Colonial Rule; Structural and Institutional Changes in Buganda 1884-1900 ()
1. Introduction
This particular paper has attempted to expound on the process of the interface between the traditional and the colonial authorities in their process of interaction, which was the beginning of the progression of the implementation of a colonial transformation of structural and institutional changes in colonial Buganda. This paper puts into perspective the British’s consolidation of colonial rule in Buganda. This process involved the construction of a powerful landed oligarchy, which was used to dominate the peasants (Bakopi) the ordinary people, or local people, by constructing a new land tenure system and production relations. This necessitated the creation of a colonial state that incorporated traditional structures and institutions.
In order to establish firm control over Buganda the British introduced a new economic system, production relations and land tenure system with the help of collaborating chiefs. This process of establishing responsible administration in Buganda involved the signing of the Buganda agreement, which acted as an administrative framework. This framework built the working relationship between the British officials and the Baganda chiefs. However, it begins with the realignment of power relations in the ensuing religious wars that broke out in the Buganda Kingdom.
2. The Missionary Initiative and the Occupation of Buganda by the British
This paper portrays the view that missionary influence was the greatest tool used by the British government to gain a foothold in Buganda. This process was started by the effect of an alleged letter sent to England to invite Christian missionaries to Buganda. The subsequent activities that followed led to the missionary’s influence in Buganda. Religion was used as a pretext to set the ground for what would become a British sphere of influence in the East African region. It might appear peculiar to make such general statements. The explanation made here is that in Uganda unlike in any of her mainland neighbours, missionaries were the most effective agents of colonialism—more effective than even the agents of the British government themselves. This is not to suggest that in Kenya or mainland Tanzania, missionaries were not an important arm of colonialisation. But in Uganda, to a much greater extent than in her two neighbours, the missionaries were the most important arm of colonisation: as shown in the subsequent explanation.
On the 30th June 1877 the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) Missionaries, Lt. Shergold Smith and Rev.C.T.Wilson, arrived in Buganda to be followed, at the beginning of 1879, by the Roman Catholic White fathers, Father Lourdel and Brother Amans [1].
The stage was now set for missionary influence in the Buganda Kingdom. Despite royal disfavour, Muteesa’s inclination to Islam and a rather troubled and insecure situation in Buganda, religious instruction was commenced by the CMS and the white Fathers’ missionaries in 1879. This is because both dominations were allowed to teach. Public debates and quarrels at the royal court between Roman Catholics and Anglican missionaries over doctrinal differences were closely followed by Baganda pages and dignitaries. As a consequence, both Christian missions managed to gain groups of followers [2] despite having converts of the two Christian denominations bedevilled by bitter hostility and rivalry an observation that thwarted Muteesa’s enthusiasm towards the missionaries [3].
Missionary activity in Buganda is portrayed by this study as the dawn of a new era in Buganda. Christianity created a new class of Readers (Abasomi) who took political authority and became the new class of leaders in the Kingdom. The missionaries came during the reign of Mutesa who had invited them as per a letter published in the Daily Telegraph in November 1875 [4]. As odd as it may appear, the turn of events that impacted Buganda began with the feuds between the two missionary groups, the CMS and the White Fathers. These groups were supposed to be a source of enlightenment in Buganda but turned out to be a source of confusion. These Christian leaders were exceedingly intolerant of the views not conforming to their own. Their doctrinal debates discredited them in the eyes of Mutesa coupled with their inability to provide firearms or any kind of military advantage to Buganda over the threat from the north of Egyptian imperialism.
Mwanga’s taking over a Kingdom in which the seeds of disorder and disunity had been sown by the Christian missionaries may not have been done deliberately. The CMS were not only Protestants but also Britons by nationality, and the Catholic White Fathers were French. Thus, these, along with these new doctrines, were imported into Uganda. This fact contributed substantially to the rapid transformation of religious faiths into political parties or factions. The upshot of all this was that Mwanga found himself beset with numerous problems which he was not properly equipped to deal with because of his inexperience and temperament.
After the massacre, the missionaries were determined to have a political base within Buganda to ensure the future success of their endeavours. In other words, they sought to install their own converts in positions of authority, men who would not only be sympathetic to the missionaries but would be able to promote Christian ideas. Therefore, the stage was set for revolution that was to change the institutions of Buganda which had been carefully fashioned over the past four or so centuries. The missionaries already had a strong following among the elite class of readers (Ambasomi).
