The year Buganda was ruled by three kings

Between 1888 and 1889, Buganda Kingdom had three rulers. The reign of Mwanga, Kiwewa and Kalema began following the death of Kabaka Muteesa I in 1884.
Muteesa I was succeeded by his son Mwanga. Describing the new king, historian Sir John Milner Gray in the Church Missionary Society records and volume 41 of the Uganda Journal of 1950 says it would be very hard to explain his character.
“He knows how to behave with dignity and reserve when the occasion requires. One vice to which he is addicted is the smoking of bhang, one cannot place much confidence in Mwanga’s stability. Under the influence, he is capable of the wildest unpremeditated actions. But generally the young fellow is amiable,” Gray describes Mwanga.
In the first three months of his accession, Mwanga showed his ruthlessness towards Christianity when he ordered the burning of three young boys who were alleged to have been attached to the Church Missionary Society.
Shortly thereafter, he ordered the killing of Bishop Hannington who was on his way to Buganda. With the backlash that followed Hannington’s death, Mwanga’s suspicions turned to his own people.
He and the traditionalists viewed the European missionaries and the Arab traders as “the foreign devil”, according to Gray.
“Mwanga and the stalwarts of the old pagan belief viewed with alarm the dangerous doctrines which both Christians and Muslims were instilling into the minds of the younger generation of Baganda. These doctrines were in their eyes utterly subversive of everything which they valued and struck at the very foundations of existing society,” the historian says.

Mwanga’s downfall
In August 1888, Mwanga called on his subjects to complete the digging of what came to be known as Kabaka’s Lake in the valley between Mengo and Rubaga.
The lake was to be dug all the way to Munyonyo to connect to Lake Victoria. Both Muslim and Christian converts refused to turn up for work.
To Mwanga this was a direct challenge to his authority and on August 22, 1888, Honorat Nyonyintono, a Roman Catholic chief and an official in Mwanga’s palace, went to the White Fathers and told them about Mwanga’s displeasure over the slow pace at which the work on the lake was progressing.
The forceful way of having the project completed was the cause of Mwanga’s downfall. According to Gray, Mwanga called one of his chiefs named Tebukoza and ordered him to go with armed followers and attack those who had refused to take part in the lake digging exercise.
However, the Christians and Muslims were more prepared and better armed than Tebukoza’s team.
“War drums sounded throughout the night. Also during the night, Katikkiro Mukasa, one of the stalwarts of the pagan party, sent a message to Mwanga advising him that he was outnumbered and out-weaponed by the Christians and Muslims,” Gray writes.
It then became clear to Mwanga that both his life and throne were under threat. He then devised means of mending his relationship with the two religions and sought their help in getting rid of pagans on the islands of Bugala.

Overthrow plan hatched
September 9, 1888, was the date set for travelling to Bugala Island, but the Christians and Muslims disobeyed the orders to board the boats. Gray says even his chiefs like Nyonyintono and Apollo Kaggwa refused to go with the Kabaka.
“When Mwanga saw that his plan had miscarried, he hastily made an excuse for returning to Mengo. At this time the Muslim party in particular was now determined that Mwanga must be deposed. Even the Katikkiro, Mukasa, agreed with them. However the question was who should be Mwanga’s successor. The Muslims put forward Kalema, a son of Muteesa I,” Gray says.
Unfortunately, the person under whose protection Kalema had been entrusted with kept him like a captive and did not let him be taken to be enthroned as a king.
It was Nyonyintono who suggested that another of Muteesa’s sons, Kiwewa, be made king.
“Messengers were sent to fetch Kiwewa. At first he refused, the emissaries then took him by force and carried him off to Rubaga,” Gray writes.

“On September 10, 1888, before daybreak, the royal drums were heard from Rubaga Hill to the cries of ‘Kiwewa, Kabaka Kiwewa’. Mwanga hastily left his residence to discover that the whole of Rubaga Hill was covered with armed men. A volley was fired and one of Mwanga’s pages fell dead. Mwanga thereupon fled to Munyonyo on Lake Victoria.”
A day after taking the throne, Kiwewa appeared in a public baraza where he lifted the ban on ivory trade between the Arabs and Bunyoro which had been put in place by Muteesa I and kept by Mwanga.
Kiwewa also announced the building of a mosque, allowed missionaries to preach and said no convert would be persecuted for their new faith.
At the start, his approach won him popularity. But it was short lived. Conflicts over the distribution of estates and posts of chiefs were he was accused of favouring Muslims, emerged.
However, his appointment of Nyonyintono as the Katikkiro displeased the Arab traders who saw him as one who was standing between them and their ivory trade.

