16/12/2025
On the evening of 19 May 1905, Harry St. George Galt, Acting British Sub-Commissioner of the Western Province of the Uganda Protectorate, was sitting outside a government rest-house at Ibanda, twenty miles north of Mbarara, the administrative centre of that part of the Western Province known as the Kingdom of Ankole.
As Galt sat reading, a man made his way unnoticed through the fence of the rest-house, approached to within a few yards, threw a spear which struck Galt in the chest, and made off into the dusk. Galt died within minutes, and for the next few years the whole of Ankole suffered the repercussions of this brief moment.
Nearly ninety years later, old people still use Galt's death as a principal chronological marker.' It is more keenly remembered than are such formal political events as the 1901 Ankole Agreement, which had turned the pre-colonial kingdom of Nkore into a larger body, incorporating several smaller neighbouring polities, which new kingdom acquired the name Ankole as a consequence of the limited linguistic skills of British officials. Galt's death has attracted much attention.
A lengthy report was compiled by an official commission of inquiry at the time, and at least three scholarly articles on the subject have since been published. The report, and the articles, were largely concerned with the event as a crime to be investigated, a political 'whodunnit' on a grand scale. Yet the answer to this question has long been known. Several tense weeks passed before the killer was identified, and although there have been many rumours that others were involved in the killing, no convincing evidence has ever been produced to refute the identification, or to implicate others. Little attempt has ever been made to understand the motives of the man identified as the killer, for most observers have suggested either that he did not actually kill Galt, or that he was only the pawn of more powerful men. Yet examination of the evidence collected by the Commission of Inquiry suggests that the killer was correctly identified at the time, and that there was no conspiracy.
