A video grab shows Speaker Rebecca Kadaga kneeling at the shrine in Busoga where she said she had gone to thank her ancestral spirits for her re-election as Speaker and Member of Parliament. Left, some of the caves at Sezibwa Falls in Kayunga District. The place is often jammed with people praying for various needs, including barren women seeking to conceive and the mentally disturbed family members hoping to get cured. PHOTO BY ABUBAKER LUBOWA.
She is not alone. The newly elected Speaker of Parliament, Ms Rebecca Kadaga, has caused a furore by paying homage to a traditional shrine in her home village in Busoga.
Ms Kadaga is not the first high profile Ugandan to make such visits. Former vice president Prof Gilbert Bukenya, visited a traditional shrine in Masaka some years back with many Christians, notably Catholics to where he belongs, calling for his resignation.
Today, a good number of Christians and Muslims are doing the same, though secretly. But why this Kadaga hullabaloo?
Charles Lwanga, a Catholic and member of Pope Paul VI Memorial Community Centre in Ndeeba, Kampala, thinks the Speaker was misunderstood.
“Most likely, she visited the shrine to thank her ancestors for enabling her win the hotly contested race for Speaker just like any Muganda can visit his or her clan’s sacred place for blessing or to express gratitude for an achievement accomplished.”
Not into witchcraft
While at the shrine, Lwanga says, Ms Kadaga was neither seen smoking a pipe or calling for the bewitching of her political enemies. “In other words, she was trying to demonstrate to the whole world that her ancestors do really exist and offer blessing when requested.”
According to Lwanga, this is very common in Buganda as well. He gives an example he experienced in his Ngabi (bush buck) clan, where members of Ennyunga sect (sub-clan), to which Emmanuel Cardinal Wamala belongs, adore the Buwende lake side of Rakai District, where some still visit in big numbers for blessings and thanks-giving.
Another Ngabi clan sect, Abalanzi on the other hand, treasure the Kyagubi hill near Villa Maria in Masaka and are often seen converging there, while those of Abasiita too consult their ancestors at Lwemwa hill, also in Masaka District.
Besides, Lwanga thinks some Kiganda words are wrongly mistaken to be satanic. He refers to words such as okusamila to simply mean “praying” and not bewitching as many think, while Masabo refers to places of worship for those who lived before Christianity came and many others who, up to date, have never embraced this faith.
A Christian friend in town, who preferred anonymity, admits having visited a Kiganda shrine (ssabo) in his Bugerere (Kayunga District) home village with a number of relatives way back in 1995.
He says they went there to perform what he calls an important traditional ritual and saw nothing wrong with this.
“We didn’t go there for any bad intention like trying to bewitch others but simply to cleanse ourselves in order to get rid of a strange illness that was affecting many of us and to which no medical solution could be found.”
There are so many cultural sites or shrines in Uganda and all over Africa considered to be sacred and often visited for blessings.
For instance, the magnificent Sezibwa Falls in Kayunga District is often jammed with people praying for various needs, including barren women seeking to conceive and the mentally disturbed family members hoping to get cured.
Across the border in Kenya, sports teams are often seen praying while facing the direction of Mount Kenya before major competitions kick off, thus seeking blessings from such an important landmark they consider important in their culture.
Surely, the theory of considering most African cultural beliefs as satanic is as old as colonialism itself. When the early Christian missionaries first arrived in Buganda Kingdom of Uganda towards the end of the 18th Century, they straight away poked holes in most African traditional cultural practices, terming them evil and even called upon Baganda to shun them.
In Buganda, people believed there was someone supernatural and behind the creation of some outstanding features around such as high mountains, huge trees and rocks.
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