Uganda: Old boys, not religion influenced parties

By Ham Mukasawww.hammukasafoundation.comwww.hgmconsult.com 

Although the Bataka Party  does not feature much in the minds of today’s political analysts, it nonetheless held sway over the country’s political horizon from the time of its formation in 1945 until it was banned by the colonial government in April 1949.

The use of the word “party” in the group’s name was, however, a misnomer since the group did not have the structures and machinery normally associated with the modern political party.

At best, the group can be described as a carry-all bag for all manner of political agitations, personal vendettas and outright hatred for the British colonial masters. The group’s most articulate activist was a former seminarian by the name of Ssemakula Mulumba who was sent to London to propagate its causes there.

Locally, the group proved to be most adept at organising well-attended rallies and was ably supported in its causes by numerous individually-owned newspapers which helped spread its message.

However, its extremism and outright hatred proved to be the group’s undoing and the assassination of Martin Luther Nsibirwa, the then Katikkiro of Buganda, as well as other atrocities were generally attributed to the group.

After some uprisings in 1945 in which demands for people to elect their representatives were made, the Buganda Lukiiko passed The Representative of the People to Lower Councils Law under which councillors were to be elected for the first time at county, sub-county and parish levels and later to the Buganda Lukiiko. The right to elect councillors was extended to all local councils in the country in 1949 under the African Local Government Ordinance when more powers were also conferred on them. The political consciousness which was aroused led to the formation of the Uganda National Congress in 1952. I. K. Musazi, the first president of UNC and its founder as well as many of its original members had been closely associated with the political activities of the 40s. Musazi’s Uganda Farmers’ Association was also banned in 1949. This background seems to have defined the political outlook of UNC against which a group of young turks in the party rebelled.

What is unclear to many people though is why political parties which followed assumed such a religious outlook to the point that the claim is made that they were religiously motivated. The answer may be found not in existence of religious bigotry at the time but instead in the pervasive influence of the school old boy network especially involving the two leading Christian schools, namely St. Mary’s College, Kisubi and King’s College Buddo as well as to the junior schools which served as their seedbeds for student recruitment. Between 1952 and 1960 a total of seven political parties were formed and led by people from these schools. However, when UPC was form ed in April 1960, with an ex-Mwiri College president, Apollo Milton Obote, there was a shift in the composition of leadership cadres from such schools to Mwiri and Nabumali schools, two other Christian boarding schools in the east.

Although these developments may not be conclusive in themselves, they provide useful triggers for new thinking about the history of our political parties in that the foundation of our parties was old boy school network and not religion.

This influence of religious boarding schools had permeated all aspects of the country’s life by the time Sir Andrew Cohen, a jew, became governor in 1951. One of the first things Cohen set his sights on was to try to neutralise the polarising influence of our Christian schools by opening up secular boarding schools such as Ntare, Sir Samuel Baker, Nyapea and others.

Those in the know also claim that Cohen also ensured that Ntare would produce a new type of leaders by appointing a friend from his radical student days to be headmaster. The result of Cohen’s policy can be seen in today’s political realities in which the stranglehold on political leadership by graduates of religious boarding schools has been broken. Most of the founders of the NRM went to Ntare or to the religiously liberal Nyakasura school. NB. Including the current President of Rwanda.

This fact would reinforce the suggestion that boarding schools and not religion gave the original political parties their complexion. In other words, the age-old old boy school network determined which party one joined and not his religion. This assumption is reinforced by the apparent paradox that the first secretary general of the Progressive Party which was formed by Buddonians, was Leonard Basudde and was succeeded by Lawrence Kalule Ssettaala, both catholics. Basudde received his secondary school education in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) before going to Makerere while Kalule Ssettaala went to Namiryango College which meant that the two were not within the Kisubi old boys school network whose members formed DP. Ben Kiwanuka tried to neutralise the religious complexion of DP when he became its president general. Under Kiwanuka the secretary general of DP was Balamu Mukasa while the treasurer was Stanley Bemba and Ssenteza Kajubi was special adviser.

The three were old Buddonians and protestants while Kiwanuka himself a catholic, did not go to Kisubi. The inference here is that Kiwanuka was free of the restrictive old boy school network tradition. When Kajubi joined DP in 1959 he publicly declared that he wanted to prove that DP was not a religious party. Critics of the original parties often fail to differentiate between a party formed with a religious agenda and a party which draws its support predominantly from a particular religion. A party with a religious agenda is bound to be intolerant and exclusionist and a danger to the public well-being. However, there is nothing wrong with a political party which draws its support principally from a particular religion.

Interest groups which include religious bodies are the building blocks of political parties the world over and Uganda should not be an exception. Unfortunately, unlike the case in developed countries, parties in Uganda have always suffered from lack of an ideological point of reference which can outlast its individual leaders and which are not based on transient policies .

In Britain, for example, the Conservative Party, emphasises the value of tradition and a preference for individually driven growth believing that if it is not necessary to change it it is necessary not to change. 

A Good Muganda With Historical FactsHam Mukasawww.hammukasafoundation.com

www.hgmconsult.com

Published by African Press in Norway, apn, africanpress@chello.no