Same-sex intimacies embedded in sacred kingship

3In Buganda as in many places, people were socialised through religion, which conveyed gender and sexual norms. Though religions in some places might insist on the prohibition of homosexual desire, more often than not they also allowed liminal religious space for it.4 In most societies, the religious sphere and political sphere borrow from each other, meaning that rituals, symbols and ideas pass from one to the next.5 In the context of sacred kingships (in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa as elsewhere) the lines between religion and royalty were generally blurred.

4Among other aspects of sacred kingship, as Carol Summers reminds us, the Kabaka “was Ssabasajja, the man of men who stood for masculine power; he was Mawanda, the beautiful one imbued with the power of seduction and persuasion” (Summers 2017, 109). Most of all, the king of Buganda claimed to be the husband of his subjects.6 All his subjects, male or female, were potentially his wives: they addressed the king by the title of nnanyinimu (husband, owner of the house) (Murphy 1972, 434), and he answered accordingly by using omufumbo (wife, one who cooks) (ibid., 101). A parallel between this practice, and religious ideas and practices needs to be drawn. In Buganda, and all over the world, relationships to gods and spirits are often defined through representations and concepts borrowed from love, marriage, or sex. For much of Protestant theology, the love between a human being and God is understood in the same way as the exclusive and absolute love and passion between a husband and his wife.7 In the 19th century, among the Yoruba (in today’s Nigeria), according to John Peel’s words, “spirit possession uses the idiom of sexual intercourse: the orisa [spirit] “mounts” (gun) or enters the body (wq ara) of the devotee. Because the priest (aworo) is thus “female” in relation to his orisa, male priests often braid hair in the manner of a woman” (Peel 1990, 344).

5The understanding of the relation between the medium and his spirit in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa is not so different, whether you compare them with Protestants or the Yoruba. It was understood that spirits “married” their human medium (Schoenbrun 2021, 269). A male medium could be married and be the wife to a male divinity. The kings of Buganda in the 19th century claimed to be the equals of the gods, which formed the basis for their claim to be the husbands of their subjects.

6The relation between the sacred and kingship evolved over time. Careful analysis of Buganda’s dynastic histories indicates that, in a distant past, kingship in the region probably emerged from the institution of spirit mediumship. In other words, the first kings were probably initially the heirs of some kind of religious leaders possessed by local spirits, ancestors or gods. Eventually the people and rulers found this association cumbersome and the association of both roles was forbidden. In Buganda, this separation is said to follow the reign of Tebandeke (c.1700–c.1730). A long legitimacy crisis and political instability followed this reign and the separation between mediumship and royalty. In the late 18th century, kings initiated a move to re-sacralise the institution. They no longer aspired to become priests or medium kings, but divine kings (or at least the equals of the gods). This attempt was contested first and foremost by the clergy.8 It also probably failed due to the major mortality crisis which ensued after the opening up of Africa and the globalisation of the circulation of germs in the 19th century (Médard 2007, 345–66). At that time, when the Kabaka (king) claimed to be the husband of his subjects, it was really a way for him to assert his position as an equal to the gods.

7For this reason, the sacred kingship’s structural logics and the gender system in Buganda were strongly correlated (Hoad 2007, 13). This was the case in many African kingship systems. Gender was strongly defined by status and place. Donham describes power and gender among the Maale of Southwest Ethiopia in the following manner:

There was in fact a continuous gradation from the ritual king9 to chiefs to subchiefs on down. This interpretation was made by the Maale themselves when they referred metaphorically to chiefs as the king’s “wives.” In relation to the king the chiefs were more female. (Donham 1999 [1990], 122–23)

8The association of power with gender hierarchies was particularly strong in Buganda.10 It may also be the case in Bunyoro (Needham 1967, 431–32, 437). As Nannyonga-Tamusuza notices, age is also woven into this gender divide built around place and power. I follow Nannyonga-Tamusuza’s conclusions but wish to push them still further. I argue that these numerous categories she describes hide today’s difficulty in admitting that an anatomically male person can be fully a social woman and an anatomically female person can be fully a man socially. I argue the system was binary (man or woman), yet individuals were able to pass from one category to the other, depending on the context. Compared to the king, all subjects were female. Great chiefs would dance and adopt a feminine posture in the presence of the king and in the royal enclosure. As among the Maale or the Mossi, the only man in the palace was the king.11 But in Buganda, outside the king’s presence, outside the palace, the courtiers would behave as men, especially in their own enclosures.