The Baganda Converts had grown impatient with the “old ways of doing things” (traditional modalities) and one of such old ways was the unquestionable power of the King (Kabaka) which these “new men” (converted Christians) were ever questioning. The pages started giving respect to the preachers; they started questioning the Kabaka, denouncing authoritarian rule and preaching what they regarded as democracy. This marked the decline in the traditional system of governance [5]. In 1887 many pages joined the Batongole, depending on their faith, Christian or Muslim; this phenomenon increased the power of the chieftainships and their leaders. This was what started the religious wars in Buganda: a joint force of converts, both Muslims and Christians, fearing that Mwanga might kill them, decided to depose him in 1888 [6]. The readers (Abasomi) had, by 1888, fashioned private armies. The young chiefs came to regard themselves as the arbiters of Buganda. They did not see why they should obey a Kabaka who was not even a reader like themselves. As a result, the older chiefs lost influence at the court for some time because they were not readers.
Therefore, the arrival of Christian missionaries created a new class in Buganda of the Readers, which rapidly became the most powerful interest group in the Kingdom. This interest group went as far as ousting the King of Buganda, which was something that no one could have dared contemplate, let alone attempt only a few years before 1888. It should be recalled that King Mawanda had carried out a similar revolution that changed the power structure in Buganda before the 19th century. Essentially, the base of King Mwanga’s authority had been effectively subverted by the new religio-political groups. The new religions had undermined that cohesion. The king, who was the symbolic as well as the active embodiment of it, lost his pre-eminence in the state structure. The outcomes of the 1880s and 1890 can be called a revolution. Thus, the chiefs had become the masters of Buganda and that the Kabaka would only rule at their pleasure.
The implication here is that with the help of foreigners (missionaries), a new political interest group (Readers) had been formed which usurped the authority of the monarchy; in this way creating a class of lords would be rulers that could be likened to feudal lords in a forthcoming period. It is these military lords that installed the infant son of the deposed king (Mwanga), the infant Daudi Chwa, and parcelled out territory according to religious denominations. The missionaries initially had converted the chiefs and the pages at the court of Mutesa. The young pages at the court who were converted were in essence being groomed for public office in the future. In this respect, Buganda’s hierarchical and authoritarian system had secured a powerful and sympathetic base right in the court itself, thanks to the work of missionaries in Buganda [7].
The institution of administrative chieftainship had undergone a radical change, a period compared to the time when King Mawanda took power in Buganda. This was a major shift in the locus of power in the Kingdom—thus the beginning of an oligarchical revolution. The oligarchy assumed even greater powers of allocating offices to the previously contending parties, a duty that had been solely the role of King/Kabaka. The oligarchy, the class of the Readers, rapidly became the most powerful interest group in the Kingdom, hijacking the authority of the Kabaka/King [8]. In conclusion, it is this newfound relationship between the Abakungu chiefs and the missionaries that sealed the fate of the Buganda state. The missionaries led the Abakungu chiefs into signing the Buganda agreement of 1900, after the violent events of the 1890s.
3. The Christian Missionary Society (CMS) and the Institution of British Rule in Buganda Kingdom
The alliance between the Christian Bakungu chiefs and the European missionaries was the reason why the colonial authorities in Britain were convinced to retain Buganda as their colony. First was the receipt of letters from Baganda Christians urging the missionaries to use their influence to prevent the withdrawal of the IBEA Company from Uganda. Secondly, it was the conviction of the European missionaries that Britain had incurred moral obligation in Uganda; besides, the Christian missionary society leaders in England were aware of the peculiarly invidious position in which their own missionaries stood in Uganda. The CMS missionaries, on their part, were and had been the staunch supporters of the IBEA company and of British intervention during the uncertain years from 1889 to 1892, and they were, therefore, inseparably linked in the eyes of the Baganda, and of Mwanga in particular. They were the ones who had fought for his survival/retention on the throne.
The CMS delegation for the retention of Buganda on 23 September 1892, visited Lord Rosebery the foreign Secretary to state their case in the strongest terms possible. The matter was given due consideration in that the IBEA company’s stay was prolonged awaiting further decision. In October 1993 letters began to appear in the English press urging the retention of Uganda. In the same month, the CMS committee published a minute entitled “The crisis in Uganda”, in which they declared their special responsibility to prevent the gravest crisis in the history of Uganda from communicating to the British public the grave wrong which would have been inflicted upon the people of Uganda if the British would have withdrawn their protection from the people of Uganda and of the missionaries. Therefore, the British determination to withdraw from Uganda would invoke the blood of the Baganda Martyrs who had died for their faith in the early years of Mwanga’s reign. The missionaries were predicting a massacre of the Buganda Christians in the event of British protection being withdrawn.
