Samwiri Mukasa
Buganda Nationalist
USA
I was shocked by Charles Onyango Obbo’s decision to ridicule Baganda and, by extension, our Kabaka in his Ear to The Ground column, which will appear in the Monitor newspaper of July 22, 2009. To paraphrase one smart non-Muganda, “A little power is dangerous”. Apparently, Mr. Obbo, a former UPC youth winger, is convinced that his relative popularity and longevity in the Opinion business, empowers him to ridicule a 1,000 year old kingdom. I say, Obbo’s little power is quite dangerous to us Baganda, other residents of Buganda, and even his own family.
In his column entitled, “Here are guerilla tactics for Buganda in its ‘war’” Mr. Obbo first admits that “Uganda will never be able to move forward until the Buganda question is resolved and taken off the table.” Then he proceeds to recommended, mockingly, a list of “clever guerilla tactics Buganda might adopt to win over the majority of Ugandans to its side.” Mr. Obbo tells Kabaka Mutebi and his Baganda to try the following to please and gain the support of other Ugandans: (a) convert the Bika by’Abaganda tournament to a Uganda district level competition, (b) change the Buganda regatta (boating competition) to a Ugandan regatta; (c) similarly, abandon the Buganda wrestling competition (Ekigwo Gombya) in favor of a Uganda version, and (d) start a new game, bull fights where bulls owned by Mr. Museveni would be able to field a team from his ranches.
In Mr. Onyango Obbo’s words, “I suspect most referees will be inclined to blow the whistle in favour of Kaguta’s bulls. As a man who loves his animals deeply, I suspect this will warm Museveni’s heart to no end and he will look more generously upon Buganda’s representations.” And after condemning Buganda to future to the mercy of Mr. Museveni, Mr. Obbo wields his ‘little power’ to concludes on a serious note that, “Buganda will then discover an old truth; you can never win the game, if you don’t play.”
For years, before I read Charles Onyango Obbo’s latest column, I was a big fan. I learnt to overlook his UPC youth winger past because I believe that people can change. But more, importantly, because I thought that he was a smart person. I think differently now. For, it takes a fool think that this is the time to “kick Buganda in the stomach”, just to get some laughs and dollars. Mr. Obbo, I am no longer a fan and, thanks to you, I have joined those Baganda who would rather be feared, even if not respect me. Please stop attacking my Kabaka and fellow Baganda; keep off Buganda and our Kabaka. We have a saying, “Abaganda busa bwa mbogo!”.
Ssabasajja Kabaka Awangaale!
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:43 am
Sam,
What a great piece of observation you are making of Onyango Obbo! I cannot agree more.
For anyone who may have any shade of doubt about Onyango Obbo’s patronizing attitude towards Buganda and Baganda, here below is a retrospective reflection of his mind about Buganda and the Baganda. You may be shocked to realise that his views about us are not any different from those of Obote and Museveni. Good reading!
EAR TO THE GROUND | Charles Onyango Obbo
A dog, angry men, a president’s funeral
October 26, 2005
The story in Bukedde was quite remarkable: The Baganda installed a dog as a “heir” to Milton Obote at Wankulukuku last Friday, at ceremonies held to mark 50 years since the return of Kabaka Freddie Mutesa II from exile.
The event coincided with the national funeral service for Obote at Kololo. It’s unlikely that 50 or even 20 years ago, the Baganda would have beaten drums celebrating someone’s death the way they have Obote’s.
That was the time when chiefly families, reverends, and the like from eastern, western, and even parts of northern Uganda still sent their children to Buganda to “learn good manners” and “to be taught how to be gentlemen/ladies”.
A girl would be taught to “sit properly”, not to bring the roof down with wild laughter, how to set the table, and how to “respect and give dignity” to her husband. Also thrown in, would be lessons on how to walk, tie the busuti, weave palm mats, and read the Bible, to mention a few.
