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Description

Every nation is built on a story of some form, such is the function of nationalism. The older kind of nationalism, what typically comes to mind when considering the concept, is that of ethnonationalism, that a "nation" is a state which encompasses the whole of a certain ethnic or cultural group. Others derive a more "abstract" idea of nationhood, based on a unifying story or a unification of different peoples under laws or justice. Among post-colonial African nations, this has been difficult not least for the fact that some states encompass many "nations", and the resulting discordance which emerges from that kind of disunity. Some have been better than others, but ongoing crises in places like Azawad, Tigray, and Western Togoland show how fractious the concept is. Nations like Egypt and Ethiopia are able to draw on ancient legacies for a unifying identity. Others like Kenya or Ghana are more "artificial" and build new ideas from scratch. For the Kitara Empire, both are equally useful.

One of the great tragedies of European colonial attitudes is that so much of African history is either lost or poorly understood by the preference of European chroniclers for written sources over oral histories handed down over generations. As a consequence the ancient kingdom of the Banyakitara is still a topic of emerging study, not least owing to the ways its history and legacy have been co-opted by subsequent nationalist fictions. Nonetheless the reality on the ground was that by the end of the Iron Age in eastern Africa, the old Chwezi domain had broken down into a number of states described most often as simply "interlacustrine", which is to say that they had a common cultural and linguistic heritage situated in the realm between the West African Rift Valley and Lake 'Nnalubaale ("Lake Victoria" to Europeans). Among these kingdoms, by the time that Europeans had begun their significant incursions into East Africa one of these successor states had begun to rise above the others.

The Kingdom of Buganda as it was initially noted by European scholars was described by some as an "Embryonic Empire", an expanding and dynamic state which sought power not just over the land it ruled but a thalassocratic projection of power across the lake. Its military expanded, and its naval force began to expand as well, stretching across a region anchored at the northwestern shores of the lake. Though vital, the budding state was marred by a number of political and cultural factors, not least the fact that Buganda practiced mass human sacrifice, and the political instability that emerged from a succession model where no one prince held priority for succession and multiple sons could contest their accession to the throne. It was in this environment that John Hanning Speke first arrived in 1862, finding the ascendant kingdom under the reign of a man named Muteesa. Though Buganda was fairly isolated in the midst of the "Victoria Basin" which was flanked by mountains on either side, Muteesa welcomed the men and the missionaries who followed them.

How fortunate it was, that the missionaries who came to Muteesa's court were enthralled by the new study of anthropology. Muteesa, as well, was likewise enthralled by the stories told of the outside world, and ever increasingly the power of the British Empire as it expanded its domains across the world. Buganda's own ambitions were expanding, and gathering knowledge of emergent states like Ethiopia, the Kingdom of Hawaii, and the Sikh Empire. By the arrival of Christian missionaries in 1875, he had already laid his plans out. At one point the chiefs felt that Muteesa would be easy to control. Soon, though, they found their powers being worn away, and the surrounding kingdoms of Bunyoro, Tooro, Busoga, and Karagwe found themselves under siege as Buganda sought to craft an empire of its own. Power began to centralize, and the modernization of the army and navy was followed by a period of development in the cities, as the old fortress of Mengo was renovated into being a true European-style permanent capital.

Central to Muteesa's modernization plans was the centrality of concepts. Religion was central to this. The monotheistic faiths of Christianity and Islam both began to gather wide acceptance, and although their adherents often conflicted with each other the status of there only being one God was useful for centralizing a divine authority behind the Kabaka. Muteesa's own religious beliefs are sometimes difficult to parse, best described as "opportunistic" where he would often mirror back the religious beliefs of the person or groups he was talking to if he felt it would gain their favor. Whatever the case, the more important concept was that of continuation. As Karagwe, Tooro, Ankole, and even the great kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi fell before the armies of Buganda, there was a key idea at play: that Buganda was not merely crafting an empire for itself, but that it was rebuilding the great Kitara Empire, the domain of the Bachwezi and reuniting it in the image of past glories.

