Uganda Fragmenting: Kooki Chieftainship Secedes from Buganda Kingdom

A small, previously relatively unknown polity in south-central Uganda, the Kooki chieftainship, quietly declared independence a couple weeks ago, the culmination of long-simmering conflict with its larger neighbor—or, depending on whom you ask, overarching entity—the Buganda Kingdom.  The Kooki prime minister, Hajji Idi Ahmed Kiwanuka, announced his small nation’s independence from Buganda in a July 27th letter to the Baganda prime minister, Charles Peter Mayiga.

Uganda’s kingdoms, of which Buganda is the largest and most powerful.
(The Rwenzururu live between Toro and the Congolese border.)

The Republic of Uganda is not a monarchy, but, in a situation similar to that in Malaysia, Nigeria, or South Africa, monarchies within the state are tolerated and semi-officially established, though without constitutionally recognized powers.  The Ganda, occupying a large area in south-central Uganda, are the ethnic group for which the country as a whole is named (Ganda are the people, Baganda the adjective, Buganda the kingdom, and Luganda the language).  They are the largest group—both in population (almost 17%) and in territory (almost 25%)—and were favored under the United Kingdom’s colonial rule, which pitted smaller kingdoms against one another in a “divide and rule” tactic.  Uganda’s second president, Milton Obote, who was from the far north, came to power with Baganda support and made the large Buganda Kingdom nearly coextensive with the Ugandan state itself.  This lopsided situation provoked a rebellion by the neighboring Ankole Kingdom, Uganda’s second-largest, and Obote eventually disestablished the kingdoms in 1967.  Yoweri Museveni, an Ankole, rose to power in 1986 and restored the kingdoms but only to semi-official status—and he refused to restore some monarchies, including, surprisingly, his own Ankole one, as part of his own agenda to disrupt and divide the normal monarchic order.  Territorial disputes and rivalries have raged for decades and threatened to destabilize what would otherwise be one of central Africa’s most stable and prosperous countries.

Rakai District, homeland of the Kooki, is in the south of the Buganda Kingdom.

The Kooki, a few tens of thousands of people (though figures are hard to come by) living in the Rakai District along the border with Tanzania, have for more than a century been considered a chieftainship and a county within the Buganda Kingdom, the result of an 1896 merger that was part of the British plan for Baganda hegemony.  Opinion is fiercely divided today as to whether the Kooki were traditionally a sovereign monarchy and whether Kooki is its own language or is instead a dialect of Luganda.  (The homeland is tiny: Kooki County is only one of six in Rakai, a district considerably smaller than Rhode Island.)  Only within the past few years have the Kooki introduced their own flag and anthem.

   

“Irrespective of individual and/or institutional perspective,” Kiwanuka’s letter last month read, “Kooki, by all laws governing the Republic of Uganda, is a lawful cultural institution with a hereditary leader, governance structures, with due protocol and indeed independence.”  But the letter pledges “co-existence” with other institutions.

Hajji Idi Ahmed Kiwanuka, the Kooki prime minister,
at the site of the soon-to-be-built palace of the Kooki monarch

This had been building for some time.  In April, the Kooki announced the formation of their own sports league, and in May construction began on a new palace for Kamuswaga Apollo Sansa Kabumbuli II, the Kooki “cultural leader”—a hereditary monarch sometimes called a sovereign “chief,” less commonly a “king.”  Much of the funding for the palace comes from Japan and Abu Dhabi.  A conflict over land last year led to the establishment in November 2014 of a Kooki land board in the local government, in defiance of Baganda claims on Kooki lands.  And talk of independence had been swirling since Kabumbuli II’s swearing in of his new cabinet in September 2014, usually followed by official denials that Kooki were planning a secession.  Most bizarrely, Ganda–Kooki relations had deteriorated to such a point that the Kamuswaga felt the need to deny to the press accusations that Kooki were cannibals and, less slanderously, that they ate rats.

The royal Kamuswaga of the Kooki nation denying,
in a November 2014 press conference, that his people were rat-eaters.

Uganda has also been plagued by territorial conflict between the Rwenzururu and Toro kingdoms in the southwest of the country, demands by the Ankole and Songora for restoration of their monarchies, and separatist stirrings among the non-monarchical Acholi of the north, homeland of the dreaded Lord’s Resistance Army. 

