buganda history

 On the evening of the 16th March 2010 an intense fire swept through the royal enclosure at Kasubi Hill. As the flames spread across straw thatching and engulfed the immense grass hut structures housing the tombs of four of the Kingdom of Buganda's recent kings and their descendants, news of the loss of the UNESCO world heritage site filtered across the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Carried on radio airwaves and in the reports of mobile Boda-Boda drivers initial information was confused. By the time news reached a fellow researcher and myself around four miles from the scene, rumours had already begun to circulate as to the origins of the fire. There were suggestions of arson and even intimations as to the involvement of the national government of President Yoweri Museveni.1 On the morning of the 1 i h huge crowds of Ganda gathered at the location of the tombs to express their grief and anger over the loss of one of Buganda's key spiritual sites described by Buganda minister, Medard Ssegona Lubega, as the 'second biggest tragedy' in the kingdom's history.2 The importance of ancestors and royal shrines in Ganda culture makes Kasubi a place of ritual and religious significance to the kingdom's population.3 The public spaces of the main building housing the four tombs, the Muzibu-Azaala-Mpanga, also held the regalia of Ganda royal authority, while in common with other shrines royal spirits were traditionally believed to inhabit the rear area or Ekibira (forest) of the structure. The Muzibu-Azaala-Mpanga itself also embodied the interconnected roles of Buganda's clans in the overall collective through their contribution of specific 'reed rings' in the building's construction.4 In short, the tombs are a powerful cultural and spiritual symbol.s Within the context of continuing rumours over government culpability then, the reaction of the Ganda crowd to President Museveni's arrival at Kasubi might have been anticipated. Attempts to prevent the President from entering the compound ended in violence as national security forces opened fire killing at least two people.6 When I arrived at Kasubi on the morning of the 18th the compound was once again full of people.

 The Ganda king, Kabaka Ronald Mutebi Ii, had declared seven days of mourning and the atmosphere was charged. 7 The large structures of deformed metal twisted by the heat of the fire were striking, as was the obvious emotion of many of the individuals present. The memory that has stayed with me most from that morning, however, is of the things that I was given. Moving with the crowd on the road outside the compound I was handed two items; the first, a badge bearing the flag of Buganda, and the second a black and white photograph relayed to me as showing the signing of the 1955 Buganda Agreement which officially reaffirmed the position of the kingdom within the wider Uganda Protectorate following a period of turmoil. While both items are undoubtedly available to tourists throughout the kingdom their presence at that location, at that time, symbolises many of the themes upon which this thesis will touch. The simultaneous appearance of these two images at a site of cultural significance and in a time of trauma evokes a powerful statement on ethnic identity, patriotism, and royalism within the kingdom; key notions to be explored within this work. More than this, however, they reveal significant insights into Buganda's twentieth-century history, eloquently encapsulating the continued importance of historical events in contemporary collective consciousness. The images purport to represent two momentous actions in the twentiethcentury Ganda historical record, two fixed points of renewal in a century long cycle. The flag, with its blue and white stripes carrying two spears, a shield and a lion, the symbol of the Kabaka , is a recent reincarnation of older ensigns designed for the restoration of the kingdom as an official cultural entity in 1993.8 The kingdom was restored alongside other cultural institutions by President Museveni following its abolition twenty six years earlier in 1966 by former President Milton Obote. Mikael Karlstrom has analysed the growth of cultural and royalist nationalism within the kingdom at the end of the twentieth century and it is clear that since 1993 Ganda ethnic patriotism has continued to develop, largely in response to increasing difficulties in relations between the kingdom and the national Ugandan government which will be explored later in the thesis. 