Wait a minute, history should not be distorted

By Paul Waibale Senior The story which appeared in The Monitor June 28 under the headline, "Fire guts Mwiri students house" was a source of grief to me. According to the author, Bernard Omalla, property worth millions of shillings was lost in President's House, which was a dormitory. I am particularly touched as a Mwiri Old Boy who spent l3 years (l939-l952) in what was originally known as "Abalangira High School". The name was changed to Busoga College, Mwiri when it was moved from Kamuli, in the then Bugabula-Budiope County, some 40 miles to its present site on the top of Mwiri hill. Many Mwiri Old Boys fondly refer to it as "The School" and there is justification for that label. If I may preach to the Doubting Thomases, Mwiri products include a President, Dr Apolo Milton Obote, a Chief Justice, Sam William Wako Wambuzi, two Makerere University Vice Chancellors, Prof. Asavia Wandira and Dr. George Kirya, and Kampala's first African City Engineer, Alfred Lubato mention but a few. The list is both impressive and inexhaustible. The author of the Monitor story committed two errors in connection with Dr Obote, which I feel duty-bound to correct, at least for the sake of the record. Both errors constitute a distortion of history, which cannot be allowed to flourish unchallenged. The first mistake committed was the author's claim that President's House was named in honour of Dr Obote after he became President of Uganda. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The sacred facts are as follows: President's House was in existence in Busoga College Mwiri about two decades before Dr Obote joined the school, and certainly more than a decade before he became President of Uganda after he had left Mwiri. When I joined Mwiri as a six-year-old Primary l pupil in l939, there were four dormitories for the secondary section, namely, Presidents House, Willis House, Hanington House, and Nadiope House. There is no way Presidents House could have been named in honour of an unknown Obote who was presumably still wetting his napies in Akokoro. Let me elaborate. In the early 1930s when Mwiri College was founded, Busoga was a confederation of several chieftaincies each with a hereditary saza chief reigning over it. The confederation, or whatever one might choose to call it, had a council set up by the colonial administration to run its affairs. That council was called "The Busoga Lukiiko" and its Chairman was accorded the title of "President of the Busoga Lukiiko." It was in honour of that President that President's House was named. The second mistake committed by the author can be corrected in a couple of sentences. Interestingly, Dr Obote never stayed in President's House, although it existed when he was a student at Mwiri. Obote's dormitory was Willis House, which was named after Bishop Willis. I was living in Hanington House a few metres away, so I have my facts on good authority. Let me extend my crusade for the preservation of historical facts a little further by pointing out some of the errors committed by the author of a feature earlier published in the Monitor relating to names of streets in Kampala. In the course of justifying the naming one of Kampala's streets after the late Ben Kiwanuka, the author blundered in the narration of the relevant facts. He claimed that Ben Kiwanuka was Uganda's first African advocate of the High Court and also the country's first African Chief Justice. Both claims are erroneous. Uganda's first African advocate was Apollo Kironde and the country's first African Chief Justice was a Nigerian, Sir Udo Udoma. Incidentally, it was Sir Udo Udoma who delivered the historic verdict that legitimatised Obote's transformation from Prime Minister to President. When Obote flushed Sir Edward Mutesa out of the country and seized the seat of President, some Baganda loyalists petitioned the High Court seeking a declaration that Obote's move was unconstitutional. Sir Udo Udoma ruled that what had happened was not a constitutional transaction but a coup, therefore the resultant administration was legitimate according to international law. Another error in the same feature, was the author's claim that Prof Yusuf Lule was the first African Vice Chancellor of Makerere University. Paradoxically, Prof Lule was never Makerere University's Vice Chancellor and the university has never had any non-African Vice Chancellor. Prof Lule was Principal of Makerere College when it was one of the three constituent colleges of the University of East Africa of which Prof De Bunsen was the Vice Chancellor. The university had its headquarters in Dar es Salaam and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was its Chancellor. When the University of East Africa was split into the three universities of Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Makerere, it was Frank Kalimuzo, whom students nick-named "the donkey", that took over as the First Vice Chancellor of Makerere University, Kampala. Perhaps it is pertinent for me to observe that the corrections I have tendered are designed as a bona fide effort to save history from the jaws of inadvertent distortion. That is the spirit in which this piece is written. It is the spirit in which it should be taken.