Grandfathers, grandsons, morality, and radical politics in late colonial Buganda

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 427-447

  Summers, Carol ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33846528812     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (30)

1. Dionizio Sifirwakange, Uganda Star [translated excerpt] in Fortnightly Review, 2 December 1948, PRO CO 537/3601. In his writing, he was directlyattacking an editorial by "Dobozi" (also translated in the FR 2-12-48)that had asserted "The Editor is 'astonished' when he sees a body such asthis, which has been disowned by the Native Government, being given permissionto assemble its followers by the Resident. What manner of things are discussedat these assemblies that they cannot pass through the proper channels? How many Governments are there in Buganda to give orders to the people?" The Fortnightly Review digest of Luganda newspaper stories, intelligence reports, and local gossip were considered secret, and cyclostyled in English for alimited distribution list.
2. In distinguishing between citizens and subjects, I am drawing on (andtwisting) ideas from Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject: Decentralized Despotism and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N.J., 1996), 17.
3. For example, Apolo Kaggwa, The Customs of the Baganda, trans. Ernest Kalibala (New York, 1934), 51-62.
4. Holly Hanson, Landed Obligation:The Practice of Power in Buganda(Portsmouth, N.H., 2003), 143.
5. Ernest Balintuma Kalibala, "The Social Structure of the Baganda Tribe of East Africa" (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1946), xiv, 8, 19-25, 178, 272, 363-407.
6. Carol Summers, "Young Africa and Radical Visions: Revisiting the Bataka in Buganda, 1944-54, " presented at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, New Orleans, November 2004.
7. See Kalibala, "The Social Structure of the Baganda, " 304-309.
8. D.S.K. Musoke, "Buganda Nyafe" (1944, trans.) reprinted in Donald Anthony Low, comp., The Mind of Buganda: Documents of the Modern Historyof an African Kingdom (Berkeley, 1971), 119.
9. They acted, in other words, like modern patriots. Here I'm using Benedict Anderson's discussion of the problem of patriotism as I think about what thesemen were up to. Buganda may or may not have been an actual nation in the 1940s.The modern, imagined mass identity that the Bataka created and acted upon, though, was clear to its adherents and, while full of anti-Indian rhetoric, didnot reflect simple racism or xenophobia. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism [1963] (New York, 1991), 141-54.
10. See, for example, Hanson, Landed Obligation, 204, 210-28;
11. and Neil Kodesh, "Reimagining Tradition: The Politics of Successionin Colonial Buganda, " Northwestern University Program of African Studies Working Papers No. 9, 2000.
12. Apolo Kaggwa, The Kings of Buganda, trans. M.S.M. Kiwanuka (Nairobi, 1971), 3-4. Incidentally, it is even more impressive that Kintu reputedlyprovided not merely for grandsons, but also for granddaughters (sons'daughters). Nor was this bond entirely one way. Kaggwa also depicts a grandson, Kalemeera, so traumatized by the disappearance of his grandfather Kintu that hewatched his father unceasingly, driving the father (Chwa I) to plot against Kalemeera with the help of his chiefs. (p. 10).
13. Zimbe, Buganda ne Kabaka, 173-74.
14. Kaggwa, Customs of the Baganda, 95.
15. E. Kalibala, "The Social Structure of the Baganda, " 131.
16. One of the motives of the mission emphasis on midwifery, for example, wasto ensure from the start of a child's life that it was under professional, Christian domestic supervision, rather than that of a grandmother. See Carol Summers, "Intimate Colonialism..." Signs 16:4 (Summer 1991), 787-807.
17. For example, Lucy Mair described naming practices, but noted that theywere specifically condemned by Christians, who sought to substitute baptism andgive clan names not after grandmothers' ceremonies, but as a simple part ofchristening. Mair, An African People in the Twentieth Century, 59.
18. John Roscoe, The Baganda [1911], 2d. ed. (New York, 1966), 271.