9 The image of the flag handed to me outside of Kasubi may therefore be understood as symbolising the continued importance of ethnic identity within Buganda in the present day. Complementing this contemporary statement the second image purports to capture a key moment in Buganda's colonial past. Governor Sir Andrew Cohen and Kabaka Mutesa II lean forward side-by-side over a wooden desk; faces concentrated, they appear to sign the 1955 Buganda Agreement as an audience looks on (See Fig. 1). It is a striking picture which, if authentic, has much to tell about the relationship between Buganda and Britain. Taken only two years after Cohen had personally signed a declaration withdrawing British recognition from the Kabaka over Ganda opposition to a proposed East African Federation, the image of Mutesa, now returned to his position, can be seen to illustrate the durability and agency of Buganda in their dealings with imperialism. Acting once again in his role as king and riding a royalist fervour which would last till independence, Mutesa's signature reconfirms Buganda's privileged position within the wider Protectorate, renewing many of the benefits accrued to the kingdom through their first official agreement with the British Protectorate in 1900. Moreover, the continued circulation of the image reveals the extent to which the history of the colonial era continues to reverberate with Ganda identity in the present day. The flag and the photograph also demand further questioning. If they represent symbols of unity and durability, they also offer the opportunity to interrogate these ideals; to ask questions of the construction of the Ganda people. And that, in a sense, is the purpose of this thesis. The great public outpouring of grief over the fire at Kasubi which seemed to unite the kingdom in mourning and ethnic pride came only a little over seven months after serious riots within Buganda marked the culmination of increasing tensions between indigenous communities. Indeed, two groups, the Nyala and Ruuli, have sought to break out from Ganda cultural control and establish their own ethnic autonomy. In 1955 when Mutesa signed the Buganda Agreement the Nyala and Ruuli populations inhabiting the geographically peripheral northern counties of Bugerere and Buruuli were essentially considered to have ceased to exist; the historical record has shown such beliefs to be false. Indeed, while often spoken of by the colonial government, subsequent historians and even the Ganda themselves as an archetypal centralised and ethnically unified polity, Buganda's twentieth-century ethnic story is a much more complex account than has previously been imagined. Encompassing themes of attempted assimilation, centre-periphery relations and the motivations for ethnic change in a colonial African context, analysis of this multi-layered narrative forms the key component of this dissertation.

 The argument The Kingdom of Buganda lies on the north-western shore of Lake Victoria and its inhabitants form the largest ethnic group within Uganda (See Figs. 2, 3, and 4 for maps of Buganda). Since 1993, the role played by the kingdom within the wider Ugandan state has come under increasing scrutiny. A trial of strength has developed as Buganda's representatives seek greater power through calls for a federal system of government and increased control over Ganda lands, while the national government of Yoweri Museveni has sought to block devolution of political authority and reinforce the official position that Buganda, and other kingdoms, are exclusively cultural institutions. One consequence of this internal conflict has been a resurrection of interest in Buganda's non-heartland counties. The kingdom has accused the National Resistance Movement (NRM) of attempting to weaken its cultural and territorial integrity by fostering secessionist movements in its border territories. The culmination ofthis policy is considered to be embodied by the case of Nakasongola and Kayunga districts in northeastern Buganda where Ruuli (Nakasongola) and Nyala (Kayunga) communities have elected their own leaders and sought to declare autonomy from Buganda's cultural sphere. In September 2009 Nyala groups prevented the Ganda Kabaka from visiting Kayunga; an action which resulted in Ganda counter-riots and conflict with security forces which claimed the lives of twenty-seven individuals. The obvious tension in these two areas, however, has obscured the extent to which fears of similar movements in several other counties have proved without foundation. In the county of Kkooki, for example, the introduction of a Kkooki flag and anthem has found little popular support and has instead provoked a pro-Buganda backlash. The contemporary interest in Buganda's "peripheral counties" has opened an opportunity for a timely reassessment of Ganda history, particularly within the period of colonial rule, but also stretching both before and beyond this timeframe. In particular, the current contrasts in allegiance to a Ganda ethnic and cultural identity demands historical investigation; for while contemporary politics have undoubtedly played a significant role, to understand Buganda's present day concerns it is necessary to address its past ethnic narrative. In doing so it is clear that a significant event in Buganda's history, one which continues to directly affect both Buganda and wider Ugandan society today, has been greatly understudied. Despite the weight of historiographical tradition which has surrounded the kingdom since its first indigenous historians began to write in the early twentieth century, only a partial and 4 limited scholarly gaze has addressed the expansion of the kingdom in the last decade of the nineteenth century as a result of which Buganda nearly doubled in size. During this process a significant number of non-Ganda peoples were incorporated within the kingdom. This rapid extension of Ganda power and the subsequent experience of those communities brought into the kingdom's immediate sphere have been analysed only in relation to its newest northern counties. 

