This interdisciplinary study analyzes social life in Buganda between 1856 and 1955 as a means of examining forms of social practice and organizational regulations that illustrate that African societies like Buganda structured life to curb the powerful and protect the powerless. This and other forms of social support are argued to be precursors and analogous to current human rights.
This analysis responds, in past, to objections raised by African critics suggesting that the current human rights regime promotes social alienation, individualism, confrontational approaches to justice, and competitive political arrangements in violation of communitarian traditions in Africa. I argue that, properly understood, human rights constitute sharable moral claims upon the organization of society toward the goal of safeguarding a life of justice and dignity for all human beings. Accordingly, the rights imply a collective responsibility for persons, especially those with power, to structure the social order in which they participate toward a life of justice and dignity.
Chapter I delineates the basic theoretical approaches to the study. Chapter II calls attention to how smaller social units like the family and clan advanced the rights of the most vulnerable and restricted the unbridled excesses of those with most power in Buganda.
Chapters III and IV illustrate the cross-cultural importance of the rule of law in the protection of human rights by discussing aspects of repression and arbitrary rule in pre-colonial and colonial Buganda in tandem with legal rules and procedures which evolved to protect persons from unjust intrusions and constraints on the part of government officials and other citizens. In response to claims that African politics were consensus-based and allowed no contest among opposing political groups, the study highlights contentious politics in Buganda, the society's limits on political power, and its regulation of competition in political processes. Chapter V concludes the study with some suggestions on how education could be used as a strategic means of implementing human rights in keeping with humane customary norms in Buganda and other societies in Africa.