An element of frantic urgency went into this, as first the British and then Germans began to make inroads to the region. But an opponent stood in the way of their ambitions. Both through his own ambition and in response to the growing power of Buganda, a man named Mirambo had expanded his control through much of the plains south of the lake basin where Muteesa was settling his power. For both men, Mirambo and Muteesa alike, a new concept emerged: opposition to each other. The Miramban and Bugandan Empires came to see each other as their greatest rivals, and both were preparing for an inevitable conflict with the other. The spark erupted out of conflict over influence in Buzinza, launching a five year war that ravaged the region. Worse still, colonial influence came into play. Britain supported Buganda, Germany backed Miramba. And in the course of the war, both kings were killed. The difference, though, was in the strength of institutions. Where Miramba's death left no one to succeed him, the government and structures Muteesa had built ensured that his kingdom would survive him.

Kiweewa, who succeeded his father, swept into Miramba's former domains and overran the now disparate chiefdoms, crushing some and gaining the voluntary allegiance of others. Marching all the way to the shores of Lake Malawi, it was at what is now Ipanya that he declared the final rebirth of the Kitara Empire, crowning himself as Emperor Kiweewa I. Having solidified his power, he was quick to begin signing treaties with Germany and Britain. both of whom were eager to have the burgeoning state in their own sphere of influence. Kiweewa was astute enough of a ruler to be able to play both of the states off each other, leveraging offers made by one state to gain concessions from the other, and in this way maintain the independence of his own Empire against the advance of the two foreign empires that desired his lands. He was, in turn, able to centralize power further and expand the bureaucratic power of his national government, implementing religious freedom and a battery of European-style civil rights reforms for his diverse and multicultural empire.

As it often goes, though, inconvenience struck once more in 1901 when Kiweewa was killed by his brother Mwanga, who declared himself Mwanga II and implemented a brief struggle for power that was quashed by the strengthened and vital institutions of state which opposed such a violent takeover. Despite the briefness of the episode, though, the resulting devastation to the House of Abalasangeye was such that Mwanga's child, the four year old Daudi Cwa, was coronated as Daudi Chewa II. It was a dangerous position to be in, but here again the New Kitara Empire had a stroke of good fortune. Apollo Kaggwa, Prime Minister of the Bunge (legislature) of Kitara, was an astute and able bureaucrat who was buoyed by the efforts of Hamu Mukasa, newly appointed Secretary of State. This dyad of state power was able to maintain stability through the regency, in particular at a pivotal moment when the German Empire attempted to negotiate a new treaty which would have surrendered most of Kitara's politics, trade, and diplomacy to German officials.

Germany had approached the matter believing that Kitara would be weakened by the succession crisis followed by the regency, but Kaggwa and Mukasa rebuffed the German diplomats. When Germany launched a punitive expedition to punish this insolent upstart empire, the modernized and trained armies of Kitara (much of which, ironically, came from German military expertise) dealt crushing blows to the invading German forces. The Chwezi War of 1903-1905 was a deeply unpleasant affair for Germany, which had enjoyed an almost wholly uncontested rise to power and prominence and yet had now been thrown back by an African nation, not much longer after the Italians had suffered similar defeats in Ethiopia. Settling its borders in place, Germany plotted a future campaign of revenge, but the chance would never come. World War I tore the world apart, and although Britain had offered Kitara land from German East Africa if they joined on the side of the Entente, the now of-age and empowered Daudi Chewa II elected instead to maintain Kitara's neutrality.

In its aftermath Kitara was surrounded by British colonies and the Belgian Congo. Kitara was, by most metrics, a British "client state" of sorts but still openly independent and operating outside of Britain's political directives, particularly when it came to hosting opponents to colonial authority. The British still considered Kitara part of their "informal empire" but were never able to fully implement the kind of authority over it and the Bunge that they would have liked, but as Kitara was generally friendly and open to trade with the British this meant that there wasn't much in the way of active conflict with the British and the colony of "Swahilia" that flanked it on the east. Indeed, Daudi Chewa II became a well-traveled leader who made visits to the League of Nations and was received at the White House by President Calvin Coolidge, though his public speeches in favor of decolonization and the strength which an independent Africa could give to Europe and the United States weren't nearly as well-received.