Taken from the neighbouring Kingdom of Bunyoro in joint Ganda-British expeditions in the early 1890's, these territories, known as the "Lost Counties", remained vigorously contested by Bunyoro throughout the colonial period and have consequently been the subject of significant scholarship. In reality, however, only two of these seven counties, Buyaga and Bugangaizi, have received substantial attention, while the eastern counties, most interestingly Buruuli and Bugerere, now forming Nakasongola and Kayunga districts, have remained under-researched. Moreover, areas outside of the "Lost Counties" that were simultaneously brought into the kingdom are largely absent from its twentiethcentury historical record. These other territories, referred to here as the "Acquired Counties" to distinguish them collectively from the "Lost Counties", are made up of Kkooki, Kabula and Mawogola to Buganda's south and west and the Buvuma and Ssese Island archipelagos on Lake Victoria. It is the intention of this thesis to illuminate the histories of these communities. Moreover, it is suggested here that the limited focus on the "Lost Counties" has led to a misrepresentation of ethnic processes of assimilation, adaptation and resistance within colonial Buganda. Studies of the "Lost Counties" have tended to emphasise the roles played by Buganda and the British in attempting to effect a process of enforced assimilation stemming in part from a suppression of Nyoro, Ruuli and Nyala culture and language. Shane Doyle has further contrasted these processes with the laissez-faire Ganda reaction to the incorporation of the large numbers of immigrants who arrived in Buganda in the twentieth century.lO It is argued here that Doyle's analysis must be extended; the differences in style of "Gandisation" were not determined by a divide between 'immigrant and indigene' but by a distinction between "Lost Counties" communities and everybody else. While often considered a highly centralised, ethnic entity with 'sharp borders', Buganda has a long history of incorporation and it has been more effective at successfully assimilating strangers in the twentieth century than the "Lost Counties" example would suggest.ll Drawing upon the analytical gaze of history from beyond the centre, as well as on the literature of ethnicity in Africa, the thesis offers fresh perspectives on Ganda history by illustrating that a defining factor in determining the success and longevity of ethnic change and assimilation was the nature of the centre-periphery relationship affecting non-heartland communities. In essence, processes of "Gandisation" were more effective when they rested not on attempted assimilation or "invention" but on the agency of peripheral communities. The "Lost Counties" were of crucial importance to Buganda's prestige and power in its long running feud with its rival Bunyoro and, consequently, the Ganda state sought to impose on cultural processes. While successful to some degree, this attempted assimilation also provoked significant resistance. In the "Acquired Counties", by contrast, communities remained economically and politically less integral to the Ganda centre. Lacking the gravitas of the northern counties these areas were not subjected to a coherent extension of ethnic hegemony and individuals were therefore able to layer a predominant Ganda identity on top of their own indigenous attachments. Patrick Harries has illustrated how new 'traditions' must build upon past experiences to be effective, and individuals within the "Acquired Counties" were able to utilise the context of their peripheral relationship to the Ganda state to build positive elements of being Ganda onto their own experience. 12 These new Ganda identities, though driven in part by the desire to access the trappings of colonial "modernity", were not simply shallow epithets worn as an ethnic pass to access resources from Buganda's privileged position within the colonial protectorate. The adoption of Ganda customs and language as a badge of their belonging within the Ganda state and their participation within the wider ethnic community illustrates a depth and content to their Ganda ethnic identity. This observation is borne out by the continued Ganda patriotism of such areas in the present day, and, more significantly, in the period between 1966 and 1993 during which time the kingdom had been abolished. The thesis therefore contributes to an understanding of how peripheral peoples managed and debated their identities in the context of a strong central state within the colonial period; furthermore, it suggests revisions to the dominant theories of ethnic change within African history. In particular, Buganda offers an important case study within which to offer a fuller account of the extent of African agency in determining processes of ethnicity in the first half of the twentieth century. While systems of colonial rule impacted heavily on Ganda politics, culture and society, the actual role of European officials remained limited within the Ganda context. The story of "Gandisation" within Buganda's peripheries, while played out in the confines of an imperial prism, is a primarily African narrative. By adopting an analysis of peripheral identities within the Ganda state it is therefore possible to further our understanding of motivations and processes for assimilation within the kingdom, as well as on the nature of the wider relationship between Buganda and British colonial authority.

