Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 16:49:41 -0800 (PST)
From: musaja alumbwa <musaja27@...>
Subject: Rconcile this proposal with the federo/federalism model
To: Musaja27@...

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http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/20/470761
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Solve the Buganda problem
Tuesday, 13th December, 2005
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Peter Mulira Mayanja
A learned friend With a historical perspective

Peter Mulira Mayanja

In Buganda the abataka b’obusolya or heads of
Buganda’s fifty two clans are next only to the Kabaka
in cultural, but not political, hierarchy.

As such, it was a source of great affront to the
baganda when recently, some of the abataka were
scattered in the streets of Kampala by tear gas thrown
at them by the police as they led a group of followers
in a futile attempt to present to the Speaker of
Parliament a letter containing their new demands for
settling what is known as the Buganda problem.

Originally, when Buganda was composed of only three
counties, the heads of the ten then existing clans
were the rulers of the area with power exercised
through the control of clan lands (obutaka).

Seven hundred years ago, however, these leaders met in
a place called Nono in today’s Mawokota county and
decided to elect one of them as their cultural
superior (Ssabataka) who also doubled as the political
overlord of the area (Kabaka). Thus the kingdom of
Buganda was born along cultural and political lines.

Although, the two offices were occupied by the same
person, they were strictly separate in their roles in
that the Ssabataka’s office was concerned only with
cultural matters while the Kabaka was the political
head of the community or the sovereign in whom all
power resided.

Soon an administration based on ebitongole
(departments) under the Katikkiro (prime minister)
developed subject to the Kabaka’s suzerainty and as
the kingdom expanded territorially, its administration
expanded with it and as new cultures were assimilated,
the number of clans rose to the present number of 52.

As a result of the Berlin Conference of 1884 where
colonial powers shared out the continent of Africa, a
contraption known as Uganda was drawn on the ground
whose boundaries encompassed people of different
cultures and without a common administration to unify
them until later on when the British tutelage was
systematically imposed on various communities through
agreements and military conquests.

Under the Buganda agreement of 1900, the kingdom’s
administration in place then was recognised though it
was reorganised to be based on 20 culturally
homogeneous counties which had their own county
councils and two states of lower councils.

Above this structure was a government at Mengo with
all the organs of a slayer namely the executive, a
judiciary and a legislature.

Under this arrangement, Buganda was one of the four
provinces of Uganda and its autonomous nature made it
a state within the wider colonial state.

As independence approached, Buganda feared that it
would lose its autonomous status in an independent
Uganda and its federal status in the independence
constitution was intended to preserve this position
although many leaders saw it as a privileged position
which had to be quashed after independence.

The 1966 crisis traced its genesis not to Buganda’s
position as such but to the struggle for power within
UPC, which started at the party’s conference in Gulu
in 1965 and escalated into a motion of no confidence
in the Prime Minister, Dr. Apollo Milton Obote, being
moved in Parliament by the Ibingira faction of UPC.

Unfortunately the MPs from Buganda found themselves on
the losing side when Obote beat off his detractors
after which he used the opportunity to settle the
Buganda problem in his own way by forcing the Kabaka
to flee into exile and after he failed to get a new
Kabaka installed removed Buganda’s federal status
under the 1967 constitution.

For the first time in its long history, Buganda was
vanquished and again was ruled directly by the central
government through four districts, which were
arbitrarily drawn after the abolition of the kingdom.
The baganda viewed this new set up as a military
occupation and this together with their cultural
heritage accounts for their persistent demand for
restoration of their polity.

The key to the solution of this unique problem will be
to recognise the eighteen counties of Buganda as the
districts of the region. All the counties are
culturally homogeneous so that Kooki is for Bakooki,
Ssese for Bassese, Buluuli for Baluuli, Bugerere for
Banyala, and so on. The most popular football league
today is the counties tournament, which is testimony
to the fact that people are attached to their counties
of origin. The same cannot be said of the present
districts.

The Buganda problem will remain unresolved until five
things are accepted and put in place:
- A Buganda constitution subject to the national
constitution in which the Kabaka is recognised as the
titular head or constitutional monarch.

- A government at Mengo headed by an elected Katikkiro
and properly funded.

- An elected Lukiiko.

- Recognition of the eighteen counties as the
districts of Buganda which will then unite to form a
regional tier of Mengo. The present proposed tier is
viewed as alien.
- A system of lower local government based on
egombolola (LC3), omuluka (LC2) and ekyalo (LC1).

The case for such an arrangement is that Buganda is a
kingdom whose political head is the Kabaka. A kingdom
cannot be without administrative structures and
although the office of Kabaka was despotic at times in
history, by 1955 the Kabaka had become a
constitutional monarch and with all the councils in
the kingdom being democratically elected up to muluka
(LC2) level, such elections having been introduced in
1945.

Without the administrative structures the office of
the Kabaka is just in name because there is no polity
for him to head. The 1966 crisis had nothing to do
with the institution as such since the late Sir Edward
Muteesa II was drawn into it by virtue of his being
President of Uganda.

Secondly the Mengo government, which was headed by
Hon. Mayanja Nkangi opposed the attempt to introduce
in the Lukiiko requiring the central government to
move itself from the Buganda soil, which was not
passed anyway. The desecration of Buganda and its
institutions in 1966 was therefore based on a hoax.

In any case, Buganda is not alone in demanding
restoration of its cultural homogeneity. The Odoki
Commission recommended that district boundaries should
take into account people’s culture, language and
geographical features.
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