Uganda (Newcastle, 2011). 39 Jørgensen, Modern History. 40 Ogenga Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda (Cham, 2016). 41 Ichiro Maekawa, ‘Neo-Colonialism Reconsidered: A Case Study of East Africa in the 1960s and 1970s’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 43/2 (2015), 317–341. 42 Sylvia Tamale, When Hens Begin to Crow: Gender and Parliamentary Politics in Uganda (Oxford, 1999); Alicia Catharine Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow: Women, Gender and Militarism in Uganda (Athens, Ohio, 2014); L. Carol Summers, ‘All the Kabaka’s Wives: Marital Claims in Buganda’s 1953–1955 Kabaka Crisis’, Journal of African History 58/1 (2017), 107–127; Aili Mari Tripp, ‘Women’s Mobilisation in Uganda: Non-Racial Ideologies in European-Asian-African Encounters’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 34/3 (2001), 543–564. 43 L. Carol Summers, ‘Scandal and Mass Politics: Buganda’s 1941 Nnamasole Crisis’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 51/1 (2018), 63–83. 44 Apter, Political Kingdom; James H. Mittelman, Ideology and Politics in Uganda: From Obote to Amin (Ithaca, 1975); D. A. Low, Buganda in Modern History (Berkeley, 1971). 45 Christopher Wrigley, Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty (Cambridge, 1996); Holly E. Hanson, Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth, 2003); Jonathon L. Earle, Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical Imagination in Africa (Cambridge, 2017). 46 Patrick W. Otim, ‘Local Intellectuals: Lacito Okech and the Production of Knowledge in Colonial Acholiland’, History in Africa 45 (2018), 275–305. 47 John Iliffe, East African Doctors: A History of the Modern Profession (Cambridge, 1998); Shane Doyle, Before HIV: Sexuality, Fertility and Mortality in East Africa 1900–1980 (Oxford, 2013); Yolana Pringle, ‘Crossing the Divide: Medical Missionaries and Government Service in Uganda’ in Anna Greenwood (ed.), Beyond the State: The Colonial Medical Service in British Africa (Manchester, 2016), 19–38. 48 Sarah Stockwell, The British End of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2018), 19. 49 Timothy H. Parsons, The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the King’s African Rifles (Oxford, 1999); Amii Omara-Otunnu, Politics and Military in Uganda 1890–1985 (Basingstoke, 1987). 50 E. A. Brett, ‘Neutralising the Use of Force in Uganda: The Role of the Military in Politics’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 33/1 (1995), 151. 51 Festo Kivengere, I Love Idi Amin (London, 1977); Joe Church, Quest for the Highest: An Autobiographical Account of the East African Revival (Exeter, 1981); David Zac Niringiye, The Church in the World: A Historical-Ecclesiological Study of the Church of Uganda (Carlisle, 2016), 283–287; Phares Mutibwa, ‘The Church of Uganda and the Movement for Political Independence’ in Tom Tuma & Phares Mutibwa (eds), A Century of Christianity in Uganda (Nairobi, 1978), 131–141; Kevin Ward, ‘The Church of Uganda Amidst Conflict: The Interplay between Church and Politics in Uganda since 1967’ in Holger Bernt Hansen & Michael Twaddle (eds), Religion and Politics in East Africa (London, 1995), 72–105. 52 Derek R. Peterson, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent (Cambridge, 2012); Jason Bruner, Living Salvation in the East African Revival in Uganda (Woodbridge, 2017); Emma Wild-Wood, ‘Chosen Evangelical Revival on

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56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

Notes the Northern Congo-Uganda Border’ in Kevin Ward & Emma Wild-Wood (eds), The East African Revival: History and Legacies (London, 2012), 201–212. Baganchwera N. I. Barungi, Parliamentary Democracy in Uganda: The Experiment That Failed (Bloomington, 2011); Helen E. Kawisa & Mohammed G. Katamba, Parliament since 1962: Our Story (Kampala, 2012). Drake S. Sekeba, The Media Bullets in Uganda (Kampala, 2016); Jim Ocitti, Press Politics and Public Policy in Uganda: The Role of Journalism in Democratization (Lampeter, 2005). Roger D. Scott, The Development of Trade Unionism in Uganda (Nairobi, 1966); R. D. Grillo, Race, Class and Militancy: An African Trade Union (New York, 1974); Brian Nicol, ‘Industrial Relations in Uganda’ in Ukandi G. Damachi, H. Dieter Siebel & Lester Trachtman (eds), Industrial Relations in Africa (London, 1979), 273–306; John-Jean Barya, ‘Trade Unions, Liberalisation and Politics in Uganda’ in Bjorn Beckman, Sakhela Buhlungu & Lloyd Sachikonye (eds), Trade Unions and Party Politics: Labour Movements in Africa (Cape Town, 2010), 85–107. Elizabeth Nyabongo, Elizabeth of Toro: The Odyssey of an African Princess (London, 1989). Nelson Polsby, ‘The Institutionalization of the US House of Representatives’, American Political Science Review 62/1 (1968), 145. Vivien Lowndes & Mark Roberts. Why Institutions Matter: The New Institutionalism in Political Science (London, 2013). John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 47–48. Dan M. Mudoola, Religion, Ethnicity and Politics in Uganda (Kampala, 1996), 1. Opoku Agyeman, ‘Setbacks to Political Institutionalisation by Praetorianism in Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies 26/3 (1988), 403–435. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London, 1970). See, for example, Caroline Levine, ‘Strategic Formalism: Towards a New Method in Cultural Studies’, Victorian Studies 48/4 (2006), 625–657. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, 1994). Katherine Bruce-Lockhart & Jonathon L. Earle, ‘Researching Institutional Life in Modern Uganda’, History in Africa 45 (2018), 181. Ezra Sabiti Suruma, Advancing the Ugandan Economy: A Personal Account (New York, 2014), 20.

Chapter 2 1 The National Archives, Kew [Henceforward TNA]: CO 822/935A, Gorell Barnes to Cohen, 10 October 1955. 2 Eridadi Mulira, Troubled Uganda (London, 1950), 44. 3 TNA: FCO 141/18181, Cohen to Lloyd, 14 November 1952. 4 Wm. R. Louis & Ronald Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Decolonisation’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22/3 (1994), 462–511. 5 T. V. Sathyamurthy, The Political Development of Buganda (Aldershot, 1986), 300–311; Jan Jelmert Jørgensen, Uganda: A Modern History (London, 1981), 181–186. 6 Eridadi M.K. Mulira Papers, EMKM/Gen/1/1, Eridadi Mulira, Unpublished Autobiography, 140 [Apollo: University of Cambridge Repository].

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7 G. N. Uzoigwe, ‘Uganda and Parliamentary Government’, Journal of Modern African Studies 21/2 (1983), 257. 8 H. F. Morris & James S. Read, Uganda: The Development of Its Laws and Constitution (London, 1966), 33. 9 Jonathon L. Earle, Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire (Cambridge, 2017), ch. 1. 10 TNA: FCO 141/18181, UNC NEC to Kabaka, 7 April 1953 enclosing Memorandum on the Constitutional Reforms in Buganda, 17 March 1953. 11 The Times, 18 March 1953, 7. 12 TNA: FCO 141/18181, Wallis Report on Buganda, 28 August 1952; Record of a Meeting with Wallis and the Governor, 9 August 1952; Record of a Meeting with the Governor and Chief Secretary, 17 October 1952. 13 TNA: FCO 141/18181, Cohen to Lloyd, 14 November 1952; Lloyd to Cohen, 8 January 1953. 14 For a recent history of East African integration, see Richard E. Mshomba, Economic Integration in Africa: The East African Community in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2017). 15 The Kabaka of Buganda, The Desecration of My Kingdom (London, 1967), 117. 16 TNA: FCO 141/18182, Kabaka to the Governor, 13 October 1953 enclosing Lukiko resolutions. 17 D. A. Low, ‘The Buganda Mission 1954’, Historical Studies 13/51 (1968), 361. 18 Kabaka of Buganda, Desecration, 109. 19 TNA: FCO 141/18219, Memorandum Briefing for Namirembe, 22 June 1954. 20 P. Kavuma, Crisis in Uganda: The Story of the Exile and Return of the Kabaka (London, 1979), ch. 5; Kabaka of Buganda, Desecration, 120–122. 21 Oliver Lyttelton, The Memoirs of Lord Chandos (London, 1964), 418. 22 D. Goldsworthy (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire A3: The Conservative Government and the End of Empire 1951–1957 part 2, ‘Uganda Protectorate: Cabinet Conclusions’, 19 November 1953, 253–254. 23 TNA: CAB 195/11, CC68(53), minute 7, 19 November 1953; CC79(53), minute 8, 15 December 1953. These Cabinet minutes reveal Lyttelton’s emphasis on the purportedly transgressive sexual conduct of the Kabaka. The security service files about him released in 2014 also contain much speculation about his private life but not much corroborating evidence. See TNA: KV 2/3885, Special Branch Report on Kabaka Mutesa II, 1 January 1957; KV 2/3886, Senior Liaison Officer Kenya/Uganda to Head Office, 12 July 1960 with revised SB Report. 24 Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick [Henceforward MRC]: Papers of Richard Crossman, Diaries 1928–1976, MSS 154/8/14, Diary entries, 29 December, 1953; 30 December 1953. 25 The Times, 15 December 1953, 5. 26 Mulira, Autobiography, 226–227. 27 TNA: CAB 128/26, CC(53)79th mtg., minute 8, 15 December 1953. 28 The Times, 24 December 1953, 6. 29 Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library [Henceforward ICS]: Hancock papers, ICS 29/1/1/1, Cohen to Hancock, 27 March 1953. 30 The Times, 23 April 1954, 28 May 1954, 5. 31 ICS: Hancock papers, ICS 29/1/1/11, Cohen to Hancock, 31 December 1953. 32 S. A. DeSmith, ‘Constitutional Monarchy in Buganda’, The Political Quarterly 26/1 (1955), 4–17.

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33 ‘Namirembe Constitutional Conference: Lukiko Submission’ in D. A. Low (ed.), The Mind of Buganda: Documents on the Modern History of an African Nation (London, 1971), 176–177. 34 ICS: Hancock Papers, ICS 29/1/2/18, Memorandum by the UNC on Constitutional Reforms in Uganda (ud). 35 L. A. Fallers & S. B. K. Musoke, ‘Social Mobility, Traditional and Modern’ in L. A. Fallers (ed.), The King’s Men: Leadership and Status in Buganda on the Eve of Independence (London, 1964), 158–210. 36 I. R. Hancock, ‘Patriotism and Neo-Traditionalism in Buganda: The Kabaka Yekka (“The King Alone”) Movement 1961–1962’, The Journal of African History 11/3 (1970), 423. 37 I. R. Hancock, ‘The Kakamega Club of Buganda’, Journal of Modern African Studies 12/1 (1974), 131–135. 38 Aside from Mayanja’s skills as a politician, Stonehouse was also impressed by his fluency on the guitar and his readiness to quote Shakespeare. See John Stonehouse, Prohibited Immigrant (London, 1960), 104–105; Fenner Brockway, African Journeys (London, 1955), 80. 39 ICS: Hancock Papers, ICS 29/1/1/14, Mayanja to Hancock, 1954. 40 David A. Apter, The Political Kingdom in Buganda: A Study of Bureaucratic Nationalism (London, 1961), 333–335. 41 Uganda Argus, 21 March 1958, 1, 3. 42 Kenneth Ingham, Obote: A Political Biography (London, 1994), 46–47. 43 D. A. Low, Political Parties in Uganda (London, 1962), 24. 44 ‘Boycott and the Uganda National Movement: Mulira to His English Friends’ in Low (ed.), Mind, 195–199. 45 The Times, 16 December 1958. 46 TNA: FCO 141/18241, Record of a Discussion at Government House, 19 April 1958, Record of a Meeting 5 February 1959. 47 Richard J. Reid, A History of Modern Uganda (Cambridge, 2017), 318. 48 Sathyamurthi, Political Development, 382.See also Elspeth Huxley, Forks and Hope: An African Notebook (London, 1964), 217–218. 49 TNA: CO 822/1192, Mathieson minute, 6 July 1955. 50 TNA: CO 822/1845, Uganda (Crawford) to Secretary of State, 2 May 1959. 51 The Times, 1 June 1959, 7. 52 TNA: FCO 141/18244, minute by acting Administrative Secretary, 29 October 1960. 53 Akena Adoko, Uganda Crisis (Kampala, ud), 87. 54 TNA: FCO 141/18239, Buganda Situation Report, 31 December 1960, 1 January 1961, Governor to Secretary of State, 1 January 1961. 55 TNA: FCO 141/18239, Record of the Conclusions of the Buganda Security Committee, 13 February 1961. 56 TNA: FCO 141/18239, Dreschfield Note for the Record, 28 December 1960. 57 Hancock, ‘Neo-Traditionalism’, 419–434. 58 Morris & Read, Laws and Constitution. 59 Ibid., 129–130. 60 Hancock, ‘Neo-Traditionalism’, 429–430. 61 Sathyamurthi, Political Development, 421–424. 62 James H. Mittelman, Ideology and Politics in Uganda: From Obote to Amin (Ithaca, 1975), 94.

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63 Ogenga Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda (Cham, 2016), 167–168. 64 G. F. Engholm, ‘The Tensions of Crossing the Floor in East Africa’ in Ali Mazrui (ed.), Violence and Thought (London, 1969), 122–146; Ingham, Obote, 100. 65 Grace Ibingira, African Upheavals since Independence (Boulder, 1980), 113. 66 Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy, 173–174. 67 Kabaka of Uganda, Desecration, ch. 1. 68 Los Angeles Times, 27 May 1966, 14. 69 The Guardian, 28 May 1966, 9. 70 Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy, 187–188 71 TNA: DO 213/63, Note of Beswick’s Meeting with Colyton, 4 May 1966; Montagu of Beaulieu to Bottomley, 9 May 1966; Norris minute, 10 May 1966; Posnett (CRO) to Foster (Kampala), 12 May 1966. 72 G. W. Kanyeihamba, Constitutional and Political History of Uganda: From 1894 to the Present (2nd ed., Kampala, 2010), 97–98. 73 Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training: Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Olcott H. Deming, 19. 74 Charles T. Goodsell, ‘The Architecture of Parliaments: Legislative Houses and Political Culture’, British Journal of Political Science 18/3 (1988), 292. 75 Ian Grey, The Parliamentarians: The History of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (Aldershot, 1986), 3–4. 76 The Times, 14 September 1960, 7. 77 TNA: CO 822/2508, Vanderfelt to Crawford, 19 February 1960 enclosing ‘Copy of Artist’s Description of the Victorian Boxes’. 78 O. Furley, ‘The Legislative Council 1945–1961’ in G. N. Uzoigwe (ed.), Uganda: The Dilemmas of Nationhood (London, 1982), 214. 79 Grey, Parliamentarians, 114. 80 Harold Ingrams, Uganda: A Crisis of Nationhood (London, 1960), 106. 81 C. A. S. S. Gordon, ‘Procedural Links between Commonwealth Parliaments’ in Alan Burns (ed.), Parliament as an Export (London, 1966), 59–79. 82 TNA: CO 822/1654, Titles of Lectures Given Herbert Morrison and Patrick Spens at Makerere (ud), Lockhart to Reid, 18 December 1958; Lockhart to Watt, 8 January 1959, 13 January 1959, 27 January 1959; Wild (Entebbe) to Reid (CO), 7 January 1957, Provisional Programme of CP: Uganda Affiliated Branch (ud). 83 Parliamentary Archives [Hereafter PA]: HC/CL/00/1/101-105, Box 1/26, De Bunsen to Barlas, 18 January 1961. 84 Baganchwera N. I. Barungi, Parliamentary Democracy in Uganda: The Experiment That Failed (Bloomington, 2011), 39–40. 85 Furley, ‘Legislative Council’, 180–181. 86 Samwiri Rubaraza Karugire, Roots of Instability in Uganda (Kampala, 1996), 25. 87 TNA: CO 822/935A, Fisher minute, 3 May 1955. This was Fisher’s parting shot before retiring from the Colonial Office. In her capacity as a classicist, she would later become principal of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. 88 TNA: CO 822/935A, Salisbury to Secretary of State for Colonies, 13 April 1956; Gorell Barnes minute, 11 November 1956. 89 John Wild, ‘The Wild Committee’ in Douglas Brown & Marcelle Brown (eds), Looking Back at the Uganda Protectorate: Recollections of District Officers (Dalkeith, WA, 1996), 123–127.

204 90

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United States National Archives II, College Park [Henceforward NAII]: RG59 Bureau of African Affairs: Office of Eastern and Southern African Affairs, Records Relating to Uganda 1959–1964, Hooper (Kampala) to Vaughan Ferguson (State Department), 18 February 1960. For portraits of Hartwell at work, see Philo Pullicino, The Road to Rome (MPI, 2012), 186–187 and Douglas Brown, ‘In the Secretariat’ in Brown & Brown (eds), Looking Back, 117–121. 91 ‘Manifestos of the Political Parties: Freedom Charter and Manifesto of the UNC’ in Low, Mind, 181–182. 92 TNA: CO 822/935A, Uganda (Cohen) to Secretary of State, 13 January 1956. 93 J. Iliffe, East African Doctors: A History of the Modern Profession (Cambridge, 1998), 115–116. 94 TNA: FCO 141/18236, Report by Representatives of the Kabaka’s Government and the Protectorate Government. 95 TNA: CO 822/935B, Gorell Barnes minute, 11 August 1956. 96 TNA: FCO 141/18235, Minutes of the 2nd meeting of the representatives of the Protectorate Government and the Kabaka’s Government, 12 April 1956. 97 The Guardian, 31 August 1957, 7. 98 Uganda Argus, 23 October 1957, 1; The Guardian, 27 October 1958, 7. 99 Helen E. Kawisa, ‘Women in Parliament’ in Helen E. Kawisa & Mohammed G. Katamba (eds), Parliament since 1962: Our Story (Kampala, 2012), 72–73. 100 Sylvia Tamale, When Hens Begin to Crow: Gender and Parliamentary Politics in Uganda (Oxford, 1999), 151. 101 Aili Mari Tripp, ‘Uganda: Achievements and Challenges for Women in Elected Offices’ in Susan Franceschet, Mona Lena Crook & Netina Tan (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Political Rights (London, 2019), 578. 102 Aili Mari Tripp, ‘Women’s Mobilization in Uganda: Non-Racial Ideologies in European-African-Asian Encounters’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 34/3 (2001), 553–554. 103 Uganda Argus, 28 April 1962, 5. 104 PA: HC/CL/CH/2/3/17-19, C. A. S. Gordon to Barnett Cocks enclosing diary of ‘Fourth Clerk’s Last Journey’, 21 November 1967. 105 R. M. A. Van Zwanenberg & Anne King, An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda (Basingstoke, 1975), 67. 106 New York Times, 22 January 1967, 37–52. 107 A. G. G. Gingyera-Pinycwa, Apolo Milton Obote and His Times (New York, 1978), 8. 108 Phares Mutibwa, Uganda since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes (London, 1993), 49. 109 Cherry Gertzel, Party and Locality in Northern Uganda 1945–1962 (London, 1974), 47–48. For a very brief contemporaneous account, see also Uganda Argus, 23 December 1957, 1. The contrast between the coverage the Argus gave to the controversy about Muwazi’s seat in Buganda and the scanty reportage about Omonya’s replacement in Lango is instructive of the newspaper’s thin coverage of events beyond the south. 110 PA: HC/C1/00/1/101-105, Box 1/26, Pullicino to Gordon, 18 June 1964. 111 Karugire, Roots, 53–54. 112 Paul Ssemogerere, ‘Reflections of a Veteran: Party Politics since Independence’ in Kawisa & Katamba (eds), Our Story, 122. 113 Barungi, Parliamentary Democracy, 40. 114 Kanyeihamba, Constitutional and Political History.