19. For a discussion of the etymology and significance of the term mizimu (s.muzima) see Benjamin C. Ray, Myth, Ritual and Kingship in Buganda (New York, 1991), 150-51. Ray prefers the term "ancestral spirits" to Roscoe's"ghosts." And he notes that the Luganda word muzimu does not belong tothe noun class for people (e.g., muntu, bantu) but to the class of nonhumannouns. But - to further confuse matters - he also notes that in the case ofkings, Baganda will use the nonhuman term muzima interchangeably with the humanterm for the deceased king, ssekabaka.
20. Roscoe, The Baganda, 273. The statement, taken literally, is interesting.It can be read as a hyperbolic assertion of godly power, or as a literalacknowledgment that neither Roscoe nor, perhaps, his Ganda colleagues, couldcalculate or be certain of the spirits' powers.
21. Mair, African People, 54-55. Mair emphasizes that the sengawe selected aname for the grandmother to bestow to ensure that ancestors should all have a"fair share of remembrance, " but that the practice was neither adesignation of a guardian spirit nor a marker of reincarnation.
22. See, for example, Mair, African People in the Twentieth Century, 212.Mair also provides an elaborate discussion of inheritance ceremonies thatemphasized that an individual could not inherit by himself (or herself). He orshe needed a lubuga (a female clan member standing as a fictitious wife orattendant) as "he cannot stand alone, " 212-18, 221.
23. "Discipline and Attitudes to Authority in Buganda Schools, "4-2-56, Richards Papers, 6/26. In results from 75 surveys labeled specificallyas returns from students in Forms V and VI at Buddo School (the most prestigiousin Buganda), only 47 percent of Baganda youth were sent away, they were sentyounger (between 3 and 5 years old) and for longer periods (average 4.4 yearsaway). Statistics were comparable from Aggrey School, which was less elite andemphasized self-help.
24. Kalibala noted that "Moral training consisted first of directinstruction such as how to obey parents, to receive guests, to behave beforeaged people, to respect people of the other sex, to respect chiefs, clan elders, not to spit in public, not to kiss people, not to become too familiar with theopposite sex, never to ask questions that are far-fetched, to keep secrets, notto take things that did not belong to one, never to absent oneself withoutpermission. Obedience and respect were the two premises of moral training. Adisrespectful and disobedient child was a curse to his family and no relativewished to be bothered with such a child." He asserted that while parentsloved children, the style was different than in America, as children were"taken away" by grandparents when 7 or younger. A handicapped orelderly relative could simply demand a youngster to run errands for him or her."The Social Structure of the Baganda, " 194-200.
25. Richards' 1956 surveys are included in Richards Papers, 6.26. Herconclusions on the shape of families and the results for ideas of Gandaleadership are in A.I. Richards, "Traditional Values and Current Political Behavior, " in Lloyd A. Fallers, ed., All The King's Men: Leadership and Status in Buganda on the Eve of Independence (London, 1964), 294-335.
26. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
27. David Apter, The Political Kingdom in Uganda [1961] (London, 1997), 124.In fairness, Apter's characterization makes much more sense when applied to thebanned, increasingly parochial Bataka of the 1950s, as opposed to the massmovement that culminated in the 1949 uprising.
28. Kabaka Daudi Chwa, "Education, Civilization and Foreignisation in Buganda" 1935, in David Anthony Low, ed., The Mind of Buganda (Berkeley, 1971) 104-108. Note: both Daudi Chwa's image of himself and his subjects'memories of him seem very different from British characterizations of him as asexually debauched drunkard who died relatively young, possibly of hisalcoholism, while refusing to perform the obligations and duties of kabaka forthe British Protectorate administration. CO536/197/4008; CO536/202/40080.
29. Hanson, Landed Obligation, 1-7.
30. "The Meeting of the Bataka: Precis of Telegram to Bataka from Mulumba, " Uganda Star, 83-49, Documents, 112.