Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T07:54:38.962Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Affective registers of postcolonial crisis: the Kampala Tank Hill party

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2019

Edgar Curtis Taylor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A drinking party in 1963 precipitated a crisis over newly independent Uganda's sovereignty and the respectability of a new postcolonial ruling elite. Under Kampala's multiracial veneer in the early 1960s lurked bawdy British youth culture and radical African youth politics. When Europeans at a party in the elite suburb of Tank Hill allegedly mocked African aspirations for urban respectability and political sovereignty, UPC (Uganda Peoples Congress) Youth Wing activists used the affair to elicit public expressions of anger at the collusion of conservative politicians and racist former colonizers. Prime Minister Milton Obote attempted to channel that anger into nationalist unity but soon found common cause with British diplomats in expelling intemperate youth from Uganda's governing bureaucracy. The affair points to both the power and the limits of the affective politics of decolonization as well as the relationship between youth wings and the politics of respectability in early postcolonial Africa.

Résumé

Une soirée bien arrosée en 1963 a précipité une crise autour de la souveraineté de l'Ouganda, alors jeune pays indépendant, et de la respectabilité d'une nouvelle élite dirigeante postcoloniale. Sous le vernis multiracial de Kampala au début des années 1960 se cachaient une culture paillarde chez les jeunes britanniques et un radicalisme politique chez les jeunes Africains. Lorsque, au cours d'une soirée organisée dans les beaux quartiers de Tank Hill, des Européens se seraient moqués des aspirations africaines à une respectabilité urbaine et une souveraineté politique, des activistes de l'aile jeune de l'UPC (Uganda Peoples Congress) ont utilisé cette affaire pour provoquer une colère publique contre la collusion de politiciens conservateurs et d'anciens colonisateurs racistes. Le Premier ministre Milton Obote a tenté de canaliser cette colère en unité nationaliste, mais s'est rapidement trouvé une cause commune avec les diplomates britanniques en expulsant les jeunes immodérés de la bureaucratie dirigeante d'Ouganda. Cette affaire est révélatrice du pouvoir et des limites de la politique de décolonisation affective, mais aussi du rapport entre les ailes jeunes et la politique de respectabilité dans les premiers temps de l'Afrique postcoloniale.

Type
Crisis of violence in East Africa
Information
Africa , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 541 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adhola, Y. (2015) UPC and National-Democratic Liberation in Uganda. Bloomington IN: Xlibris.Google Scholar
Agyeman, O. (1992) Nkrumah's Ghana and East Africa: pan-Africanism and African interstate relations. Rutherford NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.Google Scholar
Ahlman, J. (2017) Living with Nkrumahism: nation, state, and pan-Africanism in Ghana. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Astles, B. (2015) Forty Tribes: a life in Uganda. Sherborne: Remous.Google Scholar
Bradley, K. (1955) A Career in the Oversea Civil Service. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Brennan, J. (2006) ‘Youth, the TANU Youth League and managed vigilantism in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1925–73’, Africa 76 (2): 221–46.Google Scholar
Burgess, G. and Burton, A. (2010) ‘Introduction’ in Burton, A. and Charton-Bigot, H. (eds), Generations Past: youth in East African history. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Burgess, T. (2005) ‘The Young Pioneers and the rituals of citizenship in revolutionary Zanzibar’, Africa Today 51 (3): 3–29.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, D. (2010) ‘The legacies of Bandung: decolonization and the politics of culture’ in Lee, C. (ed.), Making a World after Empire: the Bandung moment and its political afterlives. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Chhabra, H. S. (1989) Nehru and Resurgent Africa. New Delhi: Africa Publications.Google Scholar
De La Rue, A. (1966) ‘The rise and fall of Grace Ibingira’, New African 5 (10): 207–8.Google Scholar
Dyus, G. (2011) Twilight of the Bwanas: an account of life in East Africa during the colonial period. Bloomington IN: Xlibris.Google Scholar
Gutschow, K. (2009) ‘Das neue Afrika: Ernst May's 1947 Kampala plan as cultural program’ in Demisie, F. (ed.), Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Africa: intertwined and contested histories. London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Hunt, D. (1975) On the Spot: an ambassador remembers. London: Peter Davies.Google Scholar
Iliffe, J. (2005) Honour in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ingham, K. (1994) Obote: a political biography. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ivaska, A. (2011) Cultured States: youth, gender, and modern style in 1960s Dar es Salaam. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Jørgensen, J. (1980) Uganda: a modern history. New York NY: St Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Kalema, R. (forthcoming) Finding my Life's Purpose: an autobiography. Publisher unknown at time of writing.Google Scholar
Kasozi, A. B. K. (1994) The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda: 1964–1985. Kampala: Fountain Publishers.Google Scholar
Kirk-Greene, A. (2000) Britain's Imperial Administrators, 1858–1966. New York NY: St Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Kirunda Kivejinja, A. M. (1995) Uganda: the crisis of confidence. Petaling Jaya: Excel Vision Education.Google Scholar
Kirunda Kivejinja, A. M., Ssali, B. and Musoke, K. (2014) The Sapoba Legacy: a story of ideals and idealism in Ugandan politics and family life. Kampala: Menha Publishers.Google Scholar
Macoun, M. (1996) Wrong Place, Right Time: policing the end of empire. London: Radcliffe Press.Google Scholar
Mazrui, A. (1970) ‘Leadership in Africa: Obote of Uganda’, International Journal 25 (3): 538–64.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2001) On the Postcolony. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mittelman, J. (1975) Ideology and Politics in Uganda: from Obote to Amin. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mujaju, A. (1972) ‘Youth action and political development in Uganda’. PhD thesis, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Mujaju, A. (1973) ‘The demise of UPCYL and the rise of NUYO in Uganda’, African Review 3 (2): 291–307.Google Scholar
Mujaju, A. (1976) ‘The role of the UPC as a party of government in Uganda’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 10 (3): 443–67.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. (1984) Copper Mandarin: a memoir. London: Regency Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. (2003) The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa. Westport CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. (2014) The Second British Empire: in the crucible of the twentieth century. London: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Paul, K. (1997) Whitewashing Britain: race and citizenship in the postwar era. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, R. (1966) The Development of Trade Unions in Uganda. Nairobi: East African Institute of Social Research.Google Scholar
Sicherman, C. (2005) Becoming an African University: Makerere, 1922–2000. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Soske, J. (2017) Internal Frontiers: African nationalism and the Indian diaspora in twentieth-century South Africa. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Southall, A. and Gutkind, P. (1957) Townsmen in the Making: Kampala and its suburbs. Kampala: East African Institute of Social Research.Google Scholar
Stocker, P. (2015) ‘The postwar British extreme right and empire, 1945–1967’, Religion Compass 9 (5): 162–72.Google Scholar
Stoler, A. L. (2004) ‘Affective states’ in Nugent, D. and Vincent, J. (eds), A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Taylor, E. (2016) ‘Asians and Africans in Ugandan urban life, 1959–1972’. PhD thesis, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. G. (1966) Who's Who in East Africa 1965–66. Second edition. Nairobi: Marco Publishers (Africa) Limited.Google Scholar