9Furthermore, powerful women, such as princesses, remained women to the king, but were considered men by all others and called “sir” (Ssebo instead of Nyabo, Madam12 or Misses). This is how Nsimbi, a local Ganda erudite, describes the gender ambiguities of royal women:

The Namasole [Queen Mother], Nnaalinnya [Queen Sister] and the princesses, because they were not married as other women, the Baganda they treated them as men. When greeting them, they called them “Sir” like men. In the norms of the Baganda the princesses were allowed to eat chicken, eggs and grasshoppers as men do.13

10Nsimbi includes the Namasole (the Queen Mother), who paradoxically was also the symbol of femininity and motherhood. Nsimbi also links this gender blurring to the celibacy of royal women, and not to the engendering effects of status or power as I would have done.

11Princesses adopted manly attitudes and sometimes dress codes. This is what a White Father witnessed at court when a princess guardian of the king’s predecessor’s royal tomb visited court:

Arrival of the Mbeja [Mbejja: royal woman], keeper of the tomb of Souna (always dressed as a man); she is wearing today a beautiful fez and a beautiful tiger [sic] fur.14

12The princess was the Nnaalinnya of King Suna (the ruling king’s father), the guardian of the dead king’s royal tomb in Wamala close to the Capital. She had been the queen sister of King Suna or was her successor. She was a very high-ranking princess and clearly impressed the court.

13Cross-dressing is also mentioned of the terrifying “women security officer” of the royal harem (as Faupel calls them). They were expected or allowed to dress as men.15 We know close to nothing about them, maybe they were recruited among princesses or more likely their position of power and hierarchy made them men (or both).

14Princesses behave in many ways like men, but not only by eating delicacies forbidden to women as Nsimbi mentioned above. Princesses were said to have many, often much younger, male sexual partners.16 They often took the men they desired regardless of their consent. Their sexual intercourses were sterile (princesses were not supposed to conceive, so different means such as contraception, abortion and infanticide were used) (Musisi 1991b, 773–74). In this case, the manly attitude of women did not imply lesbian sexual practices.

15Most descriptions of Ganda princesses are from a male and Christian perspective. They are usually negative and most disapproving. But French Catholic nuns have left us a different perspective. For example, as late as 1902, the manly, powerful manners of the princesses impressed the newly arrived, probably royalist, White Sisters, and filled them with awe and admiration. They have left this vivid description:

A child who has been coming to our school for several days, has run away from her mistress in the hope of being taken into our home; but the latter has come to claim her little servant, and in this manner, we have been introduced to Mteça’s youngest daughter. She is called Emilya. I get to the parlour as the princess is already pleading her cause. It’s of no use to contribute to the conversation, her words flow impetuously without a pause. She is not without prestige I must say! She is a fine woman, tall and shapely; but one wonders why she is not a man! What energy, what postures! We would have wished so much to take her portrait, but it would never be able to capture the exuberance of life of this daughter of Mteça. If there were 300 like this one in Uganda, the English would not remain there long. While admiring her type, we feel sorry for the child that will have to return with her, because though Emilya is Catholic, she is a scandal to Christendom. The missionaries had thought to compel her to a better behaviour by marrying her to a young chief that had all the qualities to make a woman happy. She made him miserable and she lives separate from him. She is excommunicated but always finds ways to approach the sacraments. This marriage being known in the country, princesses can longer find husbands except for a peasant. Everyone knows they all belong to the same race.17

16It should be noted that from the 1890s with the conversion to Christianity and the decline of royal power, princesses were allowed to marry again, however their manly behaviour and authority did not feed well into the patriarchal conception of Ganda marriage especially among great Christian chiefs.18 As the White Sister noted, princesses fell out of Christian marriages and only low-ranking men would stay with them.

17Concerning cross-dressing of men in female roles a few mentions exist. As could be expected they do not concern, outside ritual contexts, high ranking people but rather disgraced “feminine” men.

18In the wider region, Needham insists on the importance of gender crossing during initiation to spirit cults in Bunyoro, Buganda’s northern neighbour. He suggested that homosexual practices at times accompany these rituals (Needham 1967, 437c38). David Schoenbrun briefly mentions men dressed as women who play an important ritual role in Buhaya (a group of small kingdoms related to Bunyoro and southwest of Buganda and east of Rwanda) (Schoenbrun 2021, 187–88). In the 19th century, the Haya Kingdoms were closely administered tributary states of Buganda (Médard and Kidari 2019). Haya elites spent long periods in the capital of Buganda and were adopting many of the Ganda customs. Schoenbrun shows how gender crossing was used in ritual contexts:

In that part of the western rim of the Inland Sea [in Buhaya], a category exists of “men who behave as women—greeting as women do.” Such a person is called muharambwa19 in Kiziba, a Haya language. The muharambwa leads women in praising Mugasha’s20 wife, Nyakalembe, for her powers over agriculture. The muharambwa handles risky situations and materials. He disposes of dead animals or snakes, removes burned bodies or the ash of burned bodies after deadly house fires. Smelters dressed in a woman’s skirt to foster their furnace’s fertility. They acted like the muharambwa, the elder man who wore a skirt officiating at a village shrine oriented to Irungu (who is called Ddungu in Buganda).
Crossing genders was necessary for safe handling of these circumstances reveals. Gender was a social resource amenable to reconfiguration. (Schoenbrun 2021, 187–88)

19Of course, acting in a womanly manner or dressing as a woman does not always imply having sex with men, but it can, and in this case, it seems likely. Buhaya and Buganda share much in common culturally, but this specific gender crossing does not appear in sources on Buganda. It could very well be that it had not been noticed or mentioned. Conversion to Islam and Christianity happened earlier and was more thorough in Buganda than in Buhaya. Hence, the ancient religion was better preserved in Buhaya at the beginning of colonial rule and was easier to observe.