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115 Morris & Read, Laws and Constitution, xx. 116 Ibingira, African Upheavals, 31. 117 TNA: CAB 134/1559, CPC(60)1st mtg., minute 1, 8 February 1960. 118 Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy, 184. 119 Mutibwa, Unfulfilled Hopes, 30. 120 The Times, 8 January 1964, 7. 121 The Obote faction’s version of events leading to the suspension of the constitution can be found in Adoko, Uganda Crisis, 21–67. 122 The other four were Lumu, Ngobi, Magezi and Kirya. See The Times, 23 February 1966, 12. 123 NAII: RG59, Records of the Bureau of African Affairs 1958–196, Lot 67034, Box 36, Mennen Williams to Secretary of State, 13 September 1965. 124 US Declassified Documents: Denney (INR) to Rusk, 23 February 1966 [https:// www.gale.com/intl/c/us-declassified-documents-online, Accessed 2 February 2019]. 125 TNA: DO 213/60, Record of Conversation between Grahame and Amin by Senior, 5 February 1966. 126 TNA: DO 213/63, Hunt to Bottomley, 4 May 1966. 127 Paul Ssemogerere, ‘Reflections of a Veteran’, 143. 128 Mutibwa, Unfulfilled Hopes, 65. 129 Abu Mayanja, ‘The Government’s Proposals for a New Constitution of Uganda’ Transition 32 (1967), 20–25. 130 Akena Adoko, ‘The Constitution of the Republic of Uganda’, Transition 33 (1967), 10–12. 131 Uganda Argus, 27 June 1967, 3. 132 Uganda Argus, 29 June 1967, 1. 133 Uganda National Archives, Kampala [Henceforward UNA]: Office of the President, Box 38, file 002, ‘Uganda: The Case for the Second Republic’ including appendix I, Statement to the Nation by the Ugandan Army. 134 Uganda Argus, 28 January 1971, 1, 6. 135 The Times, 22 February 1971, 6. 136 Mohammed G. Katamba & Sara Namusoga. ‘When Parliament Was in Abeyance’ in Kawisa & Katamba (eds), Our Story, 29–30. 137 Derek R. Peterson & Edgar C. Taylor, ‘Rethinking the State in Idi Amin’s Uganda: The Politics of Exhortation’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 7/1 (2013), 58–82. 138 Barungi, Parliamentary Democracy, 178–179.

Chapter 3 1 Patrick J. McGowan, ‘African Military Coups d’Etat 1956–2001: Frequency, Trends and Distribution’, Journal of Modern African Studies 41/3 (2003), 339–370. 2 Richard J. Reid, A History of Modern Uganda (Cambridge, 2017), 114–141. 3 Ali Mazrui, Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda: The Making of a Military Ethnocracy (London, 1975). 4 Grace Stuart Ibingira, African Upheavals since Independence (Boulder, 1980), 175–176; Phares Mutibwa, Uganda since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes (London, 1992), 64; Dan Mudoola, ‘Communal Conflict in the Military and Its

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Political Consequences’ in Kumar Rupesinghe (ed.), Conflict Resolution in Uganda (London, 1989), 126–128; Semakula Kiwanuka, Amin and the Tragedy of Uganda (Munich, 1979), 32; Judith Listowel, Amin (London, 1973), 46–49. 5 Samwiri Lwanga-Lunyiigo, ‘The Colonial Roots of Internal Conflict’ in Rupesinghe (ed.), Conflict Resolution, 28; Timothy H. Parsons, The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa (London, 2003), 36–37; Samwiri Rubaraza Karugire, Roots of Instability in Uganda (Kampala, 1996), 31–35; Mutibwa, Unfulfilled Hopes, 6. For a continental overview of the operations of the theory, see A. Kirk-Greene, ‘“Damnosa Hereditas”: Ethnic Ranking and the Martial Races Imperative in Africa’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 3/4 (1980), 393–414. 6 Even though he was patently preoccupied with self-exculpation, Adrisi’s testimony to the Uganda Human Rights Commission offers a rare insider account of the events of the 1970s from the perspective of a senior military figure. See Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights: Verbatim Record of Proceedings, vol. 7 (1995), 6053–6282. 7 Sarah Stockwell, The British End of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2018), 234. 8 Amii Omara-Otunnu, Politics and the Military in Uganda 1890–1985 (Basingstoke, 1987), 32. 9 H. Moyse-Bartlett, The King’s African Rifles: A Study in the Military History of East and Central Africa (Aldershot, 1956), 123–131. 10 Kirsten A. Harkness, ‘The Ethnic State: Explaining Coup Traps and the Difficulties of Democratization in Africa’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 60/4 (2016), 593. 11 Timothy H. Parsons, The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the King’s African Rifles (Oxford, 1999), 21. 12 Anthony Clayton & David Killingray, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Colonial Africa (Athens, Ohio, 1989), 261. 13 Churchill Archives Centre [Henceforward CAC]: AMEJ 4/1/7, Amery Diary, 29 December 1952. 14 Peter Allen, Interesting Times: Uganda Diaries (Lewes, 2000), 199. 15 Iain Grahame, Jambo Effendi: Seven Years with the King’s African Rifles (London, 1966), 89, 224. 16 TNA: FCO 31/1055, Personal Assessment of the Situation in Uganda by Houston, 23 July 1971. 17 TNA: DO 213/50, Griffiths minute, 27 January 1964; Champion minute, 18 February 1964. 18 TNA: FCO 16/132, Newton Dunn to Moir, 31 July 1967. 19 Clayton & Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 262. 20 Parsons, Rank and File, 72. 21 Kiwanuka, Tragedy, 20; Ibingira, African Upheavals, 91–92; Jenkins Kiwanuka, ‘Gus: A Commander Who Never Was’, New Vision, 20 July 2006 [https://www.newvision. co.ug/new_vision/news/1144439/gus-commander, Accessed 7 June 2018]. 22 Clayton & Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 261. 23 TNA: FCO 16/133, Crawford to McNeill, 1 October 1968. 24 Parsons, Rank and File, 118. 25 TNA: FCO 141/18393, Champion to Biggs, 25 October 1961; Cheyne to Biggs, 25 November 1961; Biggs to Champion, 23 November 1961; Cheyne to Deputy Governor, 26 November 1961.

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26 TNA: FCO 141/28393, Turnbull to Monson, 27 April 1961; Extract of minutes of 21st meeting of the East African Defence Council, 11 April 1961. 27 TNA: FCO 16/132, Newton Dunn to Moir, 24 August 1967; Oatley to Scott, 21 August 1967. 28 TNA: FCO 31/1059, LeTocq to Slater, 30 September 1971, Slater (Kampala) LeTocq, 12 October 1971, LeTocq minute, 8 November 1971, Douglas-Home minute (ud). 29 The Times, 25 June 1975, 1. 30 Alan Campbell, Colleagues and Friends (Salisbury, 1988), 106–110. 31 Stockwell, British End, 240–251. 32 TNA: FCO 141/18393, Powell Cotton minute, 19 September 1961; Colonial Policy Committee minute on Africanization, 6 October 1961. 33 TNA: WO 32/19305, HQ East Africa Command to War Office, 12 November 1963. 34 UNA: Office of the President (Confidential), Box 18, s10904, Houston to Uganda Military Council, 3 September 1963; Onama to Obote, 20 September 1963. 35 TNA: FCO 16/132, Newton Dunn to Moir, 17 July 1967, 21 July 1967. 36 TNA: FCO 141/18393, Crawford minute, 14 October 1960; Notes by Crawford, 11 April 1961; Note of a Meeting 20 November 1961. 37 TNA: FCO 141/18393, Note of a Meeting 20 November 1961. 38 Parsons, Army Mutinies, 44–45. 39 Omara-Otunnu, Politics and the Military, 59. 40 The Times, 24 January, 12. 41 William Gutteridge, The Military in African Politics (London, 1969), 24. 42 Samuel Decalo, Coups and Army Rule in Africa: Studies in Military Style (London, 1976), 201–202. 43 Edward Khiddu-Makubuya, ‘Paramilitarism and Human Rights’ in Rupesinghe (ed.), Conflict Resolution, 147. 44 Mazrui, Soldiers and Kinsmen, 153. 45 Michael J. Macoun, Wrong Place, Right Time: Policing the End of Empire (London, 1996), xviii. 46 NAII: RG 59, Records of the State Department, Subject Numeric Files 1970–1973 Political and Defence, Box 2644, Ferguson (Kampala) to State Department, 9 April 1971; Nalle (Kampala) to Staet Department, 28 May 1971. 47 TNA: FCO 31/1056, LeTocq minute, 18 February 1971; Smedley minute, 18 February 1971; Greenhill minute, 19 February 1971. 48 TNA: PREM 15/1257, Amin to Heath, 10 January 1971; Heath minute, 18 January 1971; Bridges to Grattan, 18 January 1971. 49 TNA: FCO 31/1364, Kampala to FCO, 1 September 1972. 50 TNA: FCO 31/1059, Report by Fleming and Houston on the Visit of 28 June to 15 July 1971, Slater (Kampala) to FCO, 29 July 1971, including Home minute (ud), Duggan minute, 13 August 1971, Duggan (FCO) to Sibbring(MoD), 17 September 1971, Note of a Meeting on 29 September 1971. 51 NAII: RG 59, Records of the State Department, Subject Numeric Files 1970–1973 Political and Defence, Box 2643, Annenberg (London) to State Department, 16 July 1971. 52 TNA: FCO 31/1055, Bradbrook to Ministry of Defence, 11 May 1971, 17 August 1971, 19 October 1971; Duggan minute, 22 October 1971; LeTocq (FCO) to Brind (Kampala), 29 October 1971. 53 Stockwell, British End, 264–267 (Table 2). 54 TNA: CAB 128/50/42, CM(72)41st mtg., 7 September 1972.

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55 Decalo, Military Style, 217–218. 56 Henry Kyemba, State of Blood: The Inside Story of Idi Amin’s Regime of Fear (London, 1977), 134–138. 57 Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights: Verbatim Record of Proceedings, vol. 7, 6067. 58 Omari H. Kokole, ‘Idi Amin, “The Nubi” and Islam in Ugandan Politics 1971–1979’ in Holger Bernt Hansen & Michael Twaddle (eds), Religion and Politics in East Africa: The Period since Independence (London, 1995), 45–58. 59 Pecos Kutesa, Uganda’s Revolution 1979–1986: How I Saw It (Kampala, 2006), 19. 60 Omara-Otunnu, Politics and the Military, 133. 61 Kyemba, State of Blood, 49. 62 Tony Avirgan & Martha Honey, War in Uganda: The Legacy of Idi Amin (London, 1982), 8. 63 Decalo, Military Style, 217. 64 TNA: WO 32/19305, London Financial Conference, Briefing Paper V: Defence, 30 January 1962. 65 TNA: FCO 141/18393, Notes by His Excellency on 21st meeting of the East Africa Defence Council, 11 April 1961. 66 TNA: FCO 141/18107, Memorandum in Connection with the Strikes and Disturbances, 8 March 1945. 67 Gardner Thompson, ‘Colonialism in Crisis: The Uganda Disturbances of 1945’, African Affairs 91/365 (1992), 605–624. 68 TNA: WO 276/103, Uganda Riots: Timetable of Events (ud). 69 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 464, cols 1015–1016. 70 TNA: WO 276/103, Memo on ‘Appreciation of the Security Situation-May 1949’ (ud), General Staff Briefing Note on Uganda Riots (ud), Memo on Measures Taken to Strengthen the Uganda Police by Commissioner of Police, 27 September 1949, Hall to Dowler, 13 June 1949. 71 Ogenga Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda (Cham, 2016), 138–140. 72 TNA: FCO 141/18372, Notes on the Emergency by the Chief Secretary (ud). 73 TNA: FCO 141/18256, Thornley minute, 2 June 1954. 74 The Times, 9 March 1959, 10. 75 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 608, 7 July 1959, col. 1315; vol. 610, 30 July 1959, col 659. 76 TNA: CO 822/1846, Uganda (Crawford) to Secretary of State, 20 October 1959. 77 TNA: FCO 141/18232, Record of Conclusions Reached at a Meeting at Police HQ, 29 December 1959, Uganda Security Committee Conclusions, 31 December 1959. 78 The Times, 24 December 1960, 5. 79 TNA: FCO 141/18233, Governor (Uganda) to Secretary of State, 6 February 1961. 80 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 631, 8 December 1960, cols 1427–1428. 81 Kyemba, State of Blood. 82 A. B. K. Kasozi, The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda 1964–1985 (London, 1994), 76. 83 UNA: Office of the President, Confidential, Box 43, ref 004, minutes of 44th Cabinet meeting, minute 487, 18 September 1964. 84 Mutibwa, Unfulfilled Hopes, 49–50; A. G. G. Gingyera-Pinycwa, Apolo Milton Obote and His Times (New York, 1978), 4–7.

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85 Akena Adoko, Uganda Crisis (Kampala, ud), 20; Kabaka of Buganda, The Desecration of My Kingdom (London, 1967). 86 The Guardian, 28 May 1966, 9. 87 Mutibwa, Unfulfilled Hopes, 39. 88 The Guardian, 25 May 1966, 1; New York Times, 27 May 1966, 13; The Times, 30 May 1966, 1. 89 International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Uganda and Human Rights: Reports of the ICJ to the United Nations, April 1977, 167. 90 Kyemba, State of Blood, 48–49; Kiwanuka, Tragedy, 80–82; Mutibwa, Unfulfilled Hopes, 87–88; Omara-Otunnu, Politics and the Military, 104–107; Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy, 261–263. 91 UNA: Office of the President: Minutes of Meeting between Ministers and District Commissioners, 28 April 1971. 92 TNA: FCO 31/1055, Bradbrook to Ministry of Defence, 30 October 1971. 93 Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy, 292–293. 94 Mazrui, Soldiers and Kinsmen, 165. 95 Alicia Catharine Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow: Women, Gender and Militarism in Uganda (Athens, Ohio, 2014). 96 Timothy H. Parsons, ‘All Askaris Are Family Men: Sex, Domesticity and Discipline in the King’s African Rifles’ in David Killingray & David Omissi (eds), Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers 1700–1964 (Manchester, 1999), 157–178. 97 For further details, see Chapter 4. 98 TNA: CO 822/1845, Uganda (Crawford) to Secretary of State, 5 June 1959; Langley to Permanent Secretary, Security and External Relations, 6 June 1959. 99 The Guardian, 23 June 1959, 7. 100 Carol Summers, ‘All the Kabaka’s Wives: Marital Claims in Buganda’s 1953–1955 Kabaka Crisis’, Journal of African History 58/1 (2017), 117. 101 Frederick Kamuhanda Byaruhanga, Student Power in Africa’s Higher Education: A Case Study of Makerere University (Abingdon, 2006), chs 4–5. 102 Hugh Dinwiddy, ‘The Ugandan Army and Makerere under Obote 1962–1971’, African Affairs 82/326 (1983), 50. For Dinwiddy’s unusual career see his obituary. The Times, 12 November 2009, 82. 103 The Guardian, 8 August 1976, 1, 15 August 1976, 1, 6; Los Angeles Times, 10 August 1976, B1&15, 23 August 1976, 15; ICJ, Uganda and Human Rights: Reports of the ICJ to the United Nations, April 1977, 152–153; Bryan Langlands, ‘Students and Politics in Uganda’, African Affairs 76/302 (1977), 3–20; Byaruhanga, Student Power, ch. 6; Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow. 104 Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights: Verbatim Record of Proceedings, vol. 7, 6246. 105 UNA: Office of the President, Box 40, s.001, Minutes of the 68th Cabinet Meeting, minute 118, 22 February 1963. 106 Thomas Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency 1919–1960 (London, 1990); David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency (Oxford, 2011). For an overview, see Spencer Mawby, The Transformation and Decline of the British Empire (London, 2015), ch. 4. 107 Thomas Mockaitis, ‘The Minimum Force Debate: Contemporary Sensibilities Meet Imperial Practice’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 23/4–5 (2012), 762–780;

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David French, ‘Nasty Not Nice: British Counter-Insurgency Doctrine and Practice 1945–1967’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 23/4–5 (2012), 744–761. 108 Waruhiu Itote, ‘Mau Mau’ General (Nairobi, 1967), 85. 109 Omara-Otunnu, Politics and the Military, 38–39. 110 Parsons, Rank-and-File, 213. 111 Arthur Syahuka-Muhindo, ‘The Ruwenzuru Movement and the Democratic Struggle’ in Mahmood Mamdani & Joe Oloka-Onyango (eds), Uganda: Studies in Living Conditions, Popular Movements and Constitutionalism (Vienna, 1994), 276–277; Joshua B. Rubongoya, ‘The Bakonjo-Baamba and Uganda: Colonial and Postcolonial Integration and Ethnocide’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 18/2 (1995), 75–92. 112 Report by the Commission of Inquiry into the Recent Disturbances amongst the Baamba and Bakonjo People of Toro by Ssembeguya, Oda and Okae, 19–25 September 1962. 113 Ibid., 10. 114 Arthur Syahuka-Muhindo, ‘Ruwenzuru Movement’. 115 To gain a sense of the development of this literature it is useful to list the texts in chronological order. See Tom Stacey, Summons to Ruwenzori (London, 1965); Kirsten Alnaes, ‘Songs of the Rwenzururu Rebellion: The Konzo Revolt against the Toro in Western Uganda’ in P. H. Gulliver (ed.), Tradition and Transition in East Africa (London, 1969), 243–272; Martin Doornbos, ‘Kumanyana and Rwenzururu: Two Responses to Ethnic Inequality’ in R. I. Rotberg & Ali Mazrui (eds), Protest and Power in Black Africa (Oxford, 1970), 1088–1136; Tom Stacey, Tribe: The Hidden History of the Mountains of the Moon (London, 2003); Kirsten Alnaes, ‘Rebel Ravages in Bundibugyo, Uganda’s Forgotten District’ in B. Kapferer & Bjorn Enge Bertelsen (eds), Crisis of the State: War and Social Upheaval (2009), 97–123; Martin Doornbos, The Rwenzururu Movement in Uganda: Struggling for Recognition (Abingdon, 2018). 116 Stacey, Summons, 36–37. With one or two superficial differences, Stacey recapitulates this account in Stacey, Tribe, 211–212. 117 Doornbos, Struggling for Recognition, 57. 118 Ibid., 74. 119 UNA: Office of the President, Box 40 s.001, minutes of the 65th meeting, minute 95, 14 February 1963. 120 UNA: Office of the President, Confidential, Box 3d 001, minutes of the 111th meeting, minute 565, 22 October 1963. 121 UNA: Office of the President, Confidential, Box 3d 001, minutes of the 117th meeting, minute 602, 18 November 1963. 122 Stacey, Tribe, 309. 123 The Times, 2 November 1978, 7. 124 G. Roberts, ‘The Uganda-Tanzania War, the Fall of Idi Amin and the Failure of African Diplomacy 1978–1979’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 8/4 (2014), 694–695. 125 Avirgan & Honey, War in Uganda, 63, 72. 126 Washington Post, 1 November 1978, A25. 127 Los Angeles Times, 12 April 1979, B1, B8. 128 Oliver Furley, ‘Tanzania’s Military Intervention in Uganda’ in Oliver Furley & Roy May (eds), African Interventionist States (Aldershot, 2001), 74–75. 129 Washington Post, 23 November 1978, A30.

