VII.

History

The earliest inhabitants of Uganda were hunters and gatherers who lived more than 50,000 years ago and whose stone axes have been found near the villages of Mweya and Kagera in the southwest and at Paraa in the northwest. Their descendants retreated to the mountains between 2,500 and 3,000 years ago when Bantu-speaking farmers moved into forested areas and cleared the land for crops. Iron smelting by Bantu-speaking cultures has been dated from 2,500 years ago, and Bantu pottery from 1,500 years ago. Bantu-speakers near the shores of Lake Victoria developed the banana as a staple food about 1,000 years ago. Between 600 and 700 years ago the Chwezi, a Bantu subgroup, established settlements at Bigo in western Uganda. The Chwezi were depicted in legends as supernatural, but probably were the ancestors of the region’s present-day Hima and Tutsi herders.

A.

Precolonial Kingdoms

Between the 14th and the 16th centuries ad Nilotic-speaking herders migrated south from Sudan, displaced the Chwezi, and established dominance over preexisting farming peoples. The Nilotic speakers formed several kingdoms, notably Bunyoro, south of Lake Albert, and Ankole, west of Lake Victoria.

The kingdom of Buganda, located between Bunyoro and Lake Victoria, also developed about 500 years ago. Buganda, probably formed by a defeated claimant to the Bunyoro throne, steadily expanded over the next four centuries, largely at the expense of Bunyoro. The earliest confirmed date in Ugandan history is 1680 when a solar eclipse was recorded during the reign of Jjuuko, an early kabaka (king) of Buganda. As opposed to the omukama (king) of Bunyoro, who was chosen exclusively from the royal clan and whose chiefs had some independent authority, the kabaka of Buganda could be chosen from any clan. By the 19th century the kabaka commanded total authority over his kingdom, and all power and wealth flowed from him. He did not keep a standing army, but adult males were conscripted for war as needed.

By the 19th century the Ankole kingdom had become a caste system in which Hima herders, ruled by a king selected from the royal clan, dominated Iru farmers. Toro, Uganda’s fourth major kingdom, emerged about 1830 when a disgruntled son of the Bunyoro omukama declared the region north of Lake Victoria that he ruled independent.

Until the mid-19th century, people outside Africa took no interest in Uganda. Arab traders from Zanzibar reached the royal court of Buganda in 1844 with guns and cloth, which they traded for ivory. They also introduced the religion of Islam.

B.

European Influence

Curiosity about the source of the Nile led to European expeditions into the region. In 1862 British explorer John Hanning Speke was welcomed to the court of Kabaka Mutesa I of Buganda. Speke continued his journey and found the point where the Nile flowed out of Lake Victoria, correctly concluding that the lake was the principal source of the Nile. British explorer Samuel White Baker and his wife, following the Nile upstream, entered Uganda from the north and in 1864 reached and named Lake Albert. On Baker’s second trip, in 1872, Kabarega, the Bunyoro omukama, attacked Baker out of fear that his subjects would become vulnerable to slave raids from Sudan, and forced Baker’s withdrawal. Anglo-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley visited the court of Buganda in 1875 while en route from Zanzibar through the Congo rain forest to the Atlantic coast.

B.1.

Missionaries

Due to Stanley’s report that the Ganda people of Buganda would welcome Christianity, British Protestant and French Catholic missionaries visited Buganda in the late 1870s. Kabaka Mutesa I was more interested in foreign trade, arms, and military support than he was in foreign religions, but allowed missionaries into his court for diplomatic reasons. The presence of Christian missionaries in Mutesa’s kingdom helped deflect the potential threat of Egyptian annexation of Buganda by Charles George Gordon, the agent in southern Sudan of the Egyptian ruler.

Protestant, Catholic, and Islamic competition for converts, particularly among the pages at the royal court, many of whom later became chiefs, produced three religious factions. Fearing the consequences of disunity, Mutesa expelled missionaries from his court, but his son Mwanga, who succeeded Mutesa in 1884, invited them back. However, Mwanga reversed his decision in 1886 and ordered 22 pages who would not renounce their faith to be burnt to death. The Catholic victims came to be known as the Uganda Martyrs, and were canonized (declared saints) by the pope in 1964. The Islamic, Catholic, and Protestant factions combined in 1888 to overthrow Mwanga, but then warred against each other until Mwanga was restored to the throne in 1889. This period of religious violence firmly established religion as an important basis of politics.

