This paper is a brief analysis of the moral continuum in the cultural heritage and contemporary life of Uganda. It focuses upon the element of constraint and compulsion in the form of colonial coercion that characterized Uganda at its beginning, persistently conditioned its growth, and prevented, among other things, the development of a national moral consensus.¹ In reference to the morality and culture of traditional societies, the paper proposes humanity as the common denominator for a national consensus and culture. In conclusion it envisages the moral advantage ensuing from a realistic reaction to the moral crisis and to the social pluralism experienced by the nation.²

SOCIAL HETEROGENEITY

At Independence on October 9, 1962, Uganda comprised four Kingdoms (Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro, and Ankole), ten districts (West Nile, Madi, Acholi, Lango, Karamoja, Teso, Sebei, Bugisu, and Bukedi) and the territory of Busoga. With the exception of the name "West Nile", all the others are meant to refer to the ethnic groups inhabiting them. This would seem to imply that Uganda consists of fifteen major ethnic groups, counting also the Lugbara and Alur in West Nile. But The Uganda Atlas enumerates forty-two ethnic groups in the country.³ Ladefoged, Glick and Cripper list sixty-three languages and dialects there, and ethnicities are generally identified by their proper languages.⁴ In fact, Uganda ranks as the second most heterogeneous nation in the world, with only 10% of ethnic and linguistic homogeneity.⁵

An understanding of the contemporary life of the nation requires an awareness of, and attention to, the many social units that constitute its roots and are its historical and cultural heritage. This historical recognition takes one to the migrations and settlements in the area now known as Uganda about A.D. 1000.⁶

The social units of that time should not be looked at retrospectively through the ethnic paradigms of today. Those groups took time to form into their present patterns. "Although there have been Nilotes and Bantu in East Africa for one or two thousand years, the traditional histories of individual Nilotic and Bantu tribes usually go back only one or three hundred years, and never for more than six hundred."⁷ This remote history of Uganda "is not just a collection of histories of individual tribes or groups of tribes, but a story of fusion and interaction by which all tribes and groups have been constantly altered or even transformed."⁸

It can be assumed that the life and history of those units went through the normal vicissitudes that characterize any such group: inner and outer tensions, cohesive and disintegrating alternatives, prosperity and decline, peace and war.

Colonial Coercion

About 100 years ago, colonialism impinged on those social units with a force presumably never before experienced before and with effects lasting up to the present. Traditional societies had experienced force before, but the colonial type of force was exceptional for its magnitude, complexity and penetration. The colonial impact upset the organization of those societies, coercing them to radical changes in both their inner structures and outer relations with other societies. In most cases, those units were amalgamated in larger entities and identified by names that were new to the More vast amalgamation as such. Thus, for example, the Toro and Ankole kingdoms were enlarged; their names were extended to the people brought into the larger kingdoms. Busoga resulted from an agglomeration of various states and the name of a smaller unit given to the new amalgamation. Acholi was created into one entity by the merger of many clans. The Karimojong proper are only three ethnicities among those in the present omonimous area. Teso had many chieftainships which had to be conquered one by one to forge the present territory. Bunyoro and Buganda were states in their own right; however, the Bunyoro territory was restricted while the Baganda territory was enlarged; their structure as that of the other social units, was emptied of real power. The ethnic groups on the map of newly independent Uganda, appear to be fairly homogeneous though they had been quite heterogeneous at the time of their amalgamation.

Colonial coercion was in many cases direct and overt violence. Troops were permanently mobilized and engaged in direct fighting or terrorizing to bend the people into submission, and in constant looting to acquire provisions for themselves and income for the colonial administration. The army was a permanent source of fear; it was meant to foster a climate of compulsion and constraint curtailing freedom.

