Uganda Independence Quotes

After Independence, Uganda -- A European artefact -- was still forming as a country rather than a kingdom in the minds of ordinary Gandas. They were lulled by the fact that Kabaka Muteesa II was made president of the new Uganda. Nonetheless most of them felt that 'Uganda' should remain a kingdom for the Ganda under their kabaka so that things would go back to the way things were before the Europeans came. Uganda was a patchwork of fifty or so tribes. The Ganda did not want it. The union of tribes brought no apparent advantage to them apart from a deluge of immigrants from wherever, coming to Kampala to take their land. Meanwhile, the other fifty or so tribes looked on flabbergasted as the British drew borders and told them that they were now Ugandans. Their histories, cultures and identities were overwritten by the mispronounced name of an insufferably haughty tribe propped above them. But to the Ganda, the reality of Uganda as opposed to Buganda only sank in when, after independence, Obote overran the kabakas lubiri with tanks, exiling Muteesa and banning all kingdoms. The desecration of their kingdom by foreigners paralyzed the Ganda for decades.

In reality, Kabila was no more than a petty tyrant propelled to prominence by accident. Secretive and paranoid, he had no political programme, no strategic vision and no experience of running a government. He refused to engage with established opposition groups or with civic organisations and banned political parties. Lacking a political organisation of his own, he surrounded himself with friends and family members and relied heavily for support and protection on Rwanda and Banyamulenge. Two key ministries were awarded to cousins; the new chief of staff of the army, James Kabarebe, was a Rwandan Tutsi who had grown up in Uganda; the deputy chief of staff and commander of land forces was his 26-year-old son, Joseph; the national police chief was a brother-in-law. Whereas Mobutu had packed his administration with supporters from his home province of Équateur, Kabila handed out key positions in government, the armed forces, security services and public companies to fellow Swahili-speaking Katangese, notably members of the Lubakat group of northern Katanga, his father’s tribe.

Uganda a landlocked country in East Africa; pop. 24,699,073 (est. 2002); languages, English (official), Swahili, and others; capital, Kampala. Ethnically and culturally diverse, Uganda became a British protectorate in 1894 and an independent Commonwealth state in 1962. The country was ruled 1971–9 by the brutal dictator Idi Amin, who came to power after an army coup. His overthrow, with Tanzanian military support, was followed by several years of conflict, partly resolved in 1986 by the formation of a government under President Yoweri Museveni.

PORTUGAL’S MIGRANTS HOPE FOR NEW LIFE IN OLD AFRICAN COLONY I assumed, when I started reading it, that it was about Portuguese Mozambicans who had fled Mozambique for Portugal after independence from colonial rule in 1975 and were now going back. An interesting story but not that remarkable: my parents left Uganda for Europe, missed Uganda terribly and eventually returned. I could understand a Mozambican exile in Portugal wanting to do the same thing. But the story wasn’t about Portuguese Mozambicans going back to their country of origin. It was about young, white middle-class Portuguese citizens born, raised and educated in Portugal—a member of the European Union, no less—who were taking one look at the economic state of their own country and saying, “I tell you what, Mozambique looks like a better bet.” I almost fell off my chair when I realized that. I grew up hearing stories about Mozambique being one of the most desperate countries on Earth. A narrow sliver of a nation stretching 1,800 miles down the East African coast, it had experienced three centuries of oppressive colonial rule followed by years of brutal civil war and Marxist misrule. It was the poster child for a continent in chaos: riddled with land mines, haunted by war, entirely dependent on foreign aid.