How Church of Uganda got caught in supremacy battle

When it became apparent that Milton Obote, Uganda’s post-independence Prime Minister, would attack the Bulange-Mengo Palace, Kabaka Edward Mutesa II, Uganda’s first president, is said to have crossed over from Mengo to the adjacent Namirembe hill. The Kabaka met up with Dunstan Kasi Nsubuga, the first Bishop of Namirembe Diocese, who he told in Luganda: “Ffe tugenda. Naye Obuganda mubukuume” (which can loosely be translated as: “We are fleeing, but you should look after Buganda”). 

The fact that the Kabaka entrusted the Bishop of Namirembe to steer the kingdom when he was away in a way shows just how the Anglican Church in Uganda (i.e. the Church of Uganda) has intersected with politics in the country.   

With 36 percent of Uganda’s 45 million-strong population identifying as Anglicans, the Church of Uganda, statistically, plays second fiddle to the Roman Catholics. When it comes to politics, however, all but one (Idi Amin who identified as Muslim) of Uganda’s presidents professed—or in the case of President Museveni, continue to profess—the Anglican faith. 

Yusuf Lule, Uganda’s fourth president, who was in the saddle for the whole of 68 days, initially identified as a Muslim. He, however, converted to Anglicanism after joining King’s College Budo, an Anglican-founded School.

Religious wars  
In his book titled The Church of Uganda and the Exile of Kabaka  Mutesa II, 1953-55, Kevin Ward notes that the Anglicans’ dominance of Uganda’s politics can be traced to the religious war of the late 1880s and 1890s. At the centre of the war was the Protestant Party. 

By 1887, Muslims, Protestants and Catholics had taken up arms and started consolidating themselves as regiments called Abapere. Initially, Ward says Mwanga, then the Kabaka, first exhilarated these groups as a way of countering the older generation of chiefs. When they became too influential, his frail attempt to get rid of them precipitated a coup. Mwanga was ousted in 1888 by a united force of Muslims, Anglicans and Catholics. It was a fractured unity as the force also couldn’t agree on how to govern and soon turned guns on each other, sparking off what’s called religious wars in Buganda.   

“The Muslims proceeded to establish a Muslim state. They circumcised their Kabaka Kalema and called him ‘Sheikh.’ They envisaged a radical reordering of society along Islamic lines,” Ward writes.   

In 1889, with the help of British military officer and colonial administrator, Capt Fredrick Lugard, and the British Imperial East African Company (IBEAC), the Christian forces ousted the Muslims and reinstated Kabaka Mwanga. But the Anglicans and Catholics coalition didn’t last long. Bickering over political offices resulted in open warfare in 1892. Lugard’s intervention would swing the pendulum in favour of the Anglicans. 

When IBEAC went broke, the British had no option but to declare Uganda their protectorate. Alfred Robert Tucker, an Anglican Bishop, is said to have propagated clandestine campaigns in Britain to ensure this turns into a reality. Mwanga’s attempt to regain independence was easily thwarted by the British and he was banished to Seychelles—an archipelago in the Indian Ocean—where he was christened Anglican and took on the name Daniel (Danieri).  

“But was his choice of the baptismal name Daniel a final act of defiance—a reference to his confinement in the lions’ den of his captor?” Ward asks.

Balance of power   
With Mwanga out, in came the toddler Kabaka Daudi Chwa and the signing of the 1900 Buganda Agreement that buttressed the British takeover. In terms of religion, the agreement consolidated the dominant position of the Anglican oligarchy under Apollo Kaggwa, the Katikkiro and the regents of Kabaka Chwa.    

“Protestant baby-king, Daudi Chwa in 1897, and his ‘coronation as the first Christian Kabaka’ at Namirembe Cathedral not only sealed the political ascendancy of the Protestants but also confirmed the established position of the Protestant Church from the perspective of cuius regio, eius religio,” retired Bishop  David Zac Niringiye writes in his thesis titled “The Church in the World: A Historical-Ecclesiological Study of the Church of Uganda with Particular Reference to Post-Independence Uganda, 1962-1992”. 

