Buganda is the largest kingdom in present-day Uganda and has been from the time believed to be around the 1840s when the then-dominant kingdom of Bunyoro started to disintegrate. Buganda took advantage of the turmoil in Bunyoro to expand her territory, and by the time the Europeans started coming in, Buganda’s territory spanned vast areas. The monarchical setup of Buganda helped its organization in the political, social, and economic spheres.
Before 1860 the history of Buganda was perpetual though with considerable and occasional rivalry with her neighboring Kingdoms, which fueled constant fighting over various territories amongst them. The late King Kintu, the first ‘Muganda’, established his homestead after winning the battle between him and his brother Bbemba, probably during the mid-13th century. This marked the beginning of a gradual expansion of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the East and Central African region.
Originally, the Kingdom of Buganda was a small territory consisting of the Busiro, Busujju, Kyaddondo, Mawokota, and some small portions of Ssingo and Bulemeezi counties. However, during the early years of its making, there was considerable rivalry between the Buganda and Bunyoro Kingdoms resulting in constant fighting over various territories between the two. This led to a gradual expansion of the Buganda Kingdom until it grew to twenty counties.
Buganda is located in the south-central region of the country known today as Uganda, as shown in the map below. This is right in the heart of Africa, astride the equator, and at the source of the great river Nile. The people of Buganda are referred to as Baganda, their language is referred to as Luganda, and they refer to their customs as Kiganda customs. Sometimes the generic term Ganda is used for all the above (especially by foreign scholars). Buganda is home to the nation’s political and commercial capital, Kampala; as well as the country’s main international airport, Entebbe.
Uganda (Swahili for ‘Land of the Ganda’) was the name used by the Arab and Swahili traders on the East African coast to refer to the kingdom of Buganda, deep in the interior of Africa. These traders first arrived in Buganda in the mid-nineteenth century in search of slaves, ivory, as well as other merchandise. When the European colonialists eventually extended their hegemony over Buganda and the surrounding territories at the end of the nineteenth century, they used the Swahili term ‘Uganda’ to refer to the new colony. Today, Uganda is made up of almost 40 different ethnic groups with the Baganda being the largest group at almost 20% of the total population.
Buganda, like her neighbors, had a proud history extending back centuries before the arrival of the Arabs and Europeans. In Buganda’s case; the ruling dynasty of kings was established in the mid-14th century AD. Unfortunately, the lack of a written history before the arrival of the Arabs and Europeans makes it difficult to establish important dates with precision. The first acknowledged king in this dynasty was called Kato Kintu.
The twentieth-century influence of the Baganda in Uganda has reflected the impact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century developments. A series of Kabakas (Kings) amassed military and political power by killing rivals to the throne, abolishing hereditary positions of authority, and exacting higher taxes from their subjects. Buganda’s armies also seized territory held by Bunyoro, the neighboring kingdom to the west. Ganda cultural norms also prevented the establishment of a royal clan by assigning the children of the Kabaka to the clan of their mother. At the same time, this practice allowed the Kabaka to marry into any clan in the society.
One of the most powerful appointed advisers of the Kabaka was the ‘Katikkiro’, who was in charge of the kingdom’s administrative and judicial systems – effectively serving as both prime minister and chief justice. The katikiro and other powerful ministers formed an inner circle of advisers who could summon lower-level chiefs and other appointed advisers to confer on policy matters. By the end of the nineteenth century, the kabaka had replaced many clan heads with appointed officials and claimed the title ‘head of all the clans’.
The sophisticated structure of governance of the Baganda impressed British officials, but political leaders in neighboring Bunyoro were not receptive to British officials who arrived with Baganda escorts. Buganda became the centerpiece of the new protectorate, with a degree of control over the other kingdoms; Toro, Nkore, and Bunyoro.
Many Baganda conceived the need to educate their children and proceeded to construct institutions of higher learning in Buganda. Baganda civil servants also helped administer other ethnic groups, and Uganda’s early history was written from the perspective of the Baganda and the colonial officials who became accustomed to dealing with them. At independence in 1962, Buganda had achieved the highest standard of living and the highest literacy rate in the country.
Land tenure systems were communal, communities shared land under the authority and advice of community elders, clan heads, and/or kings. Bundles of rights (including access and grazing rights) in the same land could be held by different persons, and group rights in particular areas of land or common property rights also existed. These different rights in the land could be transferred from one generation to the next. Decisions about who farmed a particular piece of land were made by clan heads but often resulted from discussions in the family and clan, guided by customs that took into account the needs of various persons in the group. Gender, age, and position in the clan and the family were all factors that played a role in these discussions.
Although the notion of land ownership as exclusive ownership did not exist in pre-colonial times, there was a difference between primary and secondary interests in land. Most of the customs were based on patrilineal systems, and the male elders usually managed the land. Women generally only had secondary rights or interests in land, and these were often of uncertain duration, subject to change, and dependent on the maintenance of good relations with the clan, family, or person through whom women obtained their access to land.
An example of such a secondary interest is the right to use the land and benefit from its produce, also called usufruct right. Women were therefore secondary users of land, whether as daughters, sisters, wives, or mothers. These secondary rights could either apply to family fields, common land, and in some cases, a plot of land women could use as “their own” and from which the benefits of the produce would be brought to the family group as a whole.
While control of land was vested in men, houses were controlled by women (but in most cultures built by the men for their wife/wives), especially married women with sons. Most pre-colonial agricultural social groups were organized around satellite households, which were usually composed of a wife and her unmarried children. Sons who had reached maturity would build their own houses in a specific spatial relation to their mother’s house. In polygamous marriages, each wife had a separate house within the homestead.
Each of these households formed a separate economic unit with agricultural produce controlled by the wife. This separate economic unit represented the starting point of the developmental cycle of the family. Thus the house was both a social and an economic term and fell under different rules from the land on which it was built.109 Houses were identified with women, although women inherited neither houses nor land; daughters were expected to get married and their husbands to build a new house for them upon marriage.
Access to land and housing therefore mainly existed through male relatives (husbands, brothers, and sons). In general, gender relations were more complementary than hierarchical. As there was a blurred distinction between public and private life, women were not confined to the private or domestic sphere alone. This allowed them to participate either directly or indirectly in decision-making, although men dominated positions of political, economic, and social power.