An official portrait of the Kooki monarch

(If Kooki people did, one way or another, secede from Uganda itself, it would risk confusion among outsiders with the identically-pronounced Kuki nation in far-eastern India, some of whom seek to secede from Manipur as a separate state within India and some of whom wish to merge with the related Mizo, Chin, Lushai, Hmar, and Naga peoples (sometimes called collectively Zo) to create a vast, independent Kukiland or Zale’n-gam republic straddling what is now India’s border with Burma (Myanmar).  As discussed earlier in this blog, some Mizos and Kukis in particular identify themselves as descendants of ancient Israel’s Tribe of Manasseh, with kindred traditions, customs, and lore—a claim which has been bolstered by the investigations of folklorists and has even been accepted by the Israeli government, which has allowed thousands of these “Mizoram Jews” to settle in the West Bank and elsewhere.)

Uganda’s Kooki are no relation to the Jewish-identified Kuki people of eastern India.

There has not yet been a firm Baganda reaction to the Kooki declaration.  There is significance to the borders and divisions among Uganda’s kingdoms not only because kingdoms have authority over local land distribution but because many foresee a day when Uganda might break up along these very borders.  In fact, perhaps the most strident separatist movement is Buganda itself.  With the capital, the vast center of the national territory, and the very essence of Ugandan national identity, the departure of the Ganda from the lopsided union would mean the collapse of Uganda itself.  Then we might see lethal chaos of the sort that has plagued adjacent countries in what is clearly the most dangerous neighborhood in the world: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and Rwanda.  Many have been waiting for the provocation that might spark just such a civil war.  The Kooki declaration is probably not that spark.  But it adds to the tension—stoking Baganda discontent with the current order, inspiring other kingdoms with their own latent grievances, and perhaps bringing a day of division a little closer.

Apollo Sansa Kabumbuli II with his consort, H.R.H. Omugo Rebecca Talituuka

[You can read more about Uganda’s kingdoms and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Dragons, Doubts, and Devils Dog Welsh Identity as Scottish Referendum Looms

Opinion polls predict that the September 18th referendum on Scotland’s secession from the United Kingdom will fail, with polls giving somewhere between 46% and 47% intending to vote for continued union with England (and Wales and Northern Ireland) and only about 35% to 40% intending to opt for independence.  With just about four months to go before polling day, a lot could change.  But if the outcome is not 100% assured, one thing is: the truism that in the event of a “yes” result for Scottish independence, or even, as looks likely, a relatively close (non-landslide) “no,” the other constituent parts of the U.K.—England, Northern Ireland, and Wales are going to experience something of an identity crisis.

Wales, in particular, in the event of a Scottish split, would probably be carried along to independence itself like a rudderless ship in Scotland’s wake—much in the way that in the 1990s Serbia, the Czech Republic, and Belarus became independent states not from any desire to separate themselves but because of the dissolutions of their larger federations driven by centrifugal forces generated elsewhere.  After all, the U.K. is the United Kingdom because of the early-18th-century merger of the kingdoms of England and Scotland; without that constitutional basis, a rethinking of the rest of the union is in order.

Some of this anxiety is expressed as kerfuffles over flags.  Wales, were it to be independent, would suddenly become the European country with the most striking, remarkable, and dramatic national flag, featuring a rampant red dragon on a horizontal white-and-green bicolor (see above).  That prospect has attracted the superstitious nervousness of a fringe group called the Welsh Christian Party.  (Unlike more primitive backwaters like the United States, in Britain fundamentalist Christianity is a phenomenon of the fringes, not the political mainstream.)  As the Rev. George Hargreaves, speaking for the party, put it, “We will not allow this evil symbol of the devil to reign over Wales for another moment.  Wales is the only country in history to have a red dragon on its national flag.  This is the very symbol of the devil described in the Book of Revelation 12:3.  This is nothing less than the sign of Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, that ancient serpent who deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” (he explains helpfully in case we haven’t heard of him).  Just for the record, Revelation 12:3 tells us, “And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.”  Far be it from me to contradict a man of the cloth, but I’ve been studying that Welsh flag and I’m afraid I see only one head and no crowns at all.

Now that’s the dragon of Revelation.  See?  Lots more heads.