Cuius regio, eius religio is a Latin phrase that literally means: “Whose realm, his religion.” Indeed, the balance of power was clear in the 1900  Buganda Agreement, with Anglicans inevitably getting the better of the deal with 11 counties—Bulemeezi, Bugerere, Buruli, Busiro, Ggomba, Kabula,  Kooki, Kyaddondo, Kyaggwe, Ssese and Singo. 

Eight counties, including Buddu, Busujju, Buvuma, Buwekula, Mawogola, Mawokota Buyaga and Bugangaizi (both of which were returned to Bunyoro following the controversial 1964 referendum), were given to Catholics. Muslims had to settle for just one county—Butambala.   

“To prevent a possible Muslim uprising, the principal Muslim county of Butambala was placed between the Protestant county of Ggomba and the Catholic county of Mawakota,” historian Jonathan Earle writes in his book titled Contesting Catholics: Benedicto Kiwanuka and the Birth of Postcolonial Uganda.  

With the 1900 Agreement, Niringiye says political power in Buganda was now to be disposed of according to affiliations based on religion. Anglicans ended up in a pre-eminent position.  

“This was mirrored in subsequent agreements and settlements as the colonial administration extended the Protectorate boundaries beyond Buganda,” he writes, adding, “Secondly, the stipulation that the CMS (Church Missionary Society) mission was allotted land in trust for the native churches meant it was the Mission to continue the process of negotiating with the colonial authority over the revision of the land policy set out in the Agreement.” 
 
Protestant political ascendance
There were attempts by the Catholic Church, per Prof Ali Mazrui in his paper titled “Religion and Political Culture in Africa”, to claim establishment on the basis of its numerical majority. Such efforts weren’t successful though. 

“Catholics over the years began to outnumber Protestants significantly, both within Buganda and on a national scale. And yet this situation of Catholic demographic preponderance was accompanied by a Protestant political ascendance,” Mazrui, who died in 2014, wrote.  

Buganda or later Uganda wasn’t an isolated case. Records from CMS in Birmingham, England, show that, disparate from the Roman Catholic Church, the Native Anglican Church, commonly called the Protestants, was entangled in the political society in a number of overlapping and sometimes inconsistent ways. During colonial times, the Anglican Church, records show, had a quasi-established position in Uganda—the Bishop of Uganda was third in precedence in the colonial state after the governor and the Kabaka.  

“There were strong links, social, and professional, between the Government House at Entebbe and the Bishop’s residence at Namirembe,” Bishop Leslie Brown wrote in his book titled Three Worlds One Word:  Account of a Mission. 

It was important for the Church of Uganda, Ward reasons, that the Kabaka was a Protestant. But it was very difficult, he adds, for the Kabaka to combine his traditional role as the “father and husband” of all Baganda with being a role model for Christian marriage.  

“Chwa did not fulfil this ideal, and Mutesa II rather conspicuously flouted Church teaching, not least during the period of his exile,” Ward writes. 

Still, administratively, posts and government salaries favoured members of the Anglican Church. The Buganda Lukiiko (parliament), for instance, was composed of 49 Protestant chiefs, 35 Catholics, and five Muslims.

These early distributions remained consistent throughout the colonial period. A 1934 survey, Earle says, showed that while Catholic populations exceeded Protestants in Buganda by 14 percent, they occupied 22 percent fewer chieftaincies. Ultimately, Earle says, Protestant administrative earnings were higher by 35 percent.  

Influence on political parties
Uganda’s late colonial political parties, as a result, capitalised upon these long-standing complaints. According to most accounts, Uganda’s three principal parties were divided according to strict sectarian boundaries. The Democratic Party (DP) was established in 1954 as a Catholic party.

It participated in and won Uganda’s 1961 pre-independence elections which saw Benedicto Kiwanuka become Uganda’s pre-independence prime minister.    

Meanwhile, the government of Buganda boycotted the election for fear that national independence would challenge their kingdom’s regional autonomy. A separate, second party, Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) was founded in 1960.

Its membership was supposedly Protestant. It was composed of members of Uganda’s first nationalist political party, the Uganda National Congress (UNC), and members of the predominantly Busoga-based movement, the Uganda People’s Union. 

