East African LGBT Tea: King Mwanga ll of the Bugandan kingdom, an openly gay/bi king
Buganda is a subnational kingdom within Uganda.
Gender landscape within 19th century Buganda:
āWithin the palace, balangira (princes) and bambejja (princesses) were gendered male. Bakopi (commoners) were gendered female regardless of their biological characteristics. Out of the palace the Bakopi (commoners) assumed genders that aligned with biology, masculine women, feminine men and celibates were assigned distinct genders.ā
āThe bambejja (princesses) were addressed as āsseboā (sir) and could initiate sexual liaisons, propose marriage to male bakopi (commoners) and pay the bride price rather than occupying passive positionality within these transactions which reinforce their male gendering.ā
āThe kabaka (king) was addressed among other things as āssaabasajjaā (man among men). All bakopi (commoners) were his āwivesā both males and females, and both refer to him as ānnanyinimuā and āomufumbuā which are titles given to a husband. This suggest that what appeared to the missionaries as same-sex conduct, might not have been understood this way by the Baganda.ā
King Mwanga ll (1868-1903) :
Known as the openly āgayā king, the label of his sexuality isnāt known exactly (as he married women).
After the death of his father, 17 year old Basamula-Ekkere Mwanga II was revealed as the successor to his father. In Bugandan tradition the kabaka (king) selects a successor among his sons who then later reveals himself, they didnāt have a concept of crown prince.
He took the throne in 1884 at a time of polarized religious factions (catholics, protestants and muslims) internal wars outbreak of smallpox, severe drought across most of east Africa, and when colonial infiltration was at its height with colonialists (the Berlin Conference had taken place a mere four years earlier) and missionaries like Alexander MacKay and Fr. Simeon Lourdel spearheading the ācivilising missionā.
During that time in England the social purity movement peaked, here social is a euphemism for āsexualā. A movement opposing all non-reproductive sexual activities. Two months after mwanga ll became kabaka, mackay (a missionary) wrote a letter in which he mentioned the homosexual tendencies of the king.
āRelying on the writings of European missionaries and visitors to the court, Faupelās text is replete with references to āabominable vicesā, āunnatural passionā, āworks of Sodomā, āshameful proposalsā, āunnatural lustā and āevil purposeā, that allegedly haunted the corridors of power, but also more specifically to āthe vice of sodomyā and āthe practice of homosexualityā, to which āMwanga was an addict long before he succeeded to the throneā.ā
In 1885-1886 Ā Kabaka Mwanga put 45 Christian men to death (referred to as the Ugandan martyrs) and assassinated a white missionary. He pushed the missionaries further from the seat of power in the court. This became pivotal in the subsequent history of the kingdom, it drew in European powers already jostling for supremacy in east Africa. The missionaries chose sodomy as an angle and turned against him, the āgay African kingā became the villian and their scapegoat and was painted as the perverted homosexual king who killed his innocent Christian pages because they simply dared refuse his sexual advances. The few Christians that denounced their faith the day of the execution were elevated to high positions in the court and also those that didnāt were given high profile jobs, Mwanga ll feared invasion and the formation of spy ring within his court as the missionaries have turned those close to him against him but the political and security motives of the execution were conveniently left out of history. Historical scholarship puts in perspective the killings of that year, which appeared as exceptional acts of barbarity to the missionaries, such were accepted practices in 18th and 19th century Buganda for weighty and sometimes trivial reasons as a means of demonstrating the power of the king. Because of the killings he was deposed in 1888.
āWhile the main historical accounts about Mwanga amplify the killing of Bishop Hannington in 1885 and the young Christian Pages in 1886, the atrocities committed by Lugard and his assistant Capt William and others, particularly during and after the Battle of Mengo in January 1892 have been played down.ā
āProf Lunyiigo documents the atrocities committed by the British in Buganda during this period. He relies on the work of Msgr Hirth to show how Lugard and William led the Protestant faithful in the burning of both Mwangaās palace at Mengo and the newly built Catholic Church at Lubaga. Using the Maxim gun, Lugard and William were also responsible for the massacre of over 700 people at Bulingugwe Island where they followed Mwanga days after they had chased him from Mengo. Many drowned in an attempt to run away and others were captured to become slaves to the Protestant leadersā
Mwanga ll was forced off his throne 3 times but battled to reclaim it each time, after he lost the war against the british in 1897, he was arrested. He escaped and organized an army returning to Buganda again in 1898 but was defeated. He was captured and exiled. He died at the age of 35 in exile in the Seychelles.
Mwangaās grandson, Sir Edward F L Mutesa II, who was also deposed by the British (and later by Milton Obote) argues that āMwanga fought to free himself and his country of the intruders for all of his reign. He did not like or want them; he was impressed by their power, but not interested in their ideas. He could not recover the old way of life nor adapt himself to the new, and in his perplexed and unhappy groping in the gap between, he seems to me to deserve some sympathy. His cruelty cannot be denied but it was accepted by his people in a way we find hard to understand.ā
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