 Ethnicity in African history Since entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1953 ethnicity has become one of the most studied and contested terms in world scholarship across numerous disciplines; from political science to anthropology, from linguistics to history.13 In African studies, analysis of ethnic identity has produced voluminous works encouraged in part by a propensity to view ethnic conflict as a peculiarly African endeavour at least until the eruption of European violence in the Balkans in the 1990's. Studies of ethnicity across the continent began in earnest from the 1960's as it became clear that what had been understood as "tribal" identities would not simply fade away in the face of modernisation and African nationalism. Imperial powers, African nationalists and American scholars in the 1950's had believed that the "progress" embodied in the political and cultural changes of colonialism, and the introduction of a market economy would force Africans from parochial "tribal" affiliations into wider associations based on the moral code of national identity.14 Ethnicity however, as Vail has so aptly noted, 'failed to cooperate with its many would-be pall-bearers,.15 Indeed, its importance only appeared to increase in a post-independence context in which the negative aspects of ethnic identity were highlighted by a retreat across much of the continent into what appeared to be "Political Tribalism", systems of patronage linked to corruption and state decline, and the perceived ethnic violence of genocide in Rwanda and electoral conflict in Kenya. Recent studies have highlighted that ethnicity must be understood as embodying positive as well as negative facets, and that ethnicity as a dividing factor has rarely offered the "mortal threat" to national governments that might have been feared; nevertheless, and with these addendums accepted, ethnicity remains a key node of analysis for many studies of the continent.

16 Despite its continued importance to understandings of social, cultural and political interaction, however, ethnicity remains enigmatic as a concept; resistant to universal definition. In consequence, numerous explanatory theories have evolved to characterise the position of ethnicity within societies. The literature which surrounds these different positions in relation to Africa is well summarised by both Carola Lentz and Thomas Spear and this review will follow a similar structure to that adopted within these pieces. It is, however, essential for the reader of the thesis to begin with an understanding of ethnicity theory and so the arguments of Lentz, Spear and others are reviewed and tailored here for our particular context. 17 At the theoretical level three key schools of thought have often been identified in the study of ethnic identity. Although the method and context of their application has varied, and at times overlapped, primordialism, instrumentalism and constructivism have been historically considered as opposing analytic structures in the ethnic spectrum. Primordialism, deriving from the work of anthropologists Edward Shils and Clifford Geertz, sought to explain the continued power of ethnicity in newly post-colonial states through reference to 'primordial attachments' often expressed as a perceived common history, and ties of 'religion, blood, race, language, custom and region,.18 Primordia lists, then, have viewed ethnicity as a group identity drawing power from social bonds understood as being 'deeply rooted in the past,.19In Africa, application of the primordial theory suggested that the rapid socio-economic and political changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century's encouraged Africans to seek 'psychological security' by reasserting a cultural history and collective destiny.2o The unreality and incomprehensibility of the modern 'nation' state was mitigated through appeals to tradition, custom and ethnic identity. Similarly, seeking to understand the resurgence of ethnic identities in new socioeconomic contexts, instrumentalists underlined the malleability of ethnicity arguing that far from being a 'supra-historical process' ethnic identity was a social construct relying more on "we/they" boundary calculations than perceived immutable ethnic content.21 This conception of the flexibility of ethnicity drew on the ideas of Barth who illustrated in the late 1960's that cultural signifiers and even language might vary within an ethnic community; what was essential was not the cultural content inside the ethnic boundary, but the boundary itself. While the boundary signifiers might change over time the processes of