Daily life and social customs

In the countryside, the year is filled with a variety of festivals and ritual celebrations, including marriage “introductions,” weddings, births, christenings, and other familial gatherings. As in other places, the agricultural year is marked by a number of important events that require social gatherings. Other holidays, celebrated nationwide, are drawn from the Christian and Muslim calendars or commemorate events in Ugandan history, such as Martyrs’ Day (June 3rd), Heroes’ Day (June 9th), and Independence Day (October 9th).

The staple diet in most of the south is a kind of plantain called matoke, which is cooked in stews and curries; a Buganda legend relates that one of the first acts of the first man on earth, Kintu, was to plant a matoke tree for his descendants to enjoy. Sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, and cassava are consumed along with a variety of vegetables. The central market in Kampala—Nakasero—offers an extensive array of vegetables and fruits, some of which are imported from neighbouring countries. Most northerners eat millet, sorghum, cornmeal, and cassava together with local vegetables. The pastoral communities tend to consume animal-derived products, especially butter, meat, and animal blood. Fish is eaten by a number of groups, and a favourite dish is luombo, a spicy stew steamed in banana leaves. Banana leaves also figure in another favourite, oluwombo, made of rice, chicken, and tomatoes.

The arts

The Westernized elites are virtually the sole consumers and practitioners of the fine arts. Nevertheless, there is a small but active group of local artists—painters, sculptors, poets, and playwrights—who exhibit their works in local galleries and theatres. Folk art is widely collected and provides an important source of revenue. Uganda’s ethnic arts are prized by collectors around the world. Carving is an especially popular form, with scenes from Ugandan history and legend incised on hardwood shields or screens. Other popular forms are ironworking, ceramics, and batik, a technique of textile painting introduced to Uganda by Southeast Asian immigrants. David Kibuuka and Henry Lutalo Lumu (1939–89), two Ugandan painters, adopted elements of Western painting such as oil-based paints to express African themes and lived outside the African continent.

Ugandan traditional music makes use of instruments such as the lyre, marimba (xylophone), and thumb piano (see lamellaphone). There is a wide audience within the country for both Ugandan and foreign music. Uganda’s well-known Afrigo Band, which combines traditional and popular musical elements, regularly tours abroad and has produced a number of recordings. The singer and composer Geoffrey Oryema has earned international recognition for his music, which combines the Acholi, Swahili, and English languages and Acholi musical traditions (the nangu [harp]) with Western musical techniques. Congolese music is extremely popular in the country and represents a return of musicians from that region, a cultural exchange that previously had been active until the 1970s. There are many discos, pubs, and bars in most towns and trading centres where live music is performed.

Although Uganda has several writers of note, oral traditions remain a popular form of entertainment. Rajat Neogy, a Ugandan of Indian descent, started the literary magazine Transition in 1961. Okot p’Bitek developed a literary technique that combined the written word with oral traditions. An Acholi born in Gulu, he wrote several novels including Song of Lawino (1966).

Cultural institutions

The largest and most important museum in the country is the Uganda Museum in Kampala. Others include those at Murchison Falls and Queen Elizabeth national parks. The Tombs of Buganda Kings at Kasubi (designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001), a former palace converted into a royal burial ground in the 19th century, provided a glimpse into Ganda history and cultural traditions before being destroyed by fire in March 2010. National parks, such as Bwindi

Impenetrable, Ruwenzori Mountains (both designated UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1994), and Mgahinga Gorilla, are an important part of Uganda’s emerging ecotourism industry.

Sports and recreation

Sports is a vastly popular cultural activity, with millions of Ugandans supporting their favourite football (soccer) teams. Kampala is home to one of the largest sports stadiums on the continent, completed in the late 1990s. Boxing and wrestling are also immensely popular. The country’s first Olympic gold medal was earned by John Akii-Bua, who competed in the men’s 400-metre hurdles at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Media and publishing

Radio stations have proliferated since 1990. In addition to the government-run Radio Uganda, there are more than 100 privately owned stations, including Sanyu (established 1993), the first private station. Uganda Television is operated by the government, and there are also private local stations and satellite television from South Africa. Television is transmitted over a radius of 200 miles (320 km) from Kampala, with relay stations around the country.

