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Political Landscape, Court Music, and Research Collaborators
The Kingdom of Buganda, located in south-central Uganda, has somewhat unclear origins, but historians suggest it originated from Bantu clans dating back to around AD 1000. According to oral tradition, Kato Ruhuuga, from the neighboring Kingdom of Bunyoro, became the first hereditary leader of Buganda in the early fourteenth century, later taking the name Kintu. Buganda grew significantly between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and by the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries had expanded to include areas of the Bunyoro Kingdom. Its strategic location on the northern shores of Lake Victoria, fertile soil, and ability to absorb foreign influences contributed to its becoming the strongest kingdom in the region. The nineteenth century brought Arab traders, who introduced Islam, followed by Christian missionaries: first Anglican (1877) and then Catholic (1879). These religious influences set the groundwork for colonial rule.
When Uganda became a British protectorate in 1894, the British implemented indirect rule through Buganda’s existing power structures. The Uganda Agreement of 1900 was crucial, giving Buganda “special status” within the protectorate and recognizing traditional institutions, including the monarchy. This agreement held great symbolic meaning for the Baganda people. Between the 1900s and 1950s, tensions grew between colonial administrators and the Buganda government. One significant conflict led to the 1953 arrest and exile of Buganda’s king, Sir Edward Muteesa II (r. 1939–1966), by Governor Andrew Cohen, who wanted to integrate Buganda more closely into Uganda’s structures. This exile severely destabilized Buganda’s sociopolitical hierarchy until the king’s return in 1955.
Uganda gained independence in 1962, with Muteesa II becoming the country’s first president. Apollo Milton Obote, a member of the Lango ethnic group, became his executive prime minister. However, conflict soon arose between Muteesa II’s conservative supporters and Prime Minister Milton Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress. In 1966, Obote ordered the national army under Idi Amin to attack the king’s palace, forcing Muteesa II into exile in Britain, where he died in 1969. In 1967 Obote imposed a new republican constitution that terminated both the federal system and the country’s kingdoms, leading to Buganda’s becoming politically moribund for decades.
The post-independence period saw rapid political changes. For example, Idi Amin (president 1971–1979) initially gained Baganda support by returning Muteesa II’s body to Uganda, but he never reinstated the monarchy. After Amin’s overthrow, several short-lived presidencies followed, including those of Baganda leaders Yusuf Lule and Godfrey Binaisa. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni seized power in 1986 after a military campaign based in Buganda. In 1993, President Museveni’s government restored the formerly abolished kingdoms, allowing for the enthronement of Ronald Mutebi II as king. However, the federal system established by the 1900 Agreement, which had given Buganda considerable autonomy, was never restored.
Contemporary Buganda retains its cultural significance but has less of its original political power, which now primarily rests with Uganda’s central government. The Baganda still recognize the king as their leader—the apex of Buganda’s sociopolitical hierarchy, which is grounded in the intertwined institutions of kinship, clanship, and kingship. This structure, along with the kingdom’s division into eighteen counties, continues to be an important feature of sociopolitical organization in the region.
1Kafumbe 2018, xxiv–xxviii.