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a Bantu kingdom within Uganda, the kingdom of Baganda people
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Buganda is a Bantu kingdom within Uganda. The kingdom of the Baganda people, Buganda is the largest of the traditional kingdoms in present-day East Africa, consisting of Uganda's Central Region, including the Ugandan capital Kampala. The 14 million Baganda (singular Muganda; often referred to simply by the root word and adjective, Ganda) make up the largest Ugandan region, representing approximately 16% of Uganda's population.
Buganda's history includes unification around the 13th century by the first king, Kato Kintu, the founder of Buganda's Kintu dynasty, and Buganda grew to become one of the largest and most powerful states in East Africa during the 18th and the 19th centuries. During the Scramble for Africa, and following unsuccessful attempts to retain its independence against British imperialism, Buganda became the centre of the Protectorate of Uganda in 1884; the name "Uganda", the Swahili term for Buganda, was adopted by British officials. Under British rule, many Baganda acquired status as colonial administrators, and Buganda became a major producer of cotton and coffee, and it continues to be Uganda's greatest coffee producer. In the financial year 2023/2024, the region produced over 3,170,000 bags of Robusta. Baganda through the Prime Minister and Katikkiro Charles Peter Mayiga's campaign of Emwaanyi Terimba actively participated in coffee production which in the end has brought about a significant extension in the country's coffee exports.
In 1967, Uganda's first Prime Minister Milton Obote declared Uganda a republic, abolished all monarchs, parliament became the constituent assembly and later all political parties were outlawed except the Uganda People's Congress.
Following years of political turmoil, the kingdom, which largely occupies a ceremonial role, was officially restored in 1993 by Uganda's ruling National Resistance Movement under Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda since 1986.
Since the restoration of the kingdom in 1993, the King of Buganda, known as the Kabaka, has been Muwenda Mutebi II. He is recognized as the 36th Kabaka of Buganda. The current queen, known as the Nnabagereka or Kaddulubale is Queen Sylvia Nagginda.
It was a rich country, the most favoured part of the Lakeland, which is the most favoured part of Africa. Thanks to the great inland sea that the Ganda call Nalubaale, 'Mother of the gods', it enjoys a very reliable supply of rain. Being on the Equator it is warm all the year round, but as it is around 4,000 feet above sea-level it is never oppressively hot. And if climate has been kind, geology has been even kinder. Buganda is a land of small green hills, each rising some 200-400 feet above the valley floor. Many are flat-topped; for the land was once a plateau that has mostly crumbled away. As a result, the long slopes are covered with soils that are young and well supplied with plant nutrients. Deep, well structured, not easily eroded, they support a lush vegetation of which the characteristic feature is tenfoot-tall Elephant grass.
Ganda villages, sometimes as large as forty to fifty homes, were generally located on hillsides, leaving hilltops and swampy lowlands uninhabited, to be used for crops or pastures. Early Ganda villages surrounded the home of a chief or headman, which provided a common meeting ground for members of the village. The chief collected tribute from his subjects, provided tribute to the Kabaka, who was the ruler of the kingdom, distributed resources among his subjects, maintained order, and reinforced social solidarity through his decision-making skills. During the late 19th century, Ganda villages became more dispersed as the role of the chiefs diminished in response to political turmoil, population migration, and occasional popular revolts.
Buganda's boundaries are marked by the Tanzanian border in Lake Victoria (Lake Nalubaale) to the south, the River Nile (River Kiira) to the east, Lake Kyoga to the north, Ankole to the west and River Kafu to the northwest.
Buganda was by far the most powerful kingdom/empire in the Great Lakes region of Africa with the most advanced and sophisticated state institutions. Most neighboring kingdoms paid tribute to the Ganda kings; even the powerful Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom sent their tribute with Kabaka Mutesa boasting of Mukama Kumurasi of Bunyoro paying tribute to him. Unlike Bunyoro, which validated tribute from other states via claims from myth and traditional history, Buganda subjugated its neighbors by using violence or the threat of violence to terrorize their neighbors into sending tribute.
