The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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independence. Nonetheless, Kenya came nearer and nearer to independence.
Kenyatta, who was under
detention in the north of the country and was favoured
as a leader by all of the Africans in Kenya, was
released in 1961. He became
Prime Minister in 1963, just before Kenya’s independence was achieved.
Kenya
was granted its independence in 1963, as a republic.

Uganda was, by African standards, rich. The people of Uganda were more
progressive than in most other
colonial territories of British Africa, Commercial
life was not dominated entirely by the Asians, as it
tended to be in Kenya, and the
Ugandans were progressive in developing industry or, with British help, in
the
cultivation of coffee and cotton. To those more successful members of the
community co-operation
with the governing authorities seemed to offer more
than would revolt, and consequently no strong
nationalist movement developed
in the fifties, as it did for example in Kenya. A series of constitutional
changes in
the early fifties provided the Africans of Uganda with increasing opportunities,
but they
showed a surprising reluctance to take them.

However, once the advance towards independence began in Uganda, it
became as rapid as the advance in
other parts of British Africa. In the first place,
the Africans of Uganda became increasingly resentful
of the power of a feudal
aristocracy. In the second, tribal rivalries, such as had created difficulties
for the
constitution-makers in Kenya and Nigeria, showed themselves to be particularly
unmanageable
in Uganda. The native Ugandans, known as the Buganda,
constituted only 17% of the total population, and
relations between them and
some minor tribes were strained. Tension increased in 1953 when a
new
constitution provided that only a minority of the African members of the
Legislative Council
should be elected by the Bugandan assembly. The assembly,
fearing that the new body would overwhelm the
traditional Buganda leaders, was
unwilling to co-operate. This placed their ruler, the Kabaka Edward
Mutesa I I.
in the embarrassing dilemma of either having to oppose his most distinguished

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