Buganda purportedly was retained as a British protectorate thanks to the efforts of Bishop Tucker and his missionary colleagues, who put pressure on the British government to take over Uganda’s administration. McDernott (IBEAC secretary) sought the help of the church missionary society to raise 15,000 pounds, and the rest, that is to say 25,000 pounds, would come from Mackinon and his business colleagues [9]. Bishop Alfred Robert Tucker (1849-1914) was the Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa from 1897 and then bishop of Uganda until 1908. Bishop Tucker, in his efforts, mobilised church missionary society friends to raise the money to enable the IBEAC to continue to administer Uganda. Friends, gathered in Exter Hall. Reached deep in their pockets after the Bishop exaggerated the dangers protestant missionaries and their converts faced in Buganda if the company withdrew. As a result, the British evacuation from Uganda was postponed to 31 December 1892. The agreement between IBEAC and Mwanga consequently obliged Britain to provide protection even to the missionaries (CMS) who were working. It was then, on the 1st of April 1893, that Gerald Portal entrusted him the responsibility of his mother country by pulling down the company flag and hoisting the Union Jack.
It can be argued that the establishment of colonial rule in Buganda, what eventually would become Uganda, largely depended on the partnership between the Christian missionaries and the readers, even though there were also other factors outside Buganda. For instance, Uganda was the source of the River Nile. Britain’s imperial strategic designs on the East African region played an important part in swaying British interest in acquiring Buganda. Before taking over Uganda, Britain had occupied Egypt which largely depended on the waters of the Nile River. The necessity to control the source of the Nile, therefore, made it a reality to control Uganda. Moreover, this was the period when other European powers were showing increasing interest in Africa. For instance, in 1889, during the reign of Kabaka Mwanga, Carl Peters, a German trader and outspoken colonialist who had been operating in neighbouring Tanganyika, visited Kabaka Mwanga with whom he signed a treaty of friendship between the Kingdom of Buganda and Germany. This greatly alarmed the British. Thus, in 1890, Great Britain negotiated a treaty with Germany that gave the British rights to what was to become Uganda.
It was against this background that the British administration over Buganda was established in 1892, and put under the control of the imperial British East African Company (IBEAC). The arrival of Captain Fredrick D. Lugard in the same period saw the consolidation of British rule over Buganda and the surrounding areas. In the same year a special commissioner, Sir Gerald Portal, was appointed. In April 1893 the British flag replaced the company one, as noted earlier. This was followed by the signing of the agreement between Sir Gerald Portal and Kabaka Mwanga, on 18th June 1894, declaring Buganda a British Protectorate.
4. Buganda Agreement and the Creation of the Government of Chiefs (Colonial Chieftainship)
The Agreement was called the 1900 Uganda or the Buganda Agreement. This Agreement has been variously described as “Buganda’s Charter of Rights”; “Buganda’s constitution”. It was a landmark in Britain’s relationship with Buganda [10]. Allegedly this was a political instrument which was employed to exert control over Buganda. The Kabaka had surrendered certain of his sovereign rights in return for the protection of the British crown even though, on the other hand he remained an autonomous ruler, as will be explained in the subsequent paragraphs [11]. The 1900 agreement between Baganda chiefs and the British colonial officials was indeed believed to be the reform of feudal institutions of the Buganda Kingdom in respect of empowering the already client chiefs in the context of restructuring the social relations between the client chiefs and the ordinary Muganda, “Bakopi”, making the chiefs colonial civil servants [12]. The Buganda Agreement is viewed as having reconstituted the power relations in the Kingdom of Buganda; for example, the King (Kabaka) of Buganda had some of his powers reduced. According to Karugire’s analysis of the clauses of the Buganda Agreement, they begin with those provisions, which defined Buganda’s subordination to the British administration [13]. The King/Kabaka had been recognised as the supreme ruler of the Kingdom. For purposes of administration, the Kingdom was divided into twenty counties, with each county (Saza) headed by a chief who would be selected by the Kabaka’s government. However, such appointments had to have the approval of the representative of Her Majesty’s Government. It should also be noted that Kabaka’s government was only recognised on condition of his loyalty to the protectorate administration, which had even laid down procedures for the selection of future Kabaka/Kings of Buganda. All Buganda’s courts of jurisdiction with civil and criminal matters were made subordinate to the protectorate courts. The Kabaka also lost his traditional power of arming and maintaining an army [14].
Therefore, this section of the paper will deal with the process of restructuring and institutionalisation of the Buganda state institutions. This process involved the re-inventing of the administration structure of the Buganda Kingdom. The concerns of the agreement entailed what would be called the process of transformation of the administrative structure and instituting new roles of the governing class, defining Buganda’s relationship with regard to the larger country, Uganda, and in general economic matters such as the management of land, finances. The structuralisation and institutionalisation of the Buganda Kingdom by the British colonial authority is seen in those provisions of the Buganda Agreement of 1900 [15].