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130 Avirgan & Honey, War in Uganda, 88–91. 131 New York Times, 16 April 1979, A1, A8.

Chapter 4 1 Kevin Ward, ‘“Obedient Rebels”: The Relationship between the Early Balokole and the Church of Uganda: The Mukono Crisis of 1941’, Journal of Religion in Africa 19/3 (1989), 194–227. 2 David Zac Niringiye, The Church in the World: A Historical-Ecclesiological Study of the Church of Uganda with Particular Reference to Post-Independence Uganda (Carlisle, 2016), 31. 3 Derek R. Peterson, Ethnic Patriotism and East African Revival: A History of Dissent (Cambridge, 2012), 6–13. Peterson notes that the historiographical disinterest in conversion is mirrored by an emphasis on continuity which, in turn, reflects an ideological propensity among scholars of religion to establish African foreknowledge of Christianity before the arrival of European missions. 4 Church Information Board, The Moving Spirit: A Survey of the Life and Work of the Churches of the Anglican Communion (London, 1957), 67–68. 5 Ronald Kassimir, ‘Catholics and Political Identity in Toro’ in Holger Bernt Hansen & Michael Twaddle (eds), Religion and Politics in East Africa (London, 1995), 121–122. 6 Archives of the Church of Uganda, Yale Divinity Library MS 575 [Henceforward UCU]: RG1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 25, Church Statistics for the Upper Nile Diocese, Teso 1953–1954. 7 Niringiye, The Church in the World, 79. 8 Uganda Argus, 1 June 1968, 3; 14 June 1968, 9. 9 UCU: RG1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 25, Church Statistics for the Upper Nile Diocese, Upper Nile Statistics 1956–1959. 10 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [Henceforward ODNB]: ‘(Apolo) Milton Obote’ by M. Louise Pirouet (2009). 11 UCU: RG-1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 11, Minutes of the Meeting of the House of Bishops, 8 June 1964 and undated, unsigned article entitled ‘Two New Things in Africa’. 12 Jason Bruner, ‘Public Confession and the Moral Universe of the East African Revival’, Studies in World Christianity 18/3 (2012), 254–268. 13 Kevin Ward, ‘The East African Revival of the Twentieth Century: The Search for an Evangelical African Christianity’ in Kate Cooper & Jeremy Gregory (eds), Revival and Resurgence in Christian History (Woodbridge, 2008), 365–387. 14 James Ndyabahika, ‘The Revival Movement in Uganda: An Evaluation’, Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology 12/1 (1993), 20. 15 Historiographical essays by Wild-Wood and Bruner provide rather different taxonomies of literature about the revival but the prevalence of insider accounts is evident from both. See Emma Wild-Wood, ‘The East African Revival in the Study of African Christianity’ in Kevin Ward & Emma Wild-Wood (eds), The East African Revival: History and Legacies (Farnham, 2012), 201–212; Jason Bruner, ‘Keswick and the East African Revival: An Historiographical Reappraisal’, Religion Compass 5/9 (2011), 477–489. 16 See, for example, Josiah R. Mlahagwa, ‘Contending for the Faith: Spiritual Revival and the Fellowship Church in Tanzania’ in Thomas Spear & Isaria N. Kimamba (eds),

212

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East African Expressions of Christianity (Oxford, 1999), 296–306; Ndyabahika, ‘The Revival Movement in Uganda’, 18–40; Derek Peterson, ‘Wordy Women: Gender Trouble and the Oral Politics of the East African Revival in Northern Gikuyuland’, The Journal of African History 42/3 (2009), 469–489. 17 Joe Church, Quest for the Highest: An Autobiographical Account of the East African Revival (Exeter, 1981). 18 Peterson, Ethnic Patriotism. 19 Niringiye, Church in the World, 115–117. 20 Margaret Ford, Janani: The Making of a Martyr (London, 1978), 57–58. 21 Emma Wild-Wood, ‘Boundary Crossing and Boundary Marking: Radical Revival in Congo and Uganda from 1948’ in Cooper & Gregory (eds), Revival and Resurgence, 329–340. 22 Kefa Sempangi & Barbara R. Thompson, Reign of Terror; Reign of Love (Tring, 1979), 34. 23 Leslie Brown, Three Worlds: One World: Account of a Mission (London, 1981), 161. 24 The Catholic Hierarchy website provides these figures and it is notable that there is no such comprehensive database for the Anglican church. [http://www.catholichierarchy.org/diocese/dmska.html and http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/ darua.html, Accessed 2 April 2019]. 25 TNA: FCO 141/18106, Monthly Intelligence Reports for August 1958. 26 Sarah Stockwell, ‘Anglicanism in the Era of Decolonization’ in Jeremy Morris (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism Vol. IV: Global Western Anglicanism (Oxford, 2017), 160–185. 27 John V. Taylor, ‘The Uganda Church To-Day’, International Review of Missions 46/182 (1957), 136–137. 28 The Guardian, 12 October 1961, 12. 29 Bengt Sundkler & Christopher Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (Cambridge, 2000), 849. 30 Henry Okullu, Quest for Justice: An Autobiography of Bishop John Henry Okullu (Kisumu, 1997), 24. 31 Niringiye, Church in the World, 176. 32 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 10, Report of a Meeting of the Deanery Councils in Kako on 30 October 1962 by Leslie Brown. 33 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 10, Brown to Provincial Bishops, 14 October 1963. 34 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 11, Minutes of the Meetings of the House of Bishops, 8 June 1964, 13–14 January 1965. 35 Christopher Senyonjo, In Defense of All God’s Children: The Life and Ministry of Bishop Christopher Senyonjo (New York, 2016), ch. 2. 36 Dictionary of African Christian Biography [dacb.org]: H. H. Osborn, ‘Erica Sabiti 1903–1988’. 37 Niringiye, Church in the World, 142–143. 38 Brown, Three Worlds, 173–174. 39 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 11, Wamala to Archbishop, 12 November 1965. 40 Okullu, Quest for Justice, 43–44. 41 Akiiki B. Mujaju, ‘The Political Crisis of Church Institutions in Buganda’, African Affairs 75/298 (1976), 71–72.

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42 Kevin Ward, ‘The Church of Uganda amidst Conflict: The Interplay between Church and Politics in Uganda since 1967’ in Holger Bent Hansen & Michael Twaddle (eds), Religion and Politics in East Africa (London, 1995), 78–79. 43 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 11, Billington to Ramsey (ud). 44 Mujaju, ‘Political Crisis’, 72–73. 45 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 11, Sabiti to Ramsey 12 January 1971. 46 Dan M. Mudoola, Religion, Ethnicity and Politics in Uganda (Kampala, 1996), 48. 47 M. Louise Pirouet, ‘Religion in Uganda under Amin’, Journal of Religion in Africa 11/1 (1980), 14. 48 Ward, ‘Church of Uganda amidst Conflict’, 72–105. 49 Niringiye, Church in the World, 283–287. 50 Records of the Church Missionary Society, University of Birmingham [Henceforward CMS]: ACC253/Z1, ‘28 Years of Happiness in Africa’ by C. E. Stuart. 51 Harold Ingrams, Uganda: A Crisis of Nationhood (London, 1969), 59–63; David Apter, The Political Kingdom in Buganda: A Study of Bureaucratic Nationalism (London, 1961), 206–207. 52 Kevin Ward, ‘The Church of Uganda and the Exile of Kabaka Muteesa II’, Journal of Religion in Africa 28/4 (1998), 420–424. 53 CMS: G59: Y/A7/1, Long to Warren, 16 November 1950, Warren to Long, 22 November 1950, Fisher to Griffiths, 23 February 1951. 54 Sarah Stockwell, ‘“Splendidly Leading the Way”?: Archbishop Fisher and Decolonisation in British Colonial Africa’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 36/3 (2008), 545–564. 55 CMS: G59, Y/A7/1, Long to Warren, 16 November 1950; Warren to Stuart, 22 November 1950; Archbishop to Griffiths, 23 February 1951. 56 Caroline Howell, ‘Church and State in Crisis: The Deposition of the Kabaka of Buganda 1953–1955’ in Brian Stanley (ed.), Missions, Nationalism and the End of Empire (Cambridge, 2003), 194–211. 57 Phares Mutibwa, ‘The Church of Uganda and the Movement for Political Independence’ in Tom Tuma & Phares Mutibwa (eds) A Century of Christianity in Uganda 1877–1977 (Nairobi, 1978), 135. 58 UCU: RG1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 4, Warren to Brown, 16 December 1953; Sempa to Warren, 19 February 1954. 59 Paulo Kavuma, Crisis in Buganda 1953–1955: The Story of the Exile and Return of the Kabaka (London, 1979), 50. 60 The Observer, 27 December 1953, 2; 3 January 1954, 9. 61 Archbishops’ Archives, Lambeth Palace Library [Henceforward AA]: Geoffrey Fisher Papers 150, Warren to Fisher, 8 January 1954; Hopkinson to Fisher, 15 January 1954; Warren to Hopkinson, 18 January 1954; Fisher to Warren, 18 January 1954; Fisher to Stuart, 19 January 1954; Stuart to Fisher, 20 January 1954. 62 C. Summers, ‘All the Kabaka’s Wives: Marital Claims in Buganda’s 1953–1955 Kabaka Crisis’, Journal of African History 58/1 (2017), 107–127. 63 Ibid., 118. 64 The Guardian, 11 December 1953, 7. 65 On the significance of the Mothers’ Union see Elizabeth Dimock, Women, Mission and Church in Uganda: Ethnographic Encounters in an Age of Imperialism (Abingdon, 2017), ch. 7.

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66 Aili Mari Tripp, ‘Women’s Mobilisation in Uganda: Nonracial Ideologies in European-African-Asian Encounters 1945–1962’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 34/3 (2001), 561–562; Ward, ‘Exile of Kabaka Muteesa’, 433–434; Owen Griffiths, ‘The Governor and the Kabaka II’ in Douglas Brown & Marcelle Brown (eds), Looking Back at the Uganda Protectorate: Recollections of District Officers (Dalkeith, WA, 1996), 93; Brown, Three Worlds, 104. 67 UCU: RG1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 2, Members of the Uganda African Women’s League to Warren, 22 November 1954. 68 Brown, Three Worlds, 103–104. 69 John Anderson, ‘“On Very Slippery Ground”: The British Churches, Archbishop Fisher and the Suez Crisis’, Contemporary British History 29/3 (2015), 341–358. 70 UCU: RG1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 4, Warren to Palin, 6 January 1953. 71 AA: Geoffrey Fisher Papers 150, Fisher to Lyttelton 6 January 1954. 72 Brown, Three Worlds, 98. 73 UCU: RG1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 3, Brown to Cecil Bewes, 28 February 1955. 74 CMS: G59 Y/A7/1, Brown to Warren, 25 February 1955. 75 UCU: RG1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 4, Warren to Brown, 31 March 1954 including extracts from Stuart’s letter. 76 UCU: RG1, Bishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 4, Warren to Brown, 4 February; Warren to Canterbury, 30 April 1954; Warren to Brown, 7 May 1954. 77 AA: Geoffrey Fisher Papers 164, Memorandum of a Conversation with Makumbi about the Lukiko, 26 May 1955. 78 Stockwell, ‘“Splendidly Leading the Way”?’, 556. 79 TNA: FCO 141/18244, Brown to Secretary of State, 14 October 1960; Governor’s Comments of Bishop’s Letter, 18 October 1960; Secretary of State to Brown, 28 October 1960; Fisher to Macleod, 28 October 1960; Macleod to Fisher, 3 November 1960; Brown to Macleod, 4 November 1960. 80 F. B. Welbourn, Religion and Politics in Uganda 1952–1962 (Nairobi, 1965), 16. 81 J. J. Carney, ‘The Politics of Ecumenism in Uganda 1962–1986’, Church History 86/3 (2017), 772. 82 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 11, Usher Wilson to Brown, 5 May 1956, Brown to Usher Wilson, 7 May 1956. 83 CMS: G59 Y/A7/1, Brian Sturdy (NAC, Kampala) to Regional Secretary, 14 May 1957; Crawford to Warren, 13 June 1957; Warren to Crawford, 27 June 1957. 84 TNA: FCO 141/18104, Uganda Monthly Intelligence Reports for April and May 1957. 85 TNA: FCO 141/18252, Special Branch Report Sheet, 26 April 1958. 86 TNA: FCO 141/18252, Crawford minute, 7 June 1958; Sharpe to Crawford, 23 June 1958. 87 TNA: FCO 141/18252, Ogwal to the Governor, 1 September 1958. 88 Mutibwa, ‘Movement for Political Independence’, 138. 89 Ward, ‘Church of Uganda Amidst Conflict’, 77. 90 A. G. G. Gingyera-Pinycwa, Apolo Milton Obote and His Times (New York, 1978), 26–27. 91 School of Oriental and African Studies Library [Henceforward SOAS]: MCF Records, Box 63, File COU 135, Unsigned Memorandum of a Meeting between Obote, Ngobi and Page, 11 October 1961.

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92 Uganda Argus, 30 January 1962, 2. 93 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 11, Archbishop Brown to Frank Collier, 4 April 1964. 94 Carney, ‘The Politics of Ecumenism in Uganda 1962–1986’, 765–795. 95 UCU: RG5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 11, Archbishop Brown to W. David Crockett, 17 November 1964, Memorandum on ‘Two New Things in Africa’ (ud). 96 Brown, Three Worlds, 110–111. 97 Gingyera-Pinycwa, Apolo Milton Obote, 142. 98 Kevin Ward, ‘The Revival in an African Milieu’ in Kevin Ward & Emma WildWood (eds), The East African Revival: History and Legacies (Farnham, 2012), 197. 99 Festo Kivengere, I Love Idi Amin: The Story of Triumph under Fire in the Midst of the Suffering and Persecution in Uganda (London, 1977). 100 Myrrh: The Moore Institutional Repository [Henceforward MIR]: Festo Kivengere, ‘Mission to UK’, October 1981, p. 7. 101 MIR: Festo Kivengere, ‘Festo Relates His Escape Story’, World Vision Chapel, March 1977. 102 MIR: Festo Kivengere, ‘Bread of Life’, Christ Episcopal Church, November 1981, 2. 103 Sempangi & Thompson, Reign of Terror; Dan Wooding & Ray Barnett, Uganda Holocaust (London, 1980); Semakula Kiwanuka, Amin and the Tragedy of Uganda (Munich, 1979); Emmanuel Kalenzi Twesigye, ‘Church and State Conflicts in Uganda’ in Samuel K. Elolia (ed.), Religion, Conflict and Democracy in Modern Uganda: The Role of Civil Society in Political Engagement (Eugene, 2012), 148–196. 104 Jennifer Nyeko-Jones, The Silent Sunset: A Daughter’s Memoir (Milton Keynes, 2011), 136. 105 Benoni Turyahikayo (ed.), Idi Amin Speaks: An Annotated Selection of His Speeches (Madison, 1998), 123. The provenance of these documents is unclear but Crawford Young attested to their veracity and the general sentiments often give a persuasive sense of Amin’s odd combination of ingenuousness and guile. 106 Noel O’Cleirigh, Recollections of Uganda under Milton Obote and Idi Amin (Trafford, 2004), 85–87. 107 Ward, ‘Church of Uganda Amidst Conflict’, 80–81. 108 Wooding & Barnett, Uganda Holocaust, ch. 12. 109 The Times, 23 November 1972, 1. 110 The Guardian 24 June 1975, 1. 111 Twesigye, ‘Church and State Conflicts’, 170 (n. 19). 112 Ford, Janani, ch. 8; John Sentamu, ‘Tribalism, Religion and Despotism in Uganda: Archbishop Janani Luwum’ in Andrew Chandler (ed.), The Terrible Alternative: Christian Martyrdom in the Twentieth Century (London, 1998), 144–158. 113 Kivengere, I Love Idi Amin, ch. 4. 114 Kevin Ward, ‘Archbishop Janani Luwum: The Dilemmas of Loyalty, Opposition and Witness in Amin’s Uganda’ in David Maxwell & Ingrid Lawrie (eds), Christianity and the African Imagination (Leiden, 2002), 216. 115 The Observer, 20 February 1977, 12. 116 Senyonjo, Defense of All God’s Children, ch. 3; Kivengere, I Love Idi Amin, 45–57; Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Violation of Human Rights: Verbatim Record of Proceedings, vol. 7, Silvanous Wani, 3338–3441. 117 Ward, ‘Archbishop Janani Luwum’, 199–224. 118 Mujaju, ‘Political Crisis’, 84.

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119 New York Times, 18 February 1977, 22. 120 James H. Mittelman, Ideology and Politics: From Obote to Amin (Ithaca, 1975), 244. 121 Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Violation of Human Rights: Verbatim Record of Proceedings, vol. 7, Silvanous Wani, 3446–3459. 122 UCU: RG 5, Archbishop of Uganda, Series 1, Reel 9, Archbishop Wani to Archbishop Coggan, 7 October 1977; Coggan to Wani, 30 November 1977.

