Populism and Nationalism: A Comment on D. A.

Low's "The Advent of Populism in

Buganda"
Author(s): Lloyd A. Fallers
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History , Jul., 1964, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Jul.,
1964), pp. 445-448
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/177932

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 POPULISM AND NATIONALISM: A COMMENT ON
D. A. LOW'S "THE ADVENT OF POPULISM IN BUGANDA"

Anthony Low is surely right in urging students of modern Af

to probe deeper into African society and culture than they have
tomed to do. In part because of the speed with which political
unfolded during the past decade - making it difficult enough ju
with day-to-day events - and in part because of the disjunctio
traditional socio-cultural groupings and modern political bounda
it easy to believe that the former are irrelevant to the latter -
writing on African affairs, even when "well informed", has bee
superficial. Low's work on Buganda, including especially his sen
of Ganda-British relations during the early years of the Protectora
as an admirable exception. Both in the earlier studies and in h
analysis of populism, twentieth-century Baganda are shown to
and out of sentiments, that are understandably related both to con
circumstances and to the Ganda past.
I thus find myself in substantial agreement with Low's anal
roots of Ganda populism and would add to it only one further e
which he mentions but to which he does not, I think, give the
deserves: that is, Ganda "nationalism" as a source of legitim
popular monarchy. Low's analysis of the sources of populist sent
Ganda society - the social and economic alienation of the Peop
Chiefs and the emergence of the Kabaka as a popular leader
chiefly oligarchy, drawing upon the sentiments and imagery as
the system of descent-groups (butaka) - is certainly correct. Bu
external relations also have an important bearing on all this; her
position vis-a-vis her neighbors has deeply influenced the shifting
King, Chiefs and People. A recognition of the nationalist eleme
populism helps both to explain its peculiar force in what is otherwi
markedly non-egalitarian society and at the same time to relat
lisms elsewhere.
Nationalist ideology stresses the political unity of a people arising from

1 D. A. Low and R. C. Pratt, Buganda and British Overrule 1900-1955 (London, 1960),
pp. 3-159.

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446 LLOYD A. FALLERS

their cultural and linguistic kinship. It asserts that this "prim

is politically more important than any divisions among the p
the sole legitimate guide in dealings with other peoples is the
undivided nation. Nineteenth-century Baganda were highly n
this sense - unusually so among African peoples. They were
scious of their uniqueness and mutual kinship and their inst
culture were to a marked degree organized around the nation
its well-being. In the structure of society, this involved a st
fixed social divisions, perhaps best illustrated by the increasi
noted in Low's account, of the national hierarchy of appointed
to constant reorganization by the Kabaka, over the locally-r
clans and lineages. In external relations, it meant a preoccupat
atory raids and wars of conquest against neighboring people
was both the supreme symbol and the organizational pivot of
arms; his embodiment of its most deeply-held values, elaborate
ritual, legitimated his despotic control over its internal org
enabled him to both stimulate and guide its passion for aggra
The rise of the chiefly oligarchy to independent influence duri
years of the Protectorate was made possible in part by th
Buganda's external relations within a colonial framework that
the neighboring peoples toward whom the external thrust of n
been directed, and in part also by the chiefs' successful assump
ship in such self-assertion as remained possible under these co
drove a remarkably good bargain with Britain in the Agreem
and, while perforce accepting a political framework in whic
were only one people among many, effectively protected the nati
in the discussions of the proposed "closer union" among East
tories in the nineteen-twenties. Another, less directly politica
very revealing, issue during this period concerned the attemp
tional authorities to substitute Swahili, the East African lingu
Luganda as the medium of instruction. Baganda leaders not on
resisted this, but went on to develop in Luganda one of the very
African-language literatures on the continent. In these and o
chiefly oligarchy preserved and led Ganda nationalism with
limits permitted by the colonial situation.
In the period of "decolonization" that followed the Second
however, it was again possible to question more fundamentally
the kingdom's relationship with both its African neighbors an
The internal social and economic developments traced by Lo
it was the Kabaka, rather than the chiefs, who assumed lead

2 C. Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and

the New States", in C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States (Gle
pp. 105-157.

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 POPULISM AND NATIONALISM 447

renewed nationalist fervor that these new conditions invited. In the pr

and intermittent negotiations that finally led, in October 1962, to an i
dent Uganda, he again became the leader and embodiment of the n
arms, first demanding an independent Buganda state and then, w
proved unattainable, accepting as the next best thing a position o
semi-autonomy within a larger state of which he became the cer
head. Thus today Buganda's external relations are again conta
larger political framework within which the nation manque must p
passion for self-assertion. It remains to be seen how long, under t
ditions, the Kabaka will prove the most effective organizer of th
nationalist sentiment that, along with the patterns discussed by
remained one of the major themes of Ganda political life.
What then, in a more general sense, have nationalism and populi
with each other? These two ideologies - the one asserting that th
the political expression of the destiny of an undivided body of cu
linguistic kinsmen, the other that legitimacy resides in the peop
have been most thoroughly discussed by students of the past few
of Western history and such historians have commonly found an
connection between them. In the new nation-states that emerged o
universal Christian civilization of the medieval West and the polyglot e
that it legitimated, the new political leaders asserted a right to spe
people that rested upon their cultural and linguistic kinship with t
The political mobilization of the people was accompanied by a grea
tion to the "folk" cultures and "vernacular" languages in which t
thought and spoke (and might thus be spoken to). Political bounda
realigned to coincide with this "natural" political communication
the leaders and the led. While one or the other element might at
times and places receive greater emphasis, depending upon the n
sources of political leadership, on the whole the development of po
nationalist ideologies went hand in hand.3 In the other great "
empire" of recent times - that of the Ottoman sultans - somethi
similar occurred.4
In Africa, the latter-day universal empires were too short-lived to do more
than hold in check for a few decades indigenous nationalisms like that of
Buganda - to modernize and popularize them and pass them on, together
with the imposed colonial boundaries, to new states, one of whose funda-
mental problems is that they are not nations. The common use of the term
"nationalism" to denote the as yet tenuous sentiments of loyalty to these new
states, as contrasted with those the people feel toward the older indigenous
political communities and the intellectuals toward a wider, pan-African unity,

3 H. Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York, 1944).

4 N. Safran, Egypt in Search of Political Community (Cambridge, 1961); L. S. Stavria-
nos, The Balkans Since 1453 (New York, 1958).

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 448 LLOYD A. FALLERS

remains more a gesture toward a hop

present. Populism in much of Af
national definition.

LLOYD A. FALLERS

University of Chicago

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