I had gone to an optician in the local mall to collect my new glasses. They told me an employee was bringing them over from the workshop, but had got caught up in a riot. We’ll call you when they’re ready, they told me. Outside in the street, Kampala’s down-town traffic was getting away fast. It was 3:00 PM on Thursday, September 10. By 7:00 PM the streets were deserted; only gun-shots could be heard, and the smoke from teargas and burning tires. Kampalans love music and every night, there’s a drum beat or Lingala rhythm somewhere in the distance. Not Thursday night.
On Friday business didn’t take off; shooting throughout the day. No music on Friday night, the first time in the past 25 years. The whole day everyone was asking each other: would the Kabaka go to this remote corner of his kingdom, Kayunga, and thereby challenge the military and risk more bloodshed or would he cancel the visit for humanitarian reasons? Neither, as it happened. He decided to postpone the visit, but still plans to go.
Saturday morning we heard the Kabaka wouldn’t go. Relief! But no, more gunshots, this time right outside my house. Someone had spread the rumor that the Kabaka had been arrested; others were disappointed he’d put off the visit, hoping for a show-down. Shoot-outs the whole morning. There came a thunderstorm, which dampened spirits. Fighting stopped, just in time for the Arsenal-Manchester City soccer match, live on DSTV. The rioters lay down their rocks and stones. All the same, no music Saturday either. Just in case………………
Sunday was peaceful.
Total count: by Monday, over twenty dead and 550 arrested; thirty vehicles and other property destroyed.
Why the riots? Because a head-of-state refuses to allow a local king, whose powers are cultural not political, to travel freely within his own kingdom, a kingdom which the present head-of-state himself restored in 1993. The Baganda are Uganda’s largest “ethnic group”, or as they will tell you “nation”, and are very proud of their tradition. The capital of Uganda, Kampala, happens to be in the center of their kingdom, and where their parliament is. The kingdom goes back 700 years. When the British arrived over one hundred years ago, they were impressed by the kingdom’s organisation and many aspects of the culture of the Baganda, made an agreement with them and used their services for the administration of the rest of the protectorate.
Any national ruler of the Republic of Uganda has to learn how to cope with the “Baganda factor”. One Muganda explained to me that, strictly speaking, the king, being of royal blood, cannot just answer the phone call of the president, who is a “commoner”; he must deal with him through the king’s ministers. For President Museveni, who is a soldier who won Uganda’s present peace through a bush war, this is hard to swallow. But many Baganda gave their lives for this war, and think they should be rewarded for this. The reward was to restore their kingdom and leader, with his cultural powers, and have this enshrined in the constitution. Not to allow their king to travel freely within his kingdom, because a minority group (some 2.7 per cent of the Kayunga population) threatens to endanger his life is a lame excuse, and a betrayal of a promise. The army and police are there to protect the king, not prevent him from travelling because they say they cannot guarantee his safety.
Who were the rioters? The “bayaye”, uneducated, unemployed youth who have drifted into city looking for work or who were raised in the slums, who have nothing to lose, and even welcome arrest, since it gives them publicity; and three nights in a police cell removes worries about where they’ll find food. For them throwing rocks at police and setting vehicles on fire, or roughing up passers-by who refuse to join them in the mayhem is a break from the usual boredom. Besides, lobbing stones at police and ducking the bullets and tear gas, and playing hide-and seek in the ever-expanding shanties within Kampala makes up for the traditional rural initiation they missed out on by growing up in the city’s back alleyways.
The Baganda factor won’t go away. It’s as deep as “roots”, even among the young generation; it gives them an identity they would otherwise not have. The present regime has just acted rashly, and lost Baganda goodwill. The presidential and general elections are due in eighteen months’ time, and every presidential move is judged in this light, especially this latest one.
President Museveni should be reaching out to the Baganda, not alienating them. The fact that four Luganda radio stations have been closed will alienate even further, including Radio Sapienta, a Catholic one, and a radio talk-show host charged with sedition will only add oil to the flames. These are the radio stations public taxi passengers listen to while going to work; they are a forum for debate. The riots may have stopped, but a further thoughtless, stray spark could start off another fire.
Martyn Drakard is a freelance writer based in Africa.
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