Chapter 5 1 For a selection of Muoria’s journalism see Wangari Muoria-Sal, John Lonsdale & Derek Peterson (eds), Writing for Kenya: The Life and Works of Henry Muoria (Leiden, 2009). 2 Bernard Tabaire, ‘The Press and Political Repression in Uganda: Back to the Future?’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 1/2 (2007), 193. 3 The Guardian, 13 June 1954, 1. 4 Daily Express, 27 August 1948, 2. 5 UNA: Office of the President, Secretary of State to OAG (Uganda), 30 October 1948 enclosing Report for the Council of the Empire Press Union: Uganda Press Censorship Ordinance, Secretary of State to OAG (Uganda), 1 November 1948. 6 UNHD Indicators, Uganda [http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/UGA, Accessed 9 December 2018]. 7 Drake S. Sekeba, The Media Bullets in Uganda (Kampala, 2016), 8. 8 Jim Ocitti, Press, Politics and Public Policy in Uganda: The Role of Journalism in Democratization (Lampeter, 2005), 7–9. 9 Sekeba, Media Bullets, 35–36. 10 M. Twaddle, ‘Z.K. Sentongo and the Indian Question in East Africa’, History in East Africa 24 (1997), 309–336. 11 Ibid., 313. 12 James F. Scotton, ‘The First African Press in East Africa: Protest and Nationalism in Uganda in the 1920s’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 6/2 (1973), 226. 13 Ibid., 225. 14 John C. G. Isoba, ‘The Rise and Fall of Uganda’s Newspaper Industry 1900–1976’, Journalism Quarterly 57/2 (1980), 232. 15 Jacob Matovu, ‘Mass Media as Agents of Socialization in Uganda’, Journal of Black Studies 20/3 (1990), 344. 16 TNA: CO 1027/57, Uganda Information Department, Annual Report for 1953. 17 D. Nelson, ‘Newspapers in Uganda’, Transition 35 (1968), 32. 18 Matovu, ‘Mass Media’, 346–347. 19 Frank Barton, The Press of Africa: Persecution and Perseverance (London, 1979), 75. 20 Gerard Loughran, Birth of a Nation: The Story of a Newspaper in Kenya (New York, 2010). 21 James R. Brennan, ‘The Cold War Battle over Global News in East Africa’, Journal of Global History 10 (2015), 336. 22 Ibid., 346. 23 Ocitti, Press, Politics and Public Policy, 35–36. 24 Sekeba, Media Bullets, 58. 25 Uganda Argus, 1 April 1955, 2.

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Uganda Argus, 12 October 1955, 1; 13 October 1955, 2. Uganda Argus, 4 January 1961, 2. Uganda Argus, 1 June 1955, 5. Uganda Argus, 19 January 1960, 5. TNA: FCO 141/18271, Crawford to Lennox-Boyd, 26 May 1959; Gorell-Barnes to Hartwell, 15 June 1959; Crawford minute, 27 June 1959. 31 Uganda Argus, 3 June 1959, 4. 32 Uganda Argus, 18 May 1959, 1. 33 Uganda Argus, 2 October 1959, 6. 34 Uganda Argus, 1 September 1959, 2. 35 TNA: FCO 141/18271, Crawford minute, 8 September 1959. 36 Uganda Argus, 9 September 1959, 4. 37 E. Mulekezi, ‘I Was a Student at Moscow State’, Reader’s Digest 79/471 (July 1961), 99–104. 38 V. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom (New York, 1946). 39 TNA: FCO 141/18440, Mathias to Hartwell, 7 December 1959. 40 TNA: FCO 141/18440, Hartwell minute, 30 June 1958; Marquand to Commissioner of Police (Special Branch), 2 July 1958; Le Poivedin to Permanent Secretary, Security and External Relations, 11 November 1959; Extract from Black 14, 12 April 1960; Minute by Governor, 12 July 1960; Le Poivedin to Permanent Secretary, Security and External Relations, 15 December 1960. 41 Andrew Stuart, Of Cargoes, Colonies and Kings (London, 2001), 50. 42 TNA: FCO 141/18440, Ridley to Permanent Secretary, Security and External Relations, 14 October 1960; Purcell to Ridley, 18 October 1960; Purcell to Towle, 20 October 1960; Towle to Purcell, 24 October 1960; Purcell to Towle, 28 October 1960. 43 Uganda Argus, 29 December 1960, 3. 44 M. Matusevich, ‘Visions of Grandeur …. Interrupted: The Soviet Union Through Nigerian Eyes’ in M. Matusevich (ed.), Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa (Trenton, 2007), 353–376; Sean Guillory, ‘Culture Clash in the Socialist Paradise: Soviet Patronage and African Students’ Urbanity in the Soviet Union 1960–1965’, Diplomatic History 38/2 (2014), 271–281; Daniel Branch, ‘Political Traffic: Kenyan Students in Eastern and Central Europe 1958–69’, Journal of Contemporary History 53/4 (2018), 811–831. 45 Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Kintu (London, 2018), 311. 46 TNA: FCO 141/18440, Purcell to Watson, 14 December 1960, Purcell to Acting Provisional Commissioner, Northern Province, 20 December 1960. 47 Uganda Argus, 31 March 1962, 6. 48 Uganda Argus, 10 June 1968, 1–3, 11 June, 1, 14 June, 1. 49 Uganda Argus, 30 August 1968, 5. 50 Uganda Argus, 21 May 1968, 2. 51 Tabaire, ‘Back to the Future’, 201–202. 52 Uganda Argus, 4 June 1968, 3. 53 TNA: CO 822/957, Cohen (Entebbe) to Gorell Barnes, 8 May 1954. 54 While confirming Rowland’s acquisitiveness the latest research suggests he tended to exaggerate his influence over nationalist governments. See Andrew Cohen, ‘Lonrho and the Limits of Corporate Power in Africa’, South African Historical Journal 68/1 (2016), 31–49. 55 Barton, Press of Africa, 81. 56 Matovu, ‘Mass Media’, 342–361. 26 27 28 29 30

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57 Ocitti, Press, Politics and Public Policy, 32–33. 58 John Osman, Life, Love, Laughter, Liberty: Reflections on a Long and Full Existence (Bloomington, 2015), ch. 12. 59 Uganda Argus, 29 January 1972, 2; 30 January 1971, 2. 60 Uganda Argus, 10 January 1972, 4. 61 Uganda Argus, 19 October 1972, 4. 62 Uganda Argus, 13 January 1972, 4. 63 Barton, Press of Africa, 99–100. 64 Uganda Argus, 14 February 1972, 6. 65 Uganda Argus, 30 November, 1. 66 Voice of Uganda, 2 December, 1. 67 Ocitti, Press, Politics and Public Policy, 53. 68 Voice of Uganda, 2 November 1974, 7. 69 Barton, Press of Africa, 107. 70 James R. Tumusiime, What Makes Africans Laugh: Reflections of an Entrepreneur in Humour, Media and Culture (Kampala, 2013), 54–55. 71 Dan Wooding & Ray Barnett, Uganda Holocaust (London, 1980), 112–114. 72 Ocitti, Press, Politics and Public Policy, 55–59. 73 Voice of Uganda, 11 December 1972, 1; 7 February 1973, 1. 74 Voice of Uganda, 9 August 1975, 1. 75 Voice of Uganda, 4 July 1975, 2. 76 Barton, Press of Africa, 71. 77 Sekeba, Media Bullets, 64. 78 Harold Ingrams, Uganda: A Crisis of Nationhood (London, 1960), 304–305. More recently Katwe featured as the ‘slum’ from which a female chess champion arose in a Disney film. See The Queen of Katwe (2016) Dir. Mira Nair, USA: Disney. 79 TNA: FCO 141/18095, Ugandan African Affairs, Fortnightly Review for 19 January 1947, 27 February 1947, 11 March 1948, 7 October 1948. 80 TNA: FCO 141/18096, Ugandan African Affairs, Fortnightly Review for 20 October 1949, 3 November 1949; FCO 141/18097, Fortnightly Review for 12 January 1950. 81 TNA: FCO 141/18096, Ugandan African Affairs, Fortnightly Review for 8 September 1949, 22 September 1949. 82 L. Carol Summers, ‘Slander, Buzz and Spin: Telegrams, Politics and Global Communications in the Uganda Protectorate 1945–1955’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 16/3 (2015), 1–13. 83 New York Times, 14 February 1948, 6; 22 October 1948, 9; 24 October 1948, 26. 84 TNA: CO 537/3605, Galsworthy minute, 24 May 1948; Poynton minute, 24 May 1948. 85 TNA: FCO 141/18095, Ugandan African Affairs, Fortnightly Review for 25 March 1948. 86 The Times, 4 August 1948, 3; 13 August 1948, 3; Daily Express, 27 August 1948, 2. 87 TNA: FCO 141/18183, Mulumba to Hall, 8 August 1948. 88 TNA: FCO 141/18134, Memorandum on the Civil Disturbances in Buganda in April 1949 (ud). 89 TNA: CO 141/18211, Governor to Secretary of State, 16 February 1948; Secretary of State to Governor, 19 February 1948; Governor to Secretary of State, 22 June 1948; Potter (Entebbe) to Wallace (CO), 10 July 1948; Secretary of State to Governor, 10 July 1948; Wallace (CO) to Robertson (Entebbe), Hayden Note on Semakula Mulumba, 30 July 1948; Acting Governor to Wallace (CO),

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1 September 1948; Robertson (Acting Chief Secretary) to Acting Resident (Buganda), 3 September 1948.   90 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, 3 November 1948, vol. 457, col. 79.   91 TNA: FCO 141/18095, Ugandan African Affairs, Fortnightly Review for 20 May 1948.   92 TNA: CO 1027/57, Uganda Information Department, Report for 1955.   93 Nelson, ‘Newspapers in Uganda’, 29.   94 Sekeba, Media Bullets, 104.   95 TNA: CO 822/959, Governor (Uganda) to Secretary of State, 14 August 1954, enclosing text of Uganda Express, 30 December 1954.   96 The Times, 11 January 1954, 4; 20 February 1954, 5.   97 TNA: FCO 141/18256, Extracts from the Vernacular Press, Uganda Express, 5 May 1954.   98 The Times, 11 June 1954, 4; 5 July 1954, 6; 14 September 1954, 7.   99 TNA: FCO 141/18256, Extracts from the Vernacular Press, Uganda Eyogera, 19 February 1954, 12 March 1954, 23 April 1954. 100 TNA: FCO 141/18257, Lwanga to Governor, 12 June 1954; Governor to Secretary of State 1954; White to Chief Secretary, 23 June 1954; Cohen minute, 24 June 1954; Record of a Meeting in the Governor’s Office, 23 June 1954. 101 TNA: CO 822/957, Cohen to Gorell Barnes, 8 May 1954; Bates minute, 14 May 1954; Fisher minute, 17 May 1954; Bates minute, 27 May 1954; Gorell Barnes minute, 28 May 1953; Lloyd minute, 1 June 1954; Lyttelton minute (ud), Note by David, 1 June 1954; Secretary of State to Uganda (Cohen), 2 June 1954. 102 TNA: FCO 141/18103, Uganda Monthly Intelligence Appreciations for May, June, October 1955. 103 The Times, 23 November 1955, 9; 24 December 1955, 5. 104 TNA: CO 822/2857, Cartland (Entebbe) to Waller (CO), 5 August 1960. 105 TNA: CO 822/1779, Uganda (Crawford) to Secretary of State, 10 December 1957. 106 Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, vol. 580, c.47, 17 December 1957. 107 Jason C. Parker, Hearts, Minds, Voices: US Cold War Public Diplomacy and the Formation of the Third World (Oxford, 2016), n. 68, 214–215. 108 TNA: FCO 141/18449, Secretary of State to OAG (Uganda), 1 June 1961; Governor (Uganda) to Secretary of State for Colonies, 6 June 1961. 109 Tabaire, ‘Back to the Future’, 193–211; Peter Benson, Black Orpheus, Transition and Modern Cultural Awakening in Africa (London, 1986), 177–213; Asha Rogers, ‘Black Orpheus and the African Magazines of the Congress for Cultural Freedom’ in Giles Scott-Smith & Charlotte A. Lerg (eds), Campaigning Culture and the Cold War (London, 2017), 243–259; Peter Kalliney, ‘Modernism, African Literature and the Cold War’, Modern Language Quarterly 76/3 (2015), 333–368. 110 Ali Mazrui, Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda: The Making of a Military Ethnocracy (London, 1975), 20. 111 UNA: Office of the President Confidential, Box 75, 002, Cabinet Memoranda, CT(1963)252, Memorandum by the Minister of Internal Affairs, 7 August 1963. 112 Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London, 1999). 113 Tony Hall & Rajat Neogy, ‘Rajat Neogy on the CIA’, Transition 32 (1967), 45–46. 114 Okot p’Bitek, ‘Indigenous Ills’, Transition 32 (1967), 47. 115 Abu Mayanja, ‘The Government’s Proposals for a New Constitution of Uganda’, Transition 32 (1967), 20–25.

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116 Ali Mazrui, ‘The Leninist Czar’, Transition 26 (1966), 8–17. 117 Ali Mazrui, ‘A Reply to Critics’, Transition 32 (1967), 48–52. 118 K. A. Busia, ‘Interview with K.A. Busia’, Transition 28 (1967), 20–24. 119 Benson, Black Orpheus, 180. 120 R. Neogy, ‘Letters to the Editor’, Transition 38 (1971), 6; Special Correspondent, ‘A Matter of Transition’ Transition 38 (1971), 43–46 reprinted as Barbara LapčekNeogy, ‘A Matter of Transition’ Transition 75/76 (1997), 244–248. 121 Benson, Black Orpheus, 221. 122 Transition 38 (1971), 5. 123 Transition 42 (1973), 4. 124 Transition 49 (1975), 7. 125 Ocitti, Press, Politics and Public Policy, 60. 126 Sekeba, Media Bullets, 40, 48. 127 Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1976, B5. 128 I. Page, ‘Origins and Growth of the White Fathers’ Press at Bukalasa, Uganda’ in Robert Fraser & Mary Hammond (eds), Books without Borders, Vol 1: The CrossNational Dimensions in Print Culture (Basingstoke, 2008), 107–129. 129 James H. Mittelman, Ideology and Politics in Uganda: From Obote to Amin (Ithaca, 1975), 140. 130 Zie Gariyo, ‘The Press and Democratic Struggles in Uganda’ in Mahmood Mamdani & Joe Oloka-Onyango (eds), Uganda: Studies in Living Conditions, Popular Movements and Constitutionalism (Vienna, 1994), 445. 131 The Guardian, 16 January 1973, 4; 18 January 1973, 13; The Times, 16 January 1973, 5. 132 Wooding & Barnett, Uganda Holocaust, 47. 133 The Times, 30 January 1973, 6. 134 TNA: FCO 31/1773, Smith (Kampala) to Wigan (FCO), 2 July 1974. 135 Ocitti, Press, Politics and Public Policy, 59–60. 136 Wooding & Barnett, Uganda Holocaust, 60.

Chapter 6   1 John-Jean Barya, ‘Trade Unions, Liberalisation and Politics in Uganda’ in Bjorn Beckman, Sakhela Buhlungu & Lloyd Sachikonye (eds), Trade Unions and Party Politics: Labour Movements in Africa (Cape Town, 2010), 87.   2 R. M. A. Zwanenberg & Anne King, An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda 1800–1970 (London, 1975), ch. 4; Jan Jelmert Jørgensen, Uganda: A Modern History (London, 1981), ch. 2.   3 Roger D. Scott, The Development of Trade Unionism in Uganda (Nairobi, 1966), ch. 1.   4 Ioan Davies, African Trade Unions (Harmondsworth, 1966), 40.   5 B. C. Roberts, Labour in the Tropical Territories of the Commonwealth (London, 1964), 195.   6 Brian Nicol, ‘Industrial Relations in Uganda’ in Ukandi G. Damachi, H. Dieter Seibel & Lester Trachtman (eds) Industrial Relations in Africa (London, 1979), 276.   7 UNA: Chief Secretary’s Files, Box 8, 1761/D350, President of the UAMDA (Wandegeya) to Chief Secretary, 29 September 1943.   8 T. V. Sathyamurthi, The Political Development of Uganda (Aldershot, 1986), 307.   9 Gardner Thompson, ‘Colonialism in Crisis: The Uganda Disturbances of 1945’, African Affairs 91/365 (1992), 605–624.

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10 Ibid., 622. 11 TNA: FCO 141/18107, Memorandum in Connections with the Strikes, Commissioner of Police, 5 March 1945. 12 ODNB: ‘Sir Granville St. John Orde Browne’ by Anthony Clayton (2004). 13 TNA: CO 822/130/2, Labour Conditions in East Africa G. St.J. Orde Browne. 14 TNA: CO 822/130/2, Hall (Entebbe) to George Hall (CO), 27 July 1946. 15 TNA: CO 859/271, Parry minute, 6 February 1952. 16 Scott, Development of Trade Unionism, 11–12. 17 TNA: CO 822/130/2, Labour Conditions in East Africa G. St.J. Orde Browne. 18 MRC: TUC, MSS 292/932.9/4, CAC 1(1958–1959), minute 6b, 9 October 1958, CAC 2(1958–1959), minute 16a, 3 December 1958, CAC 1(1959–1960), minute 10, 4 November 1959, CAC 5(1959–1960), minute 54, 1 June 1960. 19 MRC: TUC, MSS 292b/967.2(i), ‘Uganda’ by Walter Hood, 14 February 1966. 20 Nicol, ‘Industrial Relations in Uganda’, 283. 21 Scott, Development of Trade Unionism, 46. 22 MRC: TUC, MSS 292/967.3/2, Luande to Tewson, 9 June 1959. 23 MRC: TUC, MSS 292/967.3/2, Brandie to Woodcock, 15 April 1959. 24 MRC: TUC, MSS 292/967.3/3, Brandie to Lewis, 14 October 1959, 6 January 1960. 25 TNA: CO 822/2672, Foggon minute, 10 February 1962. 26 MRC: TUC, MSS 292/967.3/3, Luande to Tewson, 25 January 1960. 27 The Guardian, 10 February 1960, 9. 28 TNA: CO 822/2064, Uganda Monthly Intelligence Report for February, 14 March 1960. 29 MRC: TUC, MSS 292/967.3/3, International Department minutes, 10 February 1960, 15 February 1960, 17 February 1960. 30 TNA: CO 822/2672, Reid (CO) to Hartwell (Entebbe), 11 February 1962. 31 F. Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996). 32 R. D. Grillo, Race, Class and Militancy: An African Trade Union (New York, 1974), 45. 33 D. Hyde, ‘The East African Railway Strike 1959–1960: Labour’s Challenge of Interterritorialism’, Labor History 57/1 (2016), 71–91. 34 Uganda Argus, 26 March 1962, 4. 35 TNA: CO 822/1624, Sanger (Toro European Association) to Secretary of State, 22 February 1959, Foggon minute, 10 March 1959. For a description of the habitués of The Glue Pot see Andrew Stuart, Of Cargoes, Colonies and Kings (London, 2001), 9–10. 36 TNA: CO 822/2679, Minutes of the 15th East African Labour Commissioners’ Conference, 22–25 August 1960. 37 MRC: TUC MSS 292c/967/6, Memorandum on Uganda by Hood, 27 April 1960. 38 MRC: TUC MSS 292c/967/5, Banyanga to Bavin, 6 June 1960. 39 Uganda Argus, 14 March 1960, p. 3. 40 TNA: CO 822/2064, Uganda Monthly Intelligence Report for July, 7 August 1961. 41 R. D. Grillo, ‘The Tribal Factor in an East African Trade Union’ in P. H. Gulliver (ed.), Tradition and Transition in East Africa: Studies of the Tribal Element in the Modern Era (London, 1969), 309. 42 Opoku Agyeman, The Failure of Grassroots Pan-Africanism: The Case of the AllAfrica Trade Union Federation (Oxford, 2003); Yevette Richards, ‘The Activism of George McCray: Confluence and Conflict of Pan-Africanism and Transnational Labor Solidarity’ in Nico Slate (ed.), Black Power beyond Borders: The Global Dimensions of the Black Power Movement (New York, 2012), 35–56; Anthony Carew,