At other times, coercion was indirect and covert, as typified by the treaties extensively used to establish colonial rule. The signing of these treaties, in the words of A. F. Thurston, a colonial administrator in Uganda, "is an amiable farce which is supposed to impose on foreign governments, and to be the equivalent of an occupation."⁹ Though these treaties might have been sometimes a farce, they were never amiable. They were not intended to be a legal instrument between equals, as treaties are supposed to be; they were used as a fraudulent means of manipulation. Though both parties probably were aware of the inner senselessness of these treaties, each tried to exploit them. But as the colonial party had a stronger force behind the treaties, it could draw a greater advantage from them--not because of the treaty in itself, but because of the force behind it.

This colonial coercion marred the nation at its beginning, and has continued to undermine its life and history. It has prevented the formation and development of a moral consensus at the national level. As morality concerns free human behavior, morality can only originate, develop and apply in freedom. But a nation like Uganda whose freedom has been impinged upon by colonialism, particularly in public life, could not develop a common view on fundamental moral issues in the atmosphere of freedom needed to achieve a moral consensus. This does not mean that Uganda has had no moral values in her public life. It has had them, and fact could not have lived without them.¹⁰ But these public values were rooted in and ensued from ethnic groups; in this sense, public ethics originally and fundamentally was ethnic.

Wider Identity

The colonial amalgamation posed a challenge to the social units undergoing that experience, and this led to their developing a more vast communal identity and cohesion. Thus, in 1943 the Basoga were proposing a constitution that had the monarchical Buganda state as a paradigm. In 1947, the Acholi were demanding an overall chief on the pattern of the centralized societies in the nation. Other ethnic groups were envisaging a paramount head as a point of reference to their vaster identity. The Samia people in East Uganda "provide a very good example of a peasant society that had no centralized political structure being forced under the influence of external circumstances to take the identity of presenting a unified aspect to the outside world it had formerly lacked."¹¹

The development of this wider identity was circumscribed by cultural boundaries, namely, it occurred among people who could communicate with each other through the same language and understand the same values. Thus, this expanding identity interested culturally homogeneous groups as for instance in Toro, Ankole, Busoga, Teso, and Acholi. Some units among them did not merge in this vaster identification process because of their linguistic and cultural differences, like the Bamba and Bakonjo in Toro. Some larger societies, like the Banyoro and Baganda, did not undergo the colonial merger referred to; their identity remained within their traditional areas.

Hence, identity was conditioned by culture. When identity expanded, its widest confines were those of culture; it did not extend to what would have become the national boundaries of Uganda. As T.B. Kabwegyere notes: "The ideology of law and order and good administration provided the guidelines in building the foundation of ethnic identity. As an offshoot of this process, parochialism, rather than widening the base for a wider identity, became an essential value in the emerging structures. Far from molding a Protectorate identity, the discontinuous change from the pre-colonial ethos to the colonial era not only encouraged but in some cases imposed and forced on people a will to identify with the local area."¹²

Referring to the previous assertion that public ethics was fundamentally ethnic, it can now be more clearly seen how public moral consensus could develop, but not beyond the confines of the new wider identities, namely, not beyond particular cultural areas. To be able to go beyond them, moral consensus would have needed a common language and basic values by which the moral discourse could have reached the expected consensus. In fact, a moral consensus results from an intense personal communication entailing persuasions at the deep level of conscience. Such interrelations among groups need a possibility of communication and understanding that only common cultural values can offer.

This possibility did not exist at the national level. A culture is not artificially manufactured or legally established or hastily concocted. One can perhaps impose a political system on a national community, but not a moral system. Interaction at the national level existed, particularly in political matters; here too some analysts could interpret such political exchange as ultimately being motivated, guided and achieved. Whatever the opinion on the nature of this political relations, the moral discourse rested its legitimacy upon and drew its authoritativeness from tradition. Tradition, in turn, came to the public scene through the medium of ethnicities. The resulting public morality reflected the heterogeneous conditions of the nation in its motivations and purpose.

