Letters to the Editor
UGANDA
8m,—There can hardly have been a more short-sighted and provocative action In our More recent colonial history than the deporta- tion of the Kabaka of Buganda without trial, last November. It has roused the most power- ful and advanced people in East Central Africa to distrust and even hatred of our people, when before there had been affection and trust. We are driving the Buganda people Into the enemy's camp just when there was needed a strong and stable country in East Africa to counteract the unrest in Kenya, and to a certaiii degree in Nyasaland, with the Sudan passing out of our influence, for good or ill.
This is primarily due to the action of a Young Governor with no colonial experience Influenced by a few senior officials who have been unable to read the signs of the times. In the second place the Colonial Secretary, new in office and with insufficient knowledge of Uganda, supported the Governor and took up a position from which it was hard for him to retreat as he had got the Cabinet's approval to the deportation of the Kabaka.
Where a Prempeh, the Asantahene of Ashanti, could be summarily deported fifty Years ago without trial, it is madness today to attempt such treatment with an advanced African people who, with the rest of the people of the Protectorate, are as near to self- government as the Gold Coast was ten or .fifteen years ago. We are not dealing with Seretse Khama, chief of 70,000 people in Sparsely populated Bechuanaland, but with an able people set in the heart of the Protectorate and who, for the first thirty years of our governing there, were used by our Govern- ment to train, and in some cases subdue, the rest of the Protectorate. They may not always be popular with some officials and some of the other tribes, but they are the nerve centre Of the Protectorate and will remain so.
Those of us who have lived many years in Uganda and know the Baganda well have so far been silent, expecting much from the Hancock mission, but it seems the Governor, beginning with his attack on the three dele- gates who came to this country, is by further action making it more and more difficult for the Baganda to co-operate with this Mission. Professor Hancock will have to meet a suspicious and desperate people and his Mission may well fail through no fault of his. Mr. Cohen was a first-class Colonial Office Secretary who would work himself to the bone for the African peoples. Sir Andrew Cohen, With a tendency to impatience when his will is crossed, has proved himself a Governor Unfitted to work with the African. That Makes all the difference. Trusting the man on the spot may in one case out of a hundred spell disaster. It has in Buganda.—Yours faithfully,
H. M. _GRACE
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