When Tooro’s King Patrick Kaboyo died in August 1995, I wrote a tribute in The Monitor in early September, reflecting on the kingdom and its famous figures like the Princess Royal, Elizabeth Bagaya.
Here I am, 31 years later, having to do the exact same thing all over again at the exact same time of the month.
It’s customary for us, whenever a friend or relative dies, to ask in our grief and bewilderment who it had to be this person, why God had to take them. But in King Oyo’s particular instance, it really is a genuinely torturous question: Why him, of all people?
Feelings of pain that can’t be put into words struck Tooro and Uganda last week. The cuteness of an infant king never ceases to tug at the heart, be it Daudi Chwa or Oyo Nyimba. We view children with a sentiment that’s different from adults. They are innocent, spontaneous, sincere, with not yet the calculation and slyness of adults. We also universally view death at a young age as a tragedy.
This is what makes Oyo’s untimely death all the more painful for millions of Ugandans and other people: the fact of his having been a cute infant king and now dies at the premature age of 34.
Oyo, as a teenager and adult, lived up to the affectionate view the public had of him as the three-year-old monarch.
A warm smile and wholesome look, his unassuming manner and easy accessibility that many have mentioned.
He was not remote and regal, but posed in group photos and smartphone selfies with anyone who requested that.
Disoriented by grief and shock at King Oyo’s tragically short life, a thought came to me last week.
If one believes in an all-knowing, all-wise God, or at least believes in the lessons of history, we just have to take it by faith that there are things we, being mere mortals and limited in our knowledge, don’t appreciate.
Princess Diana was a prime example of this. Having been wowed by her fairy-tale wedding in 1981 and followed her glamorous life for the next decade and a half, we saw her kind heart and down-to-earth style. But after her separation from Prince Charles in 1992 and divorce in 1996, something changed in Diana.
From a shy, sweet teenage bride, she became a worldly, somewhat scandal-prone celebrity. At the time of her death in 1997, she was on the verge of becoming a common Hollywood-type figure.
So, who knows if sometimes our lives are cut short for our own good and the good of our legacy.
It is just possible that King Oyo, in his 40s, might have suddenly turned into a very different person, perhaps becoming a heavy drinker, and all the goodwill and admiration from the public for the sweet little child king evaporates overnight.
Tooro Kingdom, over the last 34 years since the traditional kingdoms were restored, has not lived up to its full potential, or even appeared to be so.
The public admiration and goodwill toward King Oyo and the royal family has obscured this fact.
Only Buganda, of all the kingdoms, has endeavoured to strive to the maximum to revive its old traditions and administrative structures.
Perhaps this is because the central government, as has been the case over the last 70 years, has been most suspicious of Buganda’s intentions and ambitions.
This tug-of-war between the central State and Buganda, and the double exiling of King Edward Muteesa and the military attack of May 1966, left Buganda with tragic memories and forced on it the resolve and unity that we see today.
Tooro, like Bunyoro, Ankole and Busoga, has never had to fight for its survival in the way Buganda has.
Once the kingdoms were restored in 1992, Tooro settled in and coasted along under the new, favourable order.
Fort Portal was the first town outside Kampala to get a radio station, Voice of Tooro, in 1996.
The broadcast licence was granted without incident, whereas a lot of nervousness dominated government when Buganda applied for a licence in 1995.
Up to the last minute in June 1996, Mengo was not sure its new radio station would ever get onto the airwaves. CBS FM was closed for just over a year in September 2009 following the Buganda riots, and there was genuine fear that the radio station might never reopen.
In 1995, the year that Oyo assumed the throne, Buganda suffered a major political blow when the Constituent Assembly voted to reject the creation of a federal Uganda. Federo was Buganda’s core political goal and remains so to this day.
It has dealt with disappointment by strengthening the non-contentious areas within its power, from the Kabaka Run to the county football league, a television station, a Buganda Land Board, commercial properties, and other endeavours.
Conversely, the lack of drama, apprehension, and absence of an existential threat has resulted in the complacency of Tooro Kingdom.
With no real threat and disappointment coming its way from the NRM State since 1992 and enjoying substantial public goodwill and admiration of its royals, Tooro, over the last 34 years, has not had to think desperately about anything.
The little commercial ambition by the kingdom was injected in by the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi, when he took a sudden and inexplicable interest in Tooro.
There are few things that unite a people and force them to act with determination and with one purpose, than when they genuinely feel under an existential threat. Buganda Kingdom, the National Unity Platform, and Daily Monitor are recent examples of how it is in facing constant crisis at the hands of the NRM State, a certain resolve and sense of purpose have been forged by fire.
Tooro has never felt this kind of threat since independence in 1962.
It is one of the least contentious parts of Uganda. One is hard-pressed to find any tribe or community with bitter political feelings about the Batooro.
Batooro themselves, even in the 1940s and 1950s, have always been perceived as soft, mild-mannered, likeable, agreeable, uncontroversial.
Although dubbed the ‘Tourism City’, there is very little about Tooro’s main town, Fort Portal, to suggest that its revenues and development depend on tourism.
This, then, is Tooro’s fundamental problem. Its positives double as its negatives.
Because of the generally mild and agreeable people that the Batooro are, the kingdom will need major upheaval and an existential threat to inject a sense of urgency and resolve into its people.