How Movement checked religious influence in Ugandan politics

By Odrek Rwabwogo

One of the most enduring bi-products of a successful political revolution is an item of high treasure. We call it Freedom. My best definition of this word is "power to determine action without restraint".

A people awake to their legitimate and fundamental right receives the gift of freedom from all restraint other than that imposed by a democratically arrived at law, for the good of society. That one is free from domination by another human being can be expressed in two major ways as seen in Uganda under the Movement leadership:

First, the burst of religious freedom. This expresses what was oppressed by years of religious bigotry engendered by sectarian administrations since 1843.

In pre-colonial Uganda, the early arrivals into Buganda kingdom were Arab Muslims led by Ahmed Bin Ibrahim, in the reign of Kabaka Sunna. The arrivals so badly mixed trade in arms, gun powder in exchange for slaves and ivory with 'evangelism'. They made several attempts at converting the Kabaka but were unsuccessful.

By 1862, when the first English explorers arrived and made a case for the Queen's religion (the Anglican faith), there was competition for domination of the source of the Nile. This was between the French through the Roman Catholic faith (some 25 years or so later when Fr. Simon Lourdel known as Mapeera arrived at Lubaga, he said he had been driven by an urge to establish a Catholic kingdom in the Equatorial province) the Muslim rulers of Egypt and eventually the Mahadists of Khartoum who had broken away from the rulership of the Kedhive Ismail in Cairo.

By 1888, the fight between the Catholics and the Anglicans for the domination of Buganda were so ferocious that both were thrown out by the Muslims with the help of the Abaadis (Mahadists) and the first Muslim Kabaka, Kalema I Muguluma was installed in a short lived regime (October 1888 to October 1889).

The successful resumption of power by the Anglicans in the battle for Mengo in 1892, led to the chasing away of the Catholics to Buddu