At the Court of King Freddie
MARK HEATHCOAT AMORY
IN August 1962, three months before the inde- pendence of Uganda, I went to Mungo Palace at Kampala to spend a year as tutor to the seven- year-old son of the Kabaka of Buganda, Mutesa II, known to the British press as King Freddie. The boy and I were to live later in a pleasant housing estate surrounded by coffee, but this house took six or seven weeks to prepare (at one point we were said to be waiting for the sentry-boxes, and so we may have been, but they never arrived). In the meantime, I had some rooms that were prepared for VIPs and the use of a Mercedes that solved parking problems by having the royal coat of arms instead of a number-plate.
The palace is—or, rather, was—an imposing white building, solidly built in 1942, with two storeys and a tower in the middle. It commands a fine view, is formally, even grandly, furnished, and makes a pleasant picture postcard. The slightly stuffy and unlived-in atmosphere was ex- plained by the fact that the Kabaka (who was usually referred to as His Highness or HH) did not live there, but in an older (1928) and more African palace hidden behind a pleasant green garden of lawns and trees and hedges. Here it was dark, cool and a little shabby, and when HH was in residence there would be a group of six or seven Baganda sitting on the floor in an ante- room, perhaps for hours, while bare-footed ser- vants in full-length white shirts, called kanzus, served local beer or Pepsi-Cola and gin.
When I arrived, HH was away, shooting elephants. A secretary wandered about, worrying about when His Highness might return; a band of children, some the Kabaka's, played cricket and football. I was served tea each day alone in my sitting-room from a huge silver teapot carried by a lively servant. He was soon dis- missed: I never discovered why, all inquiries being answered by sorrowful head-shaking and sighs of, `Ah, he was a bad man.' His successor, who was much more typical, used to bow to me at first, but gave it up. Dressed in a kanzu, but with a tweed jacket on top if it was cold, he was digni- fied and reserved, and although I think he under- stood everything I said, he invariably replied, `Yes it is, please sir.' It rained for a short time in the morning and afternoon and was pleasantly hat in between.
Beyond the second palace there was a group of buildings, containing some large old women sitting on the floor playing ludg, listening end- lessly to the news or steaming green bananas into a heavy soggy form of mashed potato. I never learned to like it and was continually re- minded_that the Queen Mother had not only said it was delicious, but asked for more. Mostly I kept to European food and was expected to. Having learnt the correct greeting, I used to try it out here, with the added risk that if I was talking to a princess I should have called her `sir.' After asking how people were and saying that you, too, were well, it was optional to make a rather pleasant noise somewhere between a bleat and a hum, which is answered in kind. This can be continued indefinitely; testing for a limit. I lost my nerve after six bleats.
When the Kabaka returned, the palace awoke. Private secretaries scurried back and forth with harassed looks, Rolls-Royces (there were eight) arrived and left on bewilderingly complicated missions, which were ruined by the wrong people insinuating themselves and then commanding the driver to a new destination. All gates were guarded by armed members of the bodyguard, who were something between policemen and soldiers. A complicated and melodious rhythm came continuously from a large wooden xylo- phone, peculiar to Uganda. Sometimes strangers would think that as the only European around I was some sort of neo-colonial eminence blanche and ask me to help them. I seldom could.
All activity sprang from the slight, diffident figure of the Kabaka. He is, or was, the personi- fication of the Baganda and students who would scorn tribalism in argument felt incomplete and obscurely unhappy when he was in exile. Every- one of his people, his wife, his son, his secretary, knelt to speak to him and would not sit in a chair in his presence.
If the Kabaka had, not been chosen from among his brothers, he might have enjoyed a less demanding life. He wrote his own speeches because he was the best-equipped man to do so, but he did not like delivering them and did not do so particularly well. He enjoyed Cam- bridge intensely, but had little chance to see old friends. He would like to have read more, but seldom had time even for the Wodehouse in his library. Punctuality, occasionally forced on him, was not welcome. He was just leaving for a football match once when a secretary, who thought he had achieved a triumph of planning, groaned, `They've brought the ceremonial swords for him to look at.' We saw some of the second half.
Throughout the independence celebrations, however, hit timing was precise. This was necessary because the order of precedence be- tween himself as a king in his .own country and Obote as the Prime Minister of all Uganda was delicate and contested. It seems it has now been decided.
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