10 Muteesa Rolls Royce found
May 23, 2003
WHAT started as a hunt for scrap for cash in the Kabaka’s Mengo palace recently yielded a discovery of 10 of Kabaka Edward Muteesa II’s official Rolls Royce vehicles.
By Josephine Maseruka
WHAT started as a hunt for scrap for cash in the Kabaka’s Mengo palace recently yielded a discovery of 10 of Kabaka Edward Muteesa II’s official Rolls Royce vehicles.
The cars could be one of Buganda’s most treasured tourist attractions.
Sources in the palace said World Bank officials had expressed interest in the spare parts that could be taken to a museum.
Mengo officials recently hired men from Katwe, a Kampala suburb, to dig up the scrap from the palace to be sold to the Jinja-based Steel Rolling Company.
They expected to find old army trucks, abandoned after years of occupation by soldiers during the Milton Obote and President Yoweri Museveni’s regimes.
Excavators, however, found remains of three Rolls Royce cars believed to have been used by Kabaka Ronald Mutebi’s father, the late Sir Edward Muteesa II.
Muteesa II’s Mengo palace was overrun by Obote’s soldiers in 1966, forcing him into exile in Britain where he died.
Owing to poor handling, the vehicles were carelessly removed and they are in parts. Some of the spare parts, especially the engines, are still in good condition with inscriptions of RR for Rolls
Royce, sources said.
Technical sources have said such engines are required in the making of aeroplanes.
The officer in charge of the palace, Maj. Ssenkoma, said over 10 vehicles had been dug out of the banana plantation near Nnabagereka Primary School.
Ssenkoma, who was one of Muteesa’s drivers, managed to identify two of the Rolls Royce vehicles he used to drive.
WHAT started as a hunt for scrap for cash in the Kabaka’s Mengo palace recently yielded a discovery of 10 of Kabaka Edward Muteesa II’s official Rolls Royce vehicles.
The cars could be one of Buganda’s most treasured tourist attractions.
Sources in the palace said World Bank officials had expressed interest in the spare parts that could be taken to a museum.
Mengo officials recently hired men from Katwe, a Kampala suburb, to dig up the scrap from the palace to be sold to the Jinja-based Steel Rolling Company.
They expected to find old army trucks, abandoned after years of occupation by soldiers during the Milton Obote and President Yoweri Museveni’s regimes.
Excavators, however, found remains of three Rolls Royce cars believed to have been used by Kabaka Ronald Mutebi’s father, the late Sir Edward Muteesa II.
Muteesa II’s Mengo palace was overrun by Obote’s soldiers in 1966, forcing him into exile in Britain where he died.
Owing to poor handling, the vehicles were carelessly removed and they are in parts. Some of the spare parts, especially the engines, are still in good condition with inscriptions of RR for Rolls
Royce, sources said.
Technical sources have said such engines are required in the making of aeroplanes.
The officer in charge of the palace, Maj. Ssenkoma, said over 10 vehicles had been dug out of the banana plantation near Nnabagereka Primary School.
Ssenkoma, who was one of Muteesa’s drivers, managed to identify two of the Rolls Royce vehicles he used to drive.