Why did the British come to Uganda?
This is a question we were asked, and expected to answer in our primary school social studies classes. we’d go on to list the answers we had crammed, but never interrogated to pass the exams.
The answers are grouped under economic, social, and political reasons. they included; to secure control of valuable resources such as ivory and rubber, establish a presence in the region to counter the influence of other European powers such as Germany and France, to establish legitimate trade in East Africa, to spread Christianity and Western civilisation, and so forth.
History classes were some of my favourite, and so between the ages of eight to thirteen, I immersed myself in hearing and trying to understand this question.
We would go on to learn about direct and indirect rule which had been applied so as to govern, the introduction of cash groups which we grew and they exported, and the many other changes, discoveries and introductions. we wrote on about the schools they had built, speaking in a language they had introduced to us. these were the good things. the others which had happened; the stripping away of selves, cultures, identities; the mass murder, violences and abuses meted in order to meet this agenda; the extraction, exploitation of territories; the displacement of people, and so forth, and so forth we never really got into. these other things had after all resulted into us being more ”civilised”. we were after all introduced to a new language and God.
Thinking back at it now, there were many strange and damaging ways in which we accepted this question, and the answers. While we went on to somewhat passively acknowledge that there were things that had existed pre, we did not ever interrogate the lasting ways in which we had been so changed, altered so severely by this foreign invasion that came, and then stayed. we still learn to this day that Britain’s John Speke discovered the source of the Nile. Of course if thought through logically, this should be nothing short of a laughable conjure of falsehoods, even if simply based on the fact that those who had for eons relied on the Nile had never thought it to be missing, so how then could a man foreign to it, discover it. but it is not, laughable. we have believed it to be so true, that we teach it still, to ourselves.
so these are not logical things. and they are also lasting things. they have shaped and altered so much of who we are, and what we know to be true of our worlds. we learn(t), believed and practiced that which we were taught.
This of course, was, and is the intended result of why the British came to Uganda. To spread Christianity, and spread it they did. it is blasphemous for me to ask what we knew and prayed to before we had men in crimson robes speaking Latin to us. The schools they built punish us for speaking in languages that are native to us, so we are sometimes even more english, than the English. We still export the cash crops, we still must pledge allegiance. Even in their perceived departure, through the declaration of independence, things have but stayed, as was intended and distorted.
More and more, as I reflect back on all that which we were taught, in social studies classes and beyond, what it creates is a story (mine and yours, we who have been so changed) that essentially starts in the 1800s, when we were introduced, (perhaps even invaded by) to the explorers and missionaries.
(I must take a deep breath, and step away, in order to stop spinning)
Before the 1850s, there was no such thing as Uganda. of course too these nation states to which we are now beholden, are a figment of the colonial imagination; institutions and systems mimicked out of something that is not entirely our own. This makes it even harder, and perhaps more necessary to find the answers to these my existential questions. again I am asking; what existed before; what can be salvaged; learnt from; what could we return to, perhaps. it is partly existential because the truths have been so intentionally erased, or kept away. partly because the more you ask, the more you ask. if I did not feel the need to dream something more recognisable, with more life, for myself, I would have settled with this being enough.
It is not. and so I search, and ask.
Nyowe ndi omunya nkore. presently that means I am from Ankole, current day south-west of Uganda. there are many complexities that come from my being this, this which is a core part of me. many of them tied to Uganda, and the distortions and creations; lasting effects of why the British came, and distorted to create Uganda. that is but only a part of it. I sit in the truth of what this present reality that comes with this identification as brings and means, while knowing that it is not the entirety of me, or mine. If I begin to trace, going past the rigidity that was created by borders and territories as were dived up by our colonial masters, there is so much more. I am slowly doing the tracings and making discoveries by talking to my people. there are some answers that are still with those who are still living. in learning for instance that turi Abahinda, I have sourced deeper answers that travel a little further. the more you seek, the more you seek. there are many answers that lie with those who are not, (still living), which fuels further the needing to ask, and know.
Why I ask and answer, interrogating fully why the British came, is to allow myself the chance at dreaming something else. when I seek answers, I am working to support my belief in our ability to create something beyond this which we now have. beyond the entrapment to violences and injustices. I ask so that I may know, and be grounded in a fuller truth and knowing that goes beyond these limitations that have been made to be mine, and perhaps, yours.