“The third party—Kabaka Yekka (KY)—emerged in 1961 to publicly advocate for the supremacy of kingship in Buganda and, more sweepingly, to advocate for a federal arrangement that guaranteed the political integrity of Uganda’s precolonial kingdoms: Ankole, Buganda, Bunyoro, Busoga, and Tooro. Its principal ambition was to dislodge from power the DP, which had subjugated a [Anglican] Protestant king to the government of a Catholic commoner, Benedicto Kiwanuka,” Earle says. 

1966 Buganda crisis
Most historical accounts underscore that UPC and KY—both headed by Anglicans in Obote and Kabaka Mutesa II—entered into an electoral arrangement in 1961 to ensure Kiwanuka, a Catholic and DP stalwart, did not maintain power after the 1961 elections. Indeed, in the parliamentary election of April 1962, the UPC and KY coalition secured control of the government.

This marriage of convenience was, however, short-lived following the decision by Obote to go ahead and organise a referendum that saw Buganda lose the Buyaga and Bugangaizi counties to Bunyoro.   

“Feeling that it was no longer essential to comply with the government of Buganda—and in immediate response to the Lukiiko’s declaration that it no longer recognised the federal government’s authority on Ganda soil—Prime Minister Obote ordered the Ugandan army, under the command of Col Idi Amin, to apprehend the Kabaka in May 1966,” Earle writes, adding that Obote formally charged Mutesa with abrogating the constitution that Obote himself eventually put aside in 1967. 

During the attack, Mutesa escaped from the palace compound by discreetly scaling the northwestern wall. He briefly took refuge at the Catholic rectory at Rubaga Cathedral. He then travelled via western Uganda into Burundi before flying to London where he mysteriously died in 1969.  

The identity of Protestant Christianity, Bishop Niringiye says, as the “established religion of Buganda” meant that the Church, Christians and their leaders in Buganda were deeply affected by events that played out in the Lubiri (palace).  

Rev Lubwama, the Dean of Namirembe at the time, Niringiye further reveals, became hysterical at the sound of guns from the Lubiri on the morning of May 24. 

He spent all the day in Namirembe Cathedral, pacing up and down its length, praying, murmuring, and crying. On the other hand, Rev P Kigozi, a provincial youth worker at the time, prayed passionately for the Kabaka, his safety and return to Buganda. The prelate could not bring himself to utter the name Obote because it “was bitter” on his lips.  

Amin makes his move
Although Amin, who overthrew Obote in a coup, was initially credited for resolving fights in the Anglican Church, other researchers say he later attempted to break the Anglican hold on Uganda’s politics. 

“Whereas the Obote regime had united Protestants and Muslims (as very junior partners) against the Catholic DP, the Amin regime attempted to forge a Muslim-Catholic alliance (with Catholics as the junior partner) against the Protestants,” writes Jan Jelmert Jorgensen in his paper titled “Uganda: A Modern History. Amin or his henchmen would later be accused of murdering Archbishop Janani Luwum, who had replaced Erica Sabiti”.   

“While the Church did not elect him as an aggressive strategy, in Luwum the Church had elected a man who was to prove most disagreeable to Amin. He was an Acholi, a Mulokole, and known by character to be courageous and bold,” Niringye disclosed, adding, “The earlier period of his leadership (1974-1976) was relatively calm.

However, the government must have kept a close eye on him due to his association with the Acholi and the UPC, the archenemies of the regime. And Luwum must have intervened on several occasions on behalf of many who ‘disappeared’ at the hands of the military machine of the regime.” 

Luwum would later be accused of supporting rebels who wanted to oust Amin. On every count, Niringiye notes,  from Amin’s perspective, Luwum was guilty: an Acholi; a member and leader of the Church of Uganda, Obote’s Church; one who had chaired several sessions that sent memoranda protest; and to confirm it all for Amin, intelligence reports connected him to rebel activity.

Luwum was judged to be a subversive agent, and a criminal, one who deserved the treatment that Amin gave to all those whom he so judged—murder in cold blood.

Next week, the third instalment of Salt of the Earth will take stock of Wilberforce Kityo Luwalira’s tenure as bishop of Namirembe Diocese.