But never mind that.  Hargreaves recommends that the Welsh dragon—which is of murky origins but has been in use on the flag only since 1959—be replaced by a black-and-yellow cruciform design called the Cross of St. David, which is the emblem of the patron saint of Wales (see the flag at right in the photo at the top of this article).  This flag is often flown on March 1st, which is the feast of St. David and the Welsh national holiday.  Adopting this flag would put Wales’s flag on the same footing as those of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Cornwall, which feature the traditional crosses of those countries’ patron saints—St. George (yes, of dragon fame), St. Patrick (patron saint of all Ireland, actually), St. Andrew, and St. Piran, respectively.

This vessel in Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee flotilla in 2012 featured, atop the cabin,
the flags of England, Scotland, London (England’s flag but with sword in upper left), Northern Ireland
(not official, but the St. Patrick’s Cross), Cornwall, and Wales,with flags for the sponsoring Motability, Inc.,
mixed in, plus, aft, the U.K. civilian ensign.

(Hargreaves, given his feelings about the Welsh dragon, will be equally vexed to learn that archaeologists have recently discovered, in the ruins of Leiston Abbey in East Anglia, the remains of a seven-foot-tall canine who some feel might have been the origin of the 16th-century legend of the “Hell Hound of Suffolk.”)

It is not just conservative Christians who are unhappy with Wales’s flag.  The radical, militant Free Wales Army (F.W.A., or Byddin Rhyddid Cymru), uses a vaguely swastika-ish black-and-white emblem as its flag.  The F.W.A. are republicans and presumably would like to eschew anything heraldic as too posh.  Among other parties, the left-wing socialist Cymru Goch (“Red Wales”) independence party, though republican, wants to keep the dragon flag—it’s red, after all!—as does the equally republican Cymru Annibynnol, the Independent Wales Party, along with the former majority party in the Welsh Assembly, Plaid Cymru (“the Party of Wales”), which has republican and pro-Commonwealth (monarchist) tensions within it.  Nor are these minor distinctions: Plaid Cymru came under fire (as reported at the time in this blog) when a party leader appeared alongside F.W.A. radicals and their flags at a rally marking the 729th anniversary of the killing by English soldiers of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (Llywelyn the Last), the last true Prince of Wales (before it became a title affixing to any English crown prince), thus ending Welsh independence.  By contrast, the Scottish National Party has prevailed over republican Greens and socialists in its coalition and plans on keeping Scotland in the Commonwealth, with Elizabeth II as its head of state.

No one respectable wants to be seen alongside the F.W.A. banner.
(A more benign St. David’s Cross flag is at right.)

The Scottish referendum campaign has raised vexillological vexations in other parts of the kingdom as well.  Northern Ireland’s identity crisis in a post-Scottish dis-United Kingdom would be even more severe than Wales’s, since the Scottish ancestry of the Protestant Scots-Irish majority in the region is the only rationale behind it being part of the U.K., rather than the Republic of Ireland, in the first place.  Northern Ireland currently has no flag, and uses only the Union Jack, but the traditional flag of Ulster is used by the small minority (soon to be taken more seriously, perhaps) who wish Northern Ireland to be independent.  (Ulster, rather awkwardly, includes not just the Northern Ireland counties but the majority-Catholic county of Donegal within the Republic, so there might be some words over that ...)

Unionist rallies in Belfast sometimes feature the “red hand” flag of Ulster.

And what of a rump U.K. minus only Scotland?  The current Union Jack is a blending of the crosses of SS. George, Andrew, and Patrick—

—and without the Scottish St. Andrew’s Cross it would look like this:

Clearly, a lot less colorful.  Thus, some favor incorporating Wales’s green into it somehow ...

... or in some other way taking the opportunity to give Wales a piece of the flag to call its own, if only to persuade them not to secede themselves:

Okay, well, maybe not that prominently.  It isn’t all just about Wales, you know.  Others favor solving the color problem in a more grandiose way:

If Scotland’s secession is followed by those of Wales and Northern Ireland, then England would find itself independent in spite of itself.  Indeed, the St. George’s Cross flag is the one preferred by the pro-independence party English Democrats (as reported on earlier in this blog):

... though some of independence-for-England activists prefer the “three lions” flag which is a modification of the personal royal standard Richard the Lion-Hearted (and which for complicated reasons—1066 and all that—is also a flag used by regional activists in the Normandy region of France):

Presumably, some of these suggestions are ones that the Welsh Christian Party can live with.  And if it’s Satanic symbols they’re worried about, just be glad they don’t have deal with Morocco’s national flag:

Oh, no, wait, sorry, I put it upside-down.  Here, let me fix that ...

Phew!  That was a close one.

