The Uganda constitution, April 1966

Uganda's Independence Constitution, which came into force on October 9th, 1962, was the culmination of long negotiation in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests of Buganda, the western kingdoms and Busoga on the one hand, and the rest of the country on the other, and the result was a delicate compromise between a unitary and a federal state—the fruit of a political understanding between the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Buganda traditionalists. As in the following years rifts first appeared and then steadily widened in the alliance between the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Kabaka Yekka—between radical and traditionalist— the survival of the Constitution in its original form appeared more and more doubtful. In fact, however, the Constitution survived for over three years with only three amending Acts, the first and most important of these making provision for the substitution of a President for a Governor-General in October, 1963.