King's College Budo: cradle for Uganda's key players

To mark 50 years of Uganda’s independence, New Vision will until October 9, 2012 be publishing highlights of events and profiling personalities that have shaped the history of this country. Today, JOSEPH SSEMUTOOKE looks at the outstanding contribution of King’s College Budo to the development of Uganda’s education sector and as well as to the development of an all-round Uganda

Even if it were to be celebrated for no other reason, the list of its ‘products’ who have turned out to be outstanding servants of Uganda is suffi cient to make the country infi nitely indebted to King’s College Budo.

It is the only school in the country that counts among its former students three former presidents of Uganda. It has also had five former students reign as kings in three of Uganda’s kingdoms, while several other royals and chiefs have gone through its gates.

It has also produced former vice-presidents, prime ministers, speakers of Parliament, United Nations diplomats, an East African Assembly Secretary General, a Chief Justice, principal judges, university chancellors, world-class medical specialists, church bishops, ministers, mayors, world-reknown authors, top-level bankers, innumerable university professors and all sorts of outstanding performers in many different fields.

Budo also stands out for having greatly contributed to the development of the country’s education sector.

Among  first centres of Higher Education
According to the book Kings College Budo: A Centenary History by Gordon McGregor, King’s College Budo was founded as an intermediate school offering some form of higher education to the sons of chiefs who had completed the training at Mengo High School.

McGregor writes that having established a boarding high school for sons of the chiefs at Mengo in 1905, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) found need to put up a higher level school for the graduates of Mengo.

McGregor traces that the project of the higher level school was particularly accelerated by the then new and maiden Anglican Bishop of the Diocese of Uganda, A. R. Tucker and Henry Weatherhead, his junior. The latter identified the location for the school, while Bishop Tucker funded the project from the diocese treasury.

The land for the school premises was availed by then prime minister Sir Apollo Kaggwa on behalf of the then young Kabaka Daudi Chwa, the reason the school came to be known as King’s College.

The school was officially opened by Kabaka Chwa on March 29, 1906, with 21 young men housed in one dormitory and having a single classroom block.

McGregor notes that the Catholic-founded Namilyango College was the only school that at the time offered the level of advanced education Budo introduced, making King’s College Budo the second school to do so in the country.

Model school
The book They Built for the Future (1964) states one of Budo’s greatest contributions to the growth of education in Uganda as being a model school for the country.

It notes that it was the fi rst higher learning school to be run as a public school, as its Church Missionary founders ran the school jointly with Ugandan stakeholders, while Namilyango on the other hand was run by its Catholic founders.

They Built for the Future reckons that when in 1908 the fi rst batch of 19 boys completed the school’s three-year course, becoming the first graduates of the school, they opened the way for education in Uganda to climb higher.

Budo’s success spurred the introduction of other public schools run by the CMS in conjunction with local authorities throughout the country, such as Mbarara High School, Nyakasura School in Fort Portal and Busoga College Mwiri in Jinja. All of these subsequent schools borrowed a leaf from Budo’s experience on administration.

McGregor shows that in those days when Uganda’s education system was in its formative years, Budo was a training ground for headmasters. From Budo, teachers became headmasters elsewhere, such as Ron Wareham at Nabumali High School, Tom Harrison at Busoga College Mwiri, Caldwell at Nyakasura and Don Crawley at Sir Samuel Baker School in Gulu.

Looking through the McGregor’s history of Budo, it is clear that whenever there were innovations to be introduced to Uganda’s education system, Budo was one of the schools where the innovation was pioneered. The school was the first to have Ugandans sit for the Cambridge School Certifi cate exams in 1936, alongside St. Mary’s College Kisubi.

In subsequent years, Budo would become one of the first schools to adopt new curricula whenever they were introduced, such as its adoption of the new international science subjects curriculum in the 1960s.

First mixed institution of higher education
In 1933, Budo admitted girls and it became the fi rst mixed institution of higher learning in Uganda. The success of Budo went on to see co-education introduced in other schools.

The CMS’s Uganda News of 1925-1950 indicates that at the time when Budo took on its fi rst girls (who had completed Junior School at Gayaza), no school was offering girls higher secondary education, which enabled one to be admitted to Makerere College for the highest level learning in the country.

Only five years later, in 1935, Budo produced Uganda’s fi rst girls to pass the highlycompetitive exam to Makerere College.

Promoted technical education
McGregor’s shows the promotion of technical education in Uganda as another role Budo played in the education sector growth, thereby joining the likes of Mengo SS and Kisubi Technical Institute to promote the discipline.

McGregor shows that technical education at Budo was particularly promoted by Herbert Weatherhead, a pioneer Budo teacher who was brother of the fi rst headmaster Henry Weatherhead. On one of his vacations in England, Weatherhead fundraised to build an equipped technical workshop at Budo, and it was functional by the end of 1908.

Thereafter, every Budo student chose a practical skill to learn including carpentry, metal work, motor maintainance, shoe repairing, music instruments and printing, among others.

In 1928, agricultural education was also introduced at Budo, teaching students skills in poultry, bee-keeping and gardening. McGregor shows that Budo pushed for the establishment of the first advanced agricultural school at Namutamba.

OTHER PROMINENT OLD STUDENTS

• Kabaka Sir Edward Mutesa II (R.I.P)
   
• Kamurasi Rukidi III (R.I.P) - Toro Omukama
   
• Sir William Wilberforce Nadiope (R.I.P) -Kyabazinga of Busoga

• Omukama Olimi Kaboyo (R.I.P) - Omukama of Toro
   
• Isebantu Wako Muloki (R.I.P) - Busoga Kyabazinga
   
• Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II - Kabaka of Buganda
   
• Ignatius Musaazi (R.I.P) - Pioneer Nationalist
   
• Prof. Yusuf Lule (R.I.P) - Former President
   
• Godfrey Binaisa (R.I.P) - Former President
   
• Samson Kisekka (R.I.P) - Former Vice-President
   
• James Wapakhabulo (R.I.P) - Former Speaker of Parliament

• Charles Muganje Njonjo - Former Kenya AG
   
• Amanya Mushega - Former East African Community Secretary General

• John Ssebaana Kizito - Former Kampala City mayor
   
• Aggrey Awori - Minister for ICT 2009 – 2011
   
• Fredrick Semaganda - Former Kampala mayor
   
• Justice James Ogoola - Former Principal Judge
   
• Lady Justice Julia Sebutinde - Principal Judge at the ICC at the Hague, Netherlands

• Peter Nkambo Mugerwa - Former Attorney General
   
• Professor David Bakibinga, Former deputy Vice-Chancellor, Makerere University
   
• Apollo Kironde - 1st Ugandan UN Ambassador
   
• Grace Ibingira - Former Minister of Justice
   
• Dr. William Samson Kalema - former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commissioner for Africa

• Prof. David Rubadiri - World-renown poet and 1st Malawian Ambassador to the UN

• Prof. Timothy Wangusa – writer and scholar
   
• Prof Frederick Kayanja - VC Mbarara University