Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Mutesa II of Buganda
1924 – 1969
Kabaka of Buganda and Uganda's first president
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Uganda Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
King Freddie — Kabaka of Buganda for thirty years and Uganda's first president, deposed by Obote and dead in a London flat at forty-five.
Sir Edward Frederick William David Walugembe Mutebi Luwangula Mutesa became Kabaka of Buganda at eighteen, was educated at Cambridge and commissioned in the Grenadier Guards, and was known in the British press as King Freddie.
In 1953 the governor, Sir Andrew Cohen, demanded he support the colonial plan for an East African federation, which Buganda feared would submerge it. Mutesa refused, and was deported to London. The Kabaka Crisis that followed united Buganda behind him to a degree nobody had anticipated, and after two years and a court case the British were forced to bring him back — an almost unheard-of colonial reversal, and the moment Ugandan politics became unmanageable for Britain.
At independence in 1962 he became the first president of Uganda, in a federal arrangement with Milton Obote as executive prime minister. The alliance was never stable. In 1966 Obote suspended the constitution and sent troops under Idi Amin to storm the palace at Mengo. Mutesa escaped over the wall in the rain and left the country.
He died in a small flat in Bermondsey in 1969, aged forty-five, officially of alcohol poisoning; many Baganda have never accepted that account. His body was returned in 1971 and buried at Kasubi. The kingdom was abolished with him and not restored until 1993.
In 1953 the governor, Sir Andrew Cohen, demanded he support the colonial plan for an East African federation, which Buganda feared would submerge it. Mutesa refused, and was deported to London. The Kabaka Crisis that followed united Buganda behind him to a degree nobody had anticipated, and after two years and a court case the British were forced to bring him back — an almost unheard-of colonial reversal, and the moment Ugandan politics became unmanageable for Britain.
At independence in 1962 he became the first president of Uganda, in a federal arrangement with Milton Obote as executive prime minister. The alliance was never stable. In 1966 Obote suspended the constitution and sent troops under Idi Amin to storm the palace at Mengo. Mutesa escaped over the wall in the rain and left the country.
He died in a small flat in Bermondsey in 1969, aged forty-five, officially of alcohol poisoning; many Baganda have never accepted that account. His body was returned in 1971 and buried at Kasubi. The kingdom was abolished with him and not restored until 1993.
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