Few Ugandan politicians have been as lionised as the late Haji Abubaker Kakyama Mayanja. For over four decades he was a fixture on the country’s political scene — having been a spirited force in the Independence struggle and a mover in all Uganda’s post-Independence regimes.

The recent 5th Mayanja Memorial lecture at Makerere University demonstrated that, in spite of a somewhat shifty, controversial and enigmatic personality, Mayanja’s legacy is intact as a prominent pan-Africanist, nationalist, Muslim and traditionalist.

Here I attempt to trace the life and times of a friend and compatriot, starting in his heady days as a young anti-imperialist political activist and ending in the top echelons of Uganda’s political class.

Mayanja cut his political teeth way back in 1952 as a 23-year old undergraduate at Makerere University College, when together with Ignatius K. Musaazi and others, he founded Uganda’s first political party — the Uganda National Congress (UNC). Among other things, the UNC, stood for early self-government, a federal state and African control of the economy.

It was social-democratic in outlook and strongly opposed to chiefly hierarchy and traditional rulers, particularly those in Buganda. Paradoxically, the UNC joined other groupings to mobilise support for the return and restoration of Kabaka E. F. Muteesa following his deportation by Governor Andrew Cohen in 1953.

In the year that Mayanja and others founded the UNC, he was expelled from Makerere for leading a strike to protest the poor diet at the college. But this was not the end of the road for him. Because of his sharp mind and verve, some lecturers and Mengo (the seat of the Kabaka) officials approached Kabaka Muteesa, who in turn persuaded Governor Cohen to let the young man continue his studies as a “government scholar” in History at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Cohen must have been a tolerant man considering that, while in Kings College Buddo, Mayanja was responsible for anti-colonial protests and replacing the schools’ portrait of King George VI with that of the Kabaka of Buganda.

While in the UK between 1953 and 1959, Mayanja’s activism against British imperialism and for Ugandan self-rule increased rather than waned. He wrote articles on oppressive colonial policies in Uganda and led protests including that over the deportation of Muteesa; the alarming increase in a permanent white population in the country and the proposed federation of East Africa.

When Muteesa’s deportation was declared illegal, Mayanja triumphantly escorted him back to Buganda.

The governor’s office in Entebbe was not happy with Mayanja’s political activities in the UK. It considered his behaviour as a government scholar “unsatisfactory” because, in spite of verbal and written warnings against engaging in political activity while holding a government scholarship, he had consistently ignored this advice.

Instead, he defiantly travelled to Russia, China, Burma, and Egypt to advance his socialist and anti-imperialist network. In Moscow, he was photographed with Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

In China he met Communist leader Mao Tse Tung. Once, in 1958, on returning to Uganda from one such trip, he brought many publications for the UNC, the importation of which was prohibited by the colonial government. He was promptly charged in an Entebbe court and convicted for being in possession of offensive material, getting off with a light caution. His defence was that he had no means of knowing the material was banned since he was out of the country at the time the law was passed.

On several occasions, the governor’s office threatened to discontinue his scholarship and deny him passage back to the UK. Indeed the chief secretary in the governor’s office warned Mayanja that the government would not “tolerate mischievous public speaking while he was in receipt of a government scholarship.” The threats did not mollify or deter Mayanja from participating in the Movement for Colonial Freedom and initiating the formation of a Committee of African Organisations in London in February 1958.

Neither did they stop him from castigating the colonial government for sending a small number of Ugandan students on overseas scholarships each year. He compared the 300 scholarships given to Ghanaians with the paltry 24 available to Ugandans. He warned the colonial government that “no reforms in Uganda can ever hope to succeed without the active and willing co-operation of the Baganda.”

Not unlike his colonial benefactors, the leadership at Mengo was uneasy with Mayanja. On top of the UNC’s general antipathy towards the Mengo establishment, Mayanja was very critical especially of its policy of rejecting direct elections in Buganda in the 1958 poll.

In a hard-hitting letter published in the Uganda Argus of March 6, 1958, Mayanja felt that it “was high time somebody did some very straight talking to the reactionary elements in Buganda who seem to imagine that somehow Buganda can contract out of the 20th century and revert to a system of administration when the efficiency of guns used to be tested on human beings.” Mayanja considered that such elements at Mengo were “seeking to block the development of democracy in Buganda whilst pretending to pay lip service to its principles.”

According to Mayanja, these elements planned “not only to sabotage democracy within Buganda, but also to seek to entrench the anti-democratic system by cutting Buganda from the rest of Uganda where it may be subjected to democratic influences.”

