100 most influential Ugandans - Part VI

Some of the most influential Ugandans (clockwise) Okot p’Bitek, Alex Mukulu, Byron Kawadwa, Fr Lourdel Mapeera, Philly Bongole Lutaaya, Fabian Okware, Stephen Rwangyezi, William Pike, Sister Rachele Fassera, Dr Albert Cook

Byron Kawadwa
The former director of the National Theatre was picked by soldiers from his workplace during a rehearsal.

The playwright and actor had just returned from Nigeria during an African cultural festival and he performed the Oluyimba lwa wankoko meaning song of the chicken.

The play was about the tricks and manoeuvres of politicians. He was sentenced to death by a secret military tribunal with other five of his colleagues.

Amin’s security men picked him and he was never seen again. His death brought what had been seen as the most inspiring intellectual art centre in Africa of the time, to its knees.

Okot p’Bitek
Song of Lawino, originally written in Luo and later translated into English, features a wife lamenting, rather sarcastically, about her Westernised husband’s cultural and personal failings.

It introduced Okot Bitek to the world in 1966 as an original poet of the mold not before known to come from Africa. Bitek cemented his place further with Song of Ocol, the husband’s reply which came four years later, in which the husband confirms the wife’s concerns.

No Ugandan author probably stands taller than Bitek. So far-reaching is his influence that most West African students who study literature in English will probably have read Song of Lawino.

A traditionalist who predicted that Christianity “will die” at some point, it is ironic that on his death in 1982, Bitek was buried in a religious cemetery at Gulu High School.

Current Kenya chief justice Willy Mutunga, on a visit to Bitek’s grave in 2003, is reported to have hummed that if he had his way, he would have exhumed Bitek’s body and reburied it in the village of his ancestors.

Bitek produced more works, including Song of Prisoner and Song of Malaya to capture post-independence injustices and Horn of My Love, a collection of traditional Acholi poetry.

Fr Lourdel Mapeera
Simeon Lourdel was a pioneer Catholic missionary in Uganda, belonging to the White Fathers. He was chosen by Leon Livinhac to lead the first Roman Catholic caravan to East Africa which arrived in Buganda in February 1879.

He became the mission’s spokesman because of his language abilities.

He quickly became the palace’s favourite and was nicknamed “Mapeera” (Mon père) the name by which he is still remembered.

He baptised 15 of the first Christian martyrs killed during Mwanga’s reign.

Among those he baptised included Mukasa Balikuddembe and Andrew Kaggwa.

In 1888, he was expelled from Buganda by Kabaka Kalema and only returned a year later after the Christians overpowered the Muslims and regained the throne.

Philly Bongole Lutaaya

Courage will forever define him in our memories. He could have died a silent death, like so many before him. But he chose to defy the HIV/Aids death sentence.

If there was no cure for the disease, then he would bring it to the table for discussion. His frankness opened up the debate on Aids, a formerly taboo subject, in many households. Extraordinarily gifted at composition, Lutaaya sought greatness as a musician.

Refusing to settle for mediocrity, he sought better facilities and promoters in Sweden. He served his fans with a variety of good music, which still lives on today.

Alex Mukulu
He is Uganda’s leading English language playwright with more than 30 plays under his belt. Popular among these is his 1990 play 30 Years of Bananas.

Others include, Wounds of Africa, Mambo Bado, Guest of honor among others.

His performance has been a class of its own in the performing arts, with many of his plays being so philosophical of the events happening in the country.

Stephen Rwangyezi
Speak of Ugandan cultural performances, and Ndere Troupe comes to mind.

Those who were in primary school in the 1980s will remember how the troupe traversed schools around the country, sometimes working in conjunction with ‘magic’ troupes from Tanzania.

The fact that the troupe could perform cultural music from any part of the country, and dance to it, endeared them in the hearts of many.

We also know them for the amazing ability to balance pots on their heads while dancing.

Although now performing for international dignitaries and high-end functions, Rwangyezi has inspired a string of rural drama troupes, which are modelled on his Ndere Troupe.

Fabian Okware
He was the first Ugandan to head the prison services in 1964, a position he held until 1974.

During his time, Okware is credited for having opened a number of prison farms across the country. The prisons industry also expanded under his watch.

During his time, Uganda prisons was the only government department that was self-sustaining in terms of feeding, and it was the prisons that fed the police and army.

Its manufacturing section was responsible for making police uniform and shoes. It was the prisons carpentry that produced all government furniture across the country.

When he left the prisons service he was appointed the Agriculture minister in the Amin regime. But like many of the ministers, he fell prey to the government he was serving.

Joseph Etima
He joined the prisons service in 1966 as a cadet assistant superintendent of prisons, he went through the ranks to deputy commandant from 1968 and two years later he became the Uganda Prisons Staff College and Training School commandant from 1970 to 1973.

In 1988, he became Commissioner General of the prisons services, a post he held until 2005, making him the longest serving commissioner.

During his time, Etima oversaw a number of changes in the prisons services, among which included the introduction of formal education for the inmates and community service as an alternative to punishment for some crimes.

From prisons he joined the Uganda Human Rights Commission where he served as a commissioner until April this year.

Joseph Mayanja, aka Jose Chameleone
Jose Chameleone represents a generation of musicians that broke from traditional classic music into the field of pop music.