A young man would learn lessons into gallantry, how to “converse”, scrub his feet, and so on. In their wisdom, the Baganda adapted the kanzu. It’ social implications were far-reaching. First, because there isn’t too much variety in kanzu material, it was a great equaliser. A muluka chief’s kanzu, was exactly the same as a gombolola chief’s.
But most of all, in the good old days when most men didn’t have underwear, the kanzu saved generations of males the ultimate embarrassment of having their intimate bits exposed at gatherings like weddings and clan meetings.
Having grown up in a house with a mother who was “educated in Buganda”, the flask was not considered very fashionable. Instead, in classical fashion, a tea-cosy was wrapped around the teapot to keep the contents warm. And usually, the cakes were home baked.
These were the “civilised” and proud ways handed down through that mix of British-Buganda properness. In that Buganda, the men approached death with courtly detachment. The women wailed, but the men sat back in their folded kanzus, stiff upper lips, waiting to make speeches and install the heir, avoiding all unseemliness.
Eternal hatred
Obote will forever be hated by many Baganda for ordering the attack on Mutesa’s Lubiri palace in 1966 and effectively abolishing kingdoms, and for the atrocities of the government army, the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) in Luwero during the war against President Museveni’s guerrillas during his second presidency in the early 1980s..
Still, a Buganda where a death, even of an enemy, is celebrated comes from a very new Buganda. How could a culture so steeped in managing appearances, wait for a moment when everyone is looking then throw it all away?
For the record, I am not one of those who believe that a bad man – or woman – should be praised as if he were a saint upon his death. But to celebrate a death is equivalent to caning a corpse for the shortcomings of the person when he was alive.
For Buganda to be driven to this point therefore needs an explanation that goes beyond antipathy toward Obote. My sense is that on the question of Obote there are two trends in Buganda. There is the pragmatic tendency, which has largely moved on. It has little emotional attachment to old Buganda, and has been assimilated into the emerging cosmopolitan Uganda. Duped?
The second is the one that wants “proper closure” to the suffering that it thinks Buganda faced at the hands of Obote, and even Museveni – he cheated them out of federo after they had sacrificed so much to help bring him to power. This group thinks they opened their arms to other Ugandans.
However, in return, the visitors have taken over their land and don’t support the Kabaka. Buganda, they feel, has made all the compromises to belong to Uganda, and the rest of Uganda has done nothing to accommodate itself to Buganda.
They thought they were united with Museveni in their view of Obote as Enemy No. 1. Then Kaguta left them high and dry by grabbing the political currency he could from being reasonably decent to a dead Obote. In protest they gave up being civilised, and decided to keep an inglorious spotlight on Obote, and to embarrass his supporters during the funeral.
Yet, it’s still like the parents who boycott their daughter’s wedding. No matter how handsome their son-in-law and delightful the wedding feast is, their absence is a stain that won’t go away. But while they get to make their opposition to their daughter’s choice of husband known, in the end they lose a daughter.
In death, Obote has dealt old Buganda a blow he never managed to do for all the years he was in power. For nearly a century, Buganda taught Uganda manners. Now they can’t claim to be teachers any more.
NOW OVER TO YOU, SAM!!!
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:01 am
Tara,
How suprising! Looks like we have been turning the same page. That issue almost became controversial or rather acromonious between Obbo and his fans. In one of such correspondences between Obbo and one of his erstwhile fans by name SAMUEL, Obbo’s true clolors about the Baganda, Buganda and the Kabaka can be seen here below:
James,
Ugandan culture is a collective of ALL the cultures of Uganda, given how our nation was formed. To write about any culture in Uganda is to write both about one’s own, and about the collective. So to begin with, I don’t quite understand what you mean when you say I should write about “my” culture for a change. If you mean my sub-culture, the way Buganda’s is a sub-culture to the Ugandan culture, then I would do more than to ask you to go to The Monitor website, East African, and Daily Nation and do a search. You will find dozens of articles.
Secondly, I would say I am willing to learn. So educate me on what aspects of Ganda culture dictate that you celebrate the death of your enemy? It is a rather rare streak in not only Ugandan, African, but international culture. And when one reads Kabaka Mutesa’s “Desecration of My Kingdom”, which I have done three times, I imagine he would be confounded by the scenes at Wankuluku – notwithstanding what Obote did to him.
Also, I have written nearly 100 emails on that column, and there are many Baganda who are embarrassed by what happened at Wankulukuku. So there is no unanimity, on that, contrary to what you are suggesting.
But I am always open to hearing your explanation of how Wankulukuku came to be.
Charles
Awangaale Ssabasajja Kabaka!
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:56 am
Ali,
Thanks for the above contribution. My own father who was one of the gallant royal guards to the late Sir Edward Muteesa narrated to me how he narrowly escaped to be burried alive in Lubiiri during the ensuing battle between Obote’s band of thugs and the mostly unarmed Kabaka’s subjects in 1966. Many Baganda present in Lubiri were not as lucky as my father was to escape being burried alive!! It was one of the most henious crimes Obote committed and for which we continue to hate him, his youth wingers and his UPC party. Obote exiled our King in far away lands, killed many of King Freddie’s subjects, confiscated his and Buganda’s properties, destroyed our beautiful and glorious nation and subsequently became a bull in a China shop. When he was later returned to power by both Nyerere and Museveni in 1979, he told all and sundry that he would start from where he stopped;meaning that he would continue to kill Baganda and destroy Buganda in much the same way he did in 1966 up to the time he was deposed by Iddi Amin. Now, this is the kind of character Onyango Obbo expects the Baganda to mourn his death and feel sorry for those who tormented and continue to torment us. Does it really make sense????
Long live Kabaka Muwenda Mutebi!
July 25th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Tara + Busagwa,
Inspite of his usual mischievous tongue-in-the-cheek treatment of importnat issues that should have deserved a serious approach than this kind of soccer-games-naivette, Onyango Obbo makes a very fundamental statement that should help all those Ugandans with anti-Buganda feelings soothen their usually miguided egos, namely that:
“Uganda will never be able to move forward until the Buganda question is resolved and taken off the table.”
Onyango Obbo couldn’t be any truer! The British colonialists had erronously anticipated that by the time of their departure from Uganda, the political and cultural entity called Buganda would be no more. Obote I & II inherited this very same myopic and disastrous political thinking from the British. When he attacked the Lubiri in 1966 with the tacit approval of his British backers and riding on the tiger back of Iddi Amin, Obote thought that the last nail in the casket of of destroying the socio-cultural and political structure of Buganda had been hit. Some non – Baganda with simplistic minds about what had been done by Obote’s fascism and what was to come out of it were jubilating. Oh, how mistaken he and his political cohorts were! The political reverberations of the British and Obote’s stupidity towards Buganda have been far reaching and painful for all Ugandans. That country has bred as a consequence of the bullets fired in Lubiri and Bulange. The boomerang effect of the militaritazation of Uganda politics and its consequential political disempowerement continues up to this day in the otherwise beautiful country of my mother. So, let nobody make a mistake. Up until the issues of Buganda vis-a-vis Uganda are settled amicably and satisfactorily, the whole of Uganda will continue to breed to the low ebbs it is experiencing. And Mr. Musebeni should be a better student of desisting the temptation of thinking that might is right. He has tried it elsewhere in the country for donkey’s years and it has failed. He continues to be that country’s president not because he is popular but owing to his manipulative and opportunistic politics. Whenever elections happen in that country, folks get shot or beated up by his party’s hoodlums. And if he gets so naive enough this time to think that because he has the guns and Mengo doesn’t, and therefore, he can intimate, cajole, insult and dictate upon the genuinely popular Kabaka of Buganda, he is in for a rude shock! And God forbid!!!