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Mutesa's Crime: Hubris and the Control of African Kings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Michael G. Kenny
Michael G. Kenny
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
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Extract

For comparison of the fates of kings reflect on the misfortunes of Saul. Mired in political chaos and beset by foreign kings, Israel came to perceive an advantage in monarchy. Accordingly the people asked the prophet Samuel to find them a king so that they could be like other nations. The Lord, through Samuel, fulfilled this desire, and (Yahweh being a jealous God) the people were warned of the consequences: “This will be the sort of king who will govern you”—he will take your sons and daughters, the best of your cornfields, vineyards, and cattle— “when that day comes, you will cry out against the king you have chosen; but it will be too late” (I Samuel 8:11–19). Yet there was also to be a constitution of a sort: “Samuel … explained to the people the nature of a king, and made a written record of it on a scroll which he deposited before the Lord” (10:24–25). Royal power, though great, was still M have its limits

Type
Cultural Power
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , October 1988 , pp. 595 - 612
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1988

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References

1 Later the Americans would find an analogy between this episode and their own efforts at constitution building—as well as one between George III, King Saul, and the despotic proclivities of royalty in general.

2 See Walter, Eugene, Terror and Resistance (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

3 Gluckman, Max, “Rituals of Rebellion in South East Africa,” in his Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (London, 1963), 110–36;Google ScholarEvans-Pritchard, E. E., “The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan,” in his Essays in Social Anthropology (London, 1962).Google Scholar

4 Walzer, Michael in Regicide and Revolution (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar examines just this dilemma with respect to the French Revolution and kindred crises in other European monarchies. If the nation is immanent in the king, how is it possible to cut off his head without dissolving the nation itself? This question relates in turn to Kantorowicz's, Ernst H. discussion in The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957) of the king's two legal personalities, one pertaining to his position as sovereign, one to his status as a man; by adroit use of this logic, as in the English Revolution, it can be made to seem possible to decapitate the one without decapitating the other. The Americans were faced with something of the same problem when they chose to make “the People” itself into a sovereign place in the English king.Google Scholar

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7 Harrison, Alexina, The Story of Mackay of Uganda (London, 1911), 168.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 246. Beidelman, T. O., Colonial Evangelism (Bloomington, 1982), documents the establishment and subsequent career of a Church Missionary Society mission in Tanzania, some of whose early personnel were also involved in Buganda. Mackay's own account and what is known of CMS working procedures indicate a perverse unwillingness even to attempt an understanding of the societies that they were attempting to convert.Google Scholar

9 Stanley, Henry, Through the Dark Continent (Toronto, 1878), 325.Google Scholar

10 The missionaries believed that Mutesa had contracted a venereal disease because of homosexual practices supposedly introduced to the court by Zanzibari Arab traders.

11 Apter, David, The Political Kingdom in Uganda (Princeton, 1961), 9.Google Scholar

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18 Roscoe, , The Baganda, 227.Google Scholar On his fast visit to the lake Speke had heard of this possibility from Arabs who had visited the Ganda court. “The Arabs say, as we also have found it that thunder accompanies nearly all the storms, and the lightning there is excessive, and so destructive that the King of Uganda expresses the greatest dread of it—indeed his own palace has been often destroyed by lightning.” Speke, John Hanning, What the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (London, 1967), 321.Google Scholar

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20 Low, D. A., Buganda in Modern History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1971), 19;Google Scholar see Rotberg, Robert, A Political History of Tropical Africa (New York, 1965), 166.Google Scholar Christopher Wrigley observes that such moves were “undoubtedly counters in what may be called ecclesiastical politics,” while Peter Schmidt, in commenting on the histories of the Haya kingdoms, finds stories of conflict between royals of the ruling Hinda clan and commoner cultists that “convey the themes of indigenous opposition to Bahinda rule.” See Wrigley, C. C., “The Story of Rukidi,” Africa, 43:3 (1973), 320;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Schmidt, , Historical Archaeology, 101. I am sceptical of Schmidt's argument in particular; this structuralist analysis is built on material susceptible to quite a different interpretation even when considered structurally.Google Scholar

21 The king had committed other offences, though this was the most outrageous; see Wright, Michael, Buganda in the Heroic Age (Nairobi, 1971), 4;Google ScholarKaggwa, , Kings of Buganda, 166;Google ScholarWelboum, , “Aspects of Kiganda Religion,” 174;Google ScholarSouthwold, Martin, Bureaucracy and Chiefship in Buganda, East African Institute of Social Research Studies, no. 14 (Kampala, 1961), 15.Google Scholar

