Freddie Mutesa

SIR FREDDIE MUTESA II d1969. Kabaka of the Kingdom of Buganda in Uganda from 22nd November 1939 until his death. He was the 35th Kabaka of Buganda and the first president of Uganda. The foreign press often referred to him as "King Freddie". He was crowned Kabaka on his eighteenth birthday in 1942 (three years after the death of his father Daudi Cwa II of Buganda) during British colonial rule in Uganda. In 1953, he attempted to have Buganda secede to retain the kingdom's independence from a proposed British colonial federation in East Africa. He was deposed and exiled by British colonial governor Andrew Cohen, but was allowed to return to the country two years later in the wake of popular backlash under the terms of the 1955 Buganda Agreement. In the years preceding Uganda's independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, he founded the monarchist Kabaka Yekka party which then formed a coalition with Milton Obote's Uganda People's Congress. The year after Uganda's independence, he was named the first President of Uganda in 1963 with Obote as Prime Minister. His alliance with Obote collapsed in 1964 over the Ugandan lost counties referendum. It worsened in 1966, resulting in Obote overthrowing him and forcing him into exile in the United Kingdom. He died of alcohol poisoning in London aged 45 on November 21st 1969