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‘Conflict within the ICFTU: Anti-Colonialism and Anti-Communism in the 1950s’, International Review of Social History 41/2 (1996), 147–181. 43 John C. Stoner, ‘“We Will Never Follow a Nationalist Policy; but We Will Never Be Neutral”: American Labor and Neutralism in Cold War Africa’ in Robert A. Waters & Geert van Goethem (eds), American Labor’s Global Ambassadors (Basingstoke, 2013), 237–252. 44 TNA: FO 1110/632, Minutes of a Meeting on the WFTU, 17 December 1953, Working Paper for Conference on the WFTU (ud), Barnes minute, 25 January 1954. 45 TNA: CO 822/148/5, Parry minute, 26 June 1950. 46 David Goldsworthy, Tom Mboya: The Man Who Kenya Wanted to Forget (London, 1982), 157. 47 Uganda Argus, 14 July 1955, 3. 48 Yevette Richards & Maida Springer, Conversations with Maida Springer: A Personal History of Labor, Race and International Relations (Pittsburg, 2004). 49 George Meany Memorial Archive [Henceforward GMMA]: RG 18/003, Series 1, Box 48/26, McCray to Lovestone, 9 April 1959. 50 Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, ‘Trade Union Imperialism: American Labour, the IFCTU and the Kenyan Labour Movement’, Social and Economic Studies 36/2 (1987), 156. 51 TNA: CO 859/1210, Barton minute, 17 September 1957. 52 MRC: TUC, MSS 292/932.9/4, CAC 4/1, ‘Re-Assessment of Situation in Africa’ by Tewson, 4 February 1959. 53 TNA: FCO 141/18106, Uganda Monthly Intelligence Report for December 1958. 54 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis [Henceforward IISG]: ICFTU 3981, Gottfarcht to Morse, 31 March 1958. 55 TNA: CO 859/1210, Lennox-Boyd minute, 13 May 1958; Note of a Meeting with Tewson, 6 June 1958; Lennox-Boyd minute, 15 June 1958; CO 859/1211, Note of a Meeting with Tewson, 22 September 1958. 56 TNA: CO 859/1210, Bennett minute, 17 April 1958; Poynton minute, 30 April 1960; Lennox-Boyd minute, 2 May 1958. 57 TNA: CO 859/1210, Governor to Secretary of State, 12 April 1958, 11 May 1958. 58 Yevette Richards, Maida Springer: Pan-Africanist and International Labor Leader (Pittsburgh, 2000), 117–122. 59 Richards, Conversations, 185. 60 IISG: ICFTU 3996, Meany to Millard, 2 September 1958; McCray to Millard, 3 September 1958. 61 Yevette Richards, ‘African and African-American Labor Leaders in the Struggle over International Affiliation’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 31/2 (1998), 301–334. 62 GMMA: RG 18/1, Series 3/1, Box 13, File 8, McCray to Springer, 23 May 1960. 63 TNA: FCO 859/1560, Foggon minute, 18 February 1960; Reid minute, 4 March 1960. 64 London Metropolitan University Archives [Henceforward LMU]: Marjorie Nicholson Papers, Box 38, 967.3, Lewis (Kampala) to Nicholson, 22 November 1958. 65 IISG: ICFTU 3993a, Short Visit- ICFTU African Labour College by Tom Mboya, December 1958. 66 LMU: Nicholson Papers, Box 38, 967.3/3, Lewis to Nicholson, 10 November 1958. 67 MRC: TUC MSS 292/967.3/2, Brandie to Tewson, 5 August 1959. 68 TNA: CO 859/1211, Extract from Uganda Intelligence, 31 October 1958; FCO 141/18106, Special Branch Monthly Digest of Intelligence, December 1958. 69 IISG: ICFTU 3981, Fockstedt to Krane, 16 February 1959.

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  70 TNA: FCO 141/18106, Uganda Monthly Intelligence Report for August and December 1958.   71 New York Times, 7 July 1959, 14.   72 IISG: ICFTU 3981, Fockstedt to Millard, 1 September 1959.   73 GMMA: RG 18/1, Series 3/1, Box 17/2, McCray to Ross, 17 February 1960.   74 GMMA: RG18/4, Series 2, Box 29/18, McCray to Ross, 17 February 1960.   75 GMMA: RG 18/003, Series 1, Box 48/27, Lovestone to McCray, 4 December 1960.   76 GMMA: RG 18/1, Series 3/1, Box 17/2, McCray to Brown, 16 July 1960.   77 GMMA: RG 18/3, Series 1, Box 12/14, Report on Accra Conference by Brown, 9 December 1958.   78 GMMA: RG 18/003, Series 1, Box 48/26, McCray to Lovestone, 6 April 1959.   79 Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, ‘Pan-African Trade Unionism: Unity and Discord’, Transafrican Journal of History 15 (1986), 174.   80 Richards, Conversations, 247.   81 Scott, Development of Trade Unionism, 137–140.   82 SOAS: MCF, Box 63, COU 135, Memorandum of a Meeting by Page, 11 October 1961.   83 SOAS: MCF, Box 63, COU 135, Reich to Page, 12 June 1961, 20 July 1961, 31 July 1961, 24 August 1961; Page to Reich, 7 July 1961, 16 August 1961; Wagoina to Page, 20 June 1961, 21 August 1961, 11 September 1961, 27 September 1961; Page to Wagoina, 7 July 1961, 24 August 1961, 11 September 1961, 22 September 1961, 11 October 1961; Page to Tettegah, 5 October 1961. For further details about relations between Ugandan political parties and the government in Prague, see Philip E. Muehlenbeck, ‘Czechoslovak Assistance to Kenya and Uganda 1962–1968’ in Philip E. Muehlenbeck & Natalia Telepneva (eds), Warsaw Pact Intervention in the Third World: Aid and Influence in the Cold War (London, 2018), 249–270.   84 IISG: ICFTU 4617, Nash (ICFTU) to Tofahrn (PSI), 24 January 1961.   85 Scott, Development of Trade Unionism, 64–66.   86 IISG: ICFTU 4617, Nash (ICFTU) to Tofahrn (PSI), 24 January 1961; Nedzynski to Nakibinge, 4 May 1961; Nedzynski to Welsh, 9 November 1961.   87 IISG: ICFTU 4616, Luande to Millard, 14 December 1960.   88 IISG: ICFTU 4263, Fockstedt to Millard, 13 December 1960; ICFTU 3982, Fockstedt to Millard, 4 March 1961.   89 IISG: ICFTU 4623, Millard to Fockstedt, 10 March 1961, Nedzynski to Woodcock, 29 May 1961; ICFTU 4617, Millard to Nakibinge, 13 March 1961; GMMA: RG18/1, 3/1, Box 13/8, Mpangala to Springer, 7 April 1961.   90 Agyeman, Failure of Grassroots Pan-Africanism, 206.   91 Nicol, ‘Industrial Relations in Uganda’, 292.   92 Uganda Argus, 3 April 1962, 3; 22 April 1962, 5.   93 Uganda Argus, 14 June 1962, 3; 18 June 1962, 3; 23 June 1962, 1; 10 September 1962.   94 Uganda Argus, 21 September 1962, 5; 22 September 1962, 5; 24 September 1962, 3.   95 Uganda Argus, 3 April 1962, 3.   96 Uganda Argus, 18 June 1962, 3.   97 Uganda Argus, 31 October 1962, 4.   98 TNA: FCO 141/18426, Uganda Monthly Intelligence Report, 31 August 1962.   99 SOAS: MCF, Box 63, Ojambo to Haq, 24 July 1962. 100 Uganda Argus, 10 July 1962, 1. 101 Donald Rothchild & Michael Rogin, ‘Uganda’ in Gwendolen M. Carter (ed.), National Unity and Regionalism in Eight African States (Ithaca, NY, 1966), 386. 102 Uganda Argus, 8 October 1962, 5; 23 October 1962, 3.

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103 Uganda Argus, 22 October 1962, 1; 27 October 1962, 5; 9 November 1962. 104 Uganda Argus, 14 June 1962, 4; 29 June 1962, 3; 12 July 1962, 1, 4. 105 Agyeman, Failure of Grassroots Pan-Africanism, 168. 106 IISG: ICFTU 3982, Odero-Jowi to Tulatz, 5 November 1962; Hammerton to Tulatz, 7 November 1962. 107 IISG: ICFTU 4613, Welsh to Nedzynski, 11 November 1962. 108 MRC: TUC 292b/967.2(i), Memo on the Continuation of ISF Aid to Uganda, Briefing Note, 13 June 1963. 109 NAII: RG 59, Bureau of African Affairs: Office of Eastern and Southern African Affairs, Records Relating to Uganda 1959–1964, Box 6, Deming to Magezi, 21 December 1963, Magezi to Deming, 30 December 1963. 110 Scott, Development of Trade Unionism, 156. 111 UNA: Office of the President: Confidential, Box 43, ref 004, Cabinet Minutes of the 37th meeting, minute 403, 11 August 1964. 112 UNA: Office of the President, Box 28, PS/E3, Cabinet Memorandum CT(1964)138, 18 June 1964; Box 43, ref 004, minutes of the 45th meeting, minute 508, 22 September 1964. 113 A. B. K. Kasozi, The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda (London, 1984), 93. 114 Barya, ‘Trade Unions, Liberalisation and Politics’, 90. 115 Uganda Argus, 1 March 1968, 3. 116 Uganda Argus, 23 April 1968, 1; 25 April 1968, 1, 3; 29 April 1968, 1–2. 117 Uganda Argus, 2 May 1968, 1; 15 May 1968, 3. 118 Agyeman, Failure of Grassroots Pan-Africanism, 290–291. 119 IISG: ICFTU 3982, Mwilu to Tulatz, 29 June 1964. 120 TNA: LAB 13/1613, Reith (Kampala) to O’Leary (CRO), 11 December 1964. 121 TNA: LAB 13/1613, Reith (Kampala) to Simmons (CRO), 24 October 1964. 122 MRC: TUC MSS 292B/967.2(1), Briefing on International Solidarity Fund Committee, 10 June, 1964, 12 June 1964. 123 IISG: ICFTU 4614, Current Events in the Uganda Trade Union Movement (ud) by A. M. Kailembo. 124 Uganda Argus, 5 April 1968, 11; 6 April 1968, 7. 125 Nicol, ‘Industrial Relations in Uganda’, 288. 126 Ibid., 292. 127 Ralph E. Gonsalves, The Politics of Trade Unions and Industrial Relations in Uganda (Victoria University of Manchester, 1974), 374–376. 128 Ali Mazrui, ‘Casualties of an Underdeveloped Class Structure’ in William A. Shack & Elliott P. Skinner (eds), Strangers in African Societies (Berkeley, 1979), 261–278. 129 The Times, 15 October 1970, p. 8. 130 Barya, ‘Trade Unions, Liberalisation and Politics’, 91. 131 Nicol, ‘Industrial Relations in Uganda’, 293–294. 132 UNA: Office of the President (Confidential), Box 75/004, Owor to the Secretary of the Public Services Salaries Commission, 6 August 1973. 133 UNA: Office of the President, Box 33, ref 011, Alimundo to the Secretary of the Public Services Salary Commission, 25 July 1973. 134 www.notu.or.ug [Accessed 9 February 2019]. 135 Daily Monitor, ‘Uganda Gets First Labour College in Five Years’, 3 October 2014 [www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/Jobs-Career/Uganda-gets-first-labour-college-infive-decades/689848-2473140-8ga3pg/index.html, Accessed 9 February 2019].

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136 TNA: DEFE 11/238, Uganda: Prospects for Independence, 23 October 1962. 137 Davies, African Trade Unions, 42.

Chapter 7   1 Sridath Ramphal, Glimpses of a Global Life (Hertford, 2014), 250.   2 S. R. Ashton, ‘British Government Perspectives on the Commonwealth 1964– 1971’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35/1 (2007), 73–94; W. David McIntyre, The Britannic Vision: Historians and the Making of the British Commonwealth of Nations (Basingstoke, 2009); Richard Toye, ‘Words of Change: The Rhetoric of Commonwealth, Common Market and Cold War’ in L. J. Butler & Sarah Stockwell (eds), The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization (Basingstoke, 2013), 140–158; Philip Murphy, The Empire’s New Clothes: The Myth of the Commonwealth (Oxford, 2018); Christopher Prior, ‘“This Community Which Nobody Can Define”: Meanings of the Commonwealth in the late 1940s and 1950s’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 47/3 (2019), 568–590.   3 Olusola Akinrinade, ‘Africa and the Commonwealth 1960–80’, Round Table 78/309 (1989), 33–53; Olusola Akinrinade, ‘Africa’ in James Mayall (ed.), The Contemporary Commonwealth: An Assessment (London, 2010), 210–223.   4 Peter Lyon, ‘Foreword’ in Krishnan Srinivasan (ed.), The Rise, Decline and Future of the British Commonwealth (Basingstoke, 2005), xii.   5 W. David McIntyre, Colonies into Commonwealth (London, 1974), 118.   6 Prior, ‘Meanings of the Commonwealth’, 581.   7 TNA: CO 822/2290, Uganda (Coutts) to Secretary of State, 16 May 1962; Macmillan minute, 19 May 1962; Maudling to Macmillan, 22 May 1962.   8 TNA: CAB 134/1561, CPC(62)9th mtg., minute 1, 10 May 1962.   9 TNA: DO 168/41, Chadwck (CRO) to Webber (CO), 21 May 1962 covering draft telegrams; Sandys minute, 28 May 1962; Secretary of State to Uganda (Coutts), 28 May 1962; Uganda (Acting Governor) to Secretary of State, 7 June 1962. 10 W. David McIntyre, ‘Britain and the Creation of the Commonwealth Secretariat’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 28/1 (2000), 141. 11 Arnold Smith, Stitches in Time (London, 1981), 6. 12 David McIntyre, ‘Creation of the Commonwealth Secretariat’, 146. 13 Stephen Chan, The Commonwealth in World Politics: A Study of International Action (London, 1988), 25–26. 14 Krishnan Srinivasan, The Rise, Decline and Future of the British Commonwealth (Basingstoke, 2005), 29. 15 Peter Catterall (ed.), The Harold Macmillan Diaries Vol. 2 (London, 2011), 366–367. 16 TNA: CAB 128/35, CC(61)13th mtg., 16 March 1961. 17 TNA: PREM 11/4626, Douglas-Home to Smith, 4 June 1964, Smith to DouglasHome, 6 June 1964. 18 Michael O’Neill, ‘Militancy and Accommodation: The Influence of the Heads of Government Meetings on the Commonwealth 1960–1969’, Millennium 12/3 (1983), 218. 19 Commonwealth Oral History Project [Henceforward COHP]: Martin Aliker interview pt 1, 22 May 2013. 20 Smith, Stitches, 3.

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21 Luise White, Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization (London, 2015). 22 Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses & Robert McNamara, The White Redoubt, the Great Powers and the Struggle for Southern Africa (London, 2018). 23 TNA: PREM 11/4626, Kampala to CRO, 2 June 1964. 24 TNA: PREM 11/4633, Record of a Discussion between Douglas-Home and Obote, 7 July 1964. 25 TNA: PREM 13/188, CRO to British High Commissions, 21 June 1965. 26 TNA: PREM 13/727, CRO to Kampala, 6 January 1966, Kampala (Hunt) to CRO, 8 January 1966; PREM 13/778, minutes of the 4th meeting of Commonwealth prime ministers, Lagos, 12 January 1966. 27 Harold Wilson, The Labour Government 1964–1970: A Personal Record (London, 1971), 277. 28 Times of India, 17 September 1966, 7; The Times, 15 September 1966, 1. 29 The Guardian, 15 September 1966, 4. 30 UNA: Office of the President, Box 21/CM21/vol. 3, CT1966(218), Rhodesia at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, 19 October 1966. 31 TNA: PREM 13/2539, CPM(69)6th mtg., 9 January 1969. 32 The Times, 9 January 1969, 1. 33 TNA: FCO 31/479, LeTocq (FCO) to Scott (Kampala) including Obote to Callaghan, 14 January 1969; Callaghan to Obote, 16 January 1969. 34 Uganda Argus, 15 January 1969, 1. 35 The Times, 14 January 1969, 1. 36 Uganda Argus, 1 January 1969, 1. 37 TNA: PREM 13/2539, CPM(69)12th mtg., 14 January 1969; PREM 13/2540, Palliser to Mackilligin, 6 January 1969. 38 TNA: FCO 31/479, Wenban-Smith (Kampala) to Smallman (FCO), 2 February 1969. 39 TNA: PREM 15/275, Heath minute (ud) on ‘Agenda for Commonwealth Meeting: Suitable Items for Support’. 40 TNA: PREM 15/275, Record of a Meeting between the Prime Minister and the Commonwealth Secretary-General, 8 September 1971. 41 TNA: CAB 128/47, CM(70)5th mtg., minute 3, 16 July 1970, CM(70)6th mtg., minute 1, 20 July 1970, CM(70)7th mtg., minute 2, 21 July 1970; CAB 129/150, CP(70)12, 15 July 1970. 42 Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, vol. 804, 22 July 1970, 559–671; The Times, 23 July 1970, 1. 43 TNA: CAB 128/47, CM(70)12th mtg., minute 2, 3 September 1970, CM(70)32nd mtg., minute 1, 26 October 1970; CAB 129/154, CP(70)113, 30 November 1970. 44 The Observer, 21 December 1969, 1. 45 David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (London, 2001). 46 A. B. K. Kasozi, The Bitter Bread of Exile: The Financial Problems of Sir Edward Muteesa II during His Final Exile (Kampala, 2013). 47 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 274, 25 May 1966, col. 1386. 48 V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State: A Novel with Two Supporting Narratives (London, 2011), 114. Naipaul was a critic of Obote who was in East Africa as a visiting scholar at Makerere during the events of 1966. 49 The Times, 7 August 1970, 1. 50 UNA: Office of the President, Box 12/20, Minutes of the 12th meeting of the Security Committee of the Cabinet, 11 August 1970.

