UGANDA: Girlcotting

In Britain’s East African Uganda Protectorate, African leaders try for independence, but also find things closer at hand to fight against. Three months ago, disgruntled Buganda political leaders formed the Uganda National Movement and declared an economic boycott against non-African bus companies, shops, and products. Picketing gangs stood outside rural Indian stores to keep farmers away by force, to the delight of African merchants down the road, who promptly raised their prices. Two hundred Africans who own cars have made a mint as taxi operators since a boycott was declared against the white-owned bus line.

Alarmed, Britain’s Governor last week declared the troubled province of Buganda a “disturbed area,” decreed emergency police powers, and banned the U.N.M. (which simply changed its name and continued the boycott), and arrested its top leaders. But the movement ran into another kind of resistance when street food stalls refused to sell to African women who have abandoned Buganda custom by wearing chic dresses and combing their hair. Replied one local lady, in a remark that deserves a durable place in the language of the battle of the sexes: “If they boycott us, we’ll girlcott them.”