MORAL AWARENESS

Besides history, anthropology as the discipline of small-scale societies can help in assessing the position of ethics in pre-colonial societies. Anthropologists agree that all societies have rules relating to what ought and ought not to be done; all societies have an ideal standard of conduct sometimes adhered to, sometimes deviated from. Some societies may not have developed an explicit and systematic set of moral principles; this however does not imply that such societies are confused in their practical application and appraisal of such principles. George M. Foster points out that "the members of every society share a common cognitive orientation which is, in effect, an unverbalized, implicit understanding of the `rules of the game' of living imposed upon them by their social, natural and supernatural universes. A cognitive orientation provides the members of the society it characterizes with basic premises and assumptions normally neither recognized nor questioned which structure and guide behavior."¹³

The social units that constitute contemporary Uganda are described as traditional societies. The influence of some anthropologists, and also the desire by some philosophers to explain the development of morality, have led to the consideration of traditional societies as living by a traditional morality which is, by definition, blindly accepted. Further explained, critical thought is needed to pass from traditional, conventional or customary morality, to a reflective one.¹⁴

The available evidence on traditional Ugandan societies as they lived during the decades before colonialism, does not allow the above mentioned paradigm of traditional "blind" moralities to be applied to them. Such evidence from historical and anthropological findings and from linguistic analysis, is found, among other things, in the ways in which education was imparted, marriage contracts arranged, public hearings conducted and punishment administered. These and similar social aspects testify to a continuous incentive to motivate, assert, and perhaps modify the moral demands of individuals and society. A blind moral conformity embracing the whole community appears unrealistic. Moral issues were constantly confronted and demanded to be reflected upon.

However, there may be a time or an occasion in the life of an individual or a society when moral values are strongly challenged by some exceptional condition that induces what can be described as a crisis. A crisis here indicates a conflictual situation that challenges moral consistency at its roots, demanding a choice for or against; it touches on the principle of contradiction, by which it is an "either-or" moral choice. For instance, it could be a choice for either a traditional or a moral value; for either social conformity or individual creativity; for either a holistic or an individualistic vision of reality. The extraordinary experience effecting a crisis could be death, destruction, sickness, war, revolution or calamity. In Ugandan history, a typical instance of such experience was colonialism.

A crisis provides considerable incentives to reassess morality. Such a crisis however needs to be perceived for it to provoke the envisaged reassessment of morality: without an awareness of the crisis, there can be no reaction to it. The amount of public awareness about the moral crisis in Uganda provoked by colonialism is not easy to establish. At Independence, public awareness appeared to have been mainly drawn to the political crisis inherited from colonialism; the moral crisis received less or no attention. Today such moral awareness gradually is being acutely perceived. As a result an individual may react by developing new principles, finding new justifications, reconsidering his or her moral stand vis-a-vis other aspects of existence. The group may react to it by finding new motivations for cohesion, new patterns of interpersonal relations, new goals.

Moral Uniformity

Historical and anthropological literature on traditional societies in Uganda is abundant and several texts describe traditional moralities. These moralities varied in their prescriptions or in the way they were applied. Traditional societies were molded by their specific geographical and historical environment, and as the configuration of Uganda is remarkably varied, the characteristics of its societies varied accordingly. The application of moral tenets is to be included in this diversity. At the same time, when comparing the various moral codes of these societies, one discovers behind the prescriptive variety, a considerable measure of uniformity.

Such uniformity emerges for instance in the respect for human life. The common good may require sacrificing the life of an individual and each community assesses the nature of this communal good, the way it is threatened and it need to be safeguarded. But when human life needs to be suppressed, the general behavior that precedes, accompanies and follows such action indicates its exceptional nature. Another example of moral uniformity relates to property. This relation varies in many ways, but in all societies everyone avoids being even suspected of being a thief. The prompt and merciless lynching of thieves, which may occur even at present, ensues from this deep repulsion for people who disregard property. Also in marriage life one could detect the same fundamental tenets of indissolubility, fidelity, harmony, etc., even when the external behavior seemed to hide such ideals. There is abundant oratory in all traditional societies projecting such common moral "oughts." One is here reminded of the distinction drawn by Ralph Linton between the conceptual values, which are the broad universal values common to humanity, and the instrumental values that refer to the varied means to attain these ends.¹⁵

The difference between this moral uniformity and moral consensus is one of awareness and appropriation. Uniformity indicates the possibility of consensus, but to become such, uniformity needs to be reflected upon and assumed. Uniformity may be given, but consensus has to be acquired.