To subdue these elements, Mayanja called on the Protectorate Government to “realise that it has a duty to pursue with vigour those policies calculated to fulfill Britain’s mission in her dependencies to take Uganda to democratic self-governance.”

On his part, Mayanja used the occasion to famously declare that he had “crossed the Rubicon.” Whence he solemnly stated: “I have set my face firmly against any autocrat whether it be foreign and imperialist or native and feudal. I stake my future and dedicate my life to the realisation of democratic principles in my country no matter from which side the obstacles may emanate. This is a declaration of political faith, and I call on other intellectuals to do so likewise.”

So, soon after crossing the proverbial Rubicon, Mayanja penned another stinger in Uganda Argus of April 16 critiquing the methods of the Lukikko of Buganda. He argued that although the body had occasionally done some good for Buganda, it was not “infallible” or “incapable of acting unwisely, or even selfishly.” Needless to say the Lukkiko wasn’t amused.

Beside his salvos in the press, and as he prepared for his final law exams in September 1958, Mayanja was communicating with the UNC leadership particularly Otema Alimadi and Dr Kunuka on the forthcoming Legislative Council elections.

Once, at a press conference on his return to Uganda, Mayanja made two interesting points. On the unification of Uganda’s political parties he argued that the “best solution would be to have one powerful party, and for all the people to rally behind this party.

He said “it was personalities rather than basic principles which divided the parties and that the large number of parties would make the achievement of Independence more difficult.”

On Buganda’s quest for Independence, he said it was “a dream that would never be realised and that it only gave rise to a great deal of suspicion and was helping to delay the eventual granting of Independence to Uganda as a whole.”

A protectorate official who interviewed Mayanja about his scholarship in November 1958 stated that: “I have known Mr Mayanja on and off for a long time. I notice that he is still as highly strung as ever, seeking relief on this occasion in chain smoking. His eyes never kept still and some part of him was perpetually in movement. I cannot help feeling, as I have always felt, that some day, something will go snap inside him.”

When he was not fighting the colonial government or bashing the reactionaries in Mengo, Mayanja was avid about African nationalism. In a speech at the All African Peoples Conference in Ghana, at the risk of losing his scholarship, he stated that Uganda, like all colonial countries, had been shamelessly exploited in the interests of Great Britain, and had suffered from all the evils, which necessarily accompany a colonialist regime.

He told the conference how the people of Uganda, under the UNC, were resisting oppression. On issues related to pan-Africanism, he worked closely with John Kalekezi, based in Cairo, seen then as the centre of all African liberation movements. With Kalekezi, Mayanja struggled to find scholarships for students to study in the then Iron-Curtain countries of Eastern Europe and Russia.

With Dr Milton Obote, Mayanja set up the Committee of Anti-Apartheid Organisations aiming to assist the “brethren in South Africa in their struggle against apartheid by participating in the boycott of South African-made commodities.”

Once he qualified as a barrister and returned home, Mayanja founded the firm of Mayanja, Clerk and Company. But he did not devote much time to legal practice. Instead he immersed himself wholly in national politics and revamping the UNC. He worked with Obote to oust JW Kiwanuka as the party leader.

For this reason, both he and Obote were expelled from the UNC on August 21 1959. Ignoring the expulsion, the duo went on a countrywide tour visiting Mubende, Toro, Bulemezi, Gulu, Lira, Mbale and Tororo purporting to represent the UNC and saying that they had a duty to liberate the country. They saw to the weakening and eventual split of the UNC.

Obote later engineered the merger of the Uganda Peoples Union (UPU) and his faction of the UNC to form the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC).

Because of its ideology, history and leadership, the UPC was not popular in Buganda. Accordingly, UPC lost the 1961 elections to Benedicto Kiwanuka’s mostly Catholic  Democratic Party (DP). As Independence fast approached, the Protestant-leaning leadership in Buganda started Kabaka Yekka (KY) to countervail Kiwanuka’s DP. The champions of KY included Masembe Ka bali, Amos Sempa, Dr Lumu, A.D Lubowa, I K Musaazi, Latimaer Mpagi and Micheal Kintu. 

In the realignment of Uganda’s political landscape as above, and in a move that shocked many, Abu Mayanja accepted a position as the Minister for Education in the Kingdom of Buganda. Like a fish takes to water, Mayanja quickly adapted to his new station as a chief in Mengo. He was opposed to the unilateral and hapless Declaration of Independence by the Buganda Lukikko in December 1960.