Still Kitara was a nation recognized in the world and had a burgeoning economy and diplomatic standing. This was most apparent by its open opposition to the rise of the Axis powers, launching a fierce protest with the League of Nations after Italy invaded and conquered Ethiopia in 1935 and later denouncing the German annexation of Austria in 1938. Unlike their neutrality in World War I, Kitara elected to declare war on the Axis after the fall of France in 1940, lending its support to the British war effort and assisting with both the liberation of Ethiopia and the attacks against the Italian colonies in the Horn of Africa. While Kitara is sometimes said to have been a kind of secondary presence in the war, Kitara has long held a proud and active image of itself as a liberating force during the war, and the victory cemented a permanent friendship between Kitara and Ethiopia. Kitara emerged into the new post-war era as a strong and stable state, but the winds were changing.

The world was now divided between the United States and Soviet Union, and Kitara now found itself navigating a chaotic set of circumstances to where Washington and Moscow made merry with the "third world nations", among which Kitara was counted. Ostensibly neutral, the rising threat of communist insurgents among the Maasai began drawing further concern from Emperor Muteesa II, who directed his government to begin cracking down on them and courting the United States for support. The matter only grew worse after Britain withdrew from Swahilia, and despite efforts at coordination between Dar es Salaam and Mombasa the country soon split into a Soviet-aligned south and a U.S.-aligned north, sparking a civil war which at times began to spill into Kitara's own frontiers. The Maasai, who themselves lived in both Swahilias and in Kitara as well, began to become a recurring issue for the Kitara Empire and quickly became the target of punitive repression in a state that had, at least openly, been above such targeted forms of cultural and ethnic revanchism.

The long-simmering concerns flash-boiled in 1966 with a coup that killed Muteesa II and declared the Kitara People's Socialist Republic, openly declaring allegiance to Moscow before it became apparent they did not have the broad support that had been expected. Soon it descended into brutal guerrilla warfare, with the communist regime (the "Baraza") attempting to quash efforts at restoring the monarchy that coalesced around the dead Emperor's former son, now Kiweewa II. For the next eight years the country's delicate unity between tribes, ethnic groups, religions, and cultures fell completely apart as the country descended into anarchy. Mengo itself changed hands no less than ten times, four of those times being in 1969 alone. By the time that the Imperial forces were able to oust the Baraza entirely and re-assert power, the country had been devastated and martial law was imposed to restore order. Civil and political rights were suspended and the government forcibly worked to crush any and all opposition to the monarchy.

A lot of anger and accusations flew around on all sides, but all sides could agree on anger at the United States and Soviet Union, both of whom were accused of engineering the crisis for their own gain. From 1974 onward the country became increasingly reclusive from the world, even within the Non-Aligned Movement that it had been a founding member of. Nationalism was now constructed in opposition to the idea of "imperialism", that first it had been the British and Germans who sought to overthrow Kitara, and now it was the United States and Soviet Union. Kitara never fully withdrew from the world, of course, a key example being its aid in negotiating the cease-fire which ended the Second Swahilian War, but for many the world was so deeply sunk into the Soviet and American hegemonies that it was portrayed as anathema to engage in it, that Kitara was sacrificing its sovereignty if it tried to engage too closely with the global superpowers.

The end of the Cold War brought change to the whole world, Kitara included. After the death of Kiweewa II, his son Muteesa III announced a series of reforms that would relinquish royal authority and end the military junta which had governed the country for 18 years. The return to civilian leadership was neither swift nor easy, but Muteesa III was genuine in his desire to relinquish power to the hands of the Bunge and restore stability. The reform efforts were met by opposition from both government and opposition parties as well as military leaders, to the extent that in 1994 the military attempted to launch a coup that would dethrone the Emperor, but counter-protests by the people forced them to back down after just three days. Successful completion of the reforms was formally declared in 2000 for the dawn of the 21st century, but in reality it would take until 2007 for the full extent of Kitaran political reforms to be able to take effect. Nonetheless, aside from the brief outburst of chaos in 1995, by and large it went smoothly.