A fluctuating number of daily newspapers are published in Uganda. Those published in English include Telecast, The Star, The Monitor, and the state-owned New Vision. Popular vernacular papers include Munno, Etop, and Orumuri, while other papers appear sporadically. In addition, daily papers published in Kenya are available.

The degree of government control and censorship of the press has varied under different regimes. Since the early 1990s, however, there has been considerable freedom of expression in the country.

History

This discussion focuses on the history of Uganda since the 19th century. For a detailed treatment of Uganda’s early history and of the country in its regional context, see Eastern Africa, history of.

The early history of Uganda, like much of sub-Saharan Africa, is a saga of movements of small groups of cultivators and herders over centuries. Cultures and languages changed continuously as peoples slowly migrated to other regions and intermingled. By the mid-19th century, when the first non-African visitors entered the region later to become the Uganda Protectorate, there were a number of distinct languages and cultures within the territory. The northern areas were occupied generally by peoples speaking Nilotic and Sudanic languages, while the central, western, and southern portions of the territory were predominantly occupied by Bantu-speaking peoples.

Bunyoro and Buganda

The organization of the peoples who came to inhabit the area north of the Nile River was mainly based on their clan structures. In this respect the northerners differed markedly from the peoples to the southwest of the Nile. There, peoples were organized into states—or “kingdoms,” as they were labeled by the earliest European visitors. The dominant state was Bunyoro-Kitara, which originated at the end of the 15th century and, under able rulers, extended its influence eastward and southward over a considerable area. To the south there were a number of lesser states, each with a chief who, like the ruler of Bunyoro-Kitara, combined priestly functions with those of a secular leader. To the southeast of Bunyoro-Kitara, the smaller state of Buganda grew as an offshoot of its larger neighbour. By the end of the 18th century, however, the boundaries of Bunyoro-Kitara had been stretched so far that the authority of the ruler began to weaken, and a succession of pacific chiefs accelerated this decline. Simultaneously the smaller, more compact state of Buganda enjoyed a succession of able and aggressive kabakas (rulers), who began to expand at the expense of Bunyoro-Kitara.

It was during the period of Buganda’s rise that the first Swahili-speaking traders from the east coast of Africa reached the country in the 1840s. Their object was to trade in ivory and slaves. Kabaka Mutesa I, who took office about 1856, admitted the first European explorer, the Briton John Hanning Speke, who crossed into the kabaka’s territory in 1862.

Henry Morton Stanley, the British-American explorer who reached Buganda in 1875, met Mutesa I. Although Buganda had not been attacked, Achoiland, to the north, had been ravaged by slavers from Egypt and the Sudan since the early 1860s, and, on the death of Kamrasi, the ruler of Bunyoro, his successor, Kabarega, had defeated his rivals only with the aid of the slavers’ guns. Moreover, an emissary from the Egyptian government, Linant de Bellefonds, had reached Mutesa’s palace before Stanley, so the kabaka was anxious to obtain allies. He readily agreed to Stanley’s proposal to invite Christian missionaries to Uganda, but he was disappointed, after the first agents of the Church Missionary Society arrived in 1877, to find that they had no interest in military matters. In 1879 representatives of the Roman Catholic White Fathers Mission also reached Buganda. Although Mutesa I attempted to limit their movements, their influence rapidly spread through their contact with the chiefs whom the kabaka kept around him, and inevitably the missionaries became drawn into the politics of the country. Mutesa I was not concerned about these new influences, however, and, when Egyptian expansion was checked by the Mahdist rising in the Sudan, he was able to deal brusquely with the handful of missionaries in his country. His successor, Mwanga, who became kabaka in 1884, was less successful: he was deposed in 1888 while attempting to drive the missionaries and their supporters from the country.