Beyond Buganda's borders, there was a wide domain of influence and depredation. Kabakas launched regular raids and interfered in succession disputes to secure pliant puppet rulers. There were sizeable kingdoms to Bugandas east, but they were still not comparable to Buganda. To the west were drier grasslands where large herds of long-horned Ankole cattle were poorly defended by the Kingdom of Ankole. The Ankole kingdom would send large herds of cattle, in order to keep the peace with the kings of Buganda. The western and southern kingdoms were minuscule and raided unmercifully by Buganda's army. Rumanika, the king of Karagwe, told John Hanning Speke that the Baganda "have been making constant raids, seizing cattle and slaves from the surrounding countries". The Haya kingdoms on the coasts of the Kagera Region could not offer any resistance to Buganda's attacks by land and sea. Within the interior of the Kagera Region, The larger Kingdom of Karagwe acknowledged Buganda's superior power and accepted its suzerainty.
The once great kingdom of Bunyoro lay to Bugandas northwest frontier and was always on the defensive, being constantly raided by Buganda's armies. The Banyoro angrily referred to Buganda as "Mhwahwa" (land of wild dogs) due to this. Buganda assisted a rebel prince in breaking away from Bunyoro and forming the Tooro Kingdom. This was of great benefit for Buganda and gave it more secure access to strategic trade routes while weakening its rival.
Busoga supplied Buganda with slaves as a form of tribute, to palliate and strike bon accord with the Baganda.
The Basoga never entered Uganda [Buganda] without bringing large numbers of goats and cows as presents, and they often brought slaves too. The King [Kabaka] frequently demanded cattle and women of them, and thus obtained much wealth. Whenever a principal chief in Busoga died, there was much quarreling as to who should be his successor; and these disputes brought wealth to Uganda, whither each aspirant came to have his claims investigated.
Even areas as distant as the Kenyan border were not safe from Ganda invasions and plunder.
The region of Buganda was inhabited by Bantu peoples from the 6th century CE, who made Urewe pottery. Baganda oral traditions hold the founder of the kingdom to have been Kato Kintu, who accordingly migrated from the north-eastern direction of Mount Elgon, leading various clans. In the region of Buganda he found various indigenous clans (banansangwawo), said to have had thirty kings prior to Kintu's arrival. Kintu defeated their last king, Bemba Musota. Likely founded between the 12th and 14th centuries, Buganda was initially a small kingdom covering the counties of Kyadondo, Busiro, and Mawokota. Further clans migrated in from the east. According to tradition, Kintu disappeared after having founded the kingdom. Prominent scholars such as Apollo Kaggwa and Lloyd Fallers consider Buganda's dynasty to have been local in origin, developing from primus inter pares patrilineal groups, which corroborates with the power clan heads had in Buganda's early history.
Elizabeth Isichei said that it is likely that the Buganda state is much more ancient than had previously been thought, and that Buganda began as a small kingdom in the north of Lake Victoria in what is now Busiro County. Christopher Wrigley wrote "A political structure of some sort, small in scale and mainly ritual in function, may be taken to have existed in northern Busiro, where the ancient shrines are clustered, at a time far beyond the reach of historical tradition...the rituals of Ganda kingship are both too elaborate and too archaic in character to have been evolved within the past few centuries."
Banyoro oral history (from Buganda's historical rival, Bunyoro-Kitara) says that Kimera, Buganda's third king, came from Bunyoro following the collapse of the Chwezi dynasty of Kitara, leading some clans to found a new Babiito dynasty in Buganda. This is fiercely contested by the Baganda, whose king list documents an unbroken line of 36 kings descending from Kintu, and some have called it "patriotic fiction".
Baganda oral history says that Buganda was distinct and of at least equal antiquity to Kitara. It has no mention of the Chwezi, and according to the historian Christopher Wrigley, "It is unlikely that Buganda was integrated into the system that was probably not called Kitara. Its language is distinct from 'Rutara', and the directors of the Ntusi and Bigo systems would not have had much interest in a land that was not really suited to cattle-rearing".