Kitara in the modern age is a nation still considered to be part of the "developing world", and outside of the major cities like Lubaga, Kesumett, and Katubuka the majority of people still live in small villages in what the United Nations would describe as poverty conditions. It might be a bit of a generalization, though, as despite this state of affairs Kitara is largely absent of starvation and political turmoil. It still exists, of course, but secessionist and militant opposition movements are considered fringe movements while most Kitarans still have food even if not all of people's dietary needs are consistently met. Some describe Kitara as a "perpetual work in progress", a nation which has stood for the better part of a century and a half but which has yet to reach the levels of economic development seen in Europe, East Asia, and the Americas. The comparison is, again, limited, as within Africa Kitara is one of the most prosperous and stable nations politically and economically, and has led the continent in growth for the last 20 years.

Troubles still exist, of course. Limited infrastructure, wealth inequality, and political stagnancy are all realities of Kitara, but that conceptual idea of Kitara as it is remains a positive one. More important, though, is the concept of what Kitara will become. Throughout the country, even in the face of struggles with drought, political deadlock, and food shortages, the idea persists that Kitara's best days are still ahead of it. World indices rank Finland as the world's happiest nation, but those same indices will sometimes rank Kitara as the world's most optimistic nation, holding a status in Africa equal to Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, and Ethiopia and with hopes that as the future comes, what many see might be an "African Century", Kitara will be one of the nations which leads the way. Until then, though, work remains to be done. Roads to be built, political reforms to be passed, developments in economic robustness. But that will all come with the fullness of time. Talutambudde, y'aluyita olwangu; He who has not made the journey calls it an easy one.

Description

Every nation is built on a story of some form, such is the function of nationalism. The older kind of nationalism, what typically comes to mind when considering the concept, is that of ethnonationalism, that a "nation" is a state which encompasses the whole of a certain ethnic or cultural group. Others derive a more "abstract" idea of nationhood, based on a unifying story or a unification of different peoples under laws or justice. Among post-colonial African nations, this has been difficult not least for the fact that some states encompass many "nations", and the resulting discordance which emerges from that kind of disunity. Some have been better than others, but ongoing crises in places like Azawad, Tigray, and Western Togoland show how fractious the concept is. Nations like Egypt and Ethiopia are able to draw on ancient legacies for a unifying identity. Others like Kenya or Ghana are more "artificial" and build new ideas from scratch. For the Kitara Empire, both are equally useful.

One of the great tragedies of European colonial attitudes is that so much of African history is either lost or poorly understood by the preference of European chroniclers for written sources over oral histories handed down over generations. As a consequence the ancient kingdom of the Banyakitara is still a topic of emerging study, not least owing to the ways its history and legacy have been co-opted by subsequent nationalist fictions. Nonetheless the reality on the ground was that by the end of the Iron Age in eastern Africa, the old Chwezi domain had broken down into a number of states described most often as simply "interlacustrine", which is to say that they had a common cultural and linguistic heritage situated in the realm between the West African Rift Valley and Lake 'Nnalubaale ("Lake Victoria" to Europeans). Among these kingdoms, by the time that Europeans had begun their significant incursions into East Africa one of these successor states had begun to rise above the others.

The Kingdom of Buganda as it was initially noted by European scholars was described by some as an "Embryonic Empire", an expanding and dynamic state which sought power not just over the land it ruled but a thalassocratic projection of power across the lake. Its military expanded, and its naval force began to expand as well, stretching across a region anchored at the northwestern shores of the lake. Though vital, the budding state was marred by a number of political and cultural factors, not least the fact that Buganda practiced mass human sacrifice, and the political instability that emerged from a succession model where no one prince held priority for succession and multiple sons could contest their accession to the throne. It was in this environment that John Hanning Speke first arrived in 1862, finding the ascendant kingdom under the reign of a man named Muteesa. Though Buganda was fairly isolated in the midst of the "Victoria Basin" which was flanked by mountains on either side, Muteesa welcomed the men and the missionaries who followed them.