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23 This Oedipal pattern entails the movements of a charismatic wanderer—perhaps a hunter or an exile—who displaces an existing ruler and then marries an indigenous woman to found a dynasty; see Kenny, “Stranger from the Lake.” Kimera's father had been exiled from Buganda by his own father and a commoner prime minister and then went to the court of Bunyoro, where he illegitimately fathered the child Kimera by one of the Nyoro king's wives; see Wrigley, “Kimera,” and “Rukidi.” The child, like Oedipus, was exposed to the elements but was rescued by a potter of the Colobus Monkey Clan (see below), who gave him to Mugema's wife to be nursed. One of the Mugema's chief functions in Buganda was to serve as “p?me minister of the dead,” royal undertaker and custodian of the tombs. After various adventures Kimera returned to Buganda, hunting on the way, and manied the daughter of a regent in a sequence ritualistically re-enacted by later rulers.

24 Kaggwa, , Kings of Buganda, 45.Google Scholar It is reported that Tebandeke's father was fond of smimming in Lake Wamala, which was believed to have been created by the god Wamara as avenue for his disappearance from the visible world. The lake subsequently became a shrine site. Roscoe, , The Baganda, 250, 296.Google Scholar As for Kaggwa's opinion, Tebandeke's father was “devoted to the local gods, and he built shrines for all of them. He was really a bad king,” Kaggwa, , Kings of Baganda, 45;Google Scholar see Wrigley, , “Rukidi,” 227. Like father like son.Google Scholar

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27 The king himself steered their canoe with white paddles, a color associated with the god. The goatskin apron worn by the medium was also white, as was the god's cruciform emblem; Speke, John Hanning, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (New York, 1868), 249, 261, 271, 364–68;Google Scholar see also Gorju, Julien, Entre l' Victoria, l'Albert et l'Edouard (Rennes, 1920). Speke's account is unclear on this point, but it would appear that the king did not personally witness the medium's pronouncements and left this to his officials. If so, this would again seem to reflect a certain social distance between king and god.Google Scholar

28 Wrigley, , “Rukidi,” 232;Google ScholarAshe, Robert, Chronicles of Uganda (New York, 1895), 102n., 105n.Google Scholar

29 Roscoe, , The Baganda, 298.Google Scholar

30 Ibid.

31 Harrison, , Mackay of Uganda, 148.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 150; see Wrigley, , “Rukidi,” 232.Google Scholar

33 Low, , Buganda in Modern History, 19.Google Scholar “The believed demons … guarded with jealous care the opposite of the lake and the river Victoria Nile running therefrom north. M'tse [sic] in consenting to my going there, had caught several of these evil guardians; with what result the executions made apparent, I felt for the moment as if fixed to the spot, and my anxious look of inquiry caused M'tse to speak thus: —“O Mbuguru, thou has asked to go and visit regions inaccessible to men; that thou mightest do so I have killed these men, otherwise they would have killed you.” Charlie-Long, Charles, Central Africa: Naked Truths of a Naked People (London, 1876), 131.Google Scholar

34 Speke, , Journal of the Discovery, 256.Google Scholar spoke's companion, James Grant, later encountered the same problem when he wished to sound the Kagera, being warned by a guide that no “pranks” were to be played with the river, for “suppose in the middle of it some spirit were disturbed by a stone, and rose to upset the boat, what would his king say?” Grant, James, A Walk Across Africa (Edinburgh, London, 1864), 193.Google Scholar

35 Mutesa's father, Ssuna, had taken similar action against the Zanziban merchants by banishing them from the kingdom. A possible factor in the canoe blockade could have been a divinely sanctioned strike by cancemen. The fact that the Gabunga, the head of the Lungfish Clan, was involved in this episode suggests that a particular Lungfish Clan interest was at stake, whether it be the clan cult or the concerns of canoemen.

36 Wilson, Charles Thomas, Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan (London, 1882), 206.Google Scholar

37 Wright, , Buganda in the Heroic Age, 5.Google Scholar

38 Kiwanuka, , History of Buganda, 5.Google Scholar

39 The King was “claless,” nominally taking on the clan identity of his mother and thus ensuring that the kingship rotated between a group of influential clans.

40 Again see Kantorowicz, Ernst, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957).Google Scholar

41 See Geertz, Negara.

42 Ray, Benjamin, “The Story of Kintu,” in Explorations in African Systems of Thought, Karp, Ivan and Bird, Charles, eds., (Bloomington, 1980).Google Scholar

43 Roscoe, , The Baganda, 142. As mentioned, the potter who saved Kimera was of this clan; an association with the earth seems indicated, as one might expect for a group thought of as aboriginal ‘owners’ of the soil.Google Scholar

44 Roscoe, , The Baganda, 315.Google Scholar

45 In the interlacustrine kingdoms the skin of this creature was sometimes featured in royal regalia, while a conjointly black-and-white cowskin might find a place as coverings for the royal drums.

