Uganda: She Isn’t & Doesn’t Want To Be an Extension of Europe

Tribesmen clad in leopard skins and ostrich plumes danced to the sound of rawhide drums and blaring trumpets of antelope horn. From a thousand hilltops bonfires burst into flame. In the capital city of Kampala strings of electric lights illumined the facades of churches, mosques and Hindu temples. Thus Uganda this week became the fifth African nation to gain its freedom in a year, and the 28th since 1956. Even informed observers are becoming dazed by the endless roll call of big and little new nations that sound more and more like commuter stops on a train to Timbuctoo: Gambia, Upper Volta, Chad, Dahomey, Mali, Gabon.

What, then, is worth knowing about Uganda?

Four Kings. It is relatively small to begin with, about the size of Oregon (94,000 sq. mi.). It contains the source of the Nile in Lake Victoria, which, next to Lake Superior, is the world’s largest freshwater lake. On its western borders rise the famed Mountains of the Moon; on the east, the towering 14,178-ft. Mount Elgon. In between stretch 500 miles of open meadow and sparse forest filled with elephants, gazelles, elands, lions and leopards. Typically, Uganda is also unstable, since its 6,845,000 people are riven by tribal, religious, economic and linguistic differences. There are no fewer than four separate Bantu kingdoms on the shores of Lake Victoria, which henceforth must try to make common cause, not only among themselves, but with the Nilotic warrior tribes and the turbulent Hamitic nomads to the north and east.

Biggest source of friction has always been the Bantu kingdom of Buganda, which has one-fourth of the new country’s area, one-third of the population and nearly all the wealth. Under Kabaka (King) Frederick Mutesa II, the 36th monarch of Africa’s oldest continuously ruling dynasty, Buganda tried to secede from the Uganda Protectorate in 1961. When the British government firmly refused to permit the creation of a new Katanga in its erstwhile colony, Cambridge-educated King Freddie did an about-face and combined forces with Apollo Milton Obote, who had risen from Nilotic herd boy to the leadership of the Uganda People’s Congress. The coalition of King and commoner swept the national elections, capturing 58 Assembly seats to 24 for the rival Democratic Party of Benedicto Kiwanuka. Obote was named Prime Minister.

Never Again. Uganda’s constitution sensibly provides a large measure of local autonomy to Buganda and the three other Bantu kingdoms, and to the ten regional districts, which are equally jealous of their separate identity. Although per capita income averages only $65 a year, Uganda has enjoyed a favorable balance of trade for the past 25 years. But falling world prices for its principal exports—coffee and cotton—have eaten up the accumulated reserves and this year caused a budget deficit of $10 million.

To implement a World Bank recommendation for a $150 million development program over the next five years, Prime Minister Obote must look to London and Washington. Foreign aid, however generous, is not likely to shift Uganda from the usual African neutralist foreign policy. Though stoutly antiCommunist, Obote says, “Uganda is determined that she shall never again become an extension of Europe or of any other part of the world.”