self-ascription and ascription by others continued the ethnic distinction so that, 'to the extent that actors use ethnic identities to categorise themselves and others for the purposes of interaction, they form ethnic groups in this organisational sense.'22 By underlining that ethnicity need not draw on a discourse of fixed historical ties, instrumentalists were able to suggest that ethnicity was an identity which might be strategically manipulated in pursuit of individual or communal goals.B'n Africa, instrumentalists analysed the ways in which ethnic identity was mobilised, particularly by migrant workers to counter insecurity and competition in new urban settings, and by cultural elites as a political tool in pursuit of status.24 Ethnicity, then, may be understood in terms of 'rational choice' theory which assumed that individuals desired material wealth and power which might be attained through joining an ethnic community.25 Alternatively it might take the form of the appropriation and manipulation of symbols by cultural leaders to evoke an ethnic consciousness aimed at building a critical mass to ensure access to state resources or to build political constituencies. 26 Despite their tenacity as analytic tools in continued discourse over ethnic construction, both primordialism and instrumentalism have been acknowledged as containing serious flaws when used in isolation. Instrumentalist arguments are often criticised for over-emphasising the utility of ethnicity and stressing material interests as the primary motivating factor for ethnic cohesion.

 Critiques of instrumentalism further highlight that it fails to account for participants' sense of the permanence of their identities and underplays the affective power of ethnicity which renders it such 'an effective means for political mobilization,.27 While primordialism has sought to explain the emotional appeal of ethnicity it simultaneously fixes ethnic identity as a naturalistic and essentialist concept and denies the flexibility of identity which suggests that people choose to highlight different attachments depending on social context.28 Moreover, in an African setting, although instrumentalism highlighted the flexibility of ethnicity in urban settings, Lentz has illustrated that neither theory significantly challenged the existence of rural ethnic groups, or "tribes" as a fundamental aspect of African social order. This task fell predominantly to the discipline of history and historically-minded anthropologists, and the work of a number of scholars whose varying contributions have been broadly labelled as constructivist. 29 Questioning the rigidity of rural and urban ethnicities alike, constructivist thought focused on the extent to which modern expressions of ethnicity, "tribalism", and tradition were "invented" by colonial authorities, missionaries, anthropologists and African intellectuals under colonial rule. Constructivism found its proto-expression in Aidan Southall's seminal article, 'The Illusion of Tribe' (1970) in which he noted that the colonial period had witnessed the rise of new ethnic identities or 'supertribes,.3o The ideas found greater expression in the works of John lIiffe and John Lonsdale on British colonial Africa who argued that the reified ethnic units of colonial Africa were not direct descendants of discrete "tribal" entities as a primary section of anthropological and colonial theory had assumed; in fact, the defined ethnic communities of the twentieth century were often the product of colonial "invention" . Precolonial Africa did not consist of a patchwork of culturally, politically and geographically defined "tribal" polities but of fluid, dynamic societies in which individuals participated in numerous and often overlapping social networks.31 The introduction of European rule heralded the formation of new identities through Christianity, urbanisation and political association, but it simultaneously hardened ethnic communities into often larger more distinct entities through the ideology of indirect rule and colonial beliefs concerning the structure of "traditional" "tribal" Iife.32 Where the authorities found stateless or more disparate societies, or where local authority did not correspond to a central chiefly ideal, the colonists encouraged the formation of hierarchical "tribal" units and conducted their administration of the colonies accordingly as ethnic conglomerates. 33 Variations of indirect rule were introduced across Anglophone Africa from the 1920's and the famous circular of the Civil Secretary, Harold MacMichael, in Sudan in 1930 might have applied to any number of British colonies.