The Muslims were infuriated when it was reported that one of the local chiefs, Kaitaba of Kiziba, had accused Kiwewa of favouring Muslims.

“Kiwewa prefers the Muslims to us; he has put them at the head of all the large provinces; if he continues to do this, we shall place a woman of the royal family on the throne,” Kaitaba was quoted to have said.
According the Missionary Intelligencer of October 12, 1888, Kiwewa held a Lukiiko where he accused the Christians of trying to replace him with a woman. The Katikkiro, who was a Christian, denied the accusations and walked out of the Lukiiko.

The violent clashes that broke out immediately took the Christian by surprise. The Muslims wanted the Katikkiro driven out of Mengo. He and many Christians fled to Rubaga where they were joined by Apollo Kaggwa and they fled west of Buganda.

Following the clashes, a number of Christians were killed. Even Kiwewa was held prisoner by the Muslims.
Having been forced to the throne against his will, like his father, Kiwewa also rejected being circumcised. His downfall came when he fought back against forced circumcision.
Gray says Kiwewa planned ahead of the Muslim chiefs set to circumcise him. He attacked them with a spear before fleeing to the queen mother’s home.
“One of the attacked Muslim chiefs, Muguluma, got back up and attacked the queen mother’s house where Kiwewa had sought refuge. When he learnt that he was being pursued, he first fled to Kasubi before going towards Singo before being arrested,” Gray says.
On October 22, 1888, Kiwewa ceased to reign having been in power for about six weeks. He was placed in the stocks and deliberately starved. He was, however, to remain alive for some nine months and in the end his death was neither quick nor merciful.

Enter Kalema
The Muslims went for their earlier pick of Kalema and installed him on the throne. Kalema was ready to go by the demands of the Muslims.
In a letter dated December 12, 1888, to the Sultan of Zanzibar, Christians were warned: “Please take this trouble; we have got none but God and you. And if any Christians come to you for letters to come to Buganda, do not give them; we do not want them to come to Buganda. If they come, it will be their own fault.”
However, the Christians who had been defeated by surprise in October did not take their refuge in Ankole lightly. They planned for a return home.
While there, they forgot the difference between the Wafaransa and Wangereze (the French and the British) and planned to fight a common enemy.
Among the notable Christians who went into exile in Buddu and later ended up in Ankole included Ham Mukasa, Apollo Kaggwa and then Katikkiro Honorat Nyonyintono.
Writing in the book Bassekabaka ba Buganda (Kings of Buganda), Sir Apollo Kaggwa explains how Mwanga managed to link up with his victims, the missionaries, at Bukumbi and Usambiro for the Roman Catholics and the Church Missionary Society respectively.
When Mwanga got to Bukumbi, Monseigneur Leon Livinhac of the Roman Catholics wrote: “He has come to beseech us to grant him hospitality, promising us that he will allow himself to be instructed. He has implored pardon.”
While the missionaries were on Islands, they kept in touch with their subjects in exile. Kalema in Mengo learnt of Mwanga’s hideout and planned an expedition to go and finish him off, but that was the beginning of his end.
As the Baganda Christians exiled in Buddu and Ankole planned to return with Mwanga as their king to Mengo, they needed support in terms of arms to face the Muslim-backed Kalema.
It was at that moment that a former British Christian missionaries turned gun runner and ivory trader Charles Stokes appeared on the scene. It was through him that the missionaries in Usambiro and Bukumbi secured the guns that helped the Baganda Christians exiled in Buddu and Ankole to face Kalema and his Muslim backers.
The Chronicles of Uganda of 1901 records the recollections of Stokes, the gun runner, describing how the war between the Christians and Kalema went. At one point he says:
“When the Arab party got to know of Mwanga’s arrival, they gathered and advanced to Mwanga’s camp with about 2,000 guns, a joint party of Arabs. Wangwana (coast men) and Waganda…Mwanga had by this time about 1,000 guns; a great number of spears, and we were very short of powder ammunition,” Stokes writes.
“We burnt a large tract of country advancing on the capital, and this had the desired effect of drawing the Arabs back to the capital, Rubaga. I then brought the army into camp close to the place where Stanley met Mutesa long ago, a place about two hours’ walk from Rubaga.”
Apollo Kaggwa in Bassekabaka ba Buganda describes Kalema’s death as gruesome: “The manner of killing him was not a fit manner in which to kill a king. He began by refusing food and water for seven days. Afterwards he was shot with a gun and they killed him, and then they burnt him in the prison.”

About Buganda

Buganda has a long and extensive history. Unified in the 14th century under the first king Kintu, the founder of Buganda’s Kintu Dynasty, Buganda grew to become one of the largest and most powerful states in East Africa during the 18th and 19th centuries.
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