20Some cases of men dressing as women are mentioned in sources specifically on Buganda, but they do not reflect the same context. Most refer to repression and shame. For example, after a military campaign, cowardly soldiers were dressed in women’s attire as punishment and humiliated.21

21In April 1880, King Mutesa ordered all men wearing double bark cloth, in other words dressed in a feminine fashion, to be seized and executed (Médard 2007, 372–73). It was a crime invented for the circumstances in order to arrest enough culprits for a human sacrifice. In Buganda, human sacrifices demanded an exact number of victims. To reach the goal, new crimes were invented to arrest people in sufficient numbers.22

22Nonetheless, it would seem that while cross-gendered dressing was not unheard of in Buganda, it was not very popular. It was meant to degrade unworthy men into lowly women. What happened to degraded men or to men that wished to become women, is not known. The fall of status and change of gender may have been only temporary. If not, they may have joined a local Ganda category equivalent of the Haya muharambwas.

23Men cross-dressing in ritual situations may also have occurred, but sources do not mention it. The idea of a male medium, who was married to a god, cross-dressing would be culturally coherent but has not been reported. At court, Nannyonga-Tamusuza demonstrated, men behaved in a feminine manner. In particular they danced like enticing women using the same steps and moves. However, they did not cross-dress (Nannyonga-Tamusuza 2005).

24The extent to which these gender conceptions had implications for male sexuality is not easily grasped. Gender fluidity does not automatically dictate sexual identity or practice as we have seen with the princesses. Gender fluidity facilitated but did not necessarily require sexual fluidity.

25Royals and clergy were not always expected to adhere to the normative values of broader Buganda society. According to Musisi, “as Kabaka, in Kiganda culture, Mwanga was entitled to sexual license, and all men as well as all women were considered his wives” (Musisi 2020, 128). Most of the royal rituals in a sacred context were made to demonstrate and nourish the reality of kingship myths and ideology. To make people believe, visible actions were needed. For example, on a non-sexual topic, in Buganda, the king was said to be like a lion, therefore we are told by Speke in 1860 that King Mutesa walked like his fathers, in a strange, specifically royal and unique way. It was thought to be reminiscent of a lion’s steps.23 Another example, the king was the king of all his subjects, he was above kinship therefore he could have no relatives, which means he could sleep with his sisters (royal incest being understood in this context as a proof of the absence of incest and therefore of kinship ties between the king and the princesses).24 Another important aspect of sacred kingship can be found in polygamy. The royal harem kept thousands of women, more than anyone in the kingdom. Thanks to polygamy, the king had more children than anyone else (we will see at the end of the book how this might be a problem for King Mwanga, famous for his preference for boys). The association between the king’s manliness and fertility was made obvious in this way in Buganda just as in many other African kingdoms. This association was an essential element of sacred monarchy. The king’s fertility was a must to guarantee the fertility of the people and the land.

26It would be very tempting to understand the public display of the king’s page-lovers in the case of King Mutesa through this lens, and therefore relate it to sacred monarchy and see it as a transgressive transformation that makes the prince into a king.25 As Lydia Boyd noted, the transgression of sexual norms was a way for the king (Kabaka) to demonstrate his power (Boyd 2013, 706). Yet, the king was not advertising his desire for men. He was claiming that he was the “Man” (Ssaabasajja), the apex of the country’s fertility. He was demonstrating publicly that these boys and men in general, were women to him. He was stating that he was the husband of all his subjects and that he was like a god (Kintu 2018, 32). What is important is that male same-sex sexual practices in Buganda were not understood as homosexual but as heterosexual to use today’s inadequate words.26 In this logic, the king slept with pages; therefore, the pages were female.27 This logic where sexual roles defined gender is not unheard of, for example, in a different political context, it can be found among the Nuer further north (MacDermot 1972, 119). This fits in well with Kevin Ward’s comment in 2002, that these practices “involved people who might otherwise not have sought out, nor been attracted to same-sex relationships, and who would not see themselves as ‘homosexual’ in a modern essentialist sense” (Ward 2002, 92).

