Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol

In the precolonial period, the territory that now constitutes Uganda was inhabited by an abundance of Bantu and Nilotic ethnic groups, who respectively lived in the south and north of the region. Both Bantu and Nilotic groups had complex systems of government, most notably the Bantu kingdom of Buganda on the shores of Lake Victoria. Before 1900, Buganda was an absolute monarchy ruled by a king (Kabaka) who presided over a group of regional governors. The kingdom was relatively isolated for hundreds of years, but Arab traders coming from Zanzibar introduced Buganda to the international trade economy in the mid-19th century. Europeans arrived with the influx of foreign commerce, and by 1877, the British had sent their first Protestant missionaries to the country. In 1894, having subdued Muslim and Catholic political factions, the British government declared Uganda a protectorate of its empire. For the next 68 years, colonial laws and culture enforced a racialized system of power that benefitted white settlers and Asian immigrants, who were granted a monopoly over agricultural exports like sugar and cotton.

By the 1940s, indigenous Ugandans began organizing with the goal of political autonomy. In 1949, demonstrations broke out across the country over widespread discontent with the colonial cooperation of many Baganda chiefs, most notably Kabaka Mutesa II. The British governor was unreceptive to the protestors’ demands, claiming that they had been influenced by communist agents, and Mutesa II refused to step down (“Troops Quell Uganda Riots.” The Age, 2 May 1949). Unrest continued, however, and as Ugandans continued to self-organize, the colonial government became increasingly willing to facilitate a transition to independence.

In 1952, a new British governor, Andrew Cohen, was appointed. Cohen began implementing legislation that removed barriers to economic opportunity for indigenous Ugandans, but he also sought to quell the Baganda separatist movement by deposing Mutesa II and forcing him into exile in London. When the Kabaka’s exile only triggered more fervent anti-British anger across Buganda, Cohen was forced to reinstate him. He did so on the condition that Mutesa II not interfere with the national independence movement in Uganda, which included all ethnic groups in the territory, not only Bagandas.

In 1961, the British government held preliminary elections to determine which Ugandan leaders would eventually oversee the independent government. At the time, there were three major political parties in the country: the center-right Democratic Party (DP), the socialist Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), and the Baganda separatist party Kabaka Yekka (KY, “The King Only”). Although the UPC won the popular vote in these 1961 elections, a Baganda boycott of the election allowed the DP to win a majority of seats in the new national assembly. These results motivated the UPC to form an alliance with the KY, which guaranteed that the Kabaka would be made Uganda’s head of state and ensured Buganda’s special status as an autonomous monarchy internal to Uganda. As a result of this alliance, Mutesa II was named president of Uganda, and Milton Obote, leader of the UPC, was named prime minister in 1963 when the British government was finally ejected from the country. Despite this independence, Uganda remains a member state of the British Commonwealth and was not declared a republic until 1967, when Obote orchestrated the overthrow of Mutesa II and assumed the role of president.

At the time of its release, Song of Lawino revolutionized sub-Saharan Africa’s relationship to written literature, which had been imported by European colonists and touted as superior to the traditional oral storytelling forms of most indigenous African cultures. By writing a long-form story that rejected European imagery and literary conventions and prioritized African ones, p’Bitek opened up new possibilities for how Africans could express their ideas, experiences, and cultures in written form. This work was so influential that it inspired an entire tradition of poetry in the same style, known as the “East African Song School.”