Obote’s first presidency

Uganda became independent on October 9, 1962, although it was divided politically on a geographic as well as an ethnic basis. By accepting a constitution that conceded what amounted to federal status to Buganda, Obote contrived an unlikely alliance with the Ganda establishment. Together the UPC and KY were able to form a government with Obote as prime minister and with the DP in opposition. Obote agreed to replace the British governor-general by appointing Mutesa II as the country’s first president in an attempt to unify the alliance further, but this move was unsuccessful. Although Obote was able to win over some of the members of the KY and even of the DP so that they joined the UPC, tension grew steadily between the kabaka on the one hand and the UPC on the other. The Ganda leaders particularly resented their inability to dominate a government composed mainly of members of other ethnic groups. There were also divisions within the UPC, because each member of parliament owed his election to local ethnic supporters rather than to his membership in a political party. Those supporters frequently put pressure on their representatives to redress what they saw as an imbalance in the distribution of the material benefits of independence.

Faced with this dissatisfaction among some of his followers and with increasingly overt hostility in Buganda, Obote arrested five of his ministers and suspended the constitution in 1966. Outraged, the Ganda leaders ordered him to remove his government from the kingdom. Obote responded by sending troops under the leadership of Colonel Idi Amin to arrest the kabaka, who escaped to England, where he died in 1969. When Obote imposed a new republican constitution—appointing himself executive president, abolishing all the kingdoms, and dividing Buganda into administrative districts—he also lost the support of the peoples of southwestern Uganda. Internal friction subsequently grew in intensity, fostered by mutual suspicion between the rival groups, by assassination attempts against the president, and by the increasingly oppressive methods employed by the government to silence its critics.

At independence the export economy was flourishing without adversely affecting subsistence agriculture, and the economy continued to improve, largely because of the high demand and high prices for coffee. To answer accusations that the profits from exports did not benefit the producers enough, Obote attempted in 1969 to distribute the benefits from the prospering economy more widely. To this end he published a “common man’s charter,” which focused on removing the last vestiges of feudalism by having the government take a majority holding in the shares of the larger, mainly foreign-owned companies. In order to unite the country more firmly, he also produced a plan for a new electoral system in 1970 that would require successful candidates for parliament to secure votes in constituencies outside their home districts.

These proposals met with a cynical response in some quarters, but the government was overthrown before they could be put into effect. Obote had relied heavily on the loyalty of Idi Amin, but Amin had been building support for himself within the army by recruiting from his own Kakwa ethnic group in the northwest. The army, which had previously been composed of Acholi and their neighbours, Obote’s own Lango people, now became sharply divided. Simultaneously, a rift developed between Obote and Amin, and in January 1971 Amin took advantage of the president’s absence from the country to seize power.