The 1900 Agreement remodelled the Kiganda system of traditional chieftaincy; out of such an arrangement emerged one neat three-tiered structure that replaced the rather elaborate overlapping hierarchies that characterised the traditional Kiganda Administration of chieftaincies. The result was that under the British hybrid system of indirect rule, the Buganda chiefs now administered bounded counties (Amsaza), Sub-counties (Ama gombola) and Parishes (Amiruka). Even though the use of traditional Luganda terms which evolved from both structural and administrative Buganda units and office holders remained in use [16].
In the new dispensation, the chiefs’ roles changed; they were put in new positions and performed roles different from their forefathers in the name of securing efficiency coupled with the introduction of new services that were provided by the colonial authority. Their new errands included the performance of unpopular duties like collecting taxes and the accompanying enforcement that meant punishment to the defaulters, the recruiting of the labour force for the colonial regime, and supervision and enforcement of cash crop production. This certainly undermined the chief’s authority. He was no longer “the man of the king”, Musajja Wakabaka, he served a different master and had become a paid worker for the colonial authority. Certainly, patron-client status was lost. Initially, he had mobilised men for war and men and women worked around his compound. The more men under him the greater his position of chieftainship was assured. The chief lost his clients whose daily routine was around his compound. By making land a commodity the chief’s client turned into tenants paying rent [17]. Therefore, the Buganda agreement restructured political and social relations in the new colonial Buganda, to the extent that the chiefs acquired both executive and judicial authority to sit in the local council, Lukiiko.
Mikael Kallström gives a summary of the nature of the impact of the 1900 agreement that it was responsible in shaping out of the political clientage; that it was radically reconfigured and monetised by the abrupt transition to private property in land and purportedly the destruction of the pre-colonial “Kusenga” relationship, whereby the commoner was committed to a range of obligations and services in exchange for use-rights to a plot of land. The chief became a freehold landowner and voluntary work and tribute of their followers were replaced by rents, monetary taxes, and forced labour; reciprocities were rapidly undermined [18].
Mostly the process of colonial transformation or re-engineering of the African institution to suit colonial economic interests may be termed as the process of formalisation of colonial control over African territories [19]. It is this process that saw the first encroachment on the nature and authority of African institutions. Actually, this was the re-structuralisation and re-institutionalisation of the Buganda state apparatus. Land tenure relations were the basis of such processes of transformation of African institutions such as chieftaincies. These were already powerful local units answerable to the king, who was the overall manager of land. The chiefs held just usufruct rights over land. It is this group of notables to whom colonial authority gave individual land rights. In the case of Buganda, traditional land ownership by the chiefs was strengthened and private land rights were handed over to them when they became the officials of government and members of the Buganda Lukiiko by the clauses of the 1900 Buganda Agreement. They abandoned their role as stewards of official estates. This enhanced chief authority over land, in that chiefly authority became the foundation of what came to be termed as native rule. A mixture of traditional Kiganda type of government and European indirect rule, the result was a kind of hybrid system of local government. In the words of Mamdani, colonial rule brought with it European concepts of Land Ownership as colonialists made land synonymous with authority by investing all lands into the native political institutions the chiefs, through creating colonial chieftaincies and making traditional chiefs civil servants of the state. This creation of colonial chieftaincies was the maintenance of the colonial state that required a cadre of cheap, efficient African subordinates, as mentioned previously, to maintain order, mobilise labour, enforce production of cash crops, and collect taxes. These groups of chiefs were created, as mentioned before, as a system of salaried, transferable pensionable subordinates, in the process trimming some of the powers of the King in Buganda, and feudalising the Buganda state, by creating a landed aristocracy. The above reforms enabled the colonial authority to use chiefs as a means of gaining access to the exploitation of economic resources, for example, engaging them in the supervision of cash crop production. The reformed political system was now based on a new land tenure system involving the colonial administrators and the chiefs in a symbiotic economic relationship, each for their own mutual economic benefit. In addition, the right of usufruct, a practice that was long there before the coming of colonial administration, was revoked in favour of a Western type of system Mailo [20].
5. The Invention of Colonial Institutions and Culture in
Buganda Kingdom 1900
It should be noted that the discourse made above was indeed intended to show the process that began the creation of the colonial state in Buganda. The creation of the government by chiefs (chieftaincies); therefore, chieftaincies were a major pillar of the colonial state. Chiefs were recognised as stewards of native institutions. That is why it was perceived that the governance of African entities at the lower levels should wholesomely be left to the natives. Chieftainships in essence were autonomous institutions in terms of regulating customary laws this is not to say independent.