How fortunate it was, that the missionaries who came to Muteesa's court were enthralled by the new study of anthropology. Muteesa, as well, was likewise enthralled by the stories told of the outside world, and ever increasingly the power of the British Empire as it expanded its domains across the world. Buganda's own ambitions were expanding, and gathering knowledge of emergent states like Ethiopia, the Kingdom of Hawaii, and the Sikh Empire. By the arrival of Christian missionaries in 1875, he had already laid his plans out. At one point the chiefs felt that Muteesa would be easy to control. Soon, though, they found their powers being worn away, and the surrounding kingdoms of Bunyoro, Tooro, Busoga, and Karagwe found themselves under siege as Buganda sought to craft an empire of its own. Power began to centralize, and the modernization of the army and navy was followed by a period of development in the cities, as the old fortress of Mengo was renovated into being a true European-style permanent capital.

Central to Muteesa's modernization plans was the centrality of concepts. Religion was central to this. The monotheistic faiths of Christianity and Islam both began to gather wide acceptance, and although their adherents often conflicted with each other the status of there only being one God was useful for centralizing a divine authority behind the Kabaka. Muteesa's own religious beliefs are sometimes difficult to parse, best described as "opportunistic" where he would often mirror back the religious beliefs of the person or groups he was talking to if he felt it would gain their favor. Whatever the case, the more important concept was that of continuation. As Karagwe, Tooro, Ankole, and even the great kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi fell before the armies of Buganda, there was a key idea at play: that Buganda was not merely crafting an empire for itself, but that it was rebuilding the great Kitara Empire, the domain of the Bachwezi and reuniting it in the image of past glories.

An element of frantic urgency went into this, as first the British and then Germans began to make inroads to the region. But an opponent stood in the way of their ambitions. Both through his own ambition and in response to the growing power of Buganda, a man named Mirambo had expanded his control through much of the plains south of the lake basin where Muteesa was settling his power. For both men, Mirambo and Muteesa alike, a new concept emerged: opposition to each other. The Miramban and Bugandan Empires came to see each other as their greatest rivals, and both were preparing for an inevitable conflict with the other. The spark erupted out of conflict over influence in Buzinza, launching a five year war that ravaged the region. Worse still, colonial influence came into play. Britain supported Buganda, Germany backed Miramba. And in the course of the war, both kings were killed. The difference, though, was in the strength of institutions. Where Miramba's death left no one to succeed him, the government and structures Muteesa had built ensured that his kingdom would survive him.

Kiweewa, who succeeded his father, swept into Miramba's former domains and overran the now disparate chiefdoms, crushing some and gaining the voluntary allegiance of others. Marching all the way to the shores of Lake Malawi, it was at what is now Ipanya that he declared the final rebirth of the Kitara Empire, crowning himself as Emperor Kiweewa I. Having solidified his power, he was quick to begin signing treaties with Germany and Britain. both of whom were eager to have the burgeoning state in their own sphere of influence. Kiweewa was astute enough of a ruler to be able to play both of the states off each other, leveraging offers made by one state to gain concessions from the other, and in this way maintain the independence of his own Empire against the advance of the two foreign empires that desired his lands. He was, in turn, able to centralize power further and expand the bureaucratic power of his national government, implementing religious freedom and a battery of European-style civil rights reforms for his diverse and multicultural empire.

