ABSTRACT
On 1 April 1893, Sir Gerald Portal raised the Union Jack formally to establish a British protectorate over Buganda. This event followed the many and varied pressures coming from explorers like Morton Stanley who had been impressed by the kabaka’s court in 1875, Protestant missionaries who preferred to see Buganda under the British flag, and the desire to deny this source of the river Nile to other nations. The Ugandan Legislative Council was established in 1921. Its composition was exclusively expatriate, consisting of the governor of the protectorate and a few of his right-hand advisers. The most effective way to divert the attention of African leadership was to accord exaggerated importance to local governments and thus make them appear good enough to attract the educated and enlightened African leaders. For administrative purposes, as far as practicable each ethnic group was formed into a unit of local government called a district.