46 See Fallen, Lloyd, The King's Men (London, 1964), 72;Google ScholarApter, , The Political Kingdom in Uganda, 105;Google ScholarMair, , Primitive Government, 239;Google ScholarWelbourn, , “Aspects of Kigada Religion,” 174.Google Scholar Kiwanuka, however, sees “no evidence to support the theory put forward by historians that the indigenous clans were suppressed and lost their political powers to the migrant conquering clans such as those which came with Kimera” History of Buganda, 32n.; see Wright, , Buganda in the Heroic Age, 3–4.Google Scholar

47 Roscoe, , The Baganda, 140–72.Google Scholar

48 Roscoe, , The Baganda, 138. This place most probably was in the vicinity of modern Entebbe where the Lungfish Clan also had considerable holdings.Google Scholar

49 There were memories of Ganda rulers seeking aid in the Sseses; Kintu himself sought help on the islands against a chthonic power known as “Bemba, the Snake,” and was assisted in this by the Pangolin Clan, which, like the Colobus, was thought to have been already in the country before he came; Welboum, , “Aspects of Kigada Religion,” 173;Google ScholarSouthwold, , Bureaucracy and Chiefship, 8;Google ScholarRoscoe, , The Baganda, 153.Google Scholar During the reign of Mulondo, the ninth king, there is an episode in which the divine assistance was sought in the Sseses; Kiwanuka, , History of Buganda, 66; Kaggwa, Kings of Buganda, 30.Google Scholar The islanders were themselves perceived as magic folk and camiibals; not only were they the custodians of major cult centers, they were the providers of important Ganda “fetishes,” one of which was vital in the coronation ritual of the king: “They had a fetich named Budo, made by a medicine man, residing on the Sese Island [sic], who told them that the prince who stood upon the fetich would become king, and that no one could resist or repel him;” Roscoe, , The Baganda, 223,Google Scholar see also 192–193. Perhaps just as important, the islands were a center for barkcloth manufacturing and a major supplier of the canoes that were so important to the life of the kingdom at large. Before the sleeping sickness depopulations they were densely settled. Cunningham, Francis, Uganda and its Peoples (London, 1905);Google ScholarKoch, Robert, “Anthropologische Beobachtungen gelegentlich einer Expedition an den Viktoria Nyanza,” Zeitschrift far Ethnologie, 40 (1908), 449–468;Google ScholarRoscoe, , Twenty-Five Years in East Africa, 60–73.Google Scholar

50 Rehse, , Kiziba, 128.Google Scholar

51 Schmidt, , Historical Archaeology, 298–321; see Kenny, “Stranger from the Lake.”Google Scholar

52 The Lungfish emblem seems to have a certain intrinsic metaphysical capacity through the metaphorical associations to which it lends itself. The creature inhabits mudflats along the lake, is air-breathing, and resembles a snake as much as a fish. Its Ganda name (mmamba) is based on the generic Bantu word for “snake,” and throughout the region impressive snakes are credited as manifestations of the supernatural. Perhaps, like the Colobus Monkey, the Lungfish Clan figures so large because of the multivalent intercategorical nature of its emblem. The same might be said of the Pangolin and Otter Clans. The pangolin is white, has scales, goes about at night, and is perceived as an anomalous cross between reptile and mammal; it can therefore occupy a symbolically mediatory role, and so presumably could the clan which has it for an emblem. The otter is a mammal that spends much of its time in water and so again crosses conceptual boundaries. The Otter clan figures significantly in early events of certain of the Lake Victoria kingships and not surprisingly was prominent in the Ssese Islands; Gorju, , Entre le Victoria, 44;Google ScholarSpeke, , Journal of the Discovery, 245. In Nyoro myth this clan provided the gatekeeper for an early king; pools of water were thought of as the means through which the “Cwezi” spirits gained access to the underworld from which they still preside over human fortunes.Google Scholar

53 Gorju, , Entre le Victoria, 77.Google Scholar

54 Geertz, , Negara, 124.Google Scholar

55 See Aiden, Southall, Alur Society (Cambridge, 1953) for an account of how institutions of chieftainship can spread peacefully.Google Scholar

56 Ray, Benjamin, “Sacred Space and Royal Sh?nes in Buganda,” History of Religions, 16:4 (196–77), 363–73.Google Scholar

57 Wright, , Buganda in the Heroic Age, 1.Google Scholar

58 Hocart, A. M., Kings and Councillors (Chicago, 1970), 35.Google Scholar