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51 UNA: Office of the President, Box 7/8, Minutes of the 3rd special meeting of the Cabinet, 15 December 1970. 52 Smith, Stitches, 246. 53 Ramphal, Glimpses, 254–255. 54 COHP: Mark Chona interview, 11 August 2015, 21. 55 Uganda Argus, 4 January 1971, 2; 8 January 1971, 1, 5. 56 Uganda Argus, 8 January 1971, 1. 57 The Times of India, 23 October 1970, 10. 58 The Guardian, 1 January 1971, 5. 59 Edward Heath, The Course of My Life: My Autobiography (London, 1998), 481. 60 COHP: Mark Chona interview, 11 August 2015, 18–23. 61 TNA: CAB 133/403, Singapore CHOGM minutes of the 9th meeting, 20 January 1971. 62 TNA: PREM 15/277, Record of the Meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers held without Advisers, 19 January 1971. 63 Ramphal, Glimpses, 212; Smith, Stitches, 215. 64 TNA: PREM 15/277, Heath minute (ud) on Moon minute, 3 February 1971. 65 New York Times, 23 January 1971, 10; Los Angeles Times, 21 January 1971, a4; The Times, 23 January 1971, 1. 66 TNA: CAB 133/403, HGM(71)15, Draft Declaration of Principles, Memorandum by the Zambian Government, 12 January 1971. 67 The Times, 23 January 1973, 12. 68 Emeka Anyaoku, The Inside Story of the Modern Commonwealth (London, 2004), 247; Heath, Course, 482–483. 69 TNA: FCO 31/1023, Memo by Slater on the Military Coup in Uganda, 15 February 1971. 70 Yumiko Hamai, ‘“Imperial Burden” or “Jews of Africa”?: An Analysis of Political and Media Discourse in the Ugandan Asian Crisis’, Twentieth Century British History 22/3 (2011), 415–436. 71 TNA: PREM 15/1260, Heath minute, 14 September 1972 on Kampala to FCO 14 September 1972. The emphasis in the original takes the form of underlining in ink. 72 The Times, 20 October 1972, 9. 73 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 848, cols 1131–1132. 74 TNA: FCO 31/1600, Watts minute, 1 January 1973; Blair minute, 1 January 1973; Storer minute, 1 January 1973; Marshall minute, 4 January 1973; Jones minute, 8 January 1973; Watson minute, 17 January 1973; Dawbarn minute, 15 February 1973; FCO to Kampala, 20 February 1973. 75 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 849, 31 January 1973, col. 1372. 76 The Times, 2 February 1973, 6. 77 The Observer, 27 May 1973, 1–2. 78 George Ivan Smith, Ghosts of Kampala (London, 1980), 5. 79 TNA: FCO 68/523, Campbell minute, 16 April 1973; Note of a Meeting with Head, 16 April 1973; Watson minute, 19 April 1973. 80 TNA: FCO 68/256, Memorandum on Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Ottawa, 22 June 1973 with Douglas-Home minute (ud). 81 Commonwealth Secretariat Archives [Henceforward CSA]: 2004/136, Record of Secretary-General’s Call on the Secretary of State, 18 July 1973. 82 CSA: 2003/12, Eggleton minute, 26 October 1972; Anyaoku minute, 1 December 1972. 83 CSA: 2003/11, Minutes of Meetings of High Commissioners at Marlborough House, 12 December 1972, 19 December 1972.

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  84 Heath spent much of the race becalmed thus scuppering any chance of a British win in the Admiral’s Cup. See The Times, 17 August 1973, 1.   85 TNA: FCO 68/522, Record of a Meeting, 26 February 1973.   86 TNA: FCO 68/522, Cable minute, 26 February 1973; Watson minute, 19 February 1973; Record of a Meeting, 26 February 1973; Watson minute, 1 March 1973; Storar minute, 9 March 1973; Greenhill minute, 12 March 1973; Heath to Commonwealth Secretary-General, 16 March 1973.   87 CSA: 2004/136, Wade minute, 14 May 1973; TNA: FCO 68/524, Roberts to Grattan, 29 June 1973; Smith, Stitches, 255–256.   88 TNA: FCO 31/1588, Pickup minute (ud), CHOGM Uganda Brief, 25 July 1973.   89 The Times, 4 August 1973, 4.   90 TNA: FCO 31/1588, Speech by His Excellency the President of the Republic of Uganda, Idi Amin Dada at the CHOGM, Ottawa, August 1973.   91 Los Angeles Times, 9 August 1973, 5; New York Times, 9 August 1973, 11; The Times, 9 August 1973, 1, 5.   92 The Times, 4 May 1977, 1.   93 TNA: FCO 68/694, Chitty minute, 3 November 1976.   94 TNA: FCO 31/2152, Ewans minute (ud), Extracts from the Mirror, 14 January 1977, Ewans minute, 24 January 1977, Extracts from the Sun, 24 January 1977; FCO 31/2152, Dales (FCO) to Wright, 4 February 1977.   95 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 927, col. 297, 1 March 1977.   96 TNA: FCO 31/2155, Rosling minute, 3 March 1977, Hyde to Rosling, 3 March 1977.   97 The Times, 14 March 1977, 9.   98 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 932, col 1777–1815, 27 May 1977.   99 TNA: CAB 128/61, CM(77)21st mtg., Confidential Annex, minute 2, 26 May 1977. 100 TNA: FCO 68/694, Ewans minute, 22 September 1976, Chitty minute, 11 October 1976. 101 TNA FCO 31/2152, Record of a Meeting between the Secretary of State and Ramphal, 19 November 1976. 102 TNA: FCO 31/2157, Dales to Wright, 4 February 1977. 103 CSA: Ramphal Papers 2007/150, Ramphal to Lucinda, 4 March 1976, including William Hickey column, Daily Express, 4 March 1976. 104 COHP: Sridath Ramphal interview pt 1, 23 November 2013. 105 TNA: FCO 31/2154, Richardson (UK Mission to UN) to Hyde (FCO), 24 February 1977; FCO 31/2155, Record of a Meeting between Owen and Ramphal in the House of Commons, 1 March 1977; FCO 31/2159, Extract from a Record of Conversation between Ramphal and Owen, 6 April 1967. 106 CSA: 2008/015, Amin to Ramphal, 23 February 1977. 107 TNA: FCO 31/2156, Wright to Dales, 8 March 1977; FCO 31/2159, Brief 10 on President Amin for Thomson’s Commonwealth Tour, 31 March 1977; FCO 31/2160, Reaction of African Commonwealth Countries by Thomson, 28 April 1977; FCO 31/2161, Record of a Meeting in the FCO with Lord Thomson, 9 May 1977, Memo on Lord Thomson’s Views on President Amin’s Possible Attendance at the CHGM, 11 May 1977. 108 TNA: FCO 31/2161, Note of a Meeting in the Cabinet Room, 19 May 1977. 109 TNA: FCO 31/2162, Wall to Wright, 20 May 1977, Note of a Meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, 22 May 1977, Callaghan to Amin, 22 May 1977, Wall minute, 24 May 1977; FCO 31/2163, Wright to Wall, 26 May 1977. 110 CSA: 2008/015, Amin to Ramphal, 31 May 1977.

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111 The Times, 1 June 1977, 1. 112 TNA: FCO 68/694, Chitty minute, 11 October 1976, including Draft Note on Uganda’s Attendance at CHGM; FCO 31/2152, Evans minute (ud), Draft message to Prime Minister’s Personal Secretary (ud), Evans minute, 31 January 1971. 113 TNA: PREM 16/1904, Wright minute, 9 February 1977; FCO 31/2153, Dales to Wright, 4 February 1977, Wright to Dales, 11 February 1977, Chitty minute, 18 February 1977, Memorandum by Chitty, 24 February 1967. 114 Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–1980 (London, 1990), 17 February 1977, 24; TNA: CAB 128/61, CM(77)6th mtg., minute 2, 17 February 1977. 115 TNA: FCO 57/688, Ewans minute, 10 March 1977, Mansfield minute, 11 March 1977; FCO 31/2156, Ewans minute (ud). 116 TNA: FCO 68/714, Sinclair minute, 17 March 1977, Memo on CHOGM: President Amin’s Attendance by Duff, 25 March 1977; FCO 31/2157, Rowlands to Secretary of State (ud); FCO 31/2159, Memo on President Amin and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting by Hunt (ud). 117 TNA: FCO 31, Draft Letter from Foreign Secretary’s Private Secretary to Prime Minister’s Private Secretary (ud). The retention notices in PREM 16/904 also attest to the existence of this letter as Wright to Ferguson, 19 April 1977. 118 The most recent and comprehensive account is Rory Cormac, Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy (Oxford, 2018). Earlier book-length studies include Jonathan Bloch, British Intelligence and Covert Action (London, 1983) and Stephen Dorril, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations (London, 2000). 119 TNA: FCO 31/2164, Memorandum on Operation Bottle, 23 May 1977. 120 Charles Harrison, the former editor of the Uganda Argus provided the fullest account of these events in The Times. See The Times, 21 June 1977, 1; 22 June, 1; 23 June, 10; 24 June, 6; 25 June, 5. See also Los Angeles Times, 23 June 1977, B10, 26 June 1977, A22; New York Times, 21 June 1977, 3. 121 Richard J. Reid, A History of Modern Uganda (Cambridge, 2017), 61–62. 122 New York Times, 5 July 1977, 3. 123 TNA: FCO 73/358, Record of Private Conversation with Munyua Waiyaki by Owen, 22 June 1977. 124 TNA: Notes of a Meeting between the Prime Minister and Nigerian Foreign Minister, 6 June 1967. 125 The Times, 11 June 1977, 4. 126 TNA: PREM 16/1903, Dales (FCO) to Wright (10 Downing Street), 7 March 1977. 127 The Guardian, 8 June 1977, 1. 128 The Times, 16 June 1977, 8.

Chapter 8   1   2   3   4   5

Taban lo Liyong, Another Last Word (Nairobi, 1990), 103–111. Sarah Stockwell, The British End of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2018), 5–6. Charles Dundas, African Crossroads (London, 1955), 215. Grace Stuart Ibingira, African Upheavals since Independence (Boulder, 1980), 290. Yoweri Museveni, Sowing the Mustard Seed: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Uganda (London, 1997), 14.

230

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  6 Jim Ocitti, Press, Politics and Public Policy in Uganda: The Role of Journalism in Democratization (Lampeter, 2005), 26.   7 Uganda Argus, 1 June 1959, 3.   8 UNA: Office of the President, Minutes of the 37th meeting of the Cabinet, 9 November 1971, minute 411.   9 Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society (Cambridge, 1996). 10 Milton Obote Foundation, Dr. Obote’s Decade: Ten Years in Parliament (Kampala, 1968), 51–57. 11 Joe Church, Quest for the Highest: An Autobiographical Account of the East African Revival (London, 1981), 254–255. 12 Paul Nugent, Africa since Independence: A Comparative History (2nd ed., Basingstoke, 2012), 39.

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D. PUBLISHED REPORTS, POLITICAL PAMPHLETS AND DOCUMENTARY COLLECTIONS Church Information Board, The Moving Spirit: A Survey of the Life and Work of the Churches of the Anglican Communion (London, 1957) International Commission of Jurists, Uganda and Human Rights: Reports of the ICJ to the United Nations, April 1977 Kale, John K., Colonialism Is Incompatible with Peace (Foreign Mission of the UNC, Cairo, ud) Kale, John K., Uganda: Colonial Regime versus National Aspirations (Foreign Mission of the UNC, Cairo, ud) Kravchenko, Victor A., I Chose Freedom (New York, 1946) Lo Liyong, Taban, The Last Word: Cultural Synthesism (Nairobi, 1969)

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E. DIARIES, MEMOIRS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES Adoko, Akena, Uganda Crisis (Kampala, ud) Allen, Peter, Interesting Times: Uganda Diaries 1955–1986 (Lewes, 2000) Anyaoku, Emeka, The Inside Story of the Modern Commonwealth (Ibadan, 2004) Attwood, William, The Reds and the Blacks (London, 1967) Benn, Tony, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–1980 (London, 1990) Brockway, Fenner, African Journeys (London, 1955) Brown, Douglas & Brown, Marcelle, Looking Back at the Uganda Protectorate: Recollections of District Officers (Dalkeith WA, 1996) Brown, Leslie, Three Worlds: One World: Account of a Mission (London, 1981) Campbell, Alan, Colleagues and Friends (Salisbury, 1988) Catterall, Peter (ed.) & Macmillan, Harold, The Harold Macmillan Diaries Vol. 2 (London, 2011) Church, Joe, Quest for the Highest: An Autobiographical Account of the East African Revival (Exeter, 1981) Donoughue, Bernard, Downing Street Diary: With James Callaghan in Downing Street (London, 2008) Dundas, Charles, African Crossroads (London, 1955) Ford, Margaret, Janani: The Making of a Martyr (London, 1978) Forward, Alan, ‘You Have Been Allocated Uganda’: Letters from a District Officer (Poyntington, 1999) Grahame, Iain, Jambo Effendi: Seven Years with the King’s African Rifles (London, 1966) Grahame, Iain, Amin and Uganda: A Personal Memoir (London, 1980)

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Heath, Edward, The Course of My Life: My Autobiography (London, 1998) Hills, Denis, The White Pumpkin (London, 1975) Hunt, David, On the Spot: An Ambassador Remembers (London, 1975) Ibingira, Grace, African Upheavals since Independence (Boulder, 1980) Ingrams, Harold, Uganda: A Crisis of Nationhood (London, 1960) Itote, Waruhiu, ‘Mau Mau’ General (Nairobi, 1967) Kabaka of Buganda, The Desecration of My Kingdom (London, 1967) Kasibante, Amos, ‘Revival and Pentecostalism in My Life’ in Ward, Kevin & Wild-Wood, Emma (eds), The East African Revival: History and Legacies (Farnham, 2012), 61–69 Kavuma, Paulo, Crisis in Uganda: The Story of the Exile and Return of the Kabaka (London, 1979) Kivengere, Festo, I Love Idi Amin: The Story of Triumph under Fire in the midst of the Suffering and Persecution in Uganda (London, 1977) Kutesa, Pecos, Uganda’s Revolution 1979–1986: How I Saw It (Kampala, 2006) Kyemba, Henry, State of Blood: The Inside Story of Idi Amin’s Regime of Fear (London, 1977) Langlands, Bryan, ‘Students and Politics in Uganda’, African Affairs 76/302 (1977), 3–20 Lyttelton, Oliver, The Memoirs of Lord Chandos (London, 1964) Macoun, Michael J., Wrong Place, Right Time: Policing at the End of Empire (London, 1996) Mitchell, Philip, African Afterthoughts (London, 1954) Museveni, Yoweri, Sowing the Mustard Seed: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Uganda (London, 1997) Nyabongo, Elizabeth, Elizabeth of Toro: The Odyssey of an African Princess (London, 1989) Nyeko-Jones, Jennifer, The Silent Sunset: A Daughter’s Memoir (Milton Keynes, 2011) O’Cleirigh, Noel, Recollections of Uganda under Milton Obote and Idi Amin (Trafford, 2004) Okullu, Henry, Quest for Justice: An Autobiography of Bishop John Henry Okullu (Kisumu, 1997) Oppong-Affi, A. M., My Experience in Idi Amin’s Uganda (Accra, 1982) Osman, John, Life, Love, Laughter, Liberty: Reflections on a Long and Full Existence (Bloomington, 2015) Pullicino, Philo, The Road to Rome (MPI, 2012) Ramphal, Sridath, Glimpses of a Global Life (Hertford, 2014) Richards, Yevette & Springer, Maida, Conversations with Maida Springer: A Personal History of Labor, Race and International Relations (Pittsburg, 2004) Sempangi, F. Kefa & Thompson, Barbara R., Reign of Terror; Reign of Love (Tring, 1979) Senyonjo, Christopher, In Defense of All God’s Children: The Life and Ministry of Bishop Christopher Senyonjo (New York, 2016) Smith, Arnold, Stiches in Time: The Commonwealth in World Politics (London, 1981) Suruma, Ezra Sabiti, Advancing the Ugandan Economy: A Personal Account (New York, 2014) Stacey, Tom, Summons to Ruwenzori (London, 1965) Stacey, Tom, Tribe: The Hidden History of the Mountains of the Moon (London, 2003) Stonehouse, John, Prohibited Immigrant (London, 1960) Stuart, Andrew, Of Cargoes, Colonies and Kings: Diplomatic and Administrative Service from Africa to the Pacific (London, 2001) Tumusiime, James R., What Makes Africans Laugh: Reflections of an Entrepreneur in Humour, Media and Culture (Kampala, 2013)

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F. NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNALS Daily Express (UK) [ukpressonline] Daily Monitor (Uganda) [monitor.co.ug] Drum (South Africa) [British Library] East African Standard (Kenya) [British Library] The Guardian (UK) [Proquest] Los Angeles Times (US) [Proquest] New Vision (Uganda) [newvision.co.ug] New York Times (US) [Proquest] The Observer (UK) [Proquest] The People (Uganda) [Makerere/British Library] The Spectator (UK) [Spectator Archive] The Sunday Times (UK) [Gale] The Times (UK) [Gale] Reader’s Digest (US) [British Library] Transition (Uganda) [JSTOR] Times of India (India) [Proquest] Uganda Argus (Uganda) [Makerere/British Library] Voice of Uganda (Uganda) [Makerere/British Library] Washington Post (US) [Proquest]

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H. FICTION AND LITERARY TRAVEL WRITING Baingana, Doreen, Tropical Fish (Cape Town, 2005) Foden, Giles, The Last King of Scotland (London, 1998) Huxley, Elspeth, Forks and Hope: An African Notebook (London, 1964) Isegawa, Moses, Abyssinian Chronicles (London, 2011) Kapuściński, Ryszard & Glowczewska, Klara, The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life (London, 2001) Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga, Kintu (London, 2018) Moravia, Alberto & Davidson, Angus, Which Tribe Do You Belong To? (London, 1974) Naipaul, Shiva, North of South: An African Journey (London, 1978) Naipaul, V. S., In a Free State: A Novel with Two Supporting Narratives (London, 2011) Naipaul, V. S., The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (London, 2012) Theroux, Paul, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (London, 2002) Waugh, Evelyn, A Tourist in Africa (London, 1960)

