Ugandans demanded equality before Independence

A. J. Bwangatto

As Uganda race forward to the celebration of the Golden jubilee of her independence, a lot has been written by many people about the history of Uganda and the events that shaped our independence and post-independence era. But the way our history is written and presented, it perpetuates a subversive discourse which is precarious to the unity of the country. Almost all our history is presented in the model of Buganda/Baganda and the rest of Uganda/Ugandans. During my O' level history lesson, there was always a topic about “collaborators and resistors of colonialism.” It is argued that some ethnic communities in Uganda collaborated with the colonial administration as “quasi colonialists themselves” and others resisted fiercely this whole colonial project. Our teacher liked this topic and he would retain us in class even during break-time. This discourse of collaboration and resistance to colonialism is perpetuated in our education system and social consciousness as a claim of stating historical facts, but I fear there are adverse effects to the unity of the country. This lingering discourse of collaborators and resistors has been perpetuated for decades in our school curriculum and the curriculum experts cannot detect the dangers embedded in such thoughts as each generation of Ugandan students are fed on the same. My contention is that by presenting Ugandans in such dichotomies as resistors and collaborators of colonialism, we are perpetuating divisions among ourselves even describing and identifying ourselves as tribalists. This again perpetuates the mistrust and hatred among the citizens and the projects of patriotism will never achieve any objective. I feel as we come close to the 50th independence anniversary of our country, we need to read and re-write our history with national lenses having a view of highlighting the contribution of all Ugandans in the fight for independence and development of the country. All the people in Uganda suffered the consequences of direct foreign domination and currently we are all suffering from clandestine foreign powers and ideologies. Our mindset is corrupted and the values of nationalism are completely deficient! We need to present ourselves as one people working to liberate ourselves from the yoke of colonialism in its overt and covert forms. 

When we if scale back into our history the British colonial administration in Uganda effectively barred Ugandans from participating in the higher levels of commerce, industry, and agriculture, thus precluding the emergence of an indigenous class with a stake in the country’s economy and, hence, its social and political stability. If we follow the progress of events in the colonial era, we notice a systematic technique to marginalise the Africans and relegate them to the periphery of society of which they formed a majority. There was tough resistance as the unfortunate events unfolded in the course of the colonial period with their resultant effects. As early as the 1890s the colonial state began excluding Africans from the processing and marketing stages of production, the most lucrative in the colony’s commodity-based economy. Kabaka Mwanga tried to buy a saw-mill but was prevented by the colonial authorities from doing so. In 1909, Governor Bell ordered the destruction of hand gins, which handled some thirty-five percent of cotton produced in the colony and nothing was done to give the hand ginners alternative employment in the processing sector. In 1913, Kina Kulya Growers’ Society of Ssingo Farmers was discouraged from marketing its own cotton. The Cotton Rules of 1918 restricted middlemen from operating within five miles of a ginnery, all of which were owned by foreigners. The Buganda Growers’ Association tried to market its own cotton in 1923 but was discouraged by the government. Four years later, Seperiya Kaddumukasa tried to erect a ginnery on his land but was refused a license. In 1920 the Buganda Cotton Company was prevented from ginning and marketing its own cotton. In 1932, when the Uganda Cotton Society tried to obtain high prices by ginning and marketing its own cotton and eliminating the Indian middlemen, it was not allowed to do so. In the same year, the Native Produce Marketing Ordinance (Coffee) curtailed the buying activities of African businessmen. 

There was a growing movement in the colonial period to press for equality and fair treatment of the local people by the colonial administration. There were growing disparities between the Africans and the foreigners and the pressure was mounting to the colonial administration to exercise fairness in the running of the economy. This quest for fairness in economic matters corresponds with what is known generally, that the national economy, as it is the product of men who work together in the community of the state, has no other end than to secure without interruption the material conditions in which the individual life of the citizen may fully develop. Consequently, in 1938 the Baana ba Kintu (The Descendants of Kintu) Association was brought into being partly to address the problem of excluding Africans from marketing commodities. The Bataka Party, building on the Bataka movement of the 1920s, was founded in 1946 to fight the exploitation of the Asian cotton buyers. When the cotton hold-up, that is, a refusal by peasants to sell cotton, was organised, their demand was to participate in the marketing of agricultural commodities. The Ugandan authorities, instead of curtailing foreign control of the economy and encouraging Africans to participate, increased levels of immigration from 1949 to 1959. European immigration grew from 3,448 to 10,866, an increase of 215 percent, and Indo-Pakistani from 35,215 to 71,933, a growth of 105 percent. The banking system was controlled by British and Indian based banks and they did not lend to many Africans although they operated on an accumulation of African peasant savings. In 1949, Ignatius Musaazi called for the use of peasant stabilisation funds to create an agricultural bank. By that time Africans had been left so far behind in business expertise and capital that they could not compete with Indo-Pakistanis and Europeans. Africans could not participate in the lucrative wholesale trade because the colonial government issued wholesale licences only to traders with permanent building of stone or concrete and very few Africans had such buildings. By 1959, when a trade boycott of all foreign-owned stores was proclaimed by Augustine Kamya of the Uganda National Movement, Africans handled less than ten percent of national trade.

With such a background, we could without doubt identify the problems which independence would bring. Ugandans were handed a country with no integrated economy geared to the satisfaction of domestic demands; no indigenous property owning class with an economic stake in the country, that is, a class that would have had to lose by the occurrence of social conflict, and no consolidated ruling class that could offer a strong base for social stability. This was an apparent recipe for violence because of the sharp stratifications existent in the Ugandan society at that time and when race decided a man’s place in society. By then, society was stratified in three grades: Europeans coming first, Asians second and the Africans were at the bottom. This racial division was extended to salary structures, financial provisions for education, housing and all other kinds of privileges which created envy and animosity. This explains the euphoria that followed the expulsion of Asians by President Amin. Many people in Uganda interpreted it as a reversal of colonial injustices. And Amin was applauded and credited as one individual who tore down the edifice of colonialism. Our history shows that all Ugandans are victims of a foreign ideologies and interventions and must stand as one to work for the development of the country. For God and My Country.