B.2.

Rise of British Control

The unsettled situation in Buganda was further complicated by competition between Britain and Germany during the Scramble for Africa, in which European nations rushed to claim African territory near the end of the 19th century. Under the Treaty of Helgoland in 1890, Germany ceded its interests in Uganda to Britain, whose government had given responsibility for governing and exploiting the area to the Imperial British East Africa Company. The company’s representative, Captain Frederick Lugard, negotiated a treaty with Mwanga and Catholic and Protestant chiefs in 1891, but the two religious factions remained hostile. To strengthen the company’s position, Lugard recruited a force of Sudanese troops in western Uganda, signing treaties with the kings of Ankole and Toro along the way and thus bringing these areas into the company’s jurisdiction. With his new soldiers—and two machine guns—Lugard and his Protestant allies from Buganda provoked and won a battle against the Catholics in 1892, thus establishing Protestant political supremacy in Buganda and later in Uganda as a whole. Mwanga remained kabaka, but had to sign a treaty accepting British “protection” in 1893.

C.

British Protectorate

In 1894 Britain declared a protectorate over all of present-day Uganda and began the expansion of its control by invading Bunyoro in 1893 and 1894 and removing its king, Kabarega, whose troops were raiding areas under British control. Several Bunyoro counties were awarded to the Buganda government for its military assistance. These areas became known as the Lost Counties, a hotly contested issue in Ugandan politics until the 1960s. In 1897 Mwanga rebelled, but was defeated and deposed as kabaka in favor of his infant son, Daudi Cwa. Mwanga fled to German East Africa, but soon returned to join Kabarega in guerrilla opposition to British forces. In 1899 both were captured and exiled to the Seychelles.

C.1.

Preeminence of Buganda

The consolidation of the protectorate created a preeminent position for Buganda, greater power for Protestants, and allowed for the ascendancy of chiefs, who served as regents for the young Buganda king. Each of these situations contributed to Uganda’s political problems during and after colonial rule. In 1900 all of these issues were formalized in the Buganda Agreement between the British and the chiefs of Buganda, which laid the basis for Buganda’s economic prosperity during British rule. The agreement gave the four-year-old king and his chiefs title to the more productive half of Buganda’s land in return for which they accepted subordination to Britain and the right of the protectorate government to levy taxes. Treaties signed between Britain and the governments of the other kingdoms (Toro in 1900, Ankole in 1901, and Bunyoro in 1933) were much less generous, particularly in grants of land.

The British introduced cotton growing in 1904, and chiefs who had land became wealthy and established the prosperity of the colony through their contributions to exports and taxes. Uganda’s growing population of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent also benefited from the new cotton industry. Indians (as the immigrants were known in Uganda) came to Uganda as laborers and traders in the thousands between the 1890s and the 1920s. By the 1920s Indian entrepreneurs owned a large percentage of Ugandan cotton processing plants and many other businesses. In the 1920s the British encouraged farmers in Buganda to grow coffee, which became increasingly profitable. Consequently, people in Buganda grew wealthy faster, received better education, and obtained more positions in the public service than those from other areas.

In addition, some chiefs from Buganda were given positions as administrators over other parts of Uganda until World War I (1914-1918). The greedy conduct and cultural chauvinism of the chiefs from Buganda caused resentment and a corresponding rise in local ethnic identifications. As a result, many people from other parts of the country feared the domination of Uganda by Buganda, a fear still held by some Ugandans.

