NATIONAL MOVEMENTS AND THE NEW STATES IN AFRICA
Preface
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN NATIONALISM
CHAPTER 2: THE ITALO-ETHIOPIAN WAR
CHAPTER 3: THE IMPACT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR ON AFRICA
CHAPTER FOUR:THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION
CHAPTER FIVE:THE GHANAIAN REVOLUTION
CHAPTER SIX:THE DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA: UNITY OR BALKANIZATION
CHAPTER SEVEN:PAN AFRICANISM
CHAPTER NINE:NEO-COLONIALISM
CHAPTER TEN:AFRICAN POLITICAL PARTIES: THEIR ROLE IN THE REGAINING OF INDEPENDENCE
CHAPTER ELEVEN:NATIONALISM IN NIGERIA
CHAPTER TWELVE: NATIONALISM IN CONGO
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:NATIONALISM IN TANGANYIKA
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:NATIONALISM IN KENYA: THE DEFEAT OF REGIONALISM
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:MAU- MAU IN KENYA (1952-1956)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:THE ALGERIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:THE ARMED STRUGGLE: THE 1960S AND 1970S
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN MOZAMBIQUE
CHAPTER NINETEEN:THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN ZIMBABWE
CHAPTER TWENTY:THE POLISARIO WAR IN WESTERN SAHARA
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE:THE LIBERATION WAR IN NAMIBIA
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO:AFRIKANER AND AFRICAN NATIONALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE:NATIONALISM IN UGANDA
Introduction
Formation of political parties
Why Nationalism came late in Uganda
Factors for the growth of Nationalism in Uganda
Buganda's secessionist attempts
Reasons for Buganda's failure to secede.
Effects of secession attempts
Consequences of Buganda's Secession Attempts.
The deportation of the kabaka
Causes of the 1953 Kabaka crisis
Effects of the crisis
The Namirembe Agreement.
The final stages to the Independence (1959 – 1962)
The major political events in Uganda (1962 1971)
The 1966 Kabaka crisis and the defeat of Buganda
The 1966 army attackk on the kabaka's palace
Causes of 1966 crisis
Steps taken by Government to solve the 1966 Uganda Crisis
Features of the 1966 Constitution
Background to the 1971 Coup
Amin's 18 reasons for the coup
Amin's honey moon
Why Amin was able to rule for long
The expulsion of Asians
Reasons for Expulsion of Asians
Effects of the Expulsion of Asians
Advantages of the expulsion of Asians
The liberation war in Uganda
Causes of the war
Results of the 1979 liberation war
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR:UGANDA NATIONAL LIBERATION FRONT (UNLF) (1979-1980)
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE:PROBLEMS OF DISUNITY: CIVIL WAR IN SUDAN
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX:THE ERITREAN SECESSION WAR FROM 1961-1993
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX:POLITICAL INSTABILITIES IN THE HORN OF AFRICA.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN:SECESSIONISM IN ZAIRE, 1960-
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT:THE NIGERIAN CIVIL/ SECESSION WAR, 1967-70
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE:THE CIVIL WAR IN CHAD FROM 1965-1982
CHAPTER THIRTY:THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR, 1975-6
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE:MOZAMBICAN CIVIL WAR 1977-1994
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO:THE RWANDA REVOLUTION- 1959-1994
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE:THE ZANZIBAR REVOLUTION OF 1964
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR:MILITARY COUP D'ETATS
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE:THE LIBYAN REVOLUTION- 1969
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX:THE ONE-PARTY SYSTEM
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN:MULTIPARTY SYSTEM
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT:NATIONAL UNITY AND SOCIALISM
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE:AFRICAN CULTURE
CHAPTER FOURTY:REGIONAL AFRICAN ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
CHAPTER FOURTY ONE:POPULATION EXPLOSION IN AFRICA
CHAPTER FOURTY TWO:WARS BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AFRICAN STATES
CHAPTER FOURTY THREE:NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT (NAM)
CHAPTER FOURTY FOUR:MAJOR PROBLEMS OF AFRICA
CHAPTER FOURTY FIVE:THE BEST TECHNIQUES TO PASSING A' LEVEL HISTORY PAPER 1
REFERENCES

The years 1945 and 1949 saw the coming up of uprisings, mass protests and riots which confronted the colonial authorities because of the monopoly of Asian traders in processing and marketing of cash crops; opposed land alienation advocated for democratic representation in the Lukiiko. The riots resulted into burning of chiefs' houses, Asians' shops and government property.

 

They formed parties like Bataka Party in 1946, the Abaganda Abakopi and Uganda African Farmers' Union in 1947 and the Buganda African Motor Drivers' Union (BAMDU) was also formed. The leaders for some of these organizations were James Miti, Spartas Mukasa, Semakula Mulumba, Peter Sonko, among others. All these organizations did not succeed. Bataka party was banned, and all leaders were deported and imprisoned.

 

Already in 1952 Uganda's first modern nationalist party had been created. This was the Uganda National Congress (UNC), whose declared aim was to unite all the peoples of Uganda and to bring independence. The UNC denounced the economic exploitation of the African masses by Asians, but it was essentially an elite not a mass organization.

