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Quiz |
| 1. Why is Uganda's independence on October 9? |
| 2. Why did Churchill call Uganda the Pearl of Africa in 1907? |
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| 1. Why is Uganda's independence on October 9? |
October 9, 1884 is the date on which the death of Muteesa I was officially announced. Ssekabaka Muteesa I was the man who invited the British to come to Uganda in the first place in 1876. See one of his handwritten letters to Britain requesting missionaries to come.
Muteesa I actually died on October 5, but his death was kept secret. Katikkiro Ham Mukasa was not at the Capital at the time, he had gone to Mukono, about 14 miles away. For fear of battles among princes and chaos which always accompanied successions to the throne, the people at the palace delayed the announcement while awaiting the Katikkiro’s return.
When the British asked the Uganda delegation in London (1961) during the Lancaster Conference which was negotiating for independence the date they wanted to have independence on, those Baganda in the know, suggested October 9, 1962. The other members in the delegation including Obote, who became the first Prime Minister after independence concurred, but did not understand the relevancy of the date until much later.
An eye-witness account is given in Rev. Bartholomew Zimbe, 1939 Buganda ne Kabaka, Gambuze Printers & Publishers. (This book revises and expands Sir Apolo Kaggwa's Empisa Z'Abaganda and Bassekabaka ba Buganda. In Bassekabaka ba Buganda, Sir Apolo Kaggwa had incorrectly given October 19, 1884 as the date on which Ssekabaka Muteesa I had died) |
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| 2. Why did Churchill call Uganda the Pearl of Africa in 1907? |
Winston Churchill, then Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, visited Uganda in 1907. On his return, he described Uganda as the Pearl of Africa, and wrote thus of Uganda in his book first published in 1908, My African Journey. London, Hodder and Stoughton (The following excerpt is from the 1964 Edition published by Icon Books Ltd.):
Chapter V
The Kingdom of Uganda
The East Africa Protectorate is a country of the highest interest to the colonist, the traveler, or the sportsman. But the Kingdom of Uganda is a fairy-tale. You climb up a railway instead of a beanstalk, and at the end there is a wonderful new world. The scenery is different, the vegetation is different, the climate is different, and, most of all the people are different from anything elsewhere to be seen in the whole range of Africa.
Instead of the breezy uplands we enter a tropical garden. In place of naked, painted savages, clashing their spears, and gibbering in chorus to their tribal chiefs, a complete and elaborate polity is presented. Under a dynastic king, with a Parliament, and a powerful feudal system,
an amiable, clothed, polite and intelligent race dwell together in an organized monarchy upon the rich domain between the Victoria and Albert Lakes. More than two hundred thousand natives are able to read and write. More than one hundred thousand have embraced the Christian faith. There is a Court, there are regents and Ministers and nobles, there is a regular system of native law and tribunals; there is discipline, there is industry, there is culture, there is peace. In fact I ask myself whether there is any other spot on the whole earth where the dreams of the Negrophile, so often mocked by results and stubborn facts, have ever attained such a happy realization.
Three separate influences, each of them powerful and benevolent, exercise control over the mass of the Baganda nation. First, the Imperial authority, secular, scientific, disinterested, irresistible; secondly, a native Government and feudal aristocracy, corrected of their abuses, yet preserving their vitality; and thirdly, missionary enterprise on an almost unequalled scale. Under the shelter of the British Flag, safe from external menace or internal broil, the child-King grows to a temperate and instructed maturity. Surrounded by his officers of State, he presides at the meetings of his council and Parliament, or worships in the huge thatched cathedral which has been reared on Namirembe Hill. Fortified in their rights, but restrained from tyrannical excess, and guided by an outside power, his feudatories exercise their proper functions.
The people, relieved from the severities and confusions of times not long ago, are apt to learn and willing to obey. And among them with patient energy toils a large body of devoted Christian men of different nations, of different Churches, but of a common charity, tending their spiritual needs, enlarging their social and moral conceptions, and advancing their education year by year.
An elegance of manners springing from a naïve simplicity of character pervades all classes. An elaborate ritual of friendly salutations relieves the monotony of the wayfarer's journey. Submission without servility or loss of self-respect is accorded to constituted authority. The natives evince an eagerness to acquire knowledge, and a very observant and imitative faculty. |
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