After poor peasants who labored on the lands of chiefs of Buganda protested their living and working conditions, the protectorate government passed legislation in 1927 limiting the peasants’ rents and securing their occupation. Militant nationalism emerged following World War II (1939-1945), marked by an outbreak of urban strikes in 1945 and rural farm protests, primarily in Buganda, in 1949. The colonial government responded by introducing greater African participation in the economy, encouraging African cotton farmers to process their own cotton, and promoting agricultural cooperatives (farms owned by, and operated for the benefit of, multiple African farmers). In addition, the British democratized some local governments. In 1945 the first African representatives were allowed in the colonial legislative council. African representation in the council increased in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At the same time, the government also tried to control reform by regulating the new agricultural cooperatives and supporting moderate African candidates for the council seats. In the 1950s Ugandan prosperity was further strengthened by large state- and foreign-financed infrastructure projects. The most significant was the dam and hydroelectric station on the Nile at Jinja, built in 1954, and the Kilembe copper mine on the western border, which began in 1956.

However, the new governor, Sir Andrew Cohen, caused a crisis in 1953 when he introduced a plan for a unitary Ugandan government, which implied eliminating the government’s special relationship with Buganda. Kabaka Frederick Mutesa II, until then known mostly as a playboy, opposed the plan and gained intense popular support among the Ganda. Cohen exiled him to Britain, bringing such strong demands for his return that Cohen was forced to negotiate a new agreement with the Ganda in 1955 that reaffirmed their privileges and granted additional powers to the kabaka. The kabaka, who returned in triumph, became a central political figure.

C.2.

Nationalist Pressure

National demands for independence began with the formation of the Uganda National Congress (UNC) in 1952 by nationalists Ignatius Musazi and Abu Mayanja. Ganda Catholic chiefs and educated urban professionals formed the Democratic Party (DP) in 1954. In 1960 Milton Obote formed the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) by joining northern branches of the UNC and representatives, mainly from western Uganda, who had been elected to the legislative council in 1958. The DP and the UPC became the major national parties, each gaining influence by winning the support of local notable figures with rural ethnic followings in their home areas. Both parties opposed the Protestant Buganda establishment—the DP, because most of its members were Catholic, and the UPC (regarded as predominantly Protestant), because its members feared Buganda’s dominance after independence.

Buganda, for its part, felt increasingly threatened by the prospect of losing its special rights in an independent Uganda. In independence negotiations with Britain in 1961 and 1962, the Buganda administration secured further guarantees of its position. Notably, the Protestant-dominated Buganda local council was given the right to indirectly elect Buganda’s representatives to the national parliament, virtually eliminating any chance of the Catholic DP winning any seats in Buganda. Bunyoro, Ankole, and Toro received only ceremonial privileges, but that was still more than the districts that lay outside the four major kingdoms received. Most of these kingdoms and districts had an ethnic identity, so their competition to gain the privileges that Buganda carried into independence guaranteed that ethnicity would be central to postindependence disputes in Uganda.

D.

Independence

For Buganda’s protection, the kabaka’s government formed an ethnic party, Kabaka Yekka (KY), in 1961. It made an unexpected alliance with the UPC to win preindependence elections in early 1962. Uganda became independent in October 1962 with UPC leader Milton Obote as prime minister and several KY ministers in his cabinet. A year later Uganda became a republic with the kabaka as ceremonial president. But the UPC/KY coalition split over the UPC’s insistence on holding a referendum to decide whether to return the Lost Counties to Bunyoro.

The UPC used its control over the state bureaucracy to bestow favors to its followers and to lure members of the DP to its side. However, it never consolidated its control over its own factions, and in 1966 UPC cabinet members from southern Uganda tried to force Obote out of office. Obote had the cabinet members arrested and claimed the kabaka was part of the plot. He suspended the 1962 constitution and forced an interim constitution through parliament in which Obote replaced the kabaka as president. The Buganda government responded by threatening to secede. Obote ordered the army, under the command of newly appointed Army Chief of Staff Idi Amin, to take control over the Buganda government. The army defeated the small force defending the kabaka, who fled in disguise into exile. In 1967 Obote’s government adopted a new constitution that abolished all four kingdoms and eliminated federal powers. In a futile effort to expand his support, Obote adopted radical policies that expanded state control over the economy. In 1969, following an assassination attempt on Obote, the DP and other minor parties were banned. The UPC remained the only existing party, though the constitution was not amended to prohibit the formation of other parties.

E.