Thanks to Jen Mayfield Shafer for alerting me to the report on the Leiston Abbey discovery.

[You can read more about Wales, Scotland, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Shots Fired as French Authorities Arrest Tahitian “King” Issuing His Own Currency

French authorities in the colony of French Polynesia on January 30th arrested a Tahitian man claiming to be a Polynesian king, for issuing a phony currency.  Shots were fired from within the king’s compound as police moved in, according to news accounts calling it an “alleged rebellion.”  In the end, five people were arrested and three firearms were confiscated, but there were no injuries.  (French Polynesia was included a month ago in this blog’s list of “10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014.”)

Location of French Polynesia in the Pacific

The target of the raid was Athanese Teiri, who calls himself King Tanginui I of the Pakumotu Republic (Hau Repupirita Pakumoto) despite the fact that republics, by definition, do not have kings.  He was tried in absentia on January 22nd in Papeete, French Polynesia’s capital on the main island of Tahiti, on charges of issuing a fake currency, and sentenced to six months.  Earlier, in 2012, he had received a suspended sentence for issuing illegal identity cards, and last month a follower of his Republic had gotten two months in jail for trying to buy gasoline with a 100-patu note issued by the self-styled government.

Confiscated Polynesian funny money

After the shots fired and firearms seized, the King and the four followers arrested with him are now in even bigger trouble.  They are being charged with attempted murder of a police officer, armed rebellion, and forming a militia, in addition to weapons possession charges.  Life imprisonment is now a possibility.

Pakumotu perp walk

At the time of his in absentia trial last week, the defendant’s daughter, Mahina Teiri, was also given a six-month suspended sentence, on charges of defrauding the printing press producing the Pakumotu currency.

At the time of that sentence, a Pakumotu Republic spokesman reiterated his government’s June 2, 2010, declaration of independence from the French Republic.  “France no longer has authority,” said the spokesman, who was present in court along with several ministers of the republic.  “A state cannot judge another state.”

The king declares independence in front of the Pakumotu flag

The prosecutorial moves against the Republic this month seem to have been motivated by King Tanginui’s announcement late last year that the new currency, the patu, would become legal tender on January 1, 2014, at a specified fixed exchange rate.  He even sent a formal letter to France’s Institut d’Émission d’Outre-Mer, the central bank which issues the French Pacific franc (Change Franc Pacifique, or C.F.P.), notifying it that the Pacific franc would no longer be legal tender in French Polynesia.  The C.F.P. is also used in two other French colonies, New Caledonia and Wallis et Futuna.

King Tanginui I and his daughters display what appears to be the Pakumotu royal standard—
a modification of the national flag (see above), with a coat-of-arms included.

The Pakumotu group has been operating since 2008, when it campaigned as a political party aiming for the secession of the Tuamotu chain of atolls in French Polynesia.  Tuamotu includes the notorious Moruroa Atoll, where France has carried out nuclear tests that have poisoned the indigenous population.  In 2009, it proclaimed an independent Pakumotu Republic on the Moorea in the colony’s Society Islands archipelago and a shadow government was formed.  Mr. Teiri, initially the republic’s president, eventually called himself King (though without dropping the word republic to reflect that) and expanded his claimed realm to include all of French Polynesia.  In 2010, and again last year, the Pakumotu group tried and failed to occupy the territorial legislature in Papeete.  (Watch the Pakumotu declaration of independence here.)

Mahina Teiri with a banned 100-patu note

In addition to Teiri’s movement, another group claims the legitimacy of the Maohi Republic (République Maohi, or Hau Repupirita Ma’ohi), declared in 1982 by a Polynesian named Tetua Mai who later was arrested when one of his bodyguards injured a police officer.  This self-proclaimed state has also attempted to issue identity cards.

French Polynesia’s official flag

A more generally acknowledged heir to the Polynesian throne, Tauatomo Mairau, died last year.  He was a member of France’s secret service and an ardent monarchist activist.

Self-proclaimed president of the rival Maohi Republic

Pro- and anti-independence parties are about evenly divided in the territorial parliament, though polls show support for independence running a bit below 50%.  Indigenous people make up about three-quarters of French Polynesia’s quarter-million people.

What is not yet known is whether the king’s arrest marks the end of the Pakumotu Republic.  French authorities are wondering if more armed restorationists are out there, biding their time.