As it often goes, though, inconvenience struck once more in 1901 when Kiweewa was killed by his brother Mwanga, who declared himself Mwanga II and implemented a brief struggle for power that was quashed by the strengthened and vital institutions of state which opposed such a violent takeover. Despite the briefness of the episode, though, the resulting devastation to the House of Abalasangeye was such that Mwanga's child, the four year old Daudi Cwa, was coronated as Daudi Chewa II. It was a dangerous position to be in, but here again the New Kitara Empire had a stroke of good fortune. Apollo Kaggwa, Prime Minister of the Bunge (legislature) of Kitara, was an astute and able bureaucrat who was buoyed by the efforts of Hamu Mukasa, newly appointed Secretary of State. This dyad of state power was able to maintain stability through the regency, in particular at a pivotal moment when the German Empire attempted to negotiate a new treaty which would have surrendered most of Kitara's politics, trade, and diplomacy to German officials.

Germany had approached the matter believing that Kitara would be weakened by the succession crisis followed by the regency, but Kaggwa and Mukasa rebuffed the German diplomats. When Germany launched a punitive expedition to punish this insolent upstart empire, the modernized and trained armies of Kitara (much of which, ironically, came from German military expertise) dealt crushing blows to the invading German forces. The Chwezi War of 1903-1905 was a deeply unpleasant affair for Germany, which had enjoyed an almost wholly uncontested rise to power and prominence and yet had now been thrown back by an African nation, not much longer after the Italians had suffered similar defeats in Ethiopia. Settling its borders in place, Germany plotted a future campaign of revenge, but the chance would never come. World War I tore the world apart, and although Britain had offered Kitara land from German East Africa if they joined on the side of the Entente, the now of-age and empowered Daudi Chewa II elected instead to maintain Kitara's neutrality.

In its aftermath Kitara was surrounded by British colonies and the Belgian Congo. Kitara was, by most metrics, a British "client state" of sorts but still openly independent and operating outside of Britain's political directives, particularly when it came to hosting opponents to colonial authority. The British still considered Kitara part of their "informal empire" but were never able to fully implement the kind of authority over it and the Bunge that they would have liked, but as Kitara was generally friendly and open to trade with the British this meant that there wasn't much in the way of active conflict with the British and the colony of "Swahilia" that flanked it on the east. Indeed, Daudi Chewa II became a well-traveled leader who made visits to the League of Nations and was received at the White House by President Calvin Coolidge, though his public speeches in favor of decolonization and the strength which an independent Africa could give to Europe and the United States weren't nearly as well-received.

Still Kitara was a nation recognized in the world and had a burgeoning economy and diplomatic standing. This was most apparent by its open opposition to the rise of the Axis powers, launching a fierce protest with the League of Nations after Italy invaded and conquered Ethiopia in 1935 and later denouncing the German annexation of Austria in 1938. Unlike their neutrality in World War I, Kitara elected to declare war on the Axis after the fall of France in 1940, lending its support to the British war effort and assisting with both the liberation of Ethiopia and the attacks against the Italian colonies in the Horn of Africa. While Kitara is sometimes said to have been a kind of secondary presence in the war, Kitara has long held a proud and active image of itself as a liberating force during the war, and the victory cemented a permanent friendship between Kitara and Ethiopia. Kitara emerged into the new post-war era as a strong and stable state, but the winds were changing.

The world was now divided between the United States and Soviet Union, and Kitara now found itself navigating a chaotic set of circumstances to where Washington and Moscow made merry with the "third world nations", among which Kitara was counted. Ostensibly neutral, the rising threat of communist insurgents among the Maasai began drawing further concern from Emperor Muteesa II, who directed his government to begin cracking down on them and courting the United States for support. The matter only grew worse after Britain withdrew from Swahilia, and despite efforts at coordination between Dar es Salaam and Mombasa the country soon split into a Soviet-aligned south and a U.S.-aligned north, sparking a civil war which at times began to spill into Kitara's own frontiers. The Maasai, who themselves lived in both Swahilias and in Kitara as well, began to become a recurring issue for the Kitara Empire and quickly became the target of punitive repression in a state that had, at least openly, been above such targeted forms of cultural and ethnic revanchism.