He participated in the Lancaster Constitutional Conferences, and was later responsible for the implementation of the 1962 Constitution in Buganda. He was to resign later on account of insults about his youthful zealousness, emanating from the Speaker of the Lukikko. But whilst in office, he and his KY colleagues conceived of a plan to thwart DP in Buganda and Uganda.

The plan was to enter into an alliance with the UPC. Working with Daudi Ochieng and Grace Ibingira, Mayanja arranged negotiations between Muteesa and Milton Obote — resulting in the infamous KY/UPC marriage of convenience. Because of this alliance the UPC won the 1962 elections and constituted the first Independence government of Uganda with Milton Obote as the Prime Minister and later in 1963, Kabaka Muteesa as the first president.

The presidency inevitably placed Muteesa in a position of conflict between his interest as the Kabaka and as the president of Uganda. As we know, the marriage was as short-lived and barren as it was ill-fated.

Once Obote’s true character was exposed, Abu Mayanja and others conceived an idea in 1965 to oust him from the leadership of the UPC. Under the plan, these would cross to the UPC so as to fight Obote from within. Part of the plot was to pass a vote of no–confidence in Obote based upon his alleged involvement in stolen gold from Congo.

Obote got wind of the plot and swiftly moved to curb the revolt in the UPC ranks. He purged the suspects and detained five of his Cabinet ministers.

The final straw for KY and its leaders like Mayanja was Obote and Amin’s attack on the Lubiri in May 1966, the exiling of Kabaka Muteesa, replacing the negotiated 1962 Constitution with that of 1966 and the abolition of kingdoms in 1967.

To seal his occupation of Buganda, Obote imposed a state of emergency and detained many Baganda loyalists without trial. No inquiry or report was made on the many that died in the Lubiri or the catchment of arms that Muteesa was alleged to have amassed there. With Muteesa out of the way and Buganda on its knees, it was back to politics as usual for Obote and the UPC.

As a back-bencher in the UPC government, Abu Mayanja became a “rebel.” With a handful of opposition MPs such as Latim, and when only a few could speak up against dictatorship and the abuse of human rights, Mayanja eloquently opposed Obote’s abrogation of the 1962 constitution; the imposition of a state of emergency in Buganda; the enactment of the Emergency Powers (detention) law and the laws on detention without trial.

Through his law firm, Abu Mayanja and Co. Advocates, Mayanja unsuccessfully challenged the legality of the 1966 constitution in the famous case Uganda vs. Commissioner of Prisons Ex Parte Matovu.

In 1972, Abu Mayanja chaired the committee that was responsible for the return of the body of Ssekabaka Sir Edward Muteesa from London.

Once Amin was overthrown by the Uganda National Liberation Front, Mayanja stood on a Democratic Party ticket and was elected Member of Parliament for Bussujju County.

To avoid arrest by Obote in 1982, Abu Mayanja went into exile and worked as a teacher in Kenya. There he joined the struggle with Yusuf Lule and others to overthrow Obote. He was a legal adviser to Yoweri Kaguta Museveni during the Nairobi Peace talks.

Following the war that saw Museveni and the NRA capture power, Mayanja was appointed attorney-general and deputy prime minister of Uganda. As attorney-general he was instrumental in the restoration of the institutions of traditional leaders and the Kingdom of Buganda and also instrumental in the establishment of Uganda’s first Muslim University at Mbale, becoming its first rector. 

He was a member of the Constituent Assembly that prepared the 1995 Constitution. Mayanja was to fall out with Museveni over his support for federalism in Uganda and the Kingdom of Buganda in general and was sacked from the Cabinet.

Mayanja joined the opposition and constantly critiqued Museveni’s government in the press and at public rallies.

At 76 years Mayanja was as busy and humorous as ever. He was a father of 29 children and the president of the Oxford and Cambridge University of Uganda. He was contemplating a return to active politics in parliament.

Known for his modest ways, he was almost broke and was soliciting funds from friends to write his memoirs. At this age the traditionalist in him was far stronger than the nationalist and pan-Africanist.

He was closer than ever before to the Kingdom of Buganda and was considered a favourite to become the first Muslim Katikkiro. One cannot fathom him roaring on issues like federalism and on the illegal closure of CBS radio; on the wrongful arrest, torture and detention of Buganda’s ministers. He died on November 4, 2005.

Apollo N. Makubuya is the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs in Buganda Kingdom.