The highest mountain in Uganda is named after Henry Morton Stanley, a notorious imperialist. The country’s biggest lake is known to English speakers as Victoria, after the monarch of the largest empire the world has ever known. In Kampala, the capital, there are roads named after Lord Lugard, who massacred hundreds of Ugandans on Bulingugwe island in 1892, and Henry Colville, who launched a murderous war on the pre-colonial kingdom of Bunyoro.
In June, as statues of racists were being pulled down around the world, over 5,000 Ugandans petitioned their government to demand that landmarks be renamed. ‘It didn’t start with George Floyd, but from a deeper need to understand the historical relations between colonized and colonizer, and the legacy of that relationship in modern times,’ says Apollo Makubuya, the lawyer who organized the campaign.
