Uganda's Katikiro in England (review)

Uganda's Katikiro in England, by Ham Mukasa. With notes and an introduction by Simon Gikandi. Exploring Travel Series. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1998. xvii + 211 pp. ISBN 0-7190-5437-0 paper.

The original 1904 title page of Ham Mukasa's book offers a compelling gloss on the complex relations between imperial center and colonized periphery. This account of two Bagandan visitors in Britain has as its subtitle "Being the Official Account of His Visit to the Coronation of His Majesty King Edward VII." Mukasa is described as the secretary to the Kitikiro (chief minister, in effect, of the Kingdom of Buganda) and as the author of "A Luganda Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew." Mukasa's text, the title page adds, was translated and (more problematically for today's reader) edited by the Rev. Ernest Millar, MA, FZS, who also served as "Official Interpreter to the Katikiro during His Visit and Missionary of the Church Missionary Society in Uganda." The book was introduced by Sir H. H. Johnston, KCB , and printed in London by Hutchinson & Co of Paternoster Row.

Amid these languages, places, religions, and cultures, it is not easy to draw sharp distinctions between colonizer and colonized, ruler and ruled, missionary and convert. Or to put it another way, there are moments when such categories seem less than useful for reading this account of Mukasa's journey from his home in East Africa through the Suez Canal to Marseilles by ship, then across France by train, and finally over the Channel to England. While there, he and Sir Apolo Kagwa, the Katikiro, tour various attractions in London and then make a virtual circumambulation of the island, visiting factories, great homes, churches, and meeting with dignitaries both secular and sacred. If this itinerary seems designed to persuade the Ugandans of the political, moral, and technological accomplishments of the British, and thus to secure their allegiance in the colonial maneuverings of European powers in East Africa, it was clearly successful. Mukasa is, everywhere, the appreciative guest: he has few if any critical comments to make about Europeans and their ways (except about Germans, and such would have elevated him in the opinion of his original readers); he is always ready to tour yet another factory or country estate or church; and he describes his new friends in Britain in the most complimentary terms. Mukasa's sense of the genre is diametrically opposed to that displayed by the typically boorish British traveler in Africa (or anywhere else in the Empire, for that matter) who does nothing but complain about the water and food, the "natives," and the absence of civilized amenities.

If Mukasa's book occasionally reads like nothing so much as an extended note of thanks to his British hosts, the irony may perhaps finally be on them. For while he is always polite and frequently makes comments like "Again we were amazed at the cleverness of the English" (127), the effect of his narrative is to flatten life in England, even to make it seem monotonous. Again, Mukasa reverses the usual strategy of the travel writer by making everything that he sees in the foreign country seem immediately comprehensible and thoroughly admirable. Through his sober reportage and frequent homilies on why it is best to work hard and be good (the two great English virtues, he observes), he makes his visit to Britain, including the relatively anticlimactic coronation service of Edward VII, seem quite routine. The English in his account hardly appear as remarkable or exotic, but instead emerge as faithful proponents of a late Victorian ethic of self-improvement.

And yet one wonders whether such a reading of Mukasa's account is not simply the attempt of a postcolonial reader to make him seem more insightful and wily than his English hosts thought him to be. Did he really find everything in England as remarkable as he claimed? And did he have as much difficulty as he thought he would...