The Buganda Question and the Forging of a Nation-State in Uganda
By Yoga Adhola Elections in preparations for independence were held in Uganda in 1961 and again in 1962 . To understand these elections we need to go back in history to the governorship of Sir Andrew Cohen. Andrew Cohen became Governor of Uganda in 1952. Prior to that, he had been Under-Secretary at the colonial Office in London. In that capacity he had earned the reputation of being dynamic and very positive to decolonization of Africans. He had been involved in the formulation of the Creech-Jones dispatch of 1947. Two major principles guided Cohen's administration. One, the belief that it was urgently necessary to increase the participation of Africans in the formulation and implementation of government policy at all levels of government. Secondly, that Uganda must move towards independence as one unit, and not fracture into several rival tribal states. There had been strong fears that the kingdom of Buganda might want to sever itself from the rest of the colony from around 1949....