Why Museveni doesn't have to apologise for speaking Luganda

Suppose every Kenyan president made a quarter of his national address in Gikuyu! Or if every Tanzanian president made a large portion of his speech to the nation in Kichagga or Kisukuma! That is what happens in Uganda.

With the exception of General Tito Okello who only ruled for six months, all our presidents have had to use our equivalent of Gikuyu and Chagga, called Luganda.

There is one other near exception — Dr Apollo Milton Obote. He never spoke Luganda in public but he must have used it during the most important moments of his life – that is with his family, and while courting Miria Kalule Obote, who is from the Buganda aristocracy.

The greatest champion of Luganda was Field Marshall Idi Amin. He initiated a weeks-long national debate on a national language in which he spiritedly rooted for Luganda.

His reason for preferring the language was that he only knew one word in Luganda —“obutiiti” (waist beads women wear under their clothes to enhance male arousal), making it the richest language he knew…

While in New York to address the general assembly, Amin spoke Luganda, which only Uganda’s permanent representative to the UN, Yunus Kinene, could understand.

But back in Kampala, Amin announced with deep regret, that the Defence Council had opted for Kiswahili as the national language instead of Luganda, and so, being a democratic man, he had acquiesced to their wishes. Of course, Amin was also the Defence Council.

Amin’s immediate successor, Prof Yusuf Lule, used Luganda at his swearing-in ceremony and many non-Baganda never forgave him.

The message he gave in Luganda, which was different from his English speech, did a lot to annoy the people.

He quoted a Kiganda proverb to the effect that the tree that required an axe to cut had been felled by a storm, meaning that what the Baganda feared was hard to attain had come with minimal effort on their part.

Lule’s shrewd successor, Godfrey Binaisa, knew that you need to speak Luganda in Kampala but without offending non-Baganda.

So at the end of his public speeches, he would ask for permission to “repeat what I said for those who paid for us to learn English but never had the opportunity to learn it themselves…”

Gen Tito Okello remained true to his fellow general, who declared Kiswahili the national language, and spoke it in public with a little English.

In comes Yoweri Museveni. He has used Luganda more effectively than any president, or any Ugandan for that matter.

At the beginning of the armed struggle, he debated with the late Andrew Kayira, another guerrilla chief, before the Baganda elders in the bush over the approach to the protracted war. Museveni’s Luganda could not have been as good then as it now is.

But he floored Kayira, a Muganda, and got the support of the Baganda elders and their children, and eventually the presidency.

When he addresses the public, the confident Museveni does not need to first apologise for using Luganda. He just talks.

There are occasions at a press conference with foreigners when he switches to Luganda to conspire with or cajole the local journalists over the portrayal of a certain subject.

At times like this you realise Ugandans do have a national language. Only problem, it is also the native tongue of one tribal group over whose role in the country’s political history there is no consensus.

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International fellow for development journalism; jbuwembo@knight.icfj.org