Related articles from this blog:
“Easter Island Wants to Split from Chile, Join French Polynesia”
“What Is a Colony? The United Nations’ Definition Needs an Overhaul”
“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014”
“France’s Far Right Wants Early Vote on New Caledonia Independence—but Only Because They’re against It”

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Hawaiian Native Activists Reject Watered-Down B.I.A.-Style “Sovereignty”

France fumed, but the soi-disant “minister of foreign affairs” of a shadow monarchist government on the Hawaiian Islands called the Hawaii Kingdom told media this past week that he and his fellow Polynesian separatists were among those buoyed by the United Nations’ recent reinstatement of French Polynesia (which includes Tahiti) on its finger-wagging list of “Non-Self-Governing Territories” (i.e. colonies).  The minister, Leon Siu, called the move “a huge boost to our efforts” of establishing Hawaii as an independent kingdom—or rather, since they believe it still is one, of garnering international recognition and the opportunity to govern.

The Hawaii Kingdom is one of a whole raft of Hawaiian independence movements, many of them monarchists loyal to either the House of Kamehameha or the House of Kalākaua, and many operating self-styled governments-in-exile of one sort or another.  But while Siu and other idealists pursue that dream, Democratic Party politicians in Washington and Honolulu are contemplating another form of sovereignty for Native Hawaiians, and the monarchist sovereigntists are rejecting it out of hand.

Sen. Daniel Akaka

Sen. Daniel Kahikina Akaka, the first Native Hawaiian in the United States Senate, had long sponsored a bill, the Akaka Bill, which would offer Native Hawaiians a form of sovereignty akin to that of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the other 49 states.  But Akaka retired this year after 23 years’ service and his efforts got nowhere.  The new push, by Sen. Brian Schatz (a non-Native Hawaiian, born in Michigan to a Canadian father), calls for a direct executive—i.e., presidential—intervention to extend some sort of tribal recognition.  As Schatz put it earlier this year, “The president is being asked to consider a number of potential executive actions.  That could take many forms, including something by the Department of the Interior [which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs], or at the secretary level or something at the presidential level.”

Some indigenous Hawaiian separatists use this flag.

President Barack Obama, who was born in Hawaii and is of mixed African and European-American ancestry, has not taken a position on the matter yet.  But Hawaiian monarchist separatists are already speaking out.  Kekane Pa, the self-styled Speaker of the House of the Reinstated Hawaiian Government, says that the “true intent” of the new legislative push “is to have the Hawaii people give up their claim to their native lands to the U.S. government.”  An August 27th petition on the White House website’s “We the People” petition page, titled “We Petition the Obama Administration to Not Bypass Congress by Signing an Executive Order for Federal Recognition of Native Hawaiian,” opposes “tribal recognition” because it seems to attempt to formalize U.S. sovereignty over Hawaii and create a subordinate status for Native Hawaiians.

Barack Obama, a Hawaii native if not a Hawaiian Native,
is being asked to grant “tribal sovereignty” to indigenous Hawaiians.

Hawaii was an independent kingdom until the mid 19th century, until annexation by the United Kingdom in the 1840s.  The U.S., still a military and economic rival to the U.K., replaced the colonial government with a restored kingdom hemmed in by treaties allowing U.S. corporations access to the archipelago’s resources.  An example was the Bayonet Treaty of 1875, which King David Kalākaua was forced to sign at gunpoint, stripping the monarchy of many of its powers.  David’s sister, Lili‘uokalani, succeeded him in 1891 and attempted to restore the monarchy to its former preeminence, and this prompted an invasion by U.S. Marines in 1893.  After a brief time as a U.S. puppet state called the Republic of Hawaii, the territory was formally annexed in 1898.  Ever since, monarchists have argued that, even though Queen Lili‘uokalani surrendered the throne, she did so under duress and that the kingdom’s legitimacy was never extinguished.  The State of Hawaii, created in 1959, is, by this reasoning, illegitimate.

Early contact

It is not clear if the Obama administration will entertain tribal recognition.  In surveys, the majority of Hawaiian residents, including three-quarters of Native Hawaiians (who are imperfectly counted but probably number between 10% and 20% of the state’s population), support some form of federally recognized sovereign status.  Meanwhile, supporters of full independence for the state reached only, for example, the 27% mark in 1995.  It is not clear that the monarchist sovereigntists have the people on their side either.  Their online petition has been taken down, but at last count it had only 53 signatures.

A protest organized by the group Hawaiian Kingdom

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]