The late Samwiri Karugire (1980) wrote that “To undertake to write a history of a country whose societies are so different, almost in all respects, is a task that imposes its own limitations. This means that the historian has to choose what aspects of history appear to be important and this judgement is inevitably arbitrary in many ways”. Historians should explain why they have taken a particular aspect but they should not distort or even lie.
Until very recently Europeans and Africans who studied and wrote Uganda’s history came from aristocratic families in Europe or were associated with royal courts in Uganda. At the time of Africa’s exploration and colonization, racial prejudice was intense in Europe. In the racial hierarchy Africans (Negroes) were located at the bottom of the pyramid and treated as people who had no history and civilization. Africa was therefore described as a ‘Dark Continent’ and darkness is not a subject of history. Africans were therefore described explicitly as people who lived in a state of savagery and barbarism without social organizations and achievements in arts and sciences.
Piers Brendon has given an overview of how Europeans regarded Africans. “In his account of The Negro’s Place in Nature (1863), for example, John Hunt stated that, apart from crude knowledge of metallurgy, Africans possessed ‘no art’. Mentally dormant and morally underdeveloped, they were also ‘indolent, careless, sensual, tyrannical, predatory, sullen, boisterous, and jovial’. To sustain these stale and contradictory stereotypes, Hunt provided a gross physiological description of the Negro – his small brain had a ‘smoky tint’ and his ‘unusually large’ penis had ‘mammilated eminences’ – which identified him with the ‘monkey tribe’. .. At best, it seemed, the black man must be a servitor if not actually a slave… At worst, he and his kind were doomed” (Brendon 2007).
When John Hanning Speke preoccupied with racial theories and prejudice and the first European to set foot on Uganda soil, he was perplexed by the high level of civilization including social organization. He concluded that that civilization in Buganda and elsewhere in what later became Uganda must have been the work of Europeans. He looked around for evidence – any evidence – of European presence. He found that Bahima had physical features that resembled those of Europeans. Without checking their mode of life and livelihood including level of material accumulation, housing and clothing, Speke concluded that civilization in Uganda was the work of Bahima light skinned people with thin lips and long and pointed noses, intelligent, superior and born to rule. Subsequent European explorers, administrators, missionaries and those from academic fields like Seligman concluded that all tall Ugandans must be light-skinned Bahima cattle owners, and all short ones (Bantu/Negroes) must be agriculturalists that Bahima had dubbed Bairu (slaves) of Bahima.
Bahima who claimed to be descendants of super-human Bachezi gods or semi-gods were credited with the introduction of a material culture superior to that of their predecessors. This material culture included bark cloth manufacture, the cultivation of coffee, iron working and earthwork fortifications (G. D. Were & D. A. Wilson 1968, 1970). They were also credited with establishing centralized systems of government among stateless Negro clans.
The Africans who wrote history books about Uganda or provided oral information to European researchers were either officials in the royal courts like Apolo Kagwa, Lazaro Kamugungunu, John Katuramu and Kesi Nganwa etc (Roland Oliver1997). They produced history of the aristocracy and how they ruled their subjects, all painting a rosy picture. Other African history scholars wrote about individuals like Nuwa Mbaguta who was prime minister in Ankole kingdom during the reign of Kahaya at the start of colonial rule. In Rwanda Alexis Kagame a priest and royal court historian wrote books about Rwanda’s aristocracy. The achievements of Bantu speaking people were not credited to them.
Thus, during and for a decade after independence the history taught in Uganda schools was almost exclusively about Europeans in Africa and African including Uganda kings.
During the first decade of independence in East Africa, a new breed of historians began to look at history differently indeed dialectically. In an introduction to a book titled Zamani B. A. Ogot and J. A. Kieran wrote that “Continuing research into East African history will fill in gaps in the account and change many of the ideas and interpretations that are put here forward…. It has been necessary, as the later pages explain, to abandon certain formerly accepted terms [like the Hamitic Myth] and introduce others” (Ogot and Kieran 1967).
J. E. G. Sutton observed that the terms ‘Hamites’ and ‘Hamitic influences’ had been omitted from the book because they were highly confusing and hedged with racist overtones and reflecting European presumptions of light-skinned peoples as more intelligent than dark-skinned ones. Sutton further noted that the pastoralist mode of life involving seasonal movements in search of pasture and water does not in general encourage the development of advanced material cultures or centralized systems of government (Ogot and Kieran 1967). Basil Davidson has also noted that “Being cattle-raising wonderers, these newcomers did not necessarily bring with them a higher level of culture than already existed in East African lands where they settled. Often enough, as Engaruka [a ruined settlement or a series of village settlements] suggests, they destroyed a great deal which they were quite unable to replace” (Davidson 1974).
Studies of earthwork fortifications have shown that they were initially settled by mixed farmers as evidenced by grinding stones, curved knives for harvesting cereal and pits that served as grain stores. As time passed the occupants of these fortifications graduated from mixed farming to a purely form of cattle herding by the time they occupied the Bigo site where more cattle bones have been excavated (Were & Wilson 1986, 1972; Eric Kashambuzi 2009).
Regarding manufacturing activities there is overwhelming evidence that that was the work of Bantu dubbed Bairu (slaves) (B. A. Ogot 1976). Bantu also had efficient and effective systems of government. Some had kings, other chiefs and yet others council of elders. In all cases the governance system served the community well in maintaining law and order, settling disputes when they arose and protecting the community against external aggression.
In spite of these revelations, many Europeans and others continue to credit Bahima, Batutsi and Bahororo with intelligence and superior quality of leadership at the expense of others planting or nurturing seeds of resentment in the rest of the country. Bahima and Bahororo in Uganda have dominated Uganda politics at the county and district levels in south west Uganda and now the whole country and possibly the East African federation when a final decision is taken. The story of establishing a Tutsi Empire in the Great Lakes Region is now too well known to be repeated here.
I encourage Ugandans to make time and read history. It is relatively easy because it does not contain mathematical formulas or laboratory work. It requires a minimum of computer knowledge to access the internet and locate the materials you want to read.
For a start read B. A. Ogot. Zamani A Survey of East African History 1967; B. A. Ogot Economic and Social History of East Africa 1976; General History of Africa by UNESCO Eight Volumes; History of Africa by Toyin Falola Five Volumes; A History of Sub-Saharan Africa by R. O. Collins & J. M. Burns 2007; Eric Kashambuzi Uganda’s Development Agenda 2008, Rethinking Africa’s Development Model 2009 and For Present and Future Generations 2010 . The three books are available at www.jonesharvest.com. And keep an eye on my blog www.kashambuzi.com.