When the saints come marching in, we stop and learn something

The young Christian men we celebrate today met a brutal death. Burned at the stake, literally.
That was a key aspect that announced the fiery arrival of Christianity in Uganda. We even had religious wars — our first imported wars. In fact, the killing of the young religious men, most pages at the Buganda Court, happened while a religious war was raging in an all-out struggle for influence with the Kabaka. What is with religion and violence?
Anyway, it was the 1880s. The imperialists were sitting in Berlin carving out spheres of influence in Africa for trade and politics. We were caught in the crosshairs. In 1894, something that would morph into today’s Uganda came into view as a protectorate of the United Kingdom.

It is fair to say Uganda has not quite recovered from that blood-soaked start. Western religion, which we embraced so fully and I wonder how exactly that happened, hangs over our politics in generally parochial ways. Mix that in with other ethno-based prejudices, and you have a society that doesn’t work well. We have not thus far done a decent job overcoming the bloody start. Instead of harnessing our diversity, we cynically manipulate it. And on we plod.

Despite being martyred for abandoning their ways for foreign ways, we can nevertheless grasp a few things from the plight of the young men.
They died for something they considered bigger than they are. That courage is rare, especially when your “opponent” is your all-powerful Kabaka. As they stuck to their new ways, they must have known at some point that death was coming. In fact, they must have “seen it” from the very first amongst the pages to be killed. They remained steadfast. I bow.

Their resolute commitment to the new faith went beyond the zeal of the new convert. Maybe it was the trinkets, maybe it was the promise of an eternal life, or something else altogether, but whatever it was in Christianity that appealed to them, it was something they fully embraced. Damn the outcome. That single-mindedness of purpose is a thing we can do with in present-day Uganda, especially official Uganda.

Our commitment today cannot be almost entirely toward chasing deals for personal gain. What larger principles do we want to uphold? We are supposed to be a “God-fearing” (God must be feared, apparently) country, some government officials like to remind us.
Many of us pray like God is about to appear in person. Yet our morals and sense of decency are far from wholesome. We are intolerant of minorities, reserving particular venom toward people in same-sex relationships. Greed is aplenty.

The religion that led the young men at the king’s court to die seems to have taught us only to talk about doing good, but rarely following through.
Maybe real change will start with the multitudes that have gathered at the shrines in Namugongo today. Some of them show determination in trekking hundreds of kilometres from various parts of the country to get to Namugongo. Power to them. If they transferred that seriousness to doing many other good deeds, they will have served their God and the common good and fittingly honoured the saints they revere.

As an aside, martyrs have inspired names for people (Catholics especially), churches, and Christian-founded schools far outside Uganda. (I assume Uganda Tourism Board and its quest for religious-based tourism is mining this fact.) I have not counted, but in countries like Nigeria, Ghana, and a couple others in southern Africa, two martyrs’ names are favoured: St Charles (Kaloli) Lwanga and St Kizito. I reckon it is because they are easier to pronounce than, say, Bazzekuketta or Buuzaabalyaawo.
At the end of the day, each one of us can take what he or she pleases from the intriguing story of the martyrs. Whatever it is, there is no doubt that they are exemplars of profiles in courage. Joy on the day.