Reprieve for Freddie

For half a century, the people of Buganda, richest of four divisions in the British protectorate of Uganda, lived in a state of unrivaled harmony with their white protectors. "Kwini Elizabeth is a very brave woman; truly we love Kwini Elizabeth," sang the soldiers of Buganda when Britain's new Queen was crowned. The Baganda were proud that they alone of African tribes had not been conquered, but had voluntarily asked Britain's protection.

A year ago, however, Kwini Elizabeth found herself at odds with her Buganda subjects and their even more beloved monarch, Kabaka Edward Frederick William David Mukabya Mutesa II, the 30-year-old local ruler whom the Baganda know as Sabasajja, the Best and Strongest of All Men. The disagreement started when Britain's Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton tactlessly suggested that peaceful Uganda be joined with Tanganyika and Mau Mau-ridden Kenya in a big East African Federation. The Kabaka, reflecting his people's outrage, began plumping instead for complete independence for his kingdom. The British reply was to pack him posthaste aboard a plane and, without giving him a chance even to say goodbye to his wife and child, to whisk him into exile in London. The Kabaka's exile, said Minister Lyttelton, was "final."

The Big Mistake. Cambridge-educated and an ex-Grenadier Guardsman, "King Freddie," as Londoners came to know him, bore his fate with philosophical good manners. Sustained by a tax-free allowance of -L-8,000 from the Crown, he set up housekeeping in a tastefully furnished flat in London's fashionable Belgravia, passed his time reading, attending the theater, discussing everything from art to EDC with old friends, and in general playing the part of a serious-minded and well-behaved West End gentleman. Britons came to admire the Kabaka's refusal to foment trouble; they were even more impressed by the unchanging loyalty of his people back home, who adamantly refused to accept any other king. As the months passed, the Colonial Office, under the direction of a new minister, Alan Lennox-Boyd, came to the reluctant conclusion that the whole thing might have been a mistake.

Last week, in what was described as a change of "situation," not policy, a special dispatch rider from Kwini Elizabeth rode over to King Freddie's Belgravia flat with a message from Her Majesty. It said in effect that if the Buganda Lukiko (Parliament) wanted him back and was willing to accept a few constitutional reforms limiting his power, the Kabaka could go home and be king again. Unmentioned in the note was the fact that the Colonial Office, already deeply troubled by race war in Kenya and rising black nationalism in Britain's West African colonies, wants to settle the crisis in Uganda before it too becomes a trouble spot of Empire.

Home Again. Suspecting more British chicanery, demonstrators outside the Lukiko building in Kampala hissed and jeered when Sir Andrew Cohen, Britain's resident administrator, broke the news. After all, it was Cohen who had engineered the King's exile in the first place. But, with nine months in which to decide, few doubted that the Lukiko would welcome its Kabaka back, no matter what the terms. "It will be nice," said King Freddie, "to go home again. I like London, but no place is pleasant when you cannot leave if you wish."

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