The Amin Years

Obote’s control over the army grew more uncertain as Amin consolidated his power. Obote placed allies in senior military posts in an attempt to diminish Amin’s control over troops. However, Amin overthrew the civilian government in 1971, relying on members of the Nubian ethnic group within the army, who controlled the army’s tank battalion. Though both Amin and Obote were northerners, Amin was a Nubian and a Muslim, while Obote was a Langi and a Protestant. On taking power, Amin ordered the murder of soldiers he regarded as loyal to Obote. He soon also authorized attacks on civilians and ignored killings by his followers. Eventually, he was also responsible for the murder of several of his cabinet ministers, the chief justice, and the Protestant archbishop. Several hundred thousand people may have been killed and thousands more fled the country. No groups were spared, though the educated were singled out by the uneducated ruling group, and the ethnic Acholi and Langi also were singled out, because Obote was thought to have derived support from those groups.

Amin spurred the shift by several African states to align with Islamic nations rather than with the Jewish state of Israel in the Middle East conflict over possession of the historic region of Palestine (see Arab-Israeli Conflict). After receiving aid from Libya in 1972, Amin expelled all Israelis from Uganda. Later that year he also expelled almost all Indians, who had controlled almost the entire commercial sector. At first these bold strokes made Amin popular among Ugandans, especially among those who were given control of the Indian businesses. As the economy contracted, however, shortages occurred, foreign exchange disappeared, and inflation increased, and Amin lost most of his popular support. Though condemned by much of the international community, Amin received military assistance from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Libya during most of his regime. In addition, both the United States and the British governments facilitated sales of military equipment by private businesses and arranged training for Ugandan “police agents” (even after the United States broke diplomatic relations and closed its embassy in Uganda in 1973). The military aid, business opportunities from the departed Indian communities, and money siphoned from state funds helped Amin buy the loyalty of his military. Nevertheless, he faced several attempted coups.

As a principled opponent of military rule, Julius Nyerere, the president of neighboring Tanzania, denounced Amin’s seizure of power and permitted Obote and other opponents of Amin to reside in Tanzania and, initially, train guerrillas there. In 1978 several divisions of the Ugandan army mutinied against Amin’s rule. To distract the nation’s attention from his weakening grip on power, Amin ordered loyal troops to invade the Kagera region of Tanzania just over Uganda’s southern border. The Tanzanian government equipped a large army that, together with two small Ugandan contingents (one loyal to Obote, the other to guerrilla leader Yoweri Museveni), quickly drove the invaders out of Tanzania. This military force then invaded Uganda and ousted the Amin government, forcing Amin to flee to Libya in 1979. The war lasted less than six months, but the looting by Ugandans and Tanzanians during that period caused as much damage to Uganda’s economy as Amin’s policies had over the preceding eight years.

F.

Return of Obote

A 20-month period of transition followed, with the goal of preparing for elections. However, factional intrigue stemming from Uganda’s complex ethnic and religious divisions resulted in three short-lived provisional governments during this period, led by Yusufu Lule, Godfrey Binaisa, and Paulo Muwanga. The 1980 election revived the competition between the UPC and the DP. The DP appeared to win, but Muwanga, a UPC stalwart, seized personal control over the vote count and declared a UPC victory. Museveni’s newly formed party, the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM), ran a poor third.

Obote took power for a second time, but with an even narrower base of support than before. In addition, Museveni rejected the UPC victory and started a multiethnic guerrilla movement, the National Resistance Army (NRA), in rural Buganda in 1981. The UPC government responded with a savage campaign against the Ganda in the region to deprive the NRA of supplies. Corruption, torture, and deprivation of human rights by UPC and government officials exceeded the worst years of the Amin regime. In 1985 Acholi officers, complaining that Acholi soldiers had to fight on the front lines while Langi officers and men from Obote’s area stayed safely behind, staged a coup. Again, Obote was forced to flee to exile, this time in Zambia. Acholi army officer Tito Okello declared himself head of state in July 1985, but he had the support of only a fraction of the army, and was unable to establish control over the country. After inconclusive negotiations in Kenya between the combatants, the NRA marched victoriously into Kampala in early 1986.

G.

