The novel, Song of Lawino

When the British withdrew from Uganda in the early 1960s, they left behind traces of colonialism that threatened to fragment Ugandan society. There was a small elite of black Africans, generally Protestants, whom the British had trained to fill government and bureaucratic posts. Educated in the West, these Africans often had little sympathy for the mass of Africans, who lived traditional lives in the villages and in many cases had adopted Catholicism or perhaps Islam rather than Protestantism. Economically the British left behind a situation that favored trade with the West over the growth of industry in Uganda or trade with other Africa nations. In religion, they left behind a divided populace. The rift between Africans who adhered to traditional African religions (such as the Acoli's polytheistic faith) and those who had converted to Christianity was no less wide than the gap between the Catholic and the Protestant converts or that between the Western-educated elite minority and the illiterate majority.