27In the sacred context, some intriguing sex related occurrences concerning public exposure of male genitalia and masturbation, are mentioned in open court, in front of the king and all the courtiers. They are hard to interpret; they do not fit into the usual pomp and etiquette of the royal audiences. They would be more expected in the context of male locker-room humour. Both mentions, one under King Suna (c.1830–1856) and the other under his son and successor King Mutesa (1856/7–1884) were about comparative size of male genitals and maybe public masturbation.28 Explanations beyond the whimsical and repetitive nature of royal humour and taste evade us, but they are likely to be unrelated to homoeroticism.

28All in all, the Kabaka of Buganda in the manners of the gods, claimed to be the husband of his male and female subjects. To him, all his subjects were like women. To prove his point, he had sex without distinction with women and boys inside his enclosure. The king’s claims to equal the gods was rather recent, dating from the early 19th century or the late 18th century (Médard 2007, 361–67). These ideas were always contested by the most conservative section of the society. King Mutesa progressively dropped this claim in the process of converting to Islam in the 1860s and 1870s.

The myth of the Arab origin of “sodomy”

29As early as the late 1870s or early 1880s, all sources, African and European, claim that “sodomy” was brought to Buganda by the Arabs.29 Here is how, for example, Father Livinhac puts it in 1880:

9th Friday. – A catechumen repeats to me what I have heard already so many times, that the Baganda were polite and uncomplicated people before the Arabs came. These Muslims pushed them into their disgraceful vice; they taught them that these abominable acts were innocent games, and the feature of civilised people.

30Often, in the same sentence or paragraph, the same is said of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and occasionally the use of Indian hemp. James Miti, a former Muslim himself who converted early to the Protestant faith, was an actor in the religious wars against the Muslim, and later a senior colonial chief. He tells about the adoption of “sodomy” in Buganda in the following manner, in his history of Buganda:

[Concluding paragraph of chapter 26 ‘Who imported the gonococcus into Buganda’]: Another immoral habit which Arabs introduced in the country is SODOMY. Never before the advent of this class of non-Africans was this sin against nature known, much less practiced in Buganda. It was only after Arabs had played this dirty game among themselves or with some of the local people and had taught it to them and encouraged its spread in the country that sodomy entered this land we live in.30

31For James Miti, Islam and the Arabs were associated with dubious sexual practices that lead to venereal diseases and “sodomy.”

32These accusations against the Arabs form a local variant of what Marc Epprecht called the “myth of heterosexual Africa.”31 In other words, it is to claim that homosexuality is foreign to Africa. This type of rumour dismissing same-sex desire and practices is common all through the world.32 For example, the French during the Renaissance claimed “sodomy” and syphilis came from Italy (Florence and Naples, respectively). Closer to Uganda, in Mombasa in the 1980s, Mary Porter reported that lesbians were always said to be from another neighbouring community (Porter 1995, 143).

33Most humans have in common the same variations of sexual desires or impulses. However, the focus, rejection, understanding and integration of specific sexual practices varies across time and space. The changes in the social understanding of homosexuality give a new insight on why “Arabs” are accused of bringing “sodomy” to Buganda. It was not so much same-sex desire that was new, but a new globalised way of living and a new prestigious understanding of it that spread to Buganda during the reigns of Mutesa and Mwanga.33

34We must first stop a moment to reflect on what exactly same sex relations meant for the Arabs and Muslims of the East African coast. In the 19th century, Oman rulers of the Busaidi Dynasty unified the Swahili coast under their rule. They even transferred their capital from Muscat to Zanzibar early in the century. They subsequently expanded their trading networks deep into the interior of Africa, connecting with Buganda in the 1840s. Much of the historiography on the Swahili coast describe a society very tolerant about same-sex practices.34 As the British traveller Richard Burton noted in 1871: “The ‘Liwat’ [sodomy] is here [Zanzibar] considered a mere peccadillo” (Burton 1872*, vol. I, 380). Some limited ethnographic observations conducted at the coast in the 1980s and 1990s tend to confirm this. However, the extent to which their findings can be pushed into the past varies and is open to question. Historical studies are few,35 and based on a very limited number of European sources.36 The association of Arabs to homosexuality was a strong European stereotype, especially in the 19th century (as it still is today). In the same vein as Edouard Said (1978) attempted on Egypt and orientalism, we cannot exclude that ethnographic and historical imagination on Zanzibar has been contaminated by these European stereotypes and sexual fantasies. If sources permit, it would be necessary to deconstruct and rebuild knowledge on the history of same-sex intimacies in the Zanzibar Sultanate. Only a historian specialist of Zanzibar could manage such an arduous task.

