1948–1961: (Uganda’s Independence Struggle as Internal Competition — Resentment of Ganda Privilege, the 1953 Deportation of the Kabaka Inflaming Ethno-Nation…

1948–1961: (Uganda’s Independence Struggle as Internal Competition — Resentment of Ganda Privilege, the 1953 Deportation of the Kabaka Inflaming Ethno-Nationalism, the 1961 Constitution Granting Buganda Internal Self-Government, Northern Protestants Versus Southern Catholics, the UPC Under Obote, the Democratic Party, and Kabaka Yekka — Independence as Much About Distribution of Power After Colonialism as About Defeating the British): Nationalism was undermined by internal disunity in Uganda, where resentment was directed at the special status of the kingdom of Buganda. The Ganda had long enjoyed privileges stemming from the assistance they rendered the British in establishing colonial rule. When in 1953 the kabaka protested vigorously at the British plan to incorporate the kingdom fully into Uganda, the colonial authorities deported him — an incident that only inflamed Ganda ethno-nationalism. The British were prepared to make concessions: under the 1961 constitution, Buganda was granted internal self-government separate from central government. More broadly, northerners were suspicious of educated nationalists who were mostly southern Christians, while within the south Protestants vied with Catholics for access to political power — a competition dating to the late nineteenth century. The struggle for independence was as much a competition between various groups about the distribution of power after decolonization as a struggle against the British themselves. The Uganda National Congress, formed in 1952 and becoming the Uganda People’s Congress in 1960, drew on northern and Protestant support, while the Democratic Party drew on southern Catholics. The Ganda formed their own Kabaka Yekka movement. The territory approached independence not as a nation being born but as an arena where multiple nineteenth-century conflicts were being restaged in twentieth-century dress.