He has heavily influenced Ugandan music by appealing to audiences in East Africa and beyond.

He is on this list because he stands taller than the other musicians of his time, and it is hard to come up with even a bad copy of him that came before he stormed the music industry.

We regard him as influential because many musicians of today would like to be him, and fans adore him. We are, however, unable to predict whether this influence will outlive him.

Sister Rachele Fassera
Few people walk the extra mile to discharge responsibilities they are entrusted with, especially if discharging such responsibilities would require them to sacrifice or even risk their lives.

This is why the example of Rachele Fassera, an Italian Comboni Missionary Sister, is hard to equal.

Sister Fassera was the deputy headmistress of St Mary’s College, Comboni, when 139 students were abducted from the school on October 10, 1996.

In an act of extraordinary courage, Fassera followed the abductors into the tracks of LRA’s Joseph Kony and she secured the release of majority of the girls.

Israel Magembe
He introduced Congelese music on the Ugandan scene in 1958 after a three-year stint in Zaire, now known as DRC.

His Kampala City Six gave birth to a number of different live bands and introduced Congolese beats. When he returned to Uganda, he invited several Congolese bands to perform in Uganda, leading to the influx of freelance guitarists and singers from Congo.

Their presence in Uganda changed the entertainment scene from the local drums.

Pastor Gary Skinner
He introduced the concept of the mega church when born-again churches were still known for operating in make-shift shelters regarded as ‘biwempe’.

A White man setting up a modern church (Kampala Pentecostal Church) in Uganda was new.

His gospel, dealing predominantly with earthly prosperity, was also new. His is still the only church that has bullion vans to ferry the Sunday offerings to the bank.

The church is an internationally renowned brand through its Watoto Ministries, with a CEO and business manager. He brought business to the church with workers receiving competitive salaries, and there the church’s accounts are professionally kept and audited.

Allidina Visram
Born in Kera, Kutch, India, in 1851, he migrated to Zanzibar at the age of 12.

He moved to Uganda in 1901 and by 1904 he had established large plantations of sugarcane and rubber, with experimental plots of fruits, flowers, tea and cotton, employing more than 3,000 workers.

In 1910, he opened his first ginnery and exported ginned cotton to India. Visram was responsible for laying the firm foundation, for not only trade in Uganda, but for cotton, sugar, rubber and tea industries.

In 1903, Visram established his shop in Kampala which became the centre of trade on what came to be known as Allidina Visram Street, now Luwum Street in Kampala. Visram is the pioneer of modern day banking, not only in Uganda, but in the entire East African region.

Wycliff Kiyingi
He is one of Uganda’s greatest playwrights. He is the ‘grandfather’ of radio plays in Uganda. Most of his plays talk about the independent country, but were written before independence.

He is believed to be the first playwright for radio, theatre and television in Uganda.

Among his famous plays include Omukazi muka Ssebo, Olugendo lwe Gologosa, Muduuma kwe kwafe and gwosusa Emwanyi Obwavu Musolo, among others.

William Pike
There is something William Pike did in Uganda that has not been replicated in most other countries.

He took charge of a government publication and turned it into a highly profitable company.

When he was in charge at New Vision, Pike emphasised accuracy in reporting and sometimes covered stories that the people in the government were uncomfortable with.

It is said that his departure was largely occasioned by attempts to be independent of a government that required the New Vision to toe its line.

Pike, with business partner Patrick Quarcoo, also co-founded Capital Radio, the private radio station broadcasting in English that has the widest listenership in Uganda.

Juliana Kanyomozi
Few Ugandan musicians sing from the heart and as effortlessly as Juliana Kanyomozi.

Little wonder then that she has a large following in Uganda and the region, and seems to stand taller than her female contemporaries. She has stayed on the scene for well over a decade and her currency never seems to drop.

Dr Piero Corti & Lucille Teasdale
Dr Piero Corti was Italian but he spent 40 of his 78 years on earth in Uganda, Gulu to be precise.

On his death, in Italy, his body was returned and buried inside St Mary’s Hospital, Lacor, Gulu, which was founded by the Comboni Fathers but owed its development to Dr Corti. His wife, Lucille Teasdale, died in 1996, of Aids, which was believed to have been contracted as she operated on patients at Lacor Hospital.

She was a Canadian surgeon but she also lies buried alongside her husband in Lacor. They took up a dispensary run by missionary sisters and, with help from friends and later their own foundation, succeeded in building a missionary hospital, with some 570 beds, serving vast areas of northern Uganda.

They endured the hard times during Idi Amin’s rule, and the even more trying moments during the Lord’s Resistance Army war, even ignoring calls by the Italian Embassy to leave Uganda because it was unsafe for them.

Dr Albert Cook
British missionary doctor Albert Cook arrived in what came to be Uganda on February 15, 1897. Seven days later, he started his medical work at present day Mengo Hospital under a tree shade.

During his first year, Cook showed quite definitely the existence in Uganda of rheumatic heart disease, cerebral vascular disease, a variety of benign and malignant tumors, hookworm anaemia, diabetes mellitus, pulmonary and bone tuberculosis, whooping-cough and leukemia.

But, from a practical point of view, ‘fever’ was his biggest clinical problem for, of all admissions during his first year, 56 were thus diagnosed.

He pioneered medical training in Uganda and he is regarded as the grandfather of modern medicine in Uganda.