35If not on Zanzibar specifically, the historiography about homosexuality in the Arab world is quite developed. All in all, it is clear the Arab world in the 19th century was more tolerant to male same-sex practices than Victorian England.37 That explains (only in part) the fascination and association of Arabs to homosexuality in the 19th century and even the 20th century. Furthermore, Zanzibar (just as Buganda) in the 19th century practised slavery on a massive scale. Homosexual practices are usually very common in slaving societies even when the moral social norms condemn these sexual practices.38 Slavery, for obvious reasons, is prone to free the masters’ sexual inhibitions. The consent of slaves, or its absence, were of little relevance in this context.

36Though few, the published sources and the sparse ethnographic literature concerning Zanzibar and the coast describe homosexual practices in sufficient details, including vocabulary, to ascertain that they are more than the fruit of baseless racist and orientalist fantasies. We should also remember that both Rigby and Bauman had an extensive knowledge of Zanzibar spanning years of experience in the town. As for Burton, he was one of the most knowledgeable writers of his time on sexual matters.

37While more nuanced and detailed research would be useful, we can reasonably assume that in the 19th century, same-sex intimacies were widely and mostly tolerated in the coastal society and often practised openly. Male prostitutes of slave descent are said to have been ubiquitous in Zanzibar town.39 This does not mean that the tolerance of these behaviours among religious and political authorities did not vary over the century. According to Burton, the sultan—Said bin Sultan al Busaidi (1840–1856)—showed disapproval of same-sex intimacies (Burton 1872*, vol. I, 380–81). Rigby confirms this but adds that, “Since the death of the late Imam [1856; in Muscat the ruler held the title of Imam] numbers of sodomites have come from Muscat and these degraded wretches openly walk about dressed in female attire” (Rigby [1860] 1935, 342). The acceptance of some same-sex intimacies does not preclude the abhorrence of others. For example, what was acceptable for a master to perform with a slave may not have been acceptable on a free man (Middleton 1992, 120). Later, during colonial rule, probably under British influence, the practices became less conspicuous (Ingrams [1931] 1967, 492). We can very reasonably conclude that same-sex practices were sufficiently conspicuous for African travellers as well as European travellers to notice them in Zanzibar, and more importantly in caravans and trading settlements in the interior (Rockel 2006, 141–42).

38Unfortunately, we do not have any Arab or Swahili sources on homosexual practices in Buganda. As far as we can tell, they were not regarded as a problem in Muslim circles in Uganda. Initially, Muslims in Buganda were mostly from the Indian Ocean. A lesser number originated from Sudan. They were traders, slaves, porters, soldiers or artisans, and very few professional clerics. Their behaviours and ideas around same-sex intimacies would have reflected the tolerance practised in their humble East African milieu rather than in an Islamic universal religious and legal written dogma. It is mostly through Islam’s enemies that we get biased hints of the reality of same-sex intimacies. European travellers, missionaries and Christian converts insist on how Islam and the Arabs spread depravity, sexually transmitted diseases, and “sodomy.” None of these were new to Buganda.

39André Kiwanuka, a great colonial Catholic chief who barely survived the persecution, and a former lover of Mwanga, dates the arrival of “sodomy” in Uganda in a rather typical testimony:

It was the Muslims who brought to Buganda the bad habits of Sodom. The King that started to indulge in this habit was King Mutesa. And Mwanga his son, the Muslims taught it to him very much. This is why King Mwanga became so angry with us Christians, it was because we did not want it as I have said during the questioning.40

40André Kiwanuka notes adoption of these sexual practices by Kabaka Mutesa during the years he was attempting to convert to Islam. Mutesa and his court considered the respect of Ramadan an essential element to their conversion to Islam. According to Middleton, homosexuality was tolerated in the Swahili world during Ramadan when heterosexual intercourse was prohibited (Middleton 1992, 120). This would constitute a direct connection in the mind of the Baganda between homosexual practices and the conversion to Islam. Let us note that Kiwanuka does not write the Arabs, but the Muslims. In the case of Mwanga, it is very unlikely that Arabs or coastal people were granted sufficient access to a royal child to have sexual intercourse with him. Many Muslim Ganda on the other hand, probably surrounded Mwanga as a child and teenager. The text does show that Mwanga was especially fond of the practice (“the Muslims taught it to him very much”).

41The Ganda did not only convert to Islam in great numbers during the second half of the 19th century, but also enthusiastically adopted many customs of the Indian Ocean. Zanzibar’s prestige was considerable. The courtiers and the king dressed in the Zanzibari fashion, the army adopted firearms and flags, Kiswahili spread across the kingdom (Oded 1974). The spread of venereal diseases along the trade routes attests that intimacy was an aspect of the exchanges between the coastal traders and the inhabitants of the interior that should not be overlooked. Sexual fashions, manners and ideas must also have circulated from the Indian Ocean coast to Buganda.