In the 16th century, Bunyoro invaded Buganda, killing Kabaka Nakinge, however Buganda managed to maintain its independence. After this, it began to expand, as Bunyoro-Kitara entered into decline. Much of this expansion was at the expense of Bunyoro-Kitara, and occurred during the reigns of Kimbugwe, Katerega, and Mutebi during the 17th and 18th centuries. Among those conquered was Buddu, parts of Busoga, and parts of the Karagwe, while Kooki was made a tributary. Defeated rulers were replaced with military leaders, which contributed to the increasing unity of the state. Historically, the Banyoro of Bunyoro-Kitara were the Baganda's most hated and despised enemies. They were so hated that the word "Nyoro" became a synonym for "foreigner" and was used to refer to all other tribes whether they were truly ethnic Nyoro or not.
By the 19th century, Buganda was an "embryonic empire". It built fleets of war canoes from the 1840s to take control of Lake Victoria and the surrounding regions and subjugated several weaker peoples. These subject peoples were then exploited for cheap labor. The first Europeans to enter the Kingdom of Buganda were British explorers John Hanning Speke and Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton while searching for the headwaters of the Nile in 1862. They found a highly organized political system.
After Buganda conquered Buddu, it was able to launch raids deep into western Uganda. Kabaka Suna II invaded and plundered the kingdom of Nkore three times. Buganda would eventually conquer territory away from Nkore such as Kabula and significant parts of the Bwera kingdom, whose grazing lands had been used by Hima pastoralists. Mutumbuka, the Mugabe (king) of Nkore, died in 1870, causing a succession crisis which Buganda took advantage of. King Mutesa sent an envoy to intercede. The purpose of the peace envoy was to make a blood brotherhood with Makumbi, who was the leader of the Nkore delegation and one of the legitimate claimants to be the next king of Nkore. Buganda secretly ordered its envoy to massacre as many of Makumbi's followers as possible (to support Makumbi's rival, Mukwenda, who was the pretender to the throne supported by Buganda). The meeting was set in Kabula, where Makumbi's supporters were led into a trap, resulting in over 70 leaders, including 20 princes, being slaughtered. It was "the height of treachery that was difficult to forget" in the Banyankole's eyes. Even in modern times, Banyankole elders were still lamenting the massacre, saying, "Only the Baganda could have thought of such a thing."
Europeans admired Buganda and often praised the kingdom, considering it the pinnacle of "native political evolution." Early travel, missionary, and colonial accounts often called the Baganda the "most advanced and intelligent of all central African societies."
To Europeans, the Baganda belonged to a distinct political and social order and were thus privileged over other ethnic and cultural groups in the region. Henry Morton Stanley described the Baganda as "an extraordinary people, as different from the barbarous pirates of Uvuma, and the wild, mop-headed men of Eastern Usukuma, as the British in India are from their Afridi fellow-subjects, or the white Americans of Arkansas from the semi-civilized Choctaws."
Perhaps one of the best organised and most civilised of African kingdoms at the present day. In fact, putting aside the empires of Abyssinia and Morocco (as entirely independent states ranking with other world powers), Uganda would take a high place among those purely Negro kingdoms which retain any degree of national rule.
Colonel Lambkin and the explorer Harry Johnston both described the Baganda as the black Japanese or "the Japanese of the dark continent" and "the most naturally civilized, charming, kind, tactful, and courteous of black people." Frederick Lugard claimed that Buganda was "probably the most civilised of any native state in Africa."
Former US President Theodore Roosevelt was amazed by the kingdom when he visited Africa in 1909, claiming that Buganda stood "far above most … in their capacity for progress towards civilization." Visiting Buganda had a profound impact on him and compelled him to rethink his negative views of African people, and even African Americans in the United States. The reality of Buganda's political sophistication commanded his respect.
Buganda was colonized by the British and made a protectorate of the United Kingdom in 1884. The move towards independence reached a climax when the Lukiiko, the parliament of Buganda appointed the Buganda Constitutional Committee in 1959 and later declared independence on 8 October 1960 and requested that the British protectorate be terminated.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Buganda”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.