The long-simmering concerns flash-boiled in 1966 with a coup that killed Muteesa II and declared the Kitara People's Socialist Republic, openly declaring allegiance to Moscow before it became apparent they did not have the broad support that had been expected. Soon it descended into brutal guerrilla warfare, with the communist regime (the "Baraza") attempting to quash efforts at restoring the monarchy that coalesced around the dead Emperor's former son, now Kiweewa II. For the next eight years the country's delicate unity between tribes, ethnic groups, religions, and cultures fell completely apart as the country descended into anarchy. Mengo itself changed hands no less than ten times, four of those times being in 1969 alone. By the time that the Imperial forces were able to oust the Baraza entirely and re-assert power, the country had been devastated and martial law was imposed to restore order. Civil and political rights were suspended and the government forcibly worked to crush any and all opposition to the monarchy.

A lot of anger and accusations flew around on all sides, but all sides could agree on anger at the United States and Soviet Union, both of whom were accused of engineering the crisis for their own gain. From 1974 onward the country became increasingly reclusive from the world, even within the Non-Aligned Movement that it had been a founding member of. Nationalism was now constructed in opposition to the idea of "imperialism", that first it had been the British and Germans who sought to overthrow Kitara, and now it was the United States and Soviet Union. Kitara never fully withdrew from the world, of course, a key example being its aid in negotiating the cease-fire which ended the Second Swahilian War, but for many the world was so deeply sunk into the Soviet and American hegemonies that it was portrayed as anathema to engage in it, that Kitara was sacrificing its sovereignty if it tried to engage too closely with the global superpowers.

The end of the Cold War brought change to the whole world, Kitara included. After the death of Kiweewa II, his son Muteesa III announced a series of reforms that would relinquish royal authority and end the military junta which had governed the country for 18 years. The return to civilian leadership was neither swift nor easy, but Muteesa III was genuine in his desire to relinquish power to the hands of the Bunge and restore stability. The reform efforts were met by opposition from both government and opposition parties as well as military leaders, to the extent that in 1994 the military attempted to launch a coup that would dethrone the Emperor, but counter-protests by the people forced them to back down after just three days. Successful completion of the reforms was formally declared in 2000 for the dawn of the 21st century, but in reality it would take until 2007 for the full extent of Kitaran political reforms to be able to take effect. Nonetheless, aside from the brief outburst of chaos in 1995, by and large it went smoothly.

Kitara in the modern age is a nation still considered to be part of the "developing world", and outside of the major cities like Lubaga, Kesumett, and Katubuka the majority of people still live in small villages in what the United Nations would describe as poverty conditions. It might be a bit of a generalization, though, as despite this state of affairs Kitara is largely absent of starvation and political turmoil. It still exists, of course, but secessionist and militant opposition movements are considered fringe movements while most Kitarans still have food even if not all of people's dietary needs are consistently met. Some describe Kitara as a "perpetual work in progress", a nation which has stood for the better part of a century and a half but which has yet to reach the levels of economic development seen in Europe, East Asia, and the Americas. The comparison is, again, limited, as within Africa Kitara is one of the most prosperous and stable nations politically and economically, and has led the continent in growth for the last 20 years.

Troubles still exist, of course. Limited infrastructure, wealth inequality, and political stagnancy are all realities of Kitara, but that conceptual idea of Kitara as it is remains a positive one. More important, though, is the concept of what Kitara will become. Throughout the country, even in the face of struggles with drought, political deadlock, and food shortages, the idea persists that Kitara's best days are still ahead of it. World indices rank Finland as the world's happiest nation, but those same indices will sometimes rank Kitara as the world's most optimistic nation, holding a status in Africa equal to Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, and Ethiopia and with hopes that as the future comes, what many see might be an "African Century", Kitara will be one of the nations which leads the way. Until then, though, work remains to be done. Roads to be built, political reforms to be passed, developments in economic robustness. But that will all come with the fullness of time. Talutambudde, y'aluyita olwangu; He who has not made the journey calls it an easy one.