The idea of putting chieftaincies in place was all the function of “indirect rule”, that indirect rule was premised on the minimal cost of administration that necessitated the use of native chiefs and not foreigners as was the case with French direct rule assimilation. It seemed the major aim was to empower and strengthen the role played by customary authorities in local governments in terms of land administration. The Buganda Agreement, in this case, served as a way whereby customary rights were significantly refashioned and reinforced to link between land ownership and chiefly authority. In fact, the colonial authority or colonialism, as referred to initially, re-constituted social relations in the Buganda Kingdom. The outcome of the aforementioned process was a singularly oppressive and extractive “decentralised despotism” in the words of Mamdani. As already noted, decentralised despotism was a fusion of customary tenure and customary authority centred on the chief as a way of establishing and maintaining domination with minimal coercive capacity; thus, the colonial feudalisation of the Buganda state.
In Buganda, unlike in the other provinces of Uganda, the civil service norm had been more clearly established. While in the past a Ganda chief obtained a place in the traditional political hierarchy by paying homage and defence, and the exchange of services and privileges as a client of a more highly placed person, at the turn of the century, and largely as a result of the Uganda Agreement, the system changed to bureaucratic form of patrimonial chieftaincy. From a client of the king, the chief was transformed into a civil servant—a bureaucrat of the king. “Invention of tradition, the making of customary law and the creation of tribalism”, traditional African institutions, are perceived as inventions of colonial authorities and missionaries colluding with African elders to establish colonial hegemony.
Colonial chiefs were inventions in two senses: first, the men colonial authorities appointed often lacked traditional legitimacy, and second, the positions to which they were appointed were either created by the colonial administration or had been so corrupted by its demands to collect taxes, raise labour and regulate agriculture that they no longer represented legitimate patterns of authority. In making what was perceived as customary law, colonial authorities, missionaries and African elders cobbled together local customs, colonial law, Christian morality and administrative regulations; codified them; gave them penal and corporal sanctions; and made them enforced by authoritarian chiefs, contrary to negotiated pre-colonial practices [21].
The invention of the colonial tradition is based on ideas from Hobsbawn invention of tradition and Mamdani’s work based on citizens and subjects from the 1870s and 1890s. This is to say that the modification of British rule in Buganda was based on the invention of colonial traditions to fit the African traditions in Buganda into the new traditions invented by the British. This will be the definition of structuralisation and modification of institutions in Buganda society. Europeans saw themselves as natural and undisputed masters of Africans. Therefore, the Europeans invented traditions to justify their governance of African societies. In this case, British administrators set about inventing African traditions for Africans. Because of their own respect for tradition, this disposed them to look with favour upon what they took to be tradition in Africa. The British set about to codify and promulgate these traditions, thereby transforming flexible custom into hard prescription, whether invented traditions from Europe or from Africa itself provided the Africans with models of modern behaviour.
Africans were made to become peasants, and their agricultural surplus was expropriated through unequal terms of trade, tax or rent. The explanation in this case is that the government of chiefs created was put in charge of collecting tax and rent from what had become free peasants; thus, a result of an imported culture of lords and peasants. European-invented tradition of governance in colonial Africa helped to produce soldiers and administrators and settlers dedicated to the Feudal-Patriarchal ethic rather than to the “capitalistic-transformative one” as were in the case of the Buganda state. Now, the oligarchical class of chiefs’ created or invented tradition was made in order to derive authority and confidence that allowed these chiefs to act as agents of change. In essence, this was the invention of traditions that they believed led to the transformation and later modernisation of Africa.
This is the way some Africans were made to become members of the governing class of colonial Africa. This way that Europeans invented had to offer terms that redefined the relationship between the leaders and the led as the terms of the Buganda Agreement did. But more importantly was the re-structuralisation of society, to create gentility, the roles of both masters and servants—the creations of a clearly hierarchical society, as was the case of the Buganda state which was clearly reconstituted.
The native institutions were slowly but surely giving way to an alien institutional mould: the establishment of market institutions, the appropriation of land, the destruction of communal autonomy and defeat and dispersal of tribal populations. In this case, the Buganda Agreement was such an institutional framework that was based on moulding a new Buganda state while at the same time destroying traditional norms of governance and replacing them with modern ones. Proletiarisation of the peasant, cash crop producer, and commoditisation of crops, in other words, end the production consumption purpose and then switch to production for commercial purposes. In other words, indirect rule came to be the mode of domination over a ‘‘free peasantry’’ where land remained a communal “customary” possession and the market was restricted to the products of labour, only marginally incorporating land or labour itself. The peasant community was reproduced within the context of institutional autonomy. The tribal leadership was either selectively reconstituted as the hierarchy of the local state. Here the result was political inequality. Indeed inequality was the result of this new construction of the status quo. The 1900 agreement put in place a class society, that of the landed and landless, a culture that was believed to have been constructed by the colonial culture of capitalism but in this case was the reaffirming of a feudal system of governance and the economic system.
