Independence: How Mwiri gave Uganda her motto

INDEPENDENCE DAY | MWIRI 

The road to Busoga College Mwiri is no longer dusty. The celebrations of the 58^th Independence Day have found the road not as dusty as it probably was on May 12, 1932 when the school was shifted from Kamuli district where it was founded in 1911. 

The change or process to fully pave the road to Mwiri is perhaps, a Government gift to the school that gave the country its motto. 

Standing on the highest hill in Jinja, overlooking Lake Victoria and Kakira Sugar Works, about 17kms from Jinja town, Mwiri's history is as poignant as Uganda's journey to Independence. 

Mwiri was first called Balangira High School in Kamuli district. As the name suggests, it was meant for sons of Busoga chiefs. 

Yet Kamuli being a smaller place, Rev. H.A Brewer, who was the headmaster at the time, surveyed Mwiri Hill in 1932, to expand the school and also give it a national character. 

To pave way for the construction of a ‘new' Mwiri, the students were briefly accommodated at Kings College Mwiri, a far off school that is located in Central Region. 

However, when the structures were completed, Mwiri became a school for not only sons of Busoga chiefs, but all Ugandans—from every corner, a move that sparked off the towering influence that the school has imposed on the country since 1911 when it was founded. 

The school has since greatly contributed to the country's journey. Mwiri educated the likes of Dr. Apollo Milton Obote from 1942 to 1948. Obote and other leaders later shaped the journey to Uganda's independence in 1962. 

In fact, Uganda borrows its national motto of ‘For God and My Country' from Busoga College Mwiri's motto—‘Kulwa Katonda n'Eggwanga Lyaffe,' loosely meaning, ‘For God and Our Country.' 

Some argue that it was in the interest of time that the men and women who designed the Coat of Arms, of course with the approval of political leaders at the time, that the Mwiri motto was selected as a national one.