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Index Abdul Rahman, Tunku 169 Accra Evening News 125 Acholi 11, 42, 53, 62, 67, 83, 97, 101, 103 Adoko, Akena 32, 42, 47, 59–60, 66 Adrisi, Mustafa 52, 62, 70, 206 (n. 6) Africa Bureau 86 African nationalism see nationalism, African Africanization 1, 55–56, 58, 76, 78, 83, 85–87, 98, 101, 103, 108, 114, 121, 123, 193–195 Aga Khan IV 112–113, 134–135 Akii-Bua, John 123 Algeria 30 Alibhai Brown, Yasmin 8 Aliker, Martin 167 All African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) 146, 151–152, 157–158 Alport, Cuthbert 93 Amalgamated and Transport and General Workers Union (Uganda) 155 Amba 30, 73, 75 American Federation of Labor/Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFLCIO) 145–148, 150–151, 156–158, 161 Amery, Leo 37 Amin, Idi 7, 16, 51–52, 56, 58, 68, 69–71, 80, 97, 99, 108, 121, 133, 138, 161, 163, 172, 185, 191–192, 194–196 soldier 4, 9, 45–46, 54–55, 59–60, 72, 134, 187, 192–193 President 2–3, 6, 8, 12, 17, 48, 53, 57, 61–63, 66, 67, 76–78, 90, 91, 100– 105, 112, 113, 122–124, 134–136, 161, 174–184 Anderson, Claude 112, 120 Anglican Church 1–2, 11–12, 16–17, 79–84, 87, 94, 98, 104–105, 134, 184–185, 188, 190, 192, 194–196 Church of England 90, 92–93

Church of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi (post-1961) 7, 80–81, 85–91, 98–104 Church of the Upper Nile 80–86 international communion 81, 88, 103, 104 Native Anglican Church (pre-1961) 2, 80–81, 91–93, 95–97 theology of 82, 86, 100, 104 Anglo-Ganda Agreement of 1900 21–24, 27, 30, 110, 115, 195 animism see pantheism Ankole 33, 76, 102 Anticorruption Squad 63 Anyanya rebellion 71 Arab Nationalism see Nationalism, Arab Arab-Israeli War (1967) 60 Arab-Israeli War (1973) 123 Arap Moi, Daniel 177 Architectural Association 36 Aristotle 13 arms sales 31, 60–62, 170–174 Army, British 1, 57, 63, 64, 187 Army, Ugandan 1–2, 4–5, 11–13, 16, 32, 34–35, 45–46, 48, 50–52, 54–56, 58–63, 66–71, 74–78, 89, 99, 102, 121, 134, 171–172, 184–185, 187, 192–194 see also King’s African Rifles Arua, 84–85 Arube, Charles 62 Asian-Ugandans 8, 24, 30–31, 42–43, 50, 116, 153, 160, 165, 170, 177, 193, 195 expulsion of (1972) 3, 61–62, 100, 110, 122–123, 134, 163, 175, 177, 179, 183 Asif Din, Mohamed 8 Associated Society of Railway Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) 115 Astles, Bob 77

252

Index

Astor, J.J. 109 Australia 37–38, 165, 174, 180 authoritarianism 2, 4, 8–9, 11, 44–50, 62–63, 99–104, 113, 120–123, 125–136, 157, 174–179, 187 Awori, Horace 123 Bagaya, Elizabeth see Nyabongo, Elizabeth Baingana, Doreen 7 Balfour, Arthur 164 balokole 79, 83–85, 87, 91, 98, 100, 194 Bamuta, Yusufu S. 111, 189 Banda, Hastings 20, 169 baptism 81–82, 88, 98 Barbados 165 Barrington-Ward, Mark 113–117, 119, 188 Barry, Charles 36 Barungi, Baganchwera 12, 38–39, 44, 46, 49 Bassude, Daudi 110–111 Bataka Union 127–128 Bataringaya, Basil 48, 67, 175 Belgian Congo 4 Belgium 35, 71–72 Belize 1 Bhabha, Homi K. 14 Bhadeshia, Paresh 8 Bikangaga, John 89–90 Billington, Roy 89 Binaisa, Godfrey 131 Bird, Handley 109 Bird, John 178 Blair, Chandos 57 Bloch, Dora 179 Bodgener, Geoffrey 36 Borneo 71 boycott campaigns 30–32, 50, 65–66, 68, 96, 115–116, 118–119, 129 Bradbrook, Benjamin H. 61–62 Braden, Tom 131 Braine, Bernard 37–38 Brandie, Jim 137, 142–144, 149–150, 190 British Broadcasting Corporation 7, 124 British East Africa Company 75 Brockway, Fenner 28 Brotherton, Michael 179 Brown, Irving 150–151 Brown, Leslie 1, 7, 81, 83, 85–89, 95–96, 98–99, 105

Budo, King’s College school 27, 110 Buganda/Ganda 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 14, 17, 19, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 58, 65, 66, 68, 69, 73, 80, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 105, 110, 111, 115, 116, 120, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 140, 152, 155, 171, 187, 188, 195, 204 (n. 109) Bugisu 5 Bukenya, Naziri 70 Bukkede 108 Bunche, Ralph 26 Bunyoro/Nyoro 4, 30, 33–34, 53, 66, 72, 73 Burma 187 Busia, Kofi 61, 133 Busoga 33, 44, 82 Byers, Martin 142, 144 Callaghan, James 57, 143, 169–170, 179–184 Campbell, Horace 133 Canada 37, 166, 175, 179 Capricorn Society 6 Caribbean, The 57, 138, 144, 170, 184 Castle, Barbara 193 Catholicism 10, 32, 55, 80–82, 85–88, 95–101, 110, 117, 134, 146, 155, 188, 212 (n. 24) Cave Brown, Phoebe 101 Central African Federation (CAF) 6, 23, 31 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 131–133 Champion, John Stuart 54–56 Chesire, Ester 69–70 Cheyne, Bill 1, 7, 56, 58, 74 Chibber, Billy 113 China, People’s Republic of, (PRC) 76, 130, 132, 134, 168–169 Chitty, Beryl 181 Chona, Mark 172–173 Chosen Evangelical Revival see Strivers Church Missionary Society (CMS) 72, 82, 83, 86, 92, 97, 101, 110 Church of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi see Anglican Church Church, Joe 11–12, 83, 194 Churchill, Winston 163, 184

Index coffee production 5, 42, 64, 73, 111, 133, 138–139 Coggan, Donald 104 Cohen, Andrew 4, 20, 22–26, 30, 39, 40, 65, 92–96, 105, 109, 113, 120, 122, 125, 129–130, 138, 142 Cold War 3, 16, 45, 56, 60, 61, 86, 98, 99, 114, 115, 117–119, 130, 131, 132, 133, 138, 141, 145–153, 156–161, 166, 168, 169 colligatory historiography 8, 10–11, 15, 196 Colonial Office 19, 22–29, 39, 40, 44, 54, 58, 93, 96, 109, 116, 127, 130, 138, 142–144, 146–150, 154, 162, 188, 203 (n. 87) Common Man’s Charter 60, 119 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGMs) 174, 184 Singapore (1971) 163, 167, 171–174, 181, 183–184 Ottawa (1973) 175–177, 179 Kingston (1975) 177, 179 London (1977) 178–183 Lusaka (1980) 183 Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1968) 170 Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) 37–38, 42 Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) 35, 55, 165–166 Commonwealth 1, 3, 6, 12, 16, 17, 38, 57, 163–184, 185, 191, 192, 195 communism 15, 46, 65, 81, 85–86, 97–99, 114, 117–119, 127, 128, 130, 141, 146, 148–149, 151–152, 156, 159, 170, 188 Congo, Republic of 35, 45, 58, 64, 71–73, 75, 77, 83, 85, 113 Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) 131–132 Conservative Party (Britain) 25, 31, 35–36, 38, 39, 60, 66, 93, 150, 166, 169–171, 175, 177, 179 constitutions, Ugandan 1902 Order-in-Council 3 1962, 3, 20, 33, 44, 45, 66 1966, 19, 35, 42, 46 1967, 4, 19, 47, 99, 132, 133 1995, 109

253

Convention People’s Party (CPP) (Ghana) 6, 153, 168 Coren, Alan 178 Cote d’Ivoire 30 cotton production 5, 42, 64, 111, 133, 138–139 Coutts, Walter 1 Craddock, Beresford 31 Crawford, Frederick 30, 32, 38–40, 58, 64–65, 97, 116–117, 125, 143, 148, 189 Crawford, Nigel 56 Creech Jones, Arthur 37, 109, 127 Crosland, Anthony 178–179, 181–182 Crossman, Richard 25 Cunningham, George 175 Curtis, Lionel 112 Curtis, Michael 112 Cyprus 92 Czechoslovakia 60, 152 Daily Express 107, 109 Daily Mirror 107, 178 Daily Monitor 108–109, 111–112 Daily Telegraph 108, 169 Damali Kisosonkole, Nnabagereka 91, 94 Ddamba, Appollinari 129 Ddungu, Adrian 88 decolonization 1–4, 8, 10–11, 14–16, 20–23, 27–28, 30, 32–33, 38–39, 43, 46, 48–49, 52–53, 56–57, 66, 74, 78, 81, 85–86, 92, 108, 112, 114, 124, 141, 143, 150, 162–165, 171, 178, 185–187, 190–191, 195–196 Defence, Ministry of, (UK) 57, 62 Democratic Party (DP) (Ugandan) 32–34, 44–46, 86, 96–99, 134 dictatorship see authoritarianism Dinwiddy, Hugh 69 Dobozi lya Buganda 111 Douglas-Home, Alec 57, 60–61, 167–169, 172, 175–176 Drum 182 Duff, Antony 181–182 Dugdale, John 65 Dundas, Charles 186 East African federalism 6, 22–25, 27, 56, 93, 125–127, 156, 158, 164 East African High Commission 23

254 East African Railways and Harbours (EARH) 143, 152 East African Standard 23, 108 East Berlin 152 Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School 52 Ebifa 93, 110, 134 economic development 3, 5–6, 10, 13, 16, 34, 45, 47–48, 73, 81, 122, 137–139, 157–158, 190, 195 ecumenicalism 99, 101 education 28, 54–55, 73, 81–83, 99, 109–110, 117–118 effendi 55, 193 Egypt 6, 39, 149, 151 Ejalu, Ateker 1, 2, 107, 108, 121, 122, 196 Ekanya 123 elections British (1970) 170 Buganda (1962) 33 Ugandan (1955) 25 Ugandan (1958) 41, 97 Uganda (1961) 28, 32, 97 Uganda (1962) 33, 42, 86, 97 Ugandan (1980) 163 electoral college 15, 19, 21–22, 40, 186, 191 Elizabeth II 31, 94, 129, 165 silver jubilee 178–179 Elizabeth of Toro see Elizabeth Nyabongo Empire Press Union 109 Encounter 131 Erastianism 86, 89–91, 98–99, 102, 104–105, 188, 190 Erskine May 37–39 Etiang, Paul 177 European Economic Community (EEC) 175 European settlers 5, 6, 7, 23, 39, 53, 77, 107, 113, 120, 125–126, 128, 144, 168, 177, 183, 195 evangelism 79–85, 89, 92, 101, 188, 194 extraversion 8–10 Eyogera 111, 129, 188 Fabian Colonial Bureau 140 Federation of Ugandan Trade Unions (FUTU) 155, 158 fez 53–54, 56 Financial Times 122

Index First World War 76, 140, 164 Fisher, Geoffrey 92–93, 95–96, 105 Fisher, Mary 39, 203 (n. 87) Fockstedt, Sven 149–150, 153, 157 Foot, Michael 180 Forbath, Peter 113 Ford, Margaret 85, 102 Foreign Office, (UK) 24, 61–62, 118, 175–179, 181–183 formalism 2, 13–16, 19, 22–23, 27–28, 39, 49, 56, 62–63, 77–78, 83–84, 91, 97, 100, 105, 115, 119–120, 124, 128, 163, 166, 174, 184–186, 190, 191, 196 Fort Portal 87, 144 Forum 130 Foucault, Michel 1 franchise 15, 17, 19, 40–41, 49, 186–187, 191 French empire 109 Freudianism 68 Front for National Salvation (FRONASA) 62 Gambuze 107–108, 111, 125–128, 133, 188 Garba, Joseph Nanven 183 Gecaga, Udi 121 gender 11, 19, 41, 67–69, 94 General Service Unit (GSU) 60 Geneva Summit (1955) 114 George of Toro 73 George the Poet 8 George V 37 George VI 97 German Southwest Africa 4 Germany 75–76 Ghaffur, Tarique 8 Ghana Trade Union Congress (GTUC) 151–152, 155 Ghana 6, 20, 45, 61, 128, 132–133, 149– 152, 156–157, 159–160, 165–166, 168–169 God Save the Queen 60, 178 ‘gold affair’ 45–46 Goodhart, Philip 66 Gorell Barnes, William 19, 39, 40 Gorton, John 174 Gowon, Yakubu 177, 183

Index Grahame, Iain 46, 54, 57 Greenhill, Dennis 61, 176 Griffin, John 38 Griffiths, James 92, 140 Gromyko, Andre 127 Guinea 151 Gulu 84, 102 High School 83, 97 Catholic Cathedral 85–86 Guyana 165 Hall, John Hathorn 65, 109, 125, 127, 140 Hammerton, Albert 149 Hancock Commission 26–28 Hancock, Keith 26 Harrison, Charles 1, 119, 120, 121, 188, 229 (n.120) Hart, Norman 110 Hartwell, Charles 40, 117 Hastings, Adrian 86 Head, Ivan 176 health, historiography on 6–7, 11 Heath, Edward 60–62, 163, 170–178, 183–184, 191, 228 (n. 84) Heating and Domestic Engineers Union (HDEU) 137, 142 Heligoland 75 Hicklin, Len 137, 142 Hills, Denis 57, 102, 124 Hinden, Rita 140 Hinduism 31 HIV/AIDS 6–7 Hood, Walter 141, 144 Hopkinson, Henry 93 Houston, James 54, 58, 61 Hunt, Roland 35, 46 Huxley, Elspeth 7 hybridity 14–16, 20, 39, 49, 64, 78, 107, 137–138, 153, 162 Ibingira, Grace 34–35, 44–46, 48, 55, 187 India 8, 30, 83, 164, 166, 175 indirect voting see electoral college industrial relations see labour legislation, trade unions Information, Ministry of, (Uganda) 112, 124, 129, 134–136 Ingrams, Harold 38, 125 institutionalisation, theories of 8, 12–16

255

intellectual history 11 intelligence 11, 118 American 46, 131 British 45, 86, 97, 117–118, 126, 130–131, 143, 149, 152, 155, 181–182, 189 Ugandan 59–60, 67 International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) 67, 69–70 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) 138, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 189 Kampala training college 3, 143, 146, 147, 148, 151, 154, 159, 161, 162 International Press Institute 120 International Transport Worker Federation (ITWF) 141 International Union of Students 130 Ireland 101 Irene Drusilla, Nnamasole 11, 91 Isegawa, Moses 7 Islam 7, 10, 31, 42, 60, 62, 96, 80, 100–101, 102 Israel 53, 58, 60, 75, 123 Itote, Waruhui 72 Jagan, Cheddi 128 Janner, Greville 178–179 Jinja 5, 122, 143, 152–155 barracks 5, 56, 59, 64 Johnson, Boris 6 Joint Christian Council (JCC) 99 Jones, Ted 113 Jordan 36, 187 journalism see print journalism Kabaka Yekka party 28–29, 32–35, 42, 45–46, 59, 96–97 Kabaka 21–22, 40, 60, 91, 93, 100, 104, 169 Kabarega, Sammy 123 Kagera river 76–77 Kagwa, Apolo 3 Kakamega Club 28 Kakembo, G.W.S. 116 Kakonge, John 67, 175 Kakwa 62–63, 70 Kalekezi, John 117–118, 149

256 Kalema, William 175 Kalenjin 53 Kalibala, Ernest 26 Kaluuya, Daniel 8 Kamba 53 Kampala Parliament see Parliament (Ugandan) Kampala 1, 3, 7, 20, 33, 36–39, 42, 46, 48, 56, 60–61, 64–66, 70, 75, 77–78, 83, 87–89, 104, 111–112, 115–116, 125–126, 132, 134, 138, 145, 148–150, 152–155, 159, 174, 177, 187, 189 Kamya, Ezra 88 Kapuściński, Ryszard 7 Karamoja 3, 4, 5, 187 Karugaba, Augustine 55, 57 Karugire, Samwiri 39, 44, 52, 99 Kasagama of Toro 72–73 Katanga 35 Katongole, Sabaganzi 85 Katwe 40, 65, 68, 125–126, 218 (n. 78) Kaunda, Kenneth 172–173, 183 Kavuma, Paulo 25, 88, 93 Kazibwe, Specioza 70 Kenya African National Union (KANU) 168 Kenya 1, 4, 5, 6, 20, 23, 24, 30, 39, 43, 51, 55, 64, 65, 71, 72, 78, 83, 92, 112, 114, 123, 126, 131, 134, 139, 146, 147, 152, 157, 160, 167, 170, 177, 198 (n.23) Kenyatta, Jomo 6, 20, 76, 156, 167, 178 Khan, Ayub 165 Kibuka, E.R. 158–159 Kiganira 95 Kigezi 5, 100, 117–118 Kiggundu, Clement 134, 136 Kikuyu 5, 23, 43, 75, 78, 108 King’s African Rifles (KAR) 2, 4, 5, 42, 51–58, 60, 63–66, 68, 72, 77–78, 100, 187, 193 Kintu, Mikaeri 27–28, 32, 34, 45, 96 Kisonsonkole, Christopher 41 Kisosonkole, Pumla 41 Kivengere, Festo 11–12, 100, 102–103, 105 Kivu, James 139 Kiwanuka, Benedicto 44, 48, 67, 86, 134

Index Kiwanuka, Joe (journalist and politician) 29–30, 36, 42, 48, 67, 88, 107, 121, 128–130, 132–133, 136, 189, 194 Kiwanuka, Joseph (Catholic Archbishop) 88 Kiwanuka, Michael 8 Kiwomya, Chris 8 Konzo 30, 73, 75 Kravchenko, Victor 117 Krokodil 130 Kutesa, Pecos 62 Kymeba, Henry 63, 66–67 Labour Party (Britain) 25, 28, 38, 65, 92, 127, 143, 171, 175, 178–179 Labour, Department of, (colonial) 140, 142, 144, 150, 162 Labour, Ministry of, (Uganda) 154, 156, 158, 161 labour legislation 139–141, 156–158, 160–161 1943 Trade Unions and Trade Disputes Act 139 1952 Trade Union Ordinance 137, 141 1964 Trade Disputes (Arbitration and Settlement) Act 158 Lambeth Conference (1978) 104 land politics 9, 11, 28, 89–90, 92, 110–111, 125 Lango/Langi 1, 42–43, 53, 59–60, 62, 67, 97, 101, 204 (n. 109) Lasky, Melvin 132 Latim, Alex 46 Le Quesne, Martin 176–177 Le Tocq, Eric 61 Lea, Brian 171–172 Leadbitter, Ted 178 Lennox Boyd, Alan 115–116, 144, 147–148 Lewis, Bert 149–150, 189 Liberal Party (British) 175 Libya 6, 77 Lidderdale, David 38 literacy 28, 49, 55, 81–82, 107, 109–111, 121, 124 liturgy, Christian 83, 104 Liverpool Daily Post 110 Lo Liyong, Taban 185

