The Ugandan Martyrs of Namugongo – the full truth behind this historic event | This is Africa

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The Ugandan Martyrs of Namugongo – the full truth behind this historic event

On 3 June, thousands gather every year at Namugongo for the annual commemoration of the 45 young men murdered by King Mwanga. While tradition has it that they were killed for refusing to denounce their faith, there are other possible contributory factors that deserve to be recognised.

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The thousands of pilgrims from all over the world who gather at Namugongo, about 3,5km from Kampala, Uganda’s capital, do so to commemorate the lives of the 23 Anglican and 22 Catholic young men who were murdered between 1885 and 1887, reportedly for their faith, by Kabaka (King) Mwanga, a traditional leader of the Buganda Kingdom.

The first victim of the king’s wrath was his page, Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, a leader among Christians, on 15 November 1885. He was killed for pleading with the king to abandon homosexuality and not to kill Bishop Hannington, an Anglican missionary, who had entered Buganda through another kingdom, that of Busoga. From that point onwards, the king turned against all Christians who refused to give in to his homosexual demands. These Christians were also persuading the king’s pages to defy all his orders. Some of these young men were hacked to pieces, others were speared, while the rest were burnt alive at Namugongo.

The 20 Roman Catholic victims were beatified by Pope Benedict XV on 6 June 1920 and canonized by Pope Paul VI on 18 October 1964. The two victims who were speared to death at Paimol, Gulu in Northern Uganda in October 1928 were beatified by Pope John Paul on 20 October 2002.

When Pope Francis visited Uganda in November 2015, he urged Ugandans to use the martyrs’ example of faith to be missionaries at home by taking care of the elderly, the poor, the widowed and the abandoned.

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“This legacy is not served by an occasional remembrance or by being enshrined in a museum as a precious jewel,” he is quoted as saying by CBS News. “Rather we honor them and all the saints when we carry on their witness to Christ in our homes and neighborhoods, in our workplaces and civil society, whether we never leave our homes or we go to the farthest corner of the world.”

 

The retelling of the martyrs’ story has many gaps that are left unaddressed.

 

Kabaka Mwanga, the gay king?                                                         

In the early 1870s, Henry Morton Stanley published a letter in London. The letter, purported to be from King Mwanga’s predecessor, Mutesa I, was an open invitation for missionaries of all Christian denominations to his kingdom. Although its authenticity is disputed, it did not stop several missions from sending representatives to the Ugandan monarchy.

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The 45 young men were murdered partly for demurring to abandon Christianity, which they had converted to, but also for their refusal to have gay sex with the king. History has exalted them and vilified the serial rapist and homosexual that Mwanga became. This, however, is a fact that is hardly mentioned in Uganda’s religious circles. In fact, none of the religious leaders are on record for giving information about the gay king that Mwanga was.

One of the earliest written records of Mwanga’s sexual preferences was a letter by Alexander Mackay, a Presbyterian missionary. The letter told the story of how a young page, Apollo Kaggwa, had been punished for refusing to sleep with the king. Mackay further wrote that Mwanga had copied homosexual behaviour from Arabs at his court.

The retelling of the martyrs’ story has many gaps that are left unaddressed. For example, was Kabaka Mwanga gay or bisexual? He had 16 wives, after all. There is also the fact that the missionaries could have had other political interests, which might have made the king suspect that his pages were being turned into spies against him, motivating him to distrust and kill them. The fact that Kabaka Mwanga never killed female converts shouldn’t be overlooked either. The question of faith has overridden all the other aspects and contributory factors to this tragic history.

Kabaka Mwanga’s story aside, there is more evidence that homosexuality existed in Africa long before Westerners and Europeans “exported” it here.

 

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On 3 June 1886, thirty-two young men, pages of the court of King Mwanga II of Buganda, were burned to death at Namugongo for their refusal to renounce Christianity.

Evidence that homosexuality is not a “Western thing”

Uganda is one of the countries where most citizens are deeply entrenched in uninformed homophobia. Transgender people are hated and discriminated against. It would have been helpful for the struggle against homophobia if the full truth of the Namugongo martyrs was more commonly known.

Kabaka Mwanga’s story aside, there is more evidence that homosexuality existed in Africa long before Westerners and Europeans “exported” it here. For example, in Zimbabwe, rock paintings by the San Bushman, dating back more than 8 000 years, depict male-on-male sex acts. Such evidence could help to demystify the widespread ignorance surrounding the richness of Africa’s sexual stature. This could also serve to water down the demonization of gay sex.

Museveni had signed the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law as a message to Western powers that he couldn’t condone policies that “do not make Uganda happy”. Signing the law on 24 February 2014, Museveni said: “It seems the topic of homosexuals was provoked by the arrogant and careless Western groups that are fond of coming into our schools and recruiting young children into homosexuality and lesbianism, just as they carelessly handle other issues concerning Africa.”

The anti-homosexual law led the US State Department to impose sanctions on Uganda. However, this did not stop Museveni from defending his move to criminalize homosexuality. In an interview with CNN, Museveni said: “I’m acting on behalf of the society. It’s not just the state, it is the society. And that’s why I would like to advise the Europeans and the Western groups that this is one area which should be a no-go area.”

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He further alleged, without proof, and certainly not remembering the gay Kabaka Mwanga, that Ugandans have never supported homosexuality. That statement can only be inaccurate because it comes from a leader who is not even sure of the population number is of homosexuals in his country.

Although the law had called for a 14-year sentence for gay persons, President Museveni has since made a u-turn, saying that the law was not necessary. This u-turn could be seen as a silent admission by Museveni that homosexuality was not just an imported behaviour, as many uninformed Africans argue.

 

Giving the full picture

Religious leaders owe their congregations the right to understand fully the reasons behind the killing of the 45 young men, as opposed to a one-sided argument that they were killed only for their faith.

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