Mulira quits Mengo
Saturday, 1st October, 2005	E-mail article   Print article
Peter Mulira By Hillary Nsambu A PROMINENT city advocate, Peter Mulira (left), has resigned from the Buganda Kingdom cabinet and Lukiiko over “serious” disagreements with the establishment over the proposed regional government. Mulira tendered in his resignation to Katikkiro Joseph Ssemwogerere yesterday and asked Kabaka Mutebi to accept it. In a seven-page statement titled “Buganda at the cross-roads”, Mulira accused unnamed Mengo officials of intolerance to divergent views. “I found that my views are in conflict with those of the Mengo leadership, on many issues,” Mulira said. The resignation letter was copied to the Kabaka’s Private Secretary and the Speaker of the Lukiiko. Mulira was a minister for special duties in the office of the Katikkiro. Mengo information minister Charles Peter Mayiga declined to comment. Mulira said prominent Mengo chiefs were intolerant of divergent views on federalism. Mulira said he had been accused of confusing the Kabaka by arguing that Buganda should opt for devolution like Scotland in the United Kingdom. “Some people seem to think that federalism and federo are synonymous and that devolution is bad. Therefore some of those who support devolution out of reality of our situation are looked at as deviants,” said Mulira. Mulira disagrees with the regional government law which gives the bataka (landlords) the power to vet candidates to become the Katikkiro and instead of the Kabaka. “Katikkiro is an official of the Kabaka. If there is need to vet candidates for this office, why should it be done under the bataka’s aegis and not Kabaka’s? I can see the bataka encroaching on the Kabaka’s space,” Mulira said. He said the new system might re-awaken historical rivalries between the bataka and the Kabaka. He said the bataka could countermand the Katikkiro and that they had formed a committee which want them to take precedence over ministers at official functions. Mulira warned against turning the Lukiiko into a cultural council but that it should have controlled legislative powers. “We should separate culture from the legislative function of the Lukiiko. Our forefathers must have had a reason when they did this,” said Mulira. Mulira wants the regional tier to be headed by a chairman who will ensure Buganda attains full federo with its own constitution.

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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.