Author: Karoli Ssemogerere. PHOTO/HANDOUT
Buganda Kingdom marked 31 years of restoration of the monarchy, or Kabakaship, yesterday. Many lessons abound.
In policy terms, the kingdom has undergone a full policy cycle. First was the novel idea of a cultural kingship, divorced from the administrative responsibilities of the Kingdom of Buganda established in 1962 as a self-governing dominion inside the State of Uganda.
The Buganda of 1962 had executive powers. The Central government had a 199-year lease from the kingdom, on which Kampala was situated. Buganda had a High Court, and a legislative assembly (the Great Lukiiko).
Circa 1962, Buganda’s population was estimated at one quarter of the population of Uganda. In 2024, the recently published census figures show, 11,113,592 persons living in Buganda, and a further 1,875,834 persons live in Kampala for a total population of 12,989,426 persons or 28percent of the population of Uganda.
Cosmopolitan Buganda is hardly a tribal outfit. Inside Buganda live thousands of people from other parts of the country, Ankole, Kigezi, Busoga and Bunyoro. There are Swahili speaking enclaves in Buganda, in Bombo, Kampala. Buganda’s parliamentary delegation commands several languages.
One of the new Members of Parliament, Ms Shartse Kuteesa from Sembabule District calls herself “Namatovu” and has been an effective parliamentarian.
The official Opposition National Unity Platform (NUP)’s strategy in the 2021 elections in Buganda placed non-native Luganda speakers alongside Luganda speakers and they won in seats like Makindye East.
The commercial realities of life in Buganda often clash with its historical aspirations. The “republican hesitancy” has sometimes stifled the growth of the old kingdom which in June read a Shs250 billion plus annual budget, hardly a fraction of the country’s Shs71 trillion budget.
In short, Uganda’s lagging economically, failure to achieve middle income status are all connected to the laggard performance of Buganda. Even though Buganda contributes more than 70 percent of national tax collections, it is home to some of the poorest communities.
Either by history or accident of history, where Buganda has exercised block voting, it has ended up on the losing side of the political divide.
In 1962, Buganda jettisoned direct elections for indirect elections to the National Assembly and 20 of its 21 Members of Parliament came from one party. In 1980, Buganda voted enmasse for the Democratic Party, which formed the opposition not government.
Between 1996 and 2016, all spoils were shared between the different parties, NRM being dominant and smaller parties, Democratic Party, Forum for Democratic Change sharing the rest. For the record, no Uganda Peoples Congress Member of Parliament has been elected from Buganda since 1980. So to that extent, modern Uganda has not benefited from exposure from what a Buganda centric government would look like.
In the United Kingdom with a similar unitarian tradition, the former Kingdom of Scotland was granted a lot of autonomy by then premier Tony Blair’s Labour government, resulting in the enactment of the Scotland Act in 1998. This Act devolved many powers to the Scottish Executive, and may on its own have averted a separationist crisis when Scotland in 2014 voted to remain in the United Kingdom. Scotland on its own is less than 10 percent of the United Kingdom’s population.
The Scots on their part have exercised pragmatic voting. They have split their spoils between the Nationalists who want independence and swung back to the traditional parties that granted them devolution. Labour’s recovery in 2024 was at the expense of the Scottish National Party (SNP).
It may be a miracle that Buganda that rejected the 2005 Regional tier, chooses to table legislation in Parliament to make the earlier discussed regional government in place.
Risk-averse, and commercially oriented, Buganda is happy to play the cultural symbolic part, lending its name, and the most spoken local language to the rest of Uganda. This caution is well understood for historical reasons, but these dissolve in the global big picture Buganda found itself during the Obote years.
Britain, a monarchy sided with Milton Obote, the Republican. Labour, long thought to be anti-monarchy, had a hand in this. Harold Wilson the Prime Minister from 1964-1970, elected three times was very much at home with Milton Obote. Surprisingly so was Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister from 1979-1990.
The lesson from these two experiences should be formative. Institutions rather than individuals are favoured in the long game. The discussion should be how does this huge entity contribute to Uganda’s economic growth and development, at its center, not at the periphery as it is today.
Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate. [email protected]
