I was attracted by an article shared with me yesterday entitled “Campaigners celebrate court ruling to ‘decolonise’ Kampala”.
The campaigners were celebrating that “After a five-year campaign, landmarks and streets honouring British colonialists will be renamed to reflect Ugandan culture.”
Written by Samuel Okiror in Kampala for the UK’s Guardian newspaper yesterday (Tuesday, March 4, 2025), it reads:
Campaigners have welcomed a court ruling to remove British colonial monuments from Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and to rename streets that honour “crooks and historical figureheads”.
In last week’s high court ruling, Justice Musa Ssekaana directed the city authorities to remove the names of British figures from streets, monuments and other landmarks.
They include Major General Henry Edward Colville, an early commissioner of the Uganda Protectorate, and Frederick Lugard, a prominent colonial official in Africa with a reputation for cruelty.
New names will be found for roads and parks that reflect Uganda’s culture after the ruling, which was the culmination of a five-year campaign.
In 2020, more than 5,800 people signed a petition asking MPs to “decolonise and rename” the dozens of statues and streets honouring colonialists, and last year John Ssempebwa, a human rights activist, filed a lawsuit in Kampala, claiming that roads and parks named by the British during colonial times violated Ugandans’ rights to dignity and freedom from cruel treatment.
Apollo Makubuya, a lawyer and leading campaigner, said: “This ruling represents a significant step forward in the recognition of human dignity and the fight against colonial injustices.
“It is essential to break free from the legacy of colonial exploitation, oppression, and impunity by embracing names that truly reflect Uganda’s independence and cultural identity,” he said.
Kampala’s lord mayor, Erias Lukwago, said he was disappointed that the judge did not give a detailed judgment that addressed historical injustices and detailed those who opposed the British rulers, but added: “I think it’s long overdue for us to decolonise our streets.
“I believe we can have our history, we can keep records, but not celebrate some crooks and historical figureheads that brutalised Ugandans. They need not be celebrated,” he said.
However, Nicholas Opiyo, a human rights lawyer in Kampala, said the court order was a “futile … symbolic” exercise.
“Let’s leave them the way they are, let’s see them, let it be a constant reminder of our past,” he said. “The best way to recommit ourselves to a new path is to remember that path and not re-erase it.
“We cannot engage in a revisionist attempt to try to erase that history. To do so only on the names of streets would be selective. Our history is what it is. We must leave it, we must see it [and] we must remind ourselves of it if we are to move on from it,” he said.
“I think the court’s judgment and process that led to it is a revisionist approach; that it’s engaged in a futile exercise or symbolic exercise to revise our history, which is inextricably linked to the British colonial role in our country.”
I was attracted by and pleased with the article because it reflects a cause I (and others) have been promoting in Saint Lucia, for the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM’s) former European colonies, since the region’s leaders launched the call for Reparations from Europe for Slavery and Native Genocide in the Caribbean and South and Central America in 2013.
Members of the National Reparations Committee (NRC) have, from time to time over the last decade, been discussing a similar project for Saint Lucia – reflecting the same thinking exists in other former colonies where old colonial names still haunt new post-independent times.
Saint Lucians mistakenly and innocently celebrate that France and Britain ‘fought 14 wars’ over the island before the British flag remained aloft, until independence in 1979.
But while the island was last British, the French influence lasted longer and is no-less still deeply represented, with the island’s city, towns and villages, communities, parks and main roads being mainly French — and in many cases representing powerful personages who were racist and contributed to preservation of slavery between wars and pillaged the island to rid it of a revolutionary takeover by sons and daughters of former slaves and freedom fighters in 1796.
French and British troops, under the ‘Grand Ole Duke of York’ marched up and down Morne Fortune Castries in several ailed attempts to overthrow the revolutionary ex-slaves who’d taken control of the island after defeating the British in Soufriere in 1795 – until the marauding invaders set fire to Castries to burn the town down and forcee inhabitants to flee to the barracks at ‘The Morne’ (where the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) stands) to urge their eventual surrender.
The City of Castries, Laborie village and Jeremie Street – to name just a few – are all named after French personalities associated with the pillage and rampage that came with colonial plunder, subjugation and racial discrimination, while the names of those who fought against slavery and colonialism for genuine liberation remain largely unknown.
Only now are we discovering the names of Petronille Dwine and Flor Gaya, who directly confronted the slave-owning class in Dennery and Soufriere, respectively, in their times; or John Quinlan, who preceded Marcus Garvey representing people of African descent with the Pan Africa Congress (PAC) in the UK (1900); or the scores of other Saint Lucians who left their marks in history at home and abroad, including Hughlan Jack, a stowaway who was elected as one of the first leaders of the borough of Brooklyn in New York.
Apart from Sir Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott, not-very-much is known at home of the finite contributions of Dr Winston Parris to the global search for a cure for pain; or how Sir Darnley Alexander became the first Attorney General of the state of Niger (in Nigeria) after Independence.
Other Saint Lucians have carved their names in stone at home and abroad, including in Africa and Asia, Europe and Latin America – including Jean Baptiste Bideau, who served alongside Simon Bolivar and as a Governor of Eastern Venezuela after Independence.
Saint Lucians played great roles in pre and post-independent Ghana, like Judge Eardley Glasgow, Dr Edwin Beausoliel and Dr Edmund Auguste, George Francois, Luther Patterson, Garth St Omer and Stanley Lewis – who contributed individually and greatly to the development of the first British colony in Africa to gain independence.
Saint Lucia and CARICOM nations need to follow those elsewhere who are moving to not-as-much erase history, as to ensure ours doesn’t remain forever erased from our minds.
Thanks to the published writings of the likes of Sir Calixte George and Morgan Dalphinis — who’ve written the longest accounts of Saint Lucian contributions to the world and of ‘The History of Saint Lucia’ — we can today find more names to cleanse the colonial character of so-many of those we cling to, that do not help us better understand and appreciate who we really are.
The island continues observance of its 46th independence anniversary this month, but before the 50th – in 2029 – it’s hoped that the Mayors, Parliamentarians and others interested in cleaning up our history will start doing like our Ugandan peers have done.
We may not wish to change inherited family names, but we can certainly name more places after more of us than after those who stole our lands and changed our history.
We owe it to ourselves!