For most anthropologists the immediate explanation of the uniformities or universal values underlying the different moral codes lies in the basic requirements of any society. Morris Ginsberg maintains that there are no societies "which do not regard that which contributes to the need and survival of the group as good, none which do not condemn conduct interfering with the satisfaction of common needs and threatening the stability of social relations."¹⁶ A.L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn acknowledge that "the mere existence of universals after so many millennia of culture history and in such diverse environments suggests that they correspond to something extremely deep in man's nature and/or are necessary conditions to social life. . . . Anthropology's facts attest that the phrase `a common humanity' is in no sense meaningless."¹⁷

The moral code of the colonialists also entered the moral arena of Uganda, with its possible diversities and uniformities. One could begin with the ethnographers' consideration of the moral codes of small scale societies. These societies distinguish between their members and outsiders in the sense that the moral norms of the group cease to have meaning outside their particular collectivity; the group may have no code or a different standard of conduct towards others. The moral code of the colonialists was most probably seen under a similar perspective, namely, as being the code of a small scale society, and consequently as valid for its members, within their interests and culture. This meant, among other things, a moral code allowing double standards.

At the same time, elements of uniformity might have been noticed in that code, like the respect for life, property, marriage contracts, parents and authority. With regard to the consensus regarding such uniformities, one could envisage two alternatives: either such a code was perceived as one with the Christian moral code and in that case the acceptance of some of its elements might have happened because of religion; or the code appeared as purely colonial and consensus over its uniformities encountered two main obstacles. The first concerned the pervasive element of coercion that made whatever was colonial suspicious and generally unacceptable. The second refers to the relativism and duplicity of the colonialist code which emptied it of objective values.

COMMON HUMANITY

The concept of a common humanity could in fact provide the moral continuum linking the cultural heritage to contemporary life. The moral advantages ensuing from this concept are generally appreciated; however, the concept itself has no agreed upon interpretation. Its analysis ultimately leads to the relation of person and community and to the individualistic or holistic visions of society. Hence, the concept of humanity poses a metaphysical challenge.

In the Ugandan context, this metaphysical issue could be seen vis-a-vis the African world-view which has harmony as one of its components. This harmonic component is still to a great extent implicit or philosophy in a "broad sense." Not having been made sufficiently explicit in "narrow sense" philosophy, it may not be possible to use it in an attempt to solve the metaphysical dualism of person and society in the concept of humanity.¹⁸ Thus the combination of an harmonic vision of reality with its dual components could be considered a further challenge to metaphysics in Africa.

But if the metaphysical problem remains, morality may still be able to benefit from the harmonic vision offered by the African world-view. For in the practical field of moral behavior, the experiential knowledge that the African has of himself and his fellow humans within a common humanity helps him discover the relation: "I am because we are, and we are because I am."¹⁹

This concept of humanity would lead to the human person as the essential constituent of humanity. It would demand, in the context of Ugandan history, that the person be given back all that belongs to his humanity, specifically the use of his freedom within the context of social cohesion. The concept of a common humanity would lead also to the common elements in culture that constitute the inner cohesion of a human society, and upon which one can elaborate a moral consensus at ever wider levels of society.

The concept of humanity may appear to contrast with that of nationality, causing a dilemma in the Ugandan context. But humanism and nationalism are not contraries. The latter concept is actual a derivate from the former, in the sense that one is human before being national. Hence, reference to a common humanity does not supersede national characteristics. Rather, it provides their foundations: a national culture has its reason from existence in the humanity of the nationals who live in it.