Index London constitutional conference (1962) 33, 44–45 Lonrho 112–113, 120–121 Los Angeles Times 77, 173 ‘Lost Counties’ 34, 66 Lovestone, Jay 150–151 Luande, Humphrey 1, 47, 137, 141, 142, 144, 146, 152, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159, 161, 194, 196 Lubega, Florence 42, 48 Lubiri see Mengo, Royal Palace at, Lubowa, Aloysius 129 Lubowa, Lameck 158 Lubulwa, Eliya 79, 84–85, 90, 104, 194 Lugard, Frederick 53, 63, 72 Lugbara 62 Lukiko, Great 14, 20–36, 40, 42, 49–50, 87, 93, 115, 125, 187, 195 Lukonge, G. A. 126 Lule-Sonke, Mathias 126 Lumu, Emmanuel 205 (n.122) Luo 1, 5, 146, 156 Lutaya, Festo 87–88, 188 Lutaya, James 29 Luwum, Janani 80, 100, 102–104, 123, 178, 181 Lyttelton, Oliver 23, 25–26, 93, 95, 105, 128, 130, 201 (n. 23) Macleod, Iain 32, 96 Macmillan, Harold 165–166 Madhvani, Manubhai 8 Madi 62 Magezi, George 157–159 Maindi, K.B. 140 Makarios, Archbishop of Cyprus 92 Makerere College 7, 28, 38, 43, 68–70, 102, 147, 226 (n. 48) Makindiye prison 70 Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga 7, 118 Malawi 20, 51, 169 see also Nyasaland Malaya 36 Malaysia 169, 187 Mali 151 Malta 1 Manchester, Guardian 109 Manning, W.H. 53 martial races theory 52–53, 78 Martin, David 69–70, 113

257

Marx, Karl 141 Masaka 36, 66, 85, 87, 88 Masembe, C.N. 126 Masembe-Kabali, Sepiriye 32–33 Matalisi 111, 127–128 Mau Mau war 4, 6, 51, 53, 65, 71, 72, 78, 92, 95, 114, 134 Maudling, Reginald 165 Mayanja, Abu 28–29, 32, 47, 96, 120, 132–133, 202 (n. 38) Mayanja-Nkangi, Joshua 34 Mazrui, Ali 7, 9, 51, 59–60, 68, 131–133 Mboya, Tom 146–149, 156–157, 159 McCray, George 146–151, 157 McNally, Tom 181 Meany, George 148, 150, 157 Mengo Notes 110 Mengo 31 battle of 32, 34, 66, 89, 195 royal palace at 23, 31, 41, 125 migrant workers 5, 43, 146, 155–156, 160, 177 mining industry 73, 111, 120–121, 160 missions, Christian 3, 7, 43, 79–83, 85, 89, 91–92, 99, 101, 110, 137, 146, 188, 194 see also Church Missionary Society, evangelism Miti, James 125 Mityana 87–88 Mobutu, Joseph-Desiré 77 Mons Officer Cadet School 52, 57–58 Montagu of Beaulieu, Lord 35, 171 Moomins, The 119, 123 Moravia, Alberto 7 Morocco 151 Morrison, Herbert 38 Moscow State University 118 Mountbatten, Louis 58 ‘Move to the Left’ 119, 160, 169 Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF) 99, 152 Mpanga, Frederick 35 Mpanga, Joyce 41 Mpera, Ernest 82 Mphahlele, Ezekiel 132 Mugema, Joswe Kate 4 Mugobansonga 126 Mukasa, Spartas 125 Mukasa, Yokana 88

258

Index

Mukirane, Isaya 73–74 Mulekezi, Everest 117–118 Mulira, Eridadi 20–21, 26, 29–31 Mulira, Rebecca 68, 94, 193 multi-racialism 23–24, 31, 42 Mulumba, Semakula 92, 126–127 Mumenyereri 108 Munno 86, 110, 134–135 Munyonyozi 4, 111, 127 Muoria, Henry 108 Musazi, Ignatius 21, 29, 31, 36, 40, 42, 92, 97, 125, 139–140 Museveni, Yoweri 7, 62, 71, 108, 121, 167, 188 Musoke, Constantine 126, 189 Mutesa I, Kabaka of Buganda 80 Mutesa II, Kabaka of Buganda 3–4, 6, 23, 24–36, 41, 44, 51, 57, 60, 64, 65, 66, 69, 80, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 104–105, 109, 113, 116, 128, 129, 130, 165, 171, 172, 195, 201 (n. 23) Mutibwa, Phares 10, 12, 43, 45, 52, 66, 92, 98 mutinies/military strikes 72 East Africa (1964) 5, 52, 58–59, 78 Uganda (1978) 76–77, 134 Muwanga-Kamya, George 135 Muwazi, Eria 40 Mwilu, Reuben 159 Nabakoza, Olive 116 Nadiope, William 45 Nagenda, William 84 Naipaul, Shiva 7 Naipaul, Vidia 7, 171, 226 (n. 48) Nairobi 69, 108, 120, 126 Nakivubo Pronouncement 172 Nasser, Gamal abd al- 6 Nation (Kenya) 113 Nation (Uganda) 112 Nation Media Group (NMG) 112, 131 National Organisation of Trade Unions (NOTU) 161 National Union of Plantation Workers 144 nationalism 19, 21, 39, 56, 58–59, 66, 86, 92, 113, 123, 137–139, 146, 150, 171, 190–191, 194, 217 (n.54) African 2, 9, 43, 98, 119–121, 125, 128, 148–149, 151, 167–169, 184, 187

Arab 6 Ganda 9, 111 Rwenzururu 73–75 Ugandan 2, 20, 22, 28–29, 32–33, 39, 40, 42, 45, 47, 49, 71, 80, 92, 97, 105, 107, 145, 152–154, 186 Nationalist Party (South Africa) 166 Native Anglican Church (NAC) see Anglican Church Nehru, Jawaharlal 94, 163–165 Nekyon, Adoko 46, 48, 155–156 Nelson, Daniel 128, 133 Nelson, Horatio 37 neo-colonialism 1–4, 8–11, 19, 42, 52–53, 78, 120, 132–133, 151, 155, 159, 161, 163, 181, 190–191, 196 Neogy, Rajat 120, 132–133 New Day 89, 110, 134 newspapers see print journalism New York Times 103, 127, 150, 173 New Zealand 37 Newfoundland 37 News Chronicle 112 Nigeria 128, 151, 177, 180, 183 Nile Mansions 102–103 Nkrumah, Kwame 6, 20, 28, 43, 94, 121, 125, 132–133, 151, 153, 163, 165, 194 Nkutu, Shaban 67 non-alignment 131, 146, 151–152, 157, 159–160, 163 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 114 Northern Ireland 63 Northern Rhodesia 6, 23 Nsibambi, Simeoni 83 Nsubuga, Dunstan 88–90 Nsubuga, Emmanuel 134 Nubi 54, 60, 62, 63, 70 Nyabongo, Elizabeth 12, 67 Nyasaland 6, 23, 65, 150 see also Malawi Nyeko-Jones, Jennifer 100 Nyerere, Julius 6, 56, 59, 71, 76, 156, 167, 177 O’Cleirigh, Noel 101 Obesanjo, Olusegun 183 Obote, Milton 10, 20, 33, 86, 102, 138, 152, 163, 174–175, 193, 196, 205 (n. 121), 226 (n. 48)

Index

259

early life and career 2, 29, 42–43, 83, 96–97 1962–1971 government 1, 4, 6, 17, 19, 34–36, 42, 44–49, 51–53,. 55–56, 58–59, 64, 66–69, 71, 74–76, 78, 89, 98–99, 105, 107–108, 112–113, 119–122, 131–136, 153–162, 165–173, 183–184, 192, 194–195 1971 coup against 60–61, 90, 121, 124, 163, 173, 181, 184, 191 1980–1985 government 90, 124 Observer, The 93, 102, 113, 171 Obwangor, Cuthbert 42, 45, 75 Ocaya-Lakidi, Dent 122 Ochieng, Daudi 32, 45 Ochwo, Edward 48 Odero-Jowi, Joseph 157, 159 Ogwal, Benjamin 97–98, 104 Ojambo, James 137, 144, 155, 194 Ojera, Alex 67, 175 Okatch, Peter 146 Okoth, Yona 90, 98, 102 Okullu, Henry 87, 89 Oman 187 Omonya, Yakobo 43 Onama, Felix 42, 47, 58–59, 75, 154, 156–157 Ondoga, Michael 124 Opolot, Shaban 1, 2, 35, 45, 46, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60 Orde Browne, Granville St. John 140–142 Organisation of African Unity (OAU), 48 Oris, Juma 67, 124 Osman, John 121 Otema Allimadi, Eric 117 Owen, David 179–180, 182

after independence 3, 34, 41–48, 50–51, 132, 192, 195 building 1, 36–37, 46, 48, 195 Legislative Council 14, 21, 24, 30, 32, 38–43, 49, 95, 109, 115, 140, 144, 186 Patel, Priti 8 Paul, St. 80, 90, 100 p’Bitek, Okot 132 Peatfield, Thomas 36 Pentecostalism 84–86, 101, 134 People, The (Ugandan newspaper) 111–113, 121, 135, 167 Peterloo massacre 63, 187 Piratin, Phil 65 police force (Uganda) 45, 64–68, 102, 127, 135, 140, 144, 160 Special Branch 97, 131 Police Service Unit 65 polygamy 82, 91, 188 Popat, Dolar 8 Portugal 168, 170, 173, 177 poststructuralism 13, 68 Poynton, Hilton 148 Presidential Intelligence Unit 63 Pring, David 38 print journalism 1, 3, 12–13, 15, 17, 23, 37, 55, 66, 80, 86, 93–94, 99–100, 107–136, 143, 150, 169, 172, 176– 180, 182, 184–185, 188–192, 194, 196–197 (n. 18) see also vernacular press providentialism 98, 100, 105 Pugin, Augustus 36 Pulle, Frances 155 Pullicino, Philip 1, 44 Punch 54, 178

Page, Ian 152 Pakistan 164–165 Palestine 177 pantheism 80, 95, 104 paramilitarism 4, 60, 63–65, 68, 134 Parliament (British) 19, 36–40, 43–44, 49, 130, 175–180, 186 Parliament (Ugandan) 1–4, 12, 16, 20, 22–23, 25, 27–28, 33, 38, 41, 49, 119, 165, 185, 187, 192–194

race 10, 19, 23, 30, 40, 43, 52–55, 57, 78, 86, 118, 120, 128–131, 147–149, 157, 165–168, 174–178, 180, 183, 186–187 see also multi-racialism, martial races theory Railway African Union (RAU) 141, 143–145, 152 Ramphal, Sonny 163, 167, 172–173, 178–181 Ramsey, Michael 89–90

Queen, British, see Elizabeth II,

260 Rawls, John 12–13 Reader’s Digest 117 Red Pepper 108 Rees, Merlyn 180 Reformation, European 90 regimentalism 53–54, 77–78 Reich, John 137, 152–153, 155, 158, 161, 194 Reith, Martin 159 republicanism 19, 40, 46–47, 66, 164–166, 171 Reuters 112–113 revival, East African 79, 81, 83, 84, 87, 98, 100, 101, 105, 194, 211 (n. 15) see also balokole, strivers, pentecostalism Rhodesia 6, 24, 39, 69, 166, 168–170, 176 Robens, Alf 143 Robinson, Roland 37 Rogers, Hugh 57 Round Table, The 164 Rowland, R.W. ‘Tiny’ 112, 121, 135 Rowlands, Ted 181 Royal Air Force 25 Royal Navy 1 Ruguma, George 144–145 Rushedge, Tumusiime 123 Rusk, Dean 45–46 Russia see Soviet Union Ruwenzori 3, 4, 52, 71–75, 78, 88 Rwanda 51, 58, 64, 71, 75, 81, 83, 84, 88, 1 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) 71 Rwanda-Urundi 139 Rwenzururu movement see nationalism, Rwenzururu Sabiti, Erica 1, 2, 88, 89, 90, 98, 102 Salisbury, 5th Marquess of 39 Salvation Army 101 Sandhurst, Royal Military College 52, 55, 57–58, 62, 76 Sandys, Duncan 165 Saudi Arabia 180, 183 Saul see Paul, St., Schroeder, Barbet 7 Sebukima, Davis 133 Second World War 1, 97, 107, 139 sedition trials 17, 120, 125–130, 133, 135–136, 191

Index Sekanyolya 110–111, 125 Sekeba, Drake 12, 110, 121, 125, 128 Sekibala, George 144 Semliki River 72–73 Sempa, Amos 29, 31, 93 Sempangi, Kefa 85 Senate, United States 24 Senoga, Yowasi 82 Sentamu, John 8, 102 Sentongo, Zefaniya 110–111 Senyonjo, Christopher 7, 88, 103 Serwango, Paul 69–70 Serwaniko, John 135 Seventh Day Adventists 101 Shaka 68 Sheehan, Edward 42–43 Shore, Peter 181 silver jubilee see Elizabeth II Simba rebellion 71 Singapore Declaration of Commonwealth Principles 173, 177, 183–184 Smith, Arnold 166–167, 170, 172–173, 176, 177, 184 Smith, Ian 39, 69, 166–167, 168, 169 Snelling, Andrew 164 socialism 52, 60, 131, 133 Somalia 58 South Africa 6, 31, 37, 41, 60, 126, 132, 150, 165–166, 168, 170–174, 183, 191 Southern Rhodesia 6, 23, 31, 39–40, 126, 166–167, 177 Soviet Union 60, 86, 93, 97, 99, 114–115, 117–119, 127, 130–131, 134, 145, 173 Soyinka, Wole 133 Special Branch see police force Spender, Stephen 131 Spens, Patrick 38 Springer, Maida 146–148, 151, 157 Sri Lanka 164 Ssembeguya Commission of Inquiry 73 Ssemogerere, Paul 44, 46, 48 Stacey, Tom 74 Standard Group 108, 112–113, 120 State of Emergency 65, 120 1954, 65, 129 1963, 74 1966, 75, 132

Index State Research Bureau 63 Stonehouse, John 28 Stowe school 1 Strivers/Trumpeters 79, 84–85, 98, 194 Stuart, Andrew 117 Stuart, Cyril 79, 91–93, 95, 105 Sudan 51, 56, 58, 62–64, 70–71, 83, 117 Suez crisis 31, 95 Sun, The 178 Sweden 77 Switzerland 175 Tabula, Yafesi 108, 126, 128, 133, 136 Taifa Empya 112–113, 134 Tanganyika 5, 39, 56, 59, 76, 83, 126, 144, 156, 167 Tanzania 6, 51, 59, 62, 71, 75–78, 124, 131, 134, 169–173, 177 Taylor, John V. 86 tea estates 142, 144–145, 160 temporality, historiography on 8, 9, 195–196 Tettegah, John 151–152, 155 Tewson, Vincent 141–143, 147–148 Theroux, Paul 7 Thomson, George 180 Thorpe, Jeremy 175 Time 113 Times of India, The 173 Times, The 1, 76, 108–109, 160, 169–170, 173–174, 189 Togo 118 Tomusgane, Stephen 88 Torgerson, Dial 69–70 Toro European Association 144 Toro 17, 33, 67, 72–75, 88, 144, 195 Tororo 82, 154 trade unions 1, 5–6, 12, 15–17, 27, 45, 99–100, 115, 137–162, 184–185, 189–196 Transition 107, 132–133 trial 107, 120, 131, 133, 135 Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) 137, 142 Treasury (British) 58, 61 Trend, Burke 166 Trinidad 165 Trudeau, Pierre 175–176 Trumpeters see Strivers

261

Tumusiime, James 123–124 Tunisia 151 Turkana 64 Turnbull, Richard 56 Uganda Argus 1, 3, 82, 99, 107–108, 111, 112–123, 125, 127–128, 135, 154, 159, 167, 172, 188–189, 195, 204 (n. 109), 229 (n. 120) Uganda Breweries and Beverages Workers Union 155–156 Uganda Express 128–129, 133 Uganda Federation of Labour (UFL) 152–153, 155, 161 Uganda Herald 108 Uganda Hotel and Domestic Workers Union 155 Uganda Labour Congress (ULC) 158–159 Uganda Motor Drivers Association (UMDA) 139–140, 190 Uganda National Congress (UNC) 6, 21–22, 25, 28–29, 32, 36, 39, 40, 42–43, 49, 80, 96–97, 99, 117, 119, 129, 131, 149 see also Uganda People’s Congress Uganda National Movement (UNM) 30–31, 65 Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) 2, 6, 29, 33–35, 44–49, 59–60, 80, 89, 90, 96–99, 105, 113, 119–122, 132, 134, 152–159, 167–169, 171, 173 see also Uganda National Congress Uganda People’s Union (UPU) 96 Uganda Post 129–130 Uganda Public Employees Union 158, 160 Uganda Rifles see Army (Ugandan) Uganda Star 127 Uganda Tea Association 31 Uganda Times 124–125 Uganda Trade Union Congress (UTUC) 1, 143, 152–153, 155–158, 159, 161–162 Uganda Women’s League 41, 94 Ugandan nationalism see nationalism, Ugandan Uganda-Tanzanian War 62, 75–78, 124, 134 uhuru strikes 153–155, 157, 160, 162 United National Independence Party 168

262

Index

United Nations 26, 35, 127, 157, 167 Human Development Report 109 United States, 1, 24, 38, 40, 45–46, 60, 118, 130–132, 145–152, 156–157, 159, 163, 175, 194 Usher Wilson, Lucian 81, 97 Vara, Shailesh 8 vernacular press 2–3, 93, 94, 107–111, 113, 120, 125–131, 134–135, 188–191 Verwoerd, Hendrik 166 Visram, Sugra 42, 193 Voice of Uganda 108, 122–125, 134–135, 195 Wagoina, Ali 152 Waiyaki, Manyua 182 Wallace, Charles 77 Walugembe, Francis 67 Wamala, Samwiri 4 Wamalwa, Halonyere 155–156 Wani, Silvanus 90, 102–104 Warren, Max 92–95 Washington Post 76 Washington State University (WSU) 118 Waugh, Evelyn 7 Welsh, Ed 157 West African Pilot 125, 128 West Germany 77 West Nile 42, 52, 62, 124, 129 Westminster Parliament see Parliament (British)

White Fathers 110, 134 see also Catholicism Whitley Report 64, 140 Whitley, Norman 140 Wild, John 31, 40 Willey, Fred 38 Williams, Eric 165 Williams, G. Mennen 45–46 Wilson, Harold 168–171, 178, 179, 184 women’s history 11, 41–42, 64, 67–69, 94–95, 193 Woodcock, George 142 Wordsworth, William 37 World Bank 102 World Federation of Democratic Youth 130 World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) 145–146, 151–152, 159, 161 Wright, Patrick 182 Yar Adua, Shehu 183 Yemen 71 Yom Kippur War see Arab-Israeli War (1973) Zake, Joseph 40 Zambia 168–174 Zanzibar 1, 75 Zikusoka, James 101 Zirabamuzale, B.K. 116