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Phoenix from the Ashes: Rediscovery of the Lost Lukiiko Archives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Michael W. Tuck  and
John A. Rowe
Michael W. Tuck
Affiliation:
Northeastern Illinois University
John A. Rowe
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

On 24 May 1966 the 500-year-old kingdom of Buganda came to an end. That was the day that Prime Minister Obote sent Colonel Idi Amin to attack the Mengo palace of Kabaka Frederick Mutesa, who was also the President of Uganda. A 120-man bodyguard defended the Kabaka; Amin had automatic and heavy weapons. Nevertheless, Obote was much annoyed that the palace held out against Amin's troops. An audience watched the battle from nearby hilltops, where expatriates and others brought out folding chairs, until a mid-afternoon thunderstorm sent everyone scurrying for cover. The Kabaka used this interruption to scale the rear wall of Mengo palace, where he hailed a passing taxicab and set off for Burundi and ultimately exile in London. Obote divided Buganda into two separate districts (East Mengo and West Mengo), promoted Amin, and gave him the palace as a barracks for his “paratroop” battalion, and more importantly also gave him Buganda's legislative hall—the Bulange—to become Amin's national military headquarters.

The casualties in the “battle of Mengo” were certainly few in number compared to the destruction Amin would wreak after his coup in 1971. But one invisible casualty of the Bulange occupation was especially significant for historians. The Bulange was not only the seat of the Lukiiko, the Ganda legislature, it was also the storage building for the Buganda government archives, which went back to the 1890s, and were still well organized anu maintained in 1956-58 when Peter Gutkind made use of them for his doctoral research. By 1963 storage space was becoming scarce when Rowe made several visits to Shaykh Ali Kulumba, the Speaker of the Lukiiko. Shaykh Kulumba opened up cupboards and closets packed with archival folders from floor to ceiling. Clearly the archives were still being preserved, but organization and access had suffered. Three years later, when Amin occupied the Bulange, he simply destroyed the entire archive—the historical record of sixty years of Buganda government ceased to exist.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 32 , 2005 , pp. 403 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2005

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References

1 Young, M. Crawford, “The Obote Revolution,” Africa Report (June 1966)Google Scholar. The Kabaka of Buganda, Desecration of My Kingdom (London, 1967), 9–16Google Scholar.

2 Gutkind, Peter, The Royal Capital of Buganda (Hague, 1963)Google Scholar. See, for example, reference notes on pages 20, 26, and 28, and for the Lukiiko of the 1920s, 57, 71, and 72, among others.

3 18 September 1963; 7 November 1963; 30 May 1964; 5 June 1964.

4 When the Tanzanian Defence Force liberated Kampala in 1979 they found a sign at the Bulange entrance on which Amin signaled his attitude: “NO ADMITTANCE TO POLITICIANS AND OTHER DISREPUTABLES” (Rowe, personal observation).

5 Personal information from Martin Sebugwawo, acting archivist, ESA, 1963.

6 The surviving archive was reportedly at Soroti; personal communication to Rowe from Michael Twaddle, although any errors are the responsibility of Rowe.

7 In the modern orthography the spelling is Lukiiko. Some sources use the older spelling of Lukiko, which we retain in quoted material.

8 Haydon, Edwin Scott, Law and Justice in Buganda (London, 1960), 9–10Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 19-20.

10 Ibid., 21-22.

11 Low, D.A., “The Making and Implementation of the Uganda Agreement of 1900: in D. Anthony Low and R. Cranford Pratt, Buganda and British Overrule, 1900-1955: Two Studies (London, 1960), 128Google Scholar.

12 The translators themselves were Makerere students: one person translated Notebook 1, a second translated Notebooks 2-5, and a third, Mr. J.M. Musoke, the son of Simon Musoke, who was a senior translator and Research Assistant at EAISR, translated the eight remaining notebooks and 1 carbon copy, up to 21 February 1918. The additional carbon copy, which extended the record three months beyond November 1917, was missed in Rowe's typescript copy and no longer exists.

13 The New Vision (Kampala), 30 June 2003Google Scholar.

14 Low, , “Uganda Agreement,” 128Google Scholar.

15 Twaddle, Michael, “The Ending of Slavery in Buganda” in Miers, Suzanne and Roberts, Richard, eds. The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1988), 138–39Google Scholar.

16 Research at the Mill Hill archives was funded by a Bernadotte E. Schmitt grant from the American Historical Association, to whom we offer thanks. Many thanks also must go to the archivist and administrators at Mill Hill for allowing access to their records. For more about the Mill Hill mission and its personnel see Gale, H.P., Uganda and the Mill Hill Fathers (London, 1959)Google Scholar. Tuck would also like to thank the students in his historical methods course who helped him work through the sources.

17 The diaries can be found in the box labeled: UGA-Box 5, “Vicariate of the Upper Nile, 1901-1902 Nsambya Diary, Father Thomas Matthews, 12 books,” in the archives at Mill Hill.

18 Theyare in UGA-Box 9.

19 They are in the file marked “History IV 1904-1906” at the Catholic Bishop's office, Rubaga Diocese, Jinja, Uganda.

20 Low, Anthony “The Composition of the Buganda Lukiko in 1902,” Uganda Journal 23(1959), 64–68Google Scholar.

21 For more on sources for Ganda history see Rowe, John A., “Myth, Memoir and Moral Admonition: Luganda Historical Writing 1893-1969,” Uganda Journal 33(1969), 17-40, 217–19Google Scholar.

22 Hanson, Holly Elisabeth, Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth, NH, 2003)Google Scholar.

23 The song was sung for Rowe by Semu Kakoma on 30 March 1964 at Kakiri in Busiro country, Uganda.

24 Kagwa Papers, correspondence, Box A, CA70-74, Makerere University Library archives room.