According to the ordinary people interviewed the resultant effects of the 1900 agreement had an irreversible effect on the Buganda society. As one Mr Serwaniko, a local leader, put it that the 1900 agreement instituted an era of land grabbers of clan lands; created a group of selfish state officials who did not take mind of the needs of the community as it had been in the past; because of the exploitation of the peasants they had engaged in. He even interprets or gives a new meaning to a tax levied on peasant tenant’s “envujjo,” which to him in the local language/his interpretation meant constant extortion of wealth or dues from the land occupants “a means of selfishly enriching oneself”. That for him meant a process of literally pampering one’s self indulging in pleasurities. He adds that the title Ssaabataka to him meant the leader of a club fellow land owners, a meaning that differs from the pre-colonial understanding of the supreme or over role clan leader [22].
This view is echoed by many of the local people who became victims of the land restructuring process of the 1900 agreement. Needless to emphasise is the dividing between the rich and the poor, the creation of a class society in Buganda based on the economic means of an individual.
According to one Musenerno, loosely interpreted as Kabaka’s Butler Chief Brewer, he was at pains to talk about the effects of the massive acquisition of land properties by the Bakungu ruling classes the Baamibakaka [23]. These were able to send the children to study abroad yet the ordinary people could not even afford local missionary schools even those that went to Budo prestigious school for sons of chiefs were those whose forefathers had served them in the government of Buganda the Bakungu. This tells the story of how colonial land tenure destroyed the clientele relations between the clan chief and his people. It was also as a result of the Buganda Agreement that the economic wheel began to turn the chiefs, who became government civil servants, literally forcing the peasants to grow cotton and later coffee, which became the backbone of the colonial economy. On the other hand, cotton and coffee also changed the social status of some of the peasants who were now graduating to kulaks through engaging in commercial production of cotton and coffee in their sambas. This new class of individuals began to buy land now in acres rather than miles from the beneficiaries of the 1900 agreement; they began to send their children to schools hitherto established for sons and daughters of chiefs; they even began to build modern habitations and to abandon traditional habitation. By 1960, 56,000 land titles (Mailo) had been registered and issued, most of them to rich peasants [24].
6. Buganda’s Perpetuation of Traditionalism and the 1900
Buganda Agreement; the Modification of Traditional Institutions
Traditionalism in this context will refer to the efforts by the rulers or Buganda institutions to maintain the norms, values of the Kabakaship/Kabaka institution or monarchy in Buganda. The ruling class, as they may be referred to, preferred to display that the Kabakaship institution was still in control of the Buganda state. This was the impression that the ordinary people got, based on the application of the British indirect rule, where the traditional leaders were left to rule over their people. From the views of Hobsbawm, the invention of tradition and Mamdani’s creation of decentralised despotism as amplified in the preceding discussion, in this light it portrayed that the colonial administration and Buganda ruling oligarchy were one. Based on the discourses of the retired traditional chiefs, they believed that Buganda was an autonomous entity from the British administration, that the Kabaka still ruled his country as he had done in the pre-colonial times. First and foremost, the institution of county and sub-county chiefs remained in place but was modified to take on chiefs who were now schooled in the same knowhow of the English and their language. It was from this group that most of the representatives of the Buganda legislature/Lukiiko came from. Therefore, in the construction of an agrarian economy they became the foot soldiers in collecting taxes and maintained labour routines as if they had a cliental that paid allegiance to them as it had been in the pre-colonial times, despite the fact that they had now become independent civil servants of the colonial administration.
The interview of one former Buganda government official about his views on the Buganda Agreement was held in September 2019 in Ssese County.
The Buganda agreement in essence divided the Buganda society between the landed/abaami and those who did not own land; the Abasenze in other interpretations could mean tenants or squatters, the ordinary people. The ordinary people were supposed to pay homage to the King/Kabaka through paying land rent to the county chiefs. The traditional view is that the Buganda agreement divided land into the crown land 9000 square miles and 8000 square miles of which were given to the kabaka and Buganda notables. This was the beginning of inequality in Buganda society. The very rich landed class and the landless Basenzense/squatters. However, more importantly, this began the process of streamlining of property ownership/land ownership in Buganda society. Letters of ownership were written out to land owners, in other words partial title certificates were given to land holders, the notables of Buganda. In fact, Mr Sseruwu complained why the people Abasenze on Kakaba’s miles did not want to pay rent these days, for he believed that land was still in the control of the Kabaka. Because for him since time immemorial this was the process of becoming a sitting teneant on any land in Buganda Kingdom [24].
