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Uganda since 1962: The colonial legacy
In Uganda, one of the greatest works of colonial master was the construction of Makerere University Main Building, constructed between 1939 and 1943.
What you need to know:
Necessary change? It was announced in South Africa on February 23 that several names of roads and streets in Cape Town, 27 in all, are to be renamed. These street names date back to the apartheid era and include such roads as Hendrik Verwoerd Drive, Jip de Jager Street, Vanguard Drive, Lansdowne Road, Jan Smuts Drive, NY1 in Gugulethu and Willie van Schoor Drive.
Residents of Cape Town have been given until the end of March to present their views on the proposed renaming of these streets in honour of several anti-apartheid figures such as the late Albertina Sisulu, widow of African National Congress (ANC) legend the late Walter Sisulu. She died last June.
Already several major South African landmarks - such as Johannesburg International Airport, now called Oliver Tambo International Airport - have been renamed to make a statement about this being the post-apartheid era and affirmation of Black majority rule.
Nobody, who not a Black South African, has a right to lecture the Black majority on what those old Afrikaans street names mean to them at the deepest emotional level. The bitterness that still lingers on nearly 18 years since the April 1994 general election that swept the ANC to power attests to the scars that apartheid left behind.
However, there is room for a respectful discussion on what these name changes mean for South Africa and the whole matter, in Uganda’s case, of re-examining the 70 years that preceded independence in October 1962.
One of the most insightful media commentators in Uganda, F. Onapito Ekomoloit, President Museveni’s former Press Secretary and a regular panelist on KFM’s Friday Hot Seat show, has frequently pointed this out.
Ekomoloit insists that one of the biggest mistakes made during the euphoric rush toward independence across Africa in the late 1950s and right through to the 1970s decade was to cast the independence period as one in which Black or indigenous majority rule was what mattered most.
“Africa for the Africans!” had been the cry championed by the Jamaican Black consciousness leader Marcus Garvey.
Ekomoloit has argued several times on radio that emotions aside, the most pragmatic and practical thing to do would have been to grant the Black majority their natural human and political rights.
But at the same time, the mercantile and professional skills in Uganda’s case of the Asian community and the professional, industrial and administrative experience of the European settlers and colonial administrators should have been recognised, with no attention paid to the emotion and bitterness among the Black majority.
The idea of a multi-racial society after the wave of independence was overlooked and for this Tropical Africa has paid dearly in 50 lost years.
I have had a few email exchanges since 2007 with Maj. Bob Astles, the long-time British-born political operative and in the 1970s, a man who gained some notoriety as an adviser to President Idi Amin.
The amount of information and extensive knowledge of Uganda’s history in Bob Astles’ head, if it were to be quantified in formal academic terms, would be the equivalent of three PhDs in Ugandan history.
Some of the best books ever written on Uganda, its people, culture, history and economic evolution have been by British colonial administrators, educators, missionaries and intellectuals.
The only detailed book ever written about Makerere University was They Build For the Future, by the recently-deceased Margaret McPherson and published in 1964. One of the most masterful narrations on Buganda history was Buganda in Modern History by D.A. Low (Donald Anthony Low), published in 1971.
To this day, Protectorate Uganda Government reports published and printed by Government Printer in Entebbe remain definitive in understanding the innermost workings of the Ugandan mind and nation.
Not a financial scandal, not a trace of public wrangling such as what we have witnessed for most of the 50 years between 1962 and 2012 can be found among the low-key British colonial administrators.
They laid the educational, economic, political, legal and administrative backbone of that which we still go by today. The school, political, judicial, economic and administrative systems, the 1940s beginnings of the East African Community, all this was the work, done meticulously, by the British colonial administrations.
They shaped the outlook of the Buganda, Tooro, Ankole and Bunyoro royal families, and to this day right through to the wildly popular English Premier League, British influence still sits at the core of the Ugandan mind.
Even a country like Ethiopia, which nominally escaped extended colonialism, has shown it is not immune from the global reach of Western culture, as attested to by the endless wave of Ethiopians who night and day dream of migrating to the United States, Canada and Australia.
In Ethiopia-Eritrea, where my wife comes from, the invading Italian army of Benito Mussolini in 1936 did more than just the usual injustice and havoc that invaders have done through history; they created a road network and other public works that is still the basis for these two countries.
Of course, none of this was being done for countries like Uganda as a philanthropic gesture. Britain and its overseas dominions in Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand profited handsomely from British rule over much of Black Africa.
But the inevitable question is, if that is so how come the Black majority in these nations that they call indigenous, ethnic and historical home have not found the organisation, purpose and unselfishness to tap into this very self-interest to improve on countries like Uganda since 1962?
Recognising the Western world
In a similar sense, there can be no escaping the fact that the backbone of present-day South Africa is British and Afrikaans in character.
The most difficult part is how millions of Black Africans can find the detachment to put the understandable bitterness aside and come to an objective, impartial appraisal of African history as it is and part of which might have to include a reluctant acknowledgement that our oppressors also happened to be brilliant administrators and nation builders.
When the Normans conquered Britain in 1066, the Anglo-Saxons had the foresight to retain intact in latter centuries the buildings and legacy of William the Conquerer. Having gained independence from Britain in 1776, the United States retained names and many traditions of New-York, New-Hampshire, New-Jersey and other names from the old country in Europe.
South Africa is not entirely the work of the ANC since 1912 or 1994, but there are decades of positive contributions by the White settlers since the first European settler Jan van Riebeeck in 1652, as bitter as this might feel to acknowledge.
One of the major hindrances to an understanding of modern African and Black history is that it is cast in emotional terms of victimhood, exploitation, justice, self-determination and suffering. Rarely is it viewed in terms other than these.
As we work our way in newspaper articles, books, Internet, radio and TV discussions on Uganda’s 50 years of independence (if, to begin with, it can be rightly called “independence”), it will be important as much to review the 50 years since 1962 as the 50 years leading up to 1962.
