Kabaka/Buganda calls off Kayunga trip
SECOND FLOOR - News just in! Buganda has issued a statement calling off the trip. They say they have failed to get guarantees for the Kabaka's safety. He who owns the guns calls the shots. Discuss.
posted by Daniel Kalinaki | 6:26 pm
3 Comments:
surely he could have ended with FOR GOD and MY Country. A statement that would have resonated a cunning but serious aligence to UGANDA.
Apropos of the previous post and this one, and taking everything in the president's speech at face-value, I must say I agree with His Excellency.
In order to become a prominent kingdom, Buganda conquered smaller tribal groups, absorbing them and taking away (by force, mind you) their sovereignity. There are certain members of these tribes who still live today and have long memories.
So, if Buganda wants to be independent from Uganda (because let's face it, this is really what this tug-of-war between Mengo and central govt is all about), is it inconceivable to the folks at Mengo that these smaller tribes whose kingdoms they raided will also clamour for independence from Buganda? Their own "federo"? Or at the very least, that they will want to publicly demand for their sovereignity back?
The whole concept of several small cultural institutions co-existing with a modern government is, in my opinion, impossible and a complete waste of time and energy. These days, nobody wants anybody to be the boss of them and because we live in a democracy, anyone can rebel against the Kabaka and the rest of his club in a court of law.
Servitude has no place in a democracy where we choose the leaders we want. In principle that is. So what then is the role of these chiefdoms? To remind us of our heydays before colonialism? To provide a medium for sequestering ever-diminishing resources in the hands of one tribe? If only ordinary Ugandans applied the same fervor and ingenuity they have for their tribes and kings to dragging themselves out of poverty...
If we keep pulling every which way based on tribe, cohesion as a nation, let alone as a region, will never take place. Ugandans need to stop being so damn short-sighted, and that includes the Kabaka, who by the way, is coming off this saga looking like a puppet with the Lukiiko as the grand puppet-master.
And forget genocide; we keep going the way we are going and the watchword will be apartheid.
He who owns the guns does not call the shots.
It’s just that Kabaka Ronald Mutebi II is posh. He cannot afford to be accosted be robots.
GUNS: If the International Community had not tricked Raila Odinga to work as an equal with Emilio Kibaki, Raila’s supporters were ready to continue battling with not just the licensed armed thugs, but also to butcher the other civilians.
In Uganda’s recent national drama, government hooligans got away with blocking the Kabaka because even the photojournalists and television crews who could have documented every nasty bit were just as unsafe from the criminals as they were from the police, CMI, ISO and Police Kiboko dimwits.
Fujitsu reasoned, well, that Baganda just wanna secede from Uganda. And that like Buganda, the smaller tribal groups Buganda conquered will one day want to secede.
But, unlike Buganda, how prosperous are the other kingdoms regions? Bunyoro is the only other that stands out because of oil discoveries. And things there are bubbling.
It is not that all investments in Buganda are by Baganda. But, still, there are substantial investments in Buganda.
I stay in Jinja, the seat of Busoga Kingdom. This National Resistance Movement government has, it seems deliberately, run down the place. It has cleared Namanve greenery when UIA could have referred those investors to Jinja, where Madhvani once offered Tri Star premises.
Don’t hang me. Some paper reported it. And Madhvani did not refute the report. President Museveni, being the force behind Kananathan, insisted on Bugolobi. It is posh, alright. But the reasoning was twisted.
Just imagine; you buy that Bravia, next a Golf GT. You follow this with a sleek apple ultra slim laptop and three touch screen cell-phones. You are investing. All this time, you are still staying with your old folks.
Some time, later, you will want to ‘secede’. You need room for these investments. To enjoy them, just you – looking at them and feeling fulfilled.
That is my simplistic understanding of Buganda’s clamour for federalism. But writing has to be simple – the highly educated are few. So I needed not write like I am doing it for a PhD audience.
Now if like the poor bloke in the Gospel of St. Luke, you have got nothing save the clothes on your back, you cannot afford a standoff with your parents – however much they harass you.
That, again, my simplistic understanding of why the other Kingdoms or Chiefdoms are not as aggressive as their elder sibling - Buganda. Their assets are not as many and of as high a premium as Buganda’s.
Fujistu, we don’t live in a democracy. My point of reference is Buganda. 65 percent of these ordinary folks told Odoki and Ssempebwa that they want federalism for their region. Mind you, central government commissioned the consultative process which came up with those findings.
That bull about democracy would have dictated that central government grants Buganda federal status. They are still clamouring for it, right?
Servitude is still with us, Fujitsu. If it weren’t, we could all be the Presidents of this country at any one particular time.
The United States of America was originally inhabited by American Indians, history books tell me. Now many descendants of immigrants count themselves more American than the American Indians. I don’t know much about the Aborigines of Australia.
We can identify ourselves by tribe but at the same time appreciate that the differences colour life. Just imagine going to Karamoja and you see naked men and women bathing by a shallow well as though it was at some nudist camp in Germany.
Fujistu rounds off saying that Lukiiko comes off as the grand puppet master.
You see, unlike the central government which is firmly between President Museveni’s thumb and forefinger, in Buganda there is the Lukiiko. The Kabaka can appoint members to this Lukiiko. But they can stand up to him.
Does Uganda also need a stronger Parliament which does not wooden stamp the President’s every wish?
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