Generally, the 1900 agreement streamlined the roles and duties of the various county chiefs just as they had been in pre-colonial but more especially defined the roles of the particular chiefs like the Kaggo of Kyadondo, Mukwenda of Singo, Sekibobo of Kyagwe, Kagawo, Mugema, Kaima of Mawokota, Kitunzi of Gomba district and Pokino of Budu and Katambala of Butambala District. These were incorporated into administration and became government officials and they played a more functional role. However, this line of information is explicitly well explained by Mr Nsimbi who tries to show that the 1900 agreement also changed the roles of some traditional chiefs and joined departments roles to county chiefs; that the 1900 agreement was instrumental in streaming the roles of these chiefs but also assigning them new roles and new titles, and at this point Nsimbe shows that clan chiefs were also given administrative roles. To illustrate this, the Kaggo, the county chief of Kyadondo district, was joined to the office of the Ssaabaddu in the olden times, which simply meant the department which was in charge of all King’s men for it was perceived all the Kings’ men were his slaves, so these offices were joined in the new dispensation. While the Mukwenda, the county chief of Singo, was also joined to the Ssaabagabo department/offices by the 1900 agreement traditionally Ssaabagabo was formally the department or chief who was in charge of holding/keeping the King’s shield, while Ssekiboobo which was the office of the county chief of Kyaggwe was joined to the department of the Ssaabawaali, the chief who was in charge of all Bachelors in Kingdom. While Kyiima who was the county chief of the district/county of Mawokota also held the title Musaale, or the two offices were joined, which in the old dispensation was the department concerned with the King’s arrows or marksmen [25]. Nsimbe further explains the fact that the 1900 agreement was instrumental in the creation of new office structures of government, not that these were not there, but fitted them in a new formal setting of modern state. Like that one of the Katikiro that had been less important to that of Kimbugwe; Kimbugwe initially had been the official in charge of the King’s Umbilical cord [26]. The Katikiro became the second important office to that of the Kabaka, the most important non-royal official in the Kingdom; the office of the finance minister in the new dispensation Muwanika and that of the Mulamuzi the chief justice,were also put in place.
In the new roles, the chiefs, for example, supervised the beginning of the process of cash crop production in Buganda. Below is the interview of a Buganda female official, Namirembe Jane, and Mwanjje Luben, held in September 2020 in Ssese Islands, a Buganda county and District.
In an interview with Namirembe Jane an elder, in her view Buganda was a very powerful state in the pre-colonial period. It was in the Buganda State that private ownership of land was inaugurated and not in other parts of Uganda. By this Buganda region took a stride ahead of other regions of Uganda in terms of economic development. She even adds that the structure of Buganda’s administration was formalised into that of modern state, that traditional power structures were incorporated into those of the British indirect rule. She gives an example of the resultant structures of Gombolola/County, Miluluka/sub-county, Batongole, Parish chiefs and village chiefs. It is also during this period that in the Buganda region infrastructure greatly improved, say, in terms of schools, hospitals, and offices. But the point to note in this case is that the land that was given to the chiefs was official estates and the other was for personal use, estates to be rented out for production purposes/economic activities, say, the engagement in agriculture and in partnership with the colonial administration; educational facilities, hospitals were built and collecting taxes for colonial administration was enforced. That’s why the process of land allotment had been streamlined with the issuement of Land titles .Namirembe, however, also points out to the reason why some officials got more land than they deserved. The officials/chiefs working in the records office awarded themselves more Mailos than necessary. Namirembe says they had privy information of those mailos whose owners did not take on; failed to be occupied; “okulimiria” literally the allotted owners failed to occupy. These/such records were returned to the records office so the chiefs who had an upper hand of such information, added on to themselves more miles, getting more than was allocated to them. This is why some critics of the 1900 agreement have a view that this was a spree of a few fellows to enrich themselves [27].
The view of those groups of people who were not serving government official royalty, suggests that the 1900 agreement did nothing towards improvement of the conditions of the ordinary people. Its role was only exploitative, sucking out even the little the ordinary person had made. This was in terms of land rent imposed on the peasants by the landlords, and that’s why the colonial administration was forced to pass the Busulo Nvujjo law of 1927 to protect the landless/renters, and everyone who lost land ownership, including the Kabaka, who was initially the owner of all land in the Buganda state in the pre-colonial period. He was also allocated land just like any ordinary chief. The Kabaka/King lost his status as King and paramount/supreme giver of land to others by the clauses of the 1900 agreement.
