Background
Abubaker Mayanja was born on August 29, 1929, in a Buganda peasant farmer’s family.
Abubaker Mayanja was born on August 29, 1929, in a Buganda peasant farmer’s family.
Educated at Ngogwe Primary, King’s College, Budo (1945-9) and Makerere College (1950-2), where he became a prominent student leader, finally expelled for leading a strike.
On March 6, 1952, he became secretary-general of the Uganda National Congress, whose constitution he had helped draft. Then he left to read history and law at King’s College, Cambridge, finally becoming a barrister in 1959. He returned home, still general secretary of the UNC, to find the party on the point of splitting. One wing went with Joseph Kiwanuka, the other, with Mayanja’s adherence, joined Milton Obote in the New Uganda Peoples’ Congress in March 1960.
Mayanja still did not have a seat in the Legislative Council. While away on a course in the United States he was appointed Education Minister in the Kabaka’s (Buganda region) government. Strongly criticised for leaving the UPC and joining a government that was far more traditionalist and secessionist minded, he said that he wanted to be “a link between Buganda and the rest of the country”.
Mayanja remained in detention until 1970, a year before the coup of January 26, 1971. On February 2, 1971, he was appointed Minister for Education in the new government. Later switched to Labour he was “retired” on December 1, 1972, along with three other Buganda ministers.
A keen Muslim who has made several pilgrimages to Mecca, he was president of the Young Men’s Muslim Association and a member of the executive committee of the World Muslim Congress.
He strove to modernise the Kabaka's government, had the ministry of Economic Planning added to his portfolio and supported the Kabaka Yekka (King Alone) party’s establishment as a national force. He resigned his ministry suddenly in May 1964, after a member had accused him of working to over-throw the Kingdom. Instead he stood and was returned as a Kabaka Yekka member to the Uganda National Parliament in September 1964. He had already arrived too late to prevent the break-up of the UPC/Kabaka Yekka coalition and in 1965 rejoined his old Party, the UPC.
Here he soon found his role as a cntic of the rapidly expanding powers of the Obote government and was one of the defence lawyers for the five ministers arrested and detained in 1966.
In July 1968 an article appeared in fhe magazine “Transition” inspired by the President’s Office, stating that the Judiciary should pass judgments in accordance with party doctrine. Mayanja wrote a scathing reply on October 9, 1968. Three days later he and the editor of the magazine were detained under emergency regulations. Charged with sedition they were both acquitted and walked out of the court, only to be re-arrested and detained.
An extremely bright, quick thinking and articulate lawyer, turned politician. Ihe great hope of the younger generation m the early sixties, but caught in the classical Muganda predicament, torn between loyalty to his own people and his desire for national unity. This led to the controversial decision to become Minister of Education in the Kabaka s government.
Brilliant but volatile, he later became a distinguished parliamentarian and Muslim leader, courage' ously criticising the excesses of the Obote government. He was the longest standing politician in the military government before he retired.
