The current Kabaka, King Ronald Mutesi
“I’m Muganda,” a co-worker told me on my first day of work, beaming with pride. “I’m Anand. Nice to meet you,” I replied. I, of course, thought that Muganda was her name until I found out that Muganda is what you call a member of the Baganda tribe in the Buganda kingdom. Like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, politics and allegiances often fall along tribal lines in Uganda. This is in interesting contrast to Tanzania, where its first president, Julius Nyerere, promoted socialism for the first 20 years of the country’s existence. He abolished tribalism and then unified the country by making Swahili the national language. Such was not the case in Uganda, and that seems to be more typical of a country in this region.
The largest tribe, the Baganda, dominate Kampala and the central region of the country. They are probably the proudest and most vocal of the tribes, paying their respects to the Buganda King, known as the Kabaka. His picture is all over the place – necklaces, keychains, barber shop walls, and inside taxi cabs. The Buganda kingdom was prosperous and well-governed until Milton Obote, Uganda’s second (and fourth) president, attacked the Kabaka’s palace and sent him into exile in the UK where he was subsequently poisoned and died. It wasn’t until the 1990s when the Kabaka’s son, Ronald Mutebi, came back to restore the monarchy, although his position is now largely ceremonious. In somewhat of a reversal of Coming to America, Mutebi, who had been raised in the UK, came back to undergo the traditional coronation ceremony of the Baganda.
The Kabaka was overthrown, the palace overtaken, and a prison was built on the grounds by Amin
But the Baganda are not the most powerful tribe – that distinction apparently goes without argument to the Banyankole of western Uganda. It is the tribe of the current president, Museveni. Then there are the Busogas, the Acholis, the Bakenye, the Batooro, and about a dozen others. There is also a north-south divide in Uganda, where the southern tribes are clearly better off than their less-educated, poorer northern brothers. Both Obote and Amin were from the north, so obviously that did not bode well for the north’s political reputation. Uganda is far from a homogeneous population. The languages are both Bantu-based and Nilotic. Because they vary so much, English is used as a unifying language and Swahili is used within the military and police forces. There is a very visible Somali community in Kampala. The Somalis are mostly refugees who crossed through Kenya, where apparently immigration law is harsher, and settled down in a more permissive Uganda. A portion of our patients at Mengo are Somali, but communication is difficult since the Ugandans do not speak Somali, and the Somalis usually don’t speak English or Luganda. The July 2010 bombings in Kampala by Al-Shabaab, a Somali based militant group, struck fear into Ugandans and unfortunately created a negative perception against the large locally-based Somali population. It’s hard to tell whether that sentiment is subsiding or not. The Somalis are concentrated in a part of the city called Kisenyi, also known as “Little Mogadishu.”
The Buganda Kingdom
There are smaller numbers of Rwandans and Congolese, and they speak Swahili and French. Their populations are logically larger near Uganda’s borders, but they have a presence in Kampala, as well. The South Sudanese are probably the most visible, simply because they tower over their Ugandan counterparts. I know that Dutch people are apparently the tallest in the world, but I think they face some stiff competition. On the other end of the height spectrum, there is a community of pygmies near the western borders of Uganda. Everything seems to fall along tribal lines, and even in a big city like Kampala where one would imagine such distinctions disappear, that’s not necessarily the case. I can definitely see why it’s important for some people to maintain tribal identity, as each group has different traditions and distinct cultures to take pride in, but then at the same time, unity and equity seem to suffer.