Museveni’s Uganda

The National Resistance Movement (NRM), the political wing of the NRA, immediately created a broad-based government by inviting members of other parties, particularly the DP, but also the UPC, to join the government at all levels, including the cabinet. However, it insisted on its own version of popular democracy. Museveni argued that because the NRM was a “movement” open to all Ugandans, it alone could contest elections. The old parties, he insisted, competed on the basis of religion and ethnicity, not on issues of development. Museveni established a system of local government whereby the smallest villages were indirectly represented in the province-level administrative bodies. He also oversaw the diversification of the Ugandan economy and adopted market-oriented economic development programs, to which he adhered strictly.

G.1.

Foreign Policy

Under Museveni, Uganda practiced an aggressive foreign policy. The country was intermittently engaged in hostilities with Kenya during the late 1980s due to Kenyan support of antigovernment Ugandan rebels. Uganda’s support of southern Sudanese rebels elicited sporadic attacks by the Sudanese military.

In 1990 the Ugandan government allowed considerable numbers of Rwandans in the Ugandan army to create an invasion force to attack and eventually defeat the Rwandan government. In 1996 Uganda allegedly helped the Congolese and Rwandan forces who crossed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and overthrew President Mobutu Sese Seko. In 1998 Ugandan military units helped the Congolese rebels battling the forces of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who was then DRC president.

G.2.

Domestic Issues

In domestic politics during the 1990s, the government took a number of bold steps. It supported a lengthy constitutional review that involved much public dialogue. The new constitution, adopted in 1995, permitted the return of traditional monarchs as cultural but not political figures. Several areas, including Buganda, promptly coronated kings. In 1996 Uganda held national elections for parliament and the presidency. All Ugandans, regardless of their party affiliation under previous governments, could contest the elections, but the government prohibited party activity and all candidates ran on a nonparty basis. International observers declared these elections free and fair. Ugandan voters chose to retain the country’s nonparty system of government in a 2000 referendum, but voted to switch to a multiparty system in 2005. Museveni was reelected in 2001 and 2006.

Since the late 1980s the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a fundamentalist Christian guerrilla group, has opposed Museveni’s administration in the Acholi areas of the north. The LRA, originally funded by the Sudanese government, has caused much damage and loss of life, leading to popular discontent with Museveni in the north.

Under Museveni, Uganda made remarkable strides toward reclaiming its international reputation since the bloody Amin and second Obote periods. Museveni and the NRM accomplished three remarkable goals: an army that respects the rights of civilians in peaceful areas, disciplined economic management, and democratic elections. Nevertheless, in the early 21st century, Uganda had eradicated neither the LRA nor corruption in government, and its aggressive foreign policy periodically raised the ire of its neighbors.

Museveni became embroiled in more controversy as he prepared for reelection in February 2006. He caused international concern when he facilitated changes in the constitution in 2005 that allowed him to run for a third term. In addition, his leading opponent, Kizza Besigye, claimed that the government sought to derail his campaign by charging him with rape and treason in the run-up to the balloting. Besigye was cleared of the rape charges but had to appear in court repeatedly during the campaign to defend himself. Besigye filed suit charging that the February polling had been rigged. In April 2006 Uganda’s Supreme Court validated Museveni’s election victory. The court declared in a split decision that despite irregularities in the election, the evidence presented would not have reversed the results. Museveni was sworn into office for a third term in May 2006.

G.3.

Ceasefire with Rebel Group

In August 2006 the Ugandan government signed a truce with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Under the truce the rebels would leave Uganda and come under the protection of the southern Sudanese regional government (see Sudan). The ceasefire was to be followed by peace negotiations. Still unresolved was the issue of war crimes charges brought against leaders of the LRA by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Ugandan government offered amnesty to the LRA leaders, but ICC officials said they were still seeking the top LRA leaders, including its founder, Joseph Kony. The ICC brought charges against them of murder, rape, using young girls as sex slaves, and forcibly conscripting children into the rebel army. In October 2006 the LRA said it would refuse to sign a peace treaty unless the ICC’s arrest warrants were dropped. By 2009 Kony was still eluding arrest, and units of the LRA were in hiding in neighboring Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Kony was believed to be in the DRC, where a civil war complicated efforts to capture him and crush the LRA revolt. Human rights groups charged that the LRA continued to kidnap children and use them as conscripts and sex slaves.