42Muslim traders from the Indian Ocean did not bring new forms of sexual intimacies, but they brought with them a new understanding of them (and probably new ways of living or practising same-sex desire). Associated with the prestige of Zanzibar, the meaning of same-sex intimacies changed and became globalised through Islam. It became a specific form of sexuality, and gradually ceased to be understood in Buganda as a recognised sub-category of normative sexual relations. In other words, Zanzibari influence changed the Ganda understanding from one that did not distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual, to a globalised Zanzibari manner that did.

43In 1882 the White Fathers’ diary is slightly more detailed than usual on this topic:

According to our neophytes, the vices now known in Buganda were brought by the Arabs. The king not satisfied with his wives, not content of his mignons that he has for his sodomy wishes that every Muganda has his sodomite. Hence this vice, it is said, is on the agenda everywhere even among the Kialo [Kyalo: rural estates].41

44This text summarises how Zanzibari fashions (religion, clothing, language etc.) in general, spread across Buganda, from the royal enclosure and capital to the countryside. In court societies, fashions spread from the court to the rest of the society (Oded 1974, 133). If “sodomy” at the royal court had become popular and fashionable, the rest of the country would have, in time, followed the capital’s example.

Slaves and pages: same-sex intimacies in the royal capital of Buganda

45Sources also mention same-sex sexual practices amongst slaves.42 They describe these practices as being the norm rather the exception among slave boys in Buganda.

In what moral state are young negroes that can be bought in Buganda when they are bought?
I will not speak about the justa naturam vices [natural vices]. Probably in all infidel countries like here children catch them at the same time they learn how to walk and talk.
Concerning contra naturam vices [unnatural vices] and in particular sodomy, almost all young negroes that we can buy in Buganda know them, and it is not without surprise (maybe we are wrong to be surprised) that we have seen 6-year-old children cognoscentes sodomiam completam illamgue incredibili furore perpretantes [knowing sodomy completely and practising it with incredible furore].43

46This type of situation is expected in a violent, highly hierarchical society practising slavery. However, the perception of the White Fathers in 1882 were probably very exaggerated. It was among their redeemed young slave boys that the White Fathers had the greatest crisis linked to homosexual practices. The events were well explained decades ago by the White Father historian François Renault.44 We can summarise them in the following manner. In July 1882, missionaries surprised two of their redeemed boys having intercourse. Unfortunately, in the White Fathers’ way of thinking, to adopt homosexual practices one needed to be “perverted” by someone else—in a manner very similar to the transmission of venereal diseases.45 The missionaries tried to determine the transmission line and proceeded to beat out confessions from the boys. Under duress, the victims admitted anything their tormentors wanted to hear and fed the missionaries their worst fears. Panicked, convinced they had uncovered a terrible plot not only against morality but against their lives, the missionaries evacuated Buganda in all haste in November 1882.46 From their correspondence, the head of the missionary order in North Africa, Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, understood what had happened and chastised them for their hasty and foolish behaviour.47

47The detailed information contained in the diary and letters extracted under duress are extremely hard to interpret. The affair mostly informs us of the fears of a vulnerable, frightened, isolated, feverish handful of foreign missionaries. However, this failure made the White Fathers reflect on the condition of redeemed slaves and same-sex intimacies in Buganda. Siméon Lourdel, one of the first and most influential Catholic missionaries, wrote the following answer to a questionnaire from his superiors.

In what moral state are young negroes that can be bought in Buganda when they are bought?
I answer: Their origin must be considered. Do they come
1° From the Wanguana [this expression, wangwana in proper Kiswahili, refers to subjects of the sultan of Zanzibar]: Generally, if they have spent some time with them, it is to be feared that they have contracted bad habits that will be difficult for them to lose. If the children were at the service of the Wanguana or if they were bought to be resold at the first occasion, it must be considered, because in the latter case it is likely that the children having been kept locked up all together to be resold, have not had time to have wicked intercourses with their masters. The example of two baptised children Léon and Ignace who, I believe, did not know these vices when they arrived here, upholds what I have just said.
2° From the Baganda: Generally speaking, the same can also be said for slaves redeemed from the Baganda. It can be assumed especially if they were gotten from the soldiers, the pages, the king, or people from the Kibuga (the capital), they are almost certainly familiar with the vice of the inhabitants of Sodom.
3° Those that come directly from their country Busoga, Bunioro [Bunyoro]: the tribe must be considered because such a vice is known in such and such tribe that has had more relations with the Baganda and is completely unknown in another one. From this follows that, generally speaking, a child coming from a tribe where the previously mentioned vice is not practised will have less difficulty in learning virtue than another that has had the misfortune to be born to more corrupt parents who encourage these vices themselves for the child to be less attracted by their wives. Hence the moral condition of the children when they are redeemed (apart from their personal individual qualities and vices) will depend on their origins and on the more or less evil hands they will have passed through. These children generally are attracted by impurity; however, if they are not too much rooted into vice, there is good hope they will amend themselves. But for others that are so anchored into bad habits it would be almost impossible (except through an extraordinary grace) to get rid of those.48

48From this letter we mostly learn of the moral positioning of the priest and the ethno-racial categories to which he relates. His explanations are full of contradiction but illustrate the thinking of the time. Lourdel, as many of people of his time, considered that once a boy has been willingly or unwillingly submitted to the practices, there was little chance he would stop. “Sodomy” was considered an acquired taste. At the same time, he asserted the individual qualities of the boys (and God’s grace) could protect and retrieve them from these sinful behaviours.