Philosophy and particularly ethics need to continue a critical appraisal of this concept to avoid its being appropriated and manipulated by one part of humanity. Such philosophical criticism must be exercised within the pluralistic and conflictual aspects which appear to characterize contemporary society and are evident in both the cultural heritage and the contemporary life in Uganda. If pluralism and conflict are ignored in favor of monistic and irenic positions, society will never achieve the moral consensus needed for its survival.

Pluralism and Conflict

The history of Uganda testifies to the existence of a social pluralism coercively impinged upon by colonial social monism. The effects and pervasiveness of this coercion have not yet been fully realized and assessed. This could be one of the reasons why they seem to have persisted beyond political colonialism up to the present. Colonial coercion has penetrated the national organism contributing to what some people call "the culture of violence" that has conditioned the thought and action of the nation. Such culture would not allow a moral consensus.

Nevertheless, seventy years of colonial attempts at social monism have not done away with social pluralism. On the eve of Independence, the Constitutional Committee recognized that "Uganda is an artificial unit containing within its borders . . . a variety of different tribes with different languages and customs."²⁰ At the same time, twenty-eight years after Independence, the International Seminar on Internal Conflicts in Uganda had to reassert: "It was widely recognized at the conference that Uganda was a land of many cultures and traditions. These should be nurtured and protected. Ethnic identities should not be de-emphasized as in Obote's time, when cultural differences were not discussed and were bottled up." And the ensuing recommendation was: "that schools should teach African cultures and traditions to build up pride in national unity. We need to enshrine our cultures in the education system . . . African traditions should be established as a subject taught in primary schools in the first three years."²¹

Thus pluralism is a factual datum that antecedes any conceptual consideration. Without a realistic recognition of this pluralism and a consequent refusal of monism, colonial or otherwise, a national moral discourse cannot develop. In fact, not only are individual citizens expected to recognize themselves as ensuing from the same humanity; also ethnic (cultural) groups are "natural" results of that humanity "natural" in the sense that culture is a necessary derivate of the socializing effect of humanity. Hence, a national moral consensus develops not only from an interrelation of individual citizens, but also from the exchange among cultural (ethnic) groups that must therefore be recognized and accepted in a pluralistic vision of history and society.

The past and present of Uganda attest to the presence of conflictual conditions which have generated crises in the field of individual and social morality. It has been asserted that such conflictual and critical conditions do not in themselves curb morality. Morality can actually develop in such conditions; crisis and conflicts can be an incentive to moral elaborations. Hence, conflicts are not an obstacle to morality, but a challenge and a means to its development when properly exploited to that effect.²² Thus, the conditions of constraint and compulsion that marked the inception of the nation and that have accompanied its life-history do not in themselves imply that a development of moral discourse and consensus is impossible. In other words constraint and compulsion have not deprived the people of their inner or metaphysical freedom, but only of its outer or social exercise.

Past conflictual conditions continue, challenging a critical and continuous reappraisal of moral issues. If this takes place in pluralism and by reference to the common values which ensue from a common humanity vis-a-vis national characteristics and culture, then contemporary society is developing a national moral consensus it had been constrained from achieving by past monistic coercion. There are indications that this is happening in Uganda: the exchange in the mass media, the debates in court rooms, the popular committees at various levels, the human rights commission, and other forums, point to the acceptance of the challenge arising from pluralism and conflict.

Makerere University

Kampala, Uganda

1. Constraint is the condition of being prevented from doing, i.e., forced to omit; compulsion is the condition of being prevented from omitting, i.e., forced to do; coercion is the deliberate forceful interference in the affairs of human beings by other human beings. J. Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 5, 7.

2. The need of a national moral consensus proposed by this paper assumes that morality is not only individual, but has also a social and national dimension.

3. Atlas of Uganda (Kampala: Dept. of Lands and Surveys, 1967), p. 40.

4. P. Ladefoged, R. Glick, and C. Cripper, Languages in Uganda (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 31.

5. G.T. Kurian, Encyclopedia of the Third World (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1987), s.v. "Uganda."

6. The peoples involved in these movement generally are classified in four main groups: the Sudanic in the north-west (Lugbara, Madi, . . . ), the River-Lake Nilotes in the north, center and south-east (Acholi, Alur, . . . ), the Highland and Plain Nilotes in the north-east and east (Karimojong, Iteso, . . . ), and the Western or Interlacustrine Bantu in the south-west and center (Baganda, Banyoro, . . . ).

7. J.E.G. Sutton, "The Settlement of East Africa", in B.A. Ogot and J.A. Kieran, Zamani (Nairobi: Longmans, 1968), p. 95.

8. Ibid., p. 96.

9. A.B. Thurston, "African Incident," quoted by R.K. Mukherjee, The Problem of Uganda, A Study in Acculturation (Berlin, Akademic Verlag, 1956), p. 126.

10. "What makes a society of any sort is a community of ideas, not only political ideas but also ideas about the way its members should behave and govern their lives; these latter ideas are its morals. Every society has a moral structure as well as a political one: or rather, since that might suggest two independent systems, I should say that the structure of every society is made up both of politics and morals." P. Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 9 (Emphasis added).

11. R.W. Moody, Social and Political Institutions of the Samia, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1967, p. 1.

12. T.B. Kabwegyere, The Politics of State Formation (Kampala: East African Literature Bureau, 1974), p. 50. The author adds: "We may therefore conclude that the so-called `tribes', at least in the Uganda context, the `units' anthropologists have studied as traditional units, are mainly a creation of modern forces, of which colonialism is one" (Ibid., p. 50). The amalgamation of traditional units is described by the author as tribalization or the creation of tribes: "Busoga presents one of the most clear cases of tribalization in the history of Uganda" (Ibid., p. 41); "If what `tribe', it is difficult to see what else it was" (Ibid., p. 45).

13. G.M. Foster, "Peasant Society and the Image of the Limited Good", American Anthropologist, 67 (1965), p. 293. (Emphasis added).

14. P.W. Taylor, Principles of Ethics (Encino, CA.: Dickenson Publishing Company, Inc., 1975), pp. 9-11.

15. R. Linton, "The Problem of Universal Values" in R.S. Spencer (ed.), Method and Perspective in Anthropology (Minneapolis, 1954). pp. 145-168.

16. M. Ginsberg, "On the Diversity of Morals," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 83 (1953), p. 124.

17. A.L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn, Culture, A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (New York, Vintage Books, 1963), pp. 351, 353. The endurance of universals does not make them absolute in the mind of anthropologists. Absolutes would in fact be subtracted from scientific scrutiny. Universals instead can be subjected to empirical scrutiny and even abandoned if evidence were to suggest so.

18. The terms "broad" and "narrow" to describe philosophy as a worldview or a technical discipline are used by Kwasi Wiredu, "Philosophy in Africa Today," 1981, mimeo: quoted by L. Outlaw, "Philosophy and Culture: Critical Hermeneutics and Social Transformation," in H. Odera Oruka and D.A. Masol, eds., Philosophy and Culture (Nairobi: Bookwise Limited, 1983), p. 28.

19. J.S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London, Heinemann, 1969), p. 214.

20. Report of the Constitutional Committee: The Wild Report (Entebbe, Government Printer, 1959), p. 34.

21. International Seminar on Internal Conflicts in Uganda, Kampala, MISR, Makerere University, September 21-25, 1987. Recommendation No. 2.

22. "From the ethical point of view, conflict is fundamentally ambivalent; it is therefore neither bad in itself (harmonious thinking) nor the good `father of all things' (dialectic of history). Its destructive and constructive potentialities depend largely on what judgment is passed on circumstances, means and ends. . . . The pugnacious element in man's individual and social self-realization is at all events not bad in itself, but takes its value or worthlessness from the relation in which its stands." B. Stoeckle, ed., Concise Dictionary of Christian Ethics (London, Burns & Oates, 1979), s.v. "Conflict" by D. Mieth.