The Buganda Kabaka

The Baganda make up largest tribe in Uganda (map on right). The Bonyoro tribe is their biggest rival (map on left).

"At its founding, the Kingdom of Buganda had only a small territory consisting of the counties of Busiro, Busujju, Kyaddondo and Mawokota; as well as small portions of Ssingo and Bulemeezi counties. Most of the surrounding territory was the dominion of the kings of Bunyoro. There was considerable rivalry between Bunyoro and Buganda, and constant fighting over territory. Gradually, Buganda was able to expand its territory at the expense of Bunyoro until it grew to the twenty counties that constituted Buganda at its pinnacle. The islands of Ssese [in Lake Victoria] were autonomous within Buganda right from its founding, being reserved as the islands of the gods. They were not directly governed by the kings of Buganda until after the 1900 agreement." Quoted from this site that has the list of Buganda counties, the chiefs and how acquired the counties.

The Baganda honored a king, the Kabaka. The last Kabaka was Mutesa II. His full name was Major General Sir Edward Frederick William David Walugembe Mutebi Luwangula Mutesa II aka "King Freddie." He died in 1969 in exile in London from alchohol poisoning, unable to return to his homeland where Obote was ruler.

Mutesa II became the King of Buganda in 1939 upon the death of his father. He attended Magdalene College in Cambridge England where he joined an officer training corps and was commissioned as a captain in the Grenadier Guards. At that time, Buganda was part of the British protectorate of Uganda.

In the early 50s the Brits wanted to unite their colonies (Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika) into a federation but people feared they would come under the control of Kenya's white settler community, as had happened in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The Baganda had some limited autonomy under British rule so were particularly opposed. Mutesa confronted the British Governor, saying "no way!" The latter exiled the former in 1953, creating massive protest among the Baganda which pressured Brits to let him return in 1955. After a settlement was reached, he became constitutional monarch and gave the Baganda the right to elect representatives to the kingdom's parliament, the Lukiiko. Mutesa's standing up to the Brits sure made him popular!

Mutesa II's monarchist party was called the Kabaka Yekka party and was now quite powerful. Milton Obote was leader of the Uganda People's Congress and created a coalition with the Kabaka Yekka. In 1962 Uganda became independent from Britain under the leadership of Milton Obote. Through parliamentary elections, Obote became Prime minister and Mutesa II became the first president.

The coalition between Mutesa and Obote's parties collapsed in 1964 when two counties from Buganda were transferred to Bunyoro. Things got even worse, so in 1966 Obote sent the Kabaka into exile (a dingy little London flat) and declared himself president.

Mutesa II wrote an autobiography in London called "The Desecration of my Kingdom." I bet it is a very sad book. The Buganda people loved their king very much.

Idi Amin was ruler after Obote and he arranged for Mutesa II's body to be returned to Uganda two years after his death to have a state funeral in order to win favor with the Baganda people in preparation for the next election. I think it worked.

Kabaka kings are still crowned in Buganda, in a place just 20 minutes from Kampala called Naggalabi Buddo. Oh boy, it's now a tourist spot - costs $2 to get a look. But apparently there was an interegnum, where they had no king between Mutessa II and his eldest son Muwendi Mutebi II being crowned in 1993.

I read some of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"

Catalyzed by a scheduled getaway with mom and sister to Hannibal, MO, Mark Twain's (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) boyhood town, this week, I'm reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the writing is blowing me away. I want to buy 9 copies for the young people in my life. The writing so entertains my mind and triggers images of the author contemplating each paragraph for a whole morning at his desk and how he could most creatively and humorously, with metaphors and adult-life reference points, present the mood and energy of seemingly simple boyhood pleasures and antics. Here he talks about Tom's new whistling skill:

[His] new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a Negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music. The reader probably remembers how to do it if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet. No doubt as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, th advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.