49Lourdel’s letter also attempted a geography of “sodomy.” This was not a new manner of thinking, in fact, it was quite typical for the time (Bleys 1996). The belief that “homosexuality is un-African” is linked to this ethno-racial geographical thinking. Culture cannot however be completely dismissed offhand. For migrant mine-labourers in South Africa, geography seemed to be an important factor for entering into same-sex relations. According to Moodie, ethnicity was important in the acceptance or refusal by young migrants to become “mine wives” to older miners (Moodie, Ndatshe and Sibuyi 1988). It seems that cultural origins were key to entering or not entering into this type of relation, the acceptability of same-sex intimacies varying from place to place. The consent of both partners is however not always relevant. Young migrants could be submitted to much pressure by the older miners. Outside of South Africa, in a ritual context, consent was irrelevant for both parties. The consent of slaves (male and female) was also mostly irrelevant, except among peers. Sexually, slaves did not have a say in Buganda.

50It is noteworthy that Lourdel considered “sodomy” as common among the Ganda as among the Arabs. In his mind, slave boys belonging to the Ganda and Swahili or Arabs were all exposed to same-sex intimacies. Only slave boys briefly detained before being sold out avoided being submitted to sexual slavery.

51He then elaborated that boys taken far away, outside the Swahili and the Ganda influence, could remain pure, but his knowledge of such regions was limited. Unsurprisingly, he failed to name a single group ignorant of “vice” from which slaves could be bought and redeemed. Lourdel claimed all slave boys belonging to Ganda or Arab owners had experienced “sodomy.” However, according to him, the situation was more varied concerning slaves of Banyoro and Basoga origins. It should be noted that this is a further incoherence, since 80% of slaves in Buganda came from these regions to the north and east of Buganda.

52The missionaries’ feeling of failure and loss of heart (they were about to abandon Buganda) led them to exaggerate the practice of “sodomy.” Even given some exaggeration Lourdel’s statement is not surprising. In the 19th century, Buganda had turned into a slave society. In slave societies across the world, newly acquired young slaves (male or female) were prime victims for sexual abuse, and it even often played an important role in breaking them into submission.

53Lourdel also points out that same-sex intimacies were frequent in the royal capital. Not only did the king keep lovers, but the missionaries considered same-sex intimacies a general practice among pages, and among soldiers (many of them former pages). He also mentions its role in polygamous households—and these two points will be dealt with in the following section.

54Sources dealing with same-sex intimacies are mostly concerned with the king and his pages. The royal enclosure housed the king, his thousands of wives and hundreds of pages. Pages formed a group of preadolescent and adolescent young boys serving the king and living in the royal enclosure. Pages were the king’s servants, closest friends and companions, bodyguards and sometimes lovers. As often in Africa (and probably elsewhere), chiefs were expected to send their daughters and sons to serve the king, in this case as wives or pages. These were not the only pages, many others were made up of slaves, just as the wives. Pages were recruited, at the same time, from the highest social categories (sons of chiefs) and the lowest (slave). It is striking how similar the status of pages and royal wives were similar.

55The most promising young boys where selected to be pages. Buganda, even in the 20th century, is unique in its great number of foster children (Golaz 2015). Most children left their parents when they were very young. It was believed that parents loved their children too much to prepare them and discipline them for the harsh and competitive outside world. The circulation of children (just as the circulation of wives) was a way to maintain or build social networks. Children would often be sent to serve powerful relatives or patrons. The households of chiefs were swarming with pages. They were treated harshly and were vulnerable to all sorts of abuse (but not to the same extent as the pages in the royal household who could be mutilated or killed). By the time they were teens, boys were well experienced in serving in a large household and could be selected for the royal court.

56Boys joined the royal palace when they were around 12 years and were expected to still be virgins (i.e. should not have been with women). They were released when they became too old and became grown men, the leaders staying on a bit longer to instruct the newcomers. They were chosen for their skills and wits, but also for their very good looks.49 Whether they were free born or slaves, pages simultaneously formed a very privileged, prestigious and elite group, whilst also being hostages taken from their families and treated as brutally as slaves.

