In a statement criticised by both the Uganda Law Society and one of the country’s most senior judges, President Yoweri Museveni has insisted that the suspects’ constitutional right to bail be set aside.
Meanwhile, the security forces continue to hunt down civic leaders from Buganda and charge them with grave offences, and, in what amounts to the largest media crackdown in regional history, four of the five Luganda language radio stations that the government switched off during the Buganda disturbances, remain silent, as does the popular “town hall” debate format they supported on weekends. Many journalists remain similarly besieged.
Voices from the ruling party continue to search for a form of words to defuse the sense of crisis and appearance of illegitimacy that these actions have produced. This is an understandable reaction for a government that sees the Western media, once totally enamoured of the regime, now using terms like “autocratic” and “corrupt” to describe their leadership, which in the past made enormous mileage out of the attendant Western benevolence.
In the immediate term, there is the possibility of another Buganda-Uganda grievance being entered into the records in the course of this week. On October 8, 1962, Buganda declared Independence from Britain, just one day before the rest of the country. The Buganda Kingdom intends to hold celebrations for this day in its northwestern district of Mubende, with the Kabaka presiding. As if reading from a well-rehearsed script, a gentleman by the name of Francis Museveni Muntu has now emerged to claim that he is in fact the unrecognised “traditional leader” of the area. In a pronouncement similar to the one that led to pre-riot Buganda-Uganda face-off, Mr Muntu has requested that Buganda’s recognition before the Kabaka may proceed.
However, the two parliamentarians for the area — both with the ruling party — have moved to distance themselves from the new king. As for its wider challenge of damage-control, NRM has mooted radically redefining how “traditional” rulers may relate to “politics,” up to the deposing of particularly troublesome individual kings, or to the outright re-abolition, 1967-style, of the institutions themselves.
The problem for the first option, is that it places the burden of being “non-political” on traditional leaders who are constantly being courted by politicians of all hues. At the height of the riots, a frustrated President Museveni himself revealed to the nation that he had tried unsuccessfully to raise the Kabaka of Buganda on the phone for two years, prior to the September disturbances. In addition, what happened to Obote’s UPC after the 1967 abolition is now well documented.
The NRM’s more definite proposals are first for the implementation of the “regional tier” arrangement. This is the constitutional curiosity passed in 2006, as an alternative to outright federation, that defines those districts that may opt to be part of the Buganda Kingdom area, but are also free to later opt out at will. In the week after the Bill was passed into law, the Buganda parliament (or Lukiiko) passed a resolution rejecting the tier, and giving detailed reasons why. Now, the regional tier may ironically help the country postpone another flashpoint that was already in the pipeline.
This is the central government’s already tabled Bill to take direct control of the management of Kampala city, and simultaneously extend its boundaries. Since Kampala is deemed to not be part of Buganda through a 1995 constitutional sleight-of-hand, its status is already a sore point with the kingdom government. Due to the realities of geography, this clause means that the city is surrounded all sides by the constitutionally defined region of Buganda, and therefore to take more land for Kampala means taking land from Buganda.
This dilemma has resulted in a delicately phrased war of words in a series of letters between the top legal minds in the central government, moderated by the prime minister. The minister for local government — once the deputy Attorney-General — has expressed the view that any such encroachment on constitutionally-defined boundaries requires a constitutional amendment only achievable by a two-thirds parliamentary majority. The current Attorney General disagrees, insisting that this is a mere “change of boundaries,” achievable through a simple parliamentary majority.
This being Uganda, one or other of these positions is bound to end up being challenged in the Constitutional Court. The government thus risks initiating a constitutional debate that could scuttle its regional tier laws even before it has had the chance to implement them. The only way it can avoid that is to abandon its intentions for the capital. This could be one of the few examples of a political party walking into a trap it unwittingly set for itself.
The other definite NRM proposal is to bring the Land Act (Amendments) Bill back to parliament for a second reading, thus fully initiating the process of it becoming law. However, land tenure and ownership lies very much at the origins of this 15-year Uganda-Buganda dispute, and it is difficult to see how even NRM parliamentarians will be willing to stick their necks that far out in the run-up to a general election just 16 months away.
The sheer persistence of the ethnic nationalism is such that it now has the record of having been courted by every government to have taken power in Uganda. Every key constitutional document — from the 1890 and 1895 “treaties” with Kabaka Mwanga; the 1900 “agreement” with the regents who deposed Mwanga; the 1930 and 1955 “settlements” that further redefined the colonial relationships; and the 1962 Independence constitution itself — was premised on the recognition of Buganda and its native government. Even Milton Obote’s first constitution following the 1966 Crisis still retained recognition of Uganda’s federal units including Buganda.
It is only the republican 1967 constitution — abolishing native government — that comes as a negation to that constitutional trend. It was this banned nationalism that formed a significant part of the recruitment and mobilisational tools in the NRM bush war, as the NRM itself was originally an alliance between Yoweri Museveni’s Popular Resistance Army, and deposed post-Amin president Yusuf Lule’s federalist Uganda Freedom Fighters.
October 9 is the day independent Uganda was born in 1962, but October 9, 1879 is the date Kabaka Muteesa I, the last Kabaka to rule over a truly independent country of Buganda, died. The outcomes of this coming week may well indicate whether the celebration of Uganda’s independence is also simultaneously the macabre rejoicing at the death of real African self-government, or a commemoration of the life of one of its iconic symbols.