 

Thirteen of the nineteen members of the Central Committee were Old Budonians, former pupils of King's College, Budo, Uganda's leading secondary school and the training ground for the country's Protestant elite. The leaders of the UNC were I.K. Musaazi, Joseph Kiwanuka and Abu Mayanja, the last named a highly westernized Muslim. The UNC was dominated by Baganda, not by design but because at this time the Baganda were far more westernized in education than the other Uganda communities. Opposed to the UNC was the Democratic Party (DP), founded in 1954. In general the DP catered for the Catholic clement of the westernized elite in Buganda. though it was not a Catholic party as such. The DP tried but failed to become a nationwide party. Its first leader, Mugwanya, was succeeded in 1958 by Benedicto Kiwanuka, a Catholic lawyer who was opposed to the Protestant establishment in Buganda.

 

A major step in Uganda's political progress was the introduction of direct elections in 1958, to a Legislative Council which now had an African majority (15 out of 25). However, the Kabaka and the traditional chiefs in the Lukiko feared the advance of democracy as much as unitarism and a non-Ganda majority in the country as a whole, and they arranged that instead of direct elections in Buganda the Lukiko would nominate Buganda's representatives to the Legislative Council. Ankole, another traditional kingdom, also adopted indirect elections to the Council.

 

Further constitutional progress was made, in spite of the opposition of the traditional Baganda leaders, with the 1959 Wild Committee and Report, which recommended a common roll and abolition of indirect elections, in preparation for independence. The Wild Committee's work had the effect of stimulating both Baganda sub-nationalism and Ugandan nationalism. The first effect was the rise of the Ugandan National Movement (UNM) which organized a boycott against non-African traders in 1959, in an effort to restore to Buganda the leadership of the Ugandan nationalist movement.
The second effect was the emergence in 1959 and I960 of the Ugandan People's Congress (UPC), the strongest splinter group of the UNC and a multi-ethnic party relying on non-Ganda support in the north, east and west of the country. The UPC was led by Apolo Milton Obote, who was descended from a chiefly family in Lango, had been educated at Makerere, and was basically a member of the new middle-class nationalist elite. What held the disparate ethnic elements of the UPC together was the common bond of anti Ganda feeling. Indeed Buganda's brief enjoyment of dominance during the colonial period had played an important part in the integrative process in Uganda.

 

The March 1961 elections to the National Assembly resulted in 44 seats for the Democratic Party and 35 for the UPC. The DP majority was artificial. Kiwanuka's party won 20 out of 21 seats in Buganda only because the Kabaka's government declared it would be disloyal to the Kabaka to register to vote. As many as 97 per cent of the Baganda of voting age observed the boycott. However, the DP had a majority of seats and Kiwanuka became Chief Minister.

 

Kiwanuka's victory at a national level represented an attempt by one group of Baganda to come to terms with the new forces of Uganda-wide nationalism. In this sense Kiwanuka was serving Buganda's real interests. However, in Buganda as a whole there was little understanding of Kiwanuka's purpose or appreciation of his achievement. As F.B. Welbourn has written;

 

Kiwanuka's position was acutely difficult. In England, while the Kabaka was in exile and Kiwanuka a student of Law, they had been good friends. But in Buganda he was not only a Catholic, he was a mukopi, a peasant, a nobody, a phrase used openly at this time by English-speaking Ganda. For any Ganda to claim - as the Chief Minister of Uganda must claim to be in the long run above the Kabaka was treason.10

 

As Welbourn goes on to write, in Buganda the DP was seen as a fundamental threat to the Kabakaship itself, to the living roots of Buganda's future. Its members were nabbe, the red ant which destroys the termites. In contrast the Kabaka was nnamunswa, the queen termite who protects her brood.

 

In reaction to Kiwanuka's victory in the national elections, the Kabaka's government formed the Kabaka Yekka ('King alone') party, whose aim was to prevent the DP destroying Buganda's special position within Uganda. In the February 1962 elections to the Lukiko, the KY won 58 seats and the DP won only two. The KY took the option, which still remained, for Buganda co nominate Buganda's representatives to the National Assembly instead of having them elected directly. In March 1962 Kiwanuka became the first Prime Minister of Uganda under internal self-government. Independence was planned for October but in terms of practical politics the major event in 1962 was the pre-independence elections in April. To the surprise of many observers Obote's apparently more radical UPC concluded an electoral alliance with the seemingly feudalistic KY. The elections produced 44 seats for the UPC, 21 for the KY and 24 for the DP. Thus at independence Uganda was governed by an unlikely UPC-KY coalition, with Obote as Prime Minister and Mutesa as President.

 

Obote's policy at this Stage of his political career was to retain some link with the inevitabilities of history - to keep some ties with the residual pre-eminence of the Baganda on attainment of independence. Uganda as a whole did not have an international image as a great radical country or even as a militantly pan Africanist state, but the nearest thing to a radical symbol in Uganda was the UPC- And here was the party of radicalism associating itself in power with the party of conservatism and traditionalism. It was a concession, on Obote's part, to an ethnocentric heritage.

 

Obote supported the election of Sir Edward Mutesa as President of the country, while Sir Edward retained his position as Kabaka of Buganda, as a shrewd tactical political move. Inevitably, it would complicate the loyalties of Sir Edward to entrust him with responsibilities which would force upon him the broader national cause, as well as the narrower one of his own ethnic kingdom. Ultimately, however, since the UPC-KY pact was one of convenience not conviction, a pact of understanding to share positions in the new Uganda, but which papered over the ultimately irreconcilable differences between a unitarist party and a federalist one, the pact was almost inevitably bound to break sooner or later. The Obote-Mutesa relationship was comparable to that between Lumumba and Kasavubu in the Congo at independence: either the advocate of a strong central government and non-ethnic nationalism would prevail over the federalist/regionalist sub-nationalist, or the latter would prevail over the former. There the comparison ends, for the outcome was different in each country.

National Movements and New States in Africa