57Serving as a royal page was a dangerous but also the route to wealth, power and honour. The court trained a future elite of brilliant, ruthless, and very effective leaders. Most of the Ganda hierarchy were former pages. Life at court was terrifying and dangerous. Discipline was excessively harsh.50 These groups were closely knit together and possessed an extremely strong esprit de corps, stronger than origins and family status (Rowe 1964b, 64). Most of the first Christian and Muslim converts were recruited from this very specific group. They lived in permanent fear for their lives, which clearly appears as one of the reasons why resurrection had so much appeal to pages in the 1880s.

58Though all of our Ganda informants were former pages, and pages constituted the main informants of missionaries, none have taken the trouble of explaining how the palace pages were organised. Kagwa writes in one short paragraph the most detailed description we have:

The Sabakaki was the title of a person who was the head of the King’s palace including the division [ekitongole] of the King’s pages. […] In the division of the King’s pages there were about one thousand young men appointed by various chiefs to serve his majesty in the palace. They were under a chief named Sabawali.51 (Kagwa ([1907]1934*, 171)

59This description is typical of Kagwa’s description of the organisation of Buganda under a clear-cut hierarchy, aspects he tended to overemphasise. More than a palace chief, Sabakaki was an important subchief under the Kago, the chief of the central province of Kyaddondo, one of the major ranking positions of the kingdom. The royal capital was usually in this province. Unfortunately, Sabawali is a generic title describing the 4th ranking chief of any position. It is too vague to enable us to identify the position. In this context it could refer to the Musalosalo (often translated by Majordome in sources about the martyrs), but this is only conjuncture, as the rank of this chieftainship is unknown. Kagwa estimated their number to be about 1,000 young men. The numbers may have varied during the reign of a king to another. Mwanga’s pages may have numbered about 600 in 1886, and their number would have risen to the unusually high number of about 3,000 in 1896.52

60Scattered elements in the source give us further indications. They were under a strict hierarchy of chiefs and subchiefs and were divided, in most studies, into two main groups: the pages of the outer court and those of the inner court (though Ganda names are never given). The pages were further divided according to where they slept in the palace (the building of the treasury, the audience hall, the king’s house, the royal latrines….), each with a subchief. Like many Luganda words, Bagalagala had a generic meaning which referred to all the pages of the king and his prime minister (Katikiro), (i.e, the two men with the largest number of pages—in the 19th century, the prime minister was often wealthier than the king) and a more restricted meaning, that of the outer court pages.

61The inner court pages or those of the king’s house or Kambi or Bulange as the White Fathers called them were the Basalosalo. They slept in and around the king’s dwelling house (Twekobe) (Kagwa 1934* [1907], 75). It is among them that most of the king’s lovers were recruited or placed. In the 1880s these were mostly converted by the Roman Catholics. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, then Charles Lwanga, and then Honorat Nyonyintono were the heads of this section. The Basalosalo were a recent 19th century institution that unsettled the neat hierarchy of the royal court. King Mutesa created them initially to cater for the influx of slave-pages. But by the 1880s, recruitment was no different from other page sections. Sons of chiefs were at least as numerous as slave boys.53

62The Musalosalo (the head of the Basalosalo) of course contested the hierarchy and his subordination to the Sabakaki. This type of structural rivalry ran through the entire Ganda chief hierarchy. It was made worse under King Mwanga, when the successive Musalosalo were mostly Catholics and the Sabakaki was a Muslim. The historically higher position of the Sabakaki was made obsolete in 1887 when the Basalosalo were transformed into a new regiment of royal fusilier’s corps (Kitongole). Between 1886 and 1888, King Mwanga changed what used to be several page units (Kisalosalo, Gwanika…) stationed in the royal enclosures into, elite adult male regiments stationed around the royal capital. Wamala,54 Mwanga’s Muslim Sabakaki, could no longer compete in wealth and prestige with the Musalosalo, Honorat Nyonyontono. Because of the changing hierarchical context, sources are confused on the comparative standing of the Musalosalo and of his rival the Sabakaki.55 The organisation of the pages was somewhat more blurred, contested, changing and overlapping than our sources make of it.

63The whole objective of being a page (or a royal wife) was to attract the king’s attention and favours, bringing honour and rewards to yourself, your family and clan. Sex was one of the paths to success (Kintu 2018, 31). As for favourite wives, it does not seem that being initially a slave or a son from the elite made any difference. What mattered was the king’s fancy. His page-lovers could be free born or slaves. Buganda was a strongly hierarchical society, but an open society as well. Pleasing the king was the key element for success, not birth. A slave page could hope to attain the highest functions almost as much as a son from an influential family (though he would have lacked the family connections). Skills, networks built at court and the king’s favours were what determined a successful career.

64According to Kenneth Hamilton, “Part of the normal duties of the pages, or bagalagala, was providing sexual services to the Kabaka or his male guests” (Hamilton 2005, 10). Unfortunately, he uses no primary sources to base his claim. