Prime
The Baganda agents and their role in entrenching colonial rule in Uganda
Chief Awich of the Payira (chiefdom) in Acholi, northern Uganda, with his family in 1904. He fiercely resisted colonial rule and later granted asylum to Omukama Kabalega of Bunyoro following a battle with British-backed forces. Courtesy photo
What you need to know:
Part LI (1900-1930): The Making of Uganda. “There was no tribal foundation on which to erect any system of ordered Government peculiar to the tribe and in Lango, as in other similar districts of the Eastern province, the policy was to introduce a system analogous to that evolved for them by the neighbouring much more advanced Bantu tribes. Among the Lango, we were most ably and loyally helped in this work by Baganda Agents who were really, if properly controlled, Native Assistant District Officers, though they call themselves chiefs and would of course usurp the function of the newly-created chiefs whom they were supposed to instruct…” - Extract from a colonial administration report on Lango.
As earlier noted in this series, Britain would have been unable to colonise Uganda without the assistance of native officials who collaborated with them.
The British exploited divisions created by the religious factions as well as the ambition of local Baganda officials like Sir Apolo Kaggwa and Semei Kakungulu, to divide and rule the new territory.
After colonising Buganda, the British used many Baganda as chiefs and agents to help govern and administer other territories. This, as earlier noted, was the case with officials like James Miti in Bunyoro and Kakungulu in Busoga and Bukedi.
Spreading sub-imperialism
In almost all cases, these officials accrued great personal benefits from their collaboration with the British. This, and the institutionalised benefit to Buganda, such as through the transfer of the Lost Counties from Bunyoro, led to allegations of Buganda sub-imperialism in the new colony.
Some historians argue that despite the benefits they acquired, Baganda agents like Kakungulu were only convenient tools for the British.
“To call the agent system Buganda sub-imperialism is to mistake the subjects for the colonisers,” argues Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere in his book, The Politics of State Formation and Destruction in Uganda.
“The British found the Kiganda system of government amenable to their interests. If the whole country had such a system, it would have facilitated colonial entry. The object of the British was to see that the Kiganda system was transplanted to other areas and the best operators of this were Baganda.”
In Buganda, Ankole and Toro that had centralised kingdoms, the British signed agreements with local chiefs or rulers that left them nominally as rulers of the natives but in reality, exercising only that power which the colonial administration ceded to them.
The societies in eastern and northern Uganda had more decentralised systems of political organisation which were harder for the British to deal with, hence their use of Baganda agents like Kakungulu.
This was not always without incident. As the earlier stories on Kakungulu show, some of the agents overshot their mandate and attempted to set up their own kingdoms or chiefdoms in the areas they were meant to be administering on behalf of the British.
In others, the Baganda agents abused their position by accumulating wealth or mistreating natives, a point captured by Frederick Jackson who was a critic of the system.
The Baganda, he wrote, “were accustomed to obedience…but outside their own country the Baganda, whether employed as agents, private servants rickshaw boys, or porters, are arrogant, overbearing, greedy, conceited, delight in asserting themselves, and generally ‘show off’.”
In Budama, the British were forced to recall Kakungulu and relocate him to Busoga after several skirmishes between his forces and locals. At least two Baganda agents were killed in Mbale, while in Kigezi, residents burnt homes belonging to the agents as well as churches and mosques.
“What is important is that when the clashes occurred between the agents and the natives, the natives fought not only to rid themselves of the agents but of their masters – and these were the white men,” notes Prof. Kabwegyere, adding that the Acholi killed one of their own, Chief Okellomwaka, for being loyal to the foreigners.
He was not the only local ruler killed for collaborating with the British. Chief Wakholi of Busoga was murdered by his defiant followers opposed to foreign rule after he tried to implement a treaty he had signed on December 7, 1890 with Frederick Lugard.
While agents played a key role in entrenching colonial rule, the British also used force to expand their sphere of influence from Buganda to the rest of the country.
This series has already discussed in detail the joint British and Buganda military adventures in Bunyoro that culminated in the capture and exile of both Mwanga and Kabalega. Similar military action, but of a considerably lower intensity, was required in Ankole.
The British needed military muscle to impose themselves on northern Uganda where tribes, including the Acholi, had acquired guns for self-defence and elephant hunting through trade with Arabs coming down through the Sudan.
In Lango, then-commissioner Henry Hesketh Joudou Bell (later to become Governor) was instrumental in ensuring displays of military might as the British imposed their authority.
“A somewhat display of force would be advisable and perhaps necessary,” he wrote to a junior official. “A military promenade of three companies of troops should be made through the District.”
The use of violence
It was not just a matter of threatening; violence was often meted out against natives in areas that were unwilling to embrace British rule. This saw the burning of villages as well as raids and the killing and plunder of people and areas that did not cooperate.
“Violence was used as an important factor to consolidate Uganda as a geopolitical entity and as a British possession,” argues Prof. Kabwegyere. “Violence is an inevitable means of political control when the outsider and the insider have conflicting interests.”
In the end, the decentralised nature of societies in eastern and northern Uganda, proved a significant handicap in resistance towards colonialism. The centralised kingdoms like Buganda and Bunyoro maintained formidable standing armies that challenged, albeit unsuccessfully, the imposition of colonial rule.
The colonial economy
If the British had had to wage a long and expensive war against the Acholi, the Langi, the Iteso, the Basoga, the Bagisu, etc., as they had done against the Banyoro, it is unlikely that they would have been successful or that colonialism would have occurred as fast as it did.
In any case, having imposed their political will on Uganda, the colonial administration undertook the imposition of a colonial economy. It is that topic to which this series must now return, starting with the rise of the Sugar Barons in Lugazi and Kakira and the colonial-era political-economic construct which has shaped the notion of Uganda as a nation state.
Continues Tomorrow
