Chaotic Spontaneity
By ROGER FALK s one drives out of Entebbe along the road that will eventually lead westwards to the Mountains of the Moon or eastwards to the source of the Nile and thence to Kenya, there suddenly appears round a corner at about mile 18 a first view of Kampala. Uganda's immense, bursting fertility lies on either side of the road; ahead lies the little city, which has been likened to ancient Rome: a city on seven hills. Over to the left on twin hills lie two cathedrals, Catholic and Protestant; farther away on a third hill sits Makerere University and on yet another is a mosque. On a fifth are the palace of the Kabaka, the parliament building of Buganda and the offices of its government, for Kampala is the capital of the Kingdom of Buganda as well as the Protectorate's commercial centre.
The high standards of building aimed at—and largely achieved—within the boundaries of the municipal council's authority have excluded from this area the vast majority of the Africans who have been increasingly drawn towards Kampala since the war. On the outskirts of the town, under the undemanding authority of the Buganda African administration, their settlements have sprung up in chaotic spontaneity, and these two words appearing in the opening chapter really set the theme of a fascinating study carried, out by the East African Ingtitute of Social Research called Townsmen in the Making.* All praise to its authors who have shown a resourceful integrity and detachment in trying to, capture the atmo- sphere of lite as it is lived in two carefully selected areas of the town and all hail to brave - spirits who, however great the limitations and difficulties, believe in the wisdom, of finding out something about Africa through the hard way of solid work in the field rather than, by dependence on impressions, largely emotional, gained from brief conversations or visits.
To one who played a small part in laying the plans for carrying out surveys among cash-crOp cultivators in two contrasting rural districts of Uganda during 1956, Townsmen in the Making makes particularly intriguing reading. The culti- vators were interviewed pretty constantly over a period of two or three months and the essential character of the 'respondent' (for want of a better word!) was , his sturdy independence, his com- parative remoteness from, urban influences, his preoccupation with the prices he was getting for , his cotton and coffee—above all, his tribal entity,
* TOWNSMEN IN 1113 MAKING KAMPALA AND ITS
Stnuaas. W. Southall and P. C. W. Gutkiid. ,I4BaSt Afrittlarfaudies No: ,9t) Is mainly Ganda in Buganda and Acholi in the north. But the East African Institute's field of study was completely different; it was far more complex and contradictory and it covered a longer period of work in the field. The surveys were undertaken in two dense and comparatively uncontrolled areas of primarily African settle- ment forming part of greater Kampala. Here the emphasis was on a remarkable heterogeneity of tribal and racial origin and on the social impact of unsettling conditions in a rapidly expanding town. The two districts chosen were, in one case, virtually a slum and,in the other, 'an intermediate situation representing the transition towards these conditions from a previously rural community.' This emphasises the fact that whereas in the rural work, of which the writer has some experience, each family interviewed was an entity in itself, the Institute's investigators in Kisenyi and Mulago worked among thousands of people liv- ing on a small acreage of land who seemed to spend much of their time drinking, laughing, arguing, fighting and sleeping with each other.
There are, of course, a hundred and one statistical facts about the survey that could be quoted, but these would only be of limited interest to the layman who wants to know the answer to one straightforward question, 'What really happens to the African who, through the seem- ingly inexorable (and inevitable) processes of so- called progress moves away from his traditional rural way of life and finds himself becoming a townsman?'
The dominant impression left upon the reader of these surveys is of people still far away from any kind of social adjustment and, indeed, when one considers the tensions of far bigger cities in the West this is not hard to understand. But, of course, there is one great difference—quite apart from the conditioning characteristics of the part of Uganda where the work was done—that, as compared with, say, New York or London, these areas are peopled in the main by a community in whose lives religion, magic and medicine, play a preponderant part. The authors of the report have quoted in the text sonic absorbingly interest-_ ing verbatim interviews and these illustrate, as no cold statistics could hope to illustrate, some- thing of the chaos that is caused by the bringing together in a confined'space of thousands of souls who are, by their, very nature, bewildered by a setting in which jealousy, competition and tempta- tion jostle, so to speak, on the doorstep. This is not to say that, in possibly more subtle forms, religion, magic and medicine do not also affect life in the Bowery or Bayswater, but it can at least be said that, there, preoccupation with these intangibles is more under control.
Social researchers, it is diffidently suggested, tend to dwell over-much on sex matters and it might be argued that a little too much space in Townsmen in the Making is given up to con- sideration of such questions as promiscuity, pros- titution, marital unsettlement and so on. Whether it is so or not, the resultant chapters make pretty heady reading—though not difficult to believe when you consider the fact that beer in these parts is a staple diet. A thirst-making section describes some of the beer varieties to be bought which are produced from bananas, germinated eleusine, maize and pineapples. There is also a brisk illegal trade in waragi, an African potheen, at a few shillings a bottle.
Musoke was arrested by the crowd at a beer party for hitting a girl with a stick. He said he met the girl there and she asked him to buy her some beer. He said he would do so on condition that she would go and sleep with him at his home. Shc agreed and he bought her beer. After drinking she went outside and embraced another man. When Musokc saw this he called her to come back at once, but she did not, and went away with the other. Musokc then went and hit her with a stick. When they heard this explanation all the crowd laughed, and told the girl to go home with Musoke. Musoke was released and took the girl to his home.
And a particularly touching conversation : Grace and Norah were quarrelling one day in Kisenyi, and their quarrelling turned into a fight, with blows freely exchanged. Grace unreasonably suspected Norah of being in love with her husband. 'Your husband tried to make love to me and I refused,' said Norah bitterly. 'but since you are blaming me for nothing I shall do my best to fall in love with him. After all,' she continued, 'men as well as women in Kisenyi are like plates used in a hotel. Anyone is free to use them.'
All in all, it is difficult to sort out the differences between 'relatively durable concu- binage' and 'blatant prostitution,' and it is just as difficult to apportion blame between the natural frailty of men and women in their mutual rela- tions and the overcrowded living conditions. which life in Greater Kampala imposes upon its confused citizens.
The report deals with the complexities of land tenure, tribal relations, education, religious affilia- tions, trades and professions and attitudes to, foreigners, especially Asians. It is all of consider- able interest and carries the stamp of genuine and dedicated research. In the end one is left a little breathless.' Can the organisational and admini- strative difficulties implicit in such `chaotic spon- taneity' ever be solved? Who can say? The drift to towns is no special African problem : it has to be accepted as a fact of life the world over How far fornis of social coherence and stability can be imposed,•from outside and how far it is a question of individual, maturing, civic' sense would seem to depend on yet one more intangible—that of the unprsdictability of human nature.
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