Museveni faces complicated new ‘war’ with Baganda — analysts

President Yoweri Museveni may have won the 22 year-old war against northern Ugandan rebels, the Lord’s Resistance Army, but another, much more complicated war is afoot — with pro-monarchy supporters of the Buganda kingdom.

Analysts say the “war” took a new turn on December 17, the day Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, traditional king of the over five million Baganda, called a conference in the heart of the city to denounce opponents of his demands for poltical power.

Baganda are Uganda’s largest and most influential tribe. They live on the northern shores of Lake Victoria — the country’s most fertile belt.

Baganda kings, who had reigned in almost unbroken succession since the 1300s, had almost absolute sway and could demand death on the spot, as they did for the 22 world-renowned Uganda Martyrs in 1884.

Ugandan legislators began debating a new Bill in parliament mid-December aimed at allowing disparate districts to come together and form regional blocs that would resemble the old kingdoms, albeit without political power for the monarchies.

Titular heads

Where kingdoms existed —Bunyoro in western Uganda, Busoga in the east, Lango and Acholi in the north — the traditional leader would be titular head of these regions.

But his role would be limited to appointing at least 15 per cent of his own representatives to a regional legislative assembly, purely to oversee cultural matters.

“That is not the federal system we are demanding,” said Betty Kamya, Member of Parliament for the strategic Lubaga North constituency southwest of Kampala.

“What we are asking for is a full-fledged federal system of government that will allow the regions to plan and execute their own development,” she said.

Museveni was warned by analysts in 1993 when he allowed monarchies to once again practise — 27 years after they were brutally abolished by former leader Milton Obote of the Uganda People’s Congress.

The war in the north of the country has all but ended after a lengthy process of peace talks with LRA boss Joseph Kony, although the elusive rebel leader is yet to pen the accord brokered by former Mozambican president Joachim Chissano.

“It is the new war that he has to brace himself for,” said Isha Otto, whose northern Ugandan Oyam South constituency neighbours Obote’s political cradle.

“It is much more complicated. It is in the capital,” added a political science lecturer at Makerere University.

The September 2009 riots, in which a police station was set ablaze and scores of people killed brought Kampala to a standstill for three days after the government blocked Kabaka Mutebi’s representative from accessing a region the Kabaka wanted to visit.