Mr Sserwaniko particularly points out that’s why while in exile the Kabaka ran broke, so he instructed his sister (name not mentioned) to sell a portion of land given to him by the colonial authority while he was still King, this is today the land near the maximum prison in Luzira Kampala; the Kabaka King had now become like any other citizen of the land [28].
In the view of Lunyiigo, the land allotment process was unfair. This view differs from the official Buganda government version. The Lukkiiko had its own aims in preparing the lists of those to be allotted Mailo land. The leading chiefs had a field day in carrying out this exercise, giving their relatives and friends land to which they were clearly not entitled, and ensuring that children and even the unborn got a share of the land. One may say this was the unofficial view of those who were merely Bakopi ordinary people, who, in any case, were not part of the allotment lists. Whatever the case, these views represented the unfairness of the whole allotment exercise, but more importantly, they represented the process of class creation in the Buganda society. This marked the beginning of the process of economic differentiation in the Buganda society, let alone the creation of a ruling oligarchy based on an agrarian economy. In Busujju, the mighty leader of the victorious protestant faction and later regent and prime minister, Katikiro Apollo Kaggwa, purportedly attempted to grab his own clan Butakka—the clan burial grounds of his own grasshopper Nsenene clan; he conflicted with his clan chief when he took over clan land as personal land and even levelled graves of his ancestors in the name of new malio land under a new dispensation. The same person using the influence of his office purportedly acquired fraudulently the islands of Magara and Bussi on Lake Victoria from the custodian clan chief Magera. Hanson also averred that regents who negotiated the 1900 Agreement were land grabbers; for example, huge estates were amassed by Apollo Kaggwa, the Prime Minister and Stanislaus Mugwanya; the Chief Justice.
Notably, Kaggwa rebuffed the traditional norms of Buganda by utterly refusing to listen to the complaints of the clan elders’ fathers of the nation. These had lost all their clan lands and were unable to bury their relatives. As highlighted above, there was proof enough that Kaggwa had allotted miles to all of his sons, including one who was unborn at the time. In general, the chiefs inscribed a new order of power in Buganda; cultural translation expressed the relationship between power and class construction. The new ruling class of chiefs gave themselves more land than clan chiefs in the past, which also meant, as mentioned in the preceding chapters, the creation of new chiefly officers such as Zakaria Kisingiri, who moved from Kangaawo/county chief of Bulemeezi to become Omuwanika/Finance minister. The result was that the whole population of Buganda was on the move; streams of men, women and children were going east with all their household goods, cattle, sheep, goats and fowls met similar streams going west. Nevertheless, the consolation was that the ordinary people, from their earnings as civil servants, began to buy land by the acre from the profligate landowners and once they had purchased their tiny potions of Mailoland, they were free from the deadly yoke of land owners and were left only with their obligations to the crown colonial administration.
7. Conclusion
This particular paper attempted to show that the interaction between the Buganda traditional chiefs and the colonial administrators resulted in the opening of the process of restructuring Buganda society and creation of institutions to run state affairs, which has been termed by this study as institutionalisation. The would-be state leaders were the ones that embraced the coming of Christianity, which was used to overthrow the old order and occasioned the creation of a new state structure—the institution of an oligarchy that led the Christian wars and assumed state duties led by Apollo Kagwa. The Christian leaders handed over Buganda to the British administrators and it was then that the 1900 agreement was signed which marked the construction of the landed class emphasising the victory of the religious leaders but more important restructuring traditional institutions or power centres in Buganda. This also led to construction of an agrarian economy; therefore, the feudalisation of Buganda country, notably putting in place a farming peasant class on the land of the independent chiefs who had now become landlords. The state of Buganda was realigned from the traditional institutions to fit the modern times like appointing functioning offices of county and sub-county, parish and sub-parish; but separating the roles of clan officers and those of state duties; state roles were no longer mixed with traditional or cultural roles. The officers of the chiefs were streamlined by the 1900 agreement to become civil officers with paid salaries, serving the colonial administration and not mainly the King/Kabaka. However, land as a factor of production became the basis of the Buganda economy, which fed the British economy with crop commodities. The structuring of the labouring masses, the rent paid to landowners, turning land into a commodity, and the presence of a non-labouring class were all changes emanating from the clauses of the Buganda agreement with the process of feudalisation of Buganda even though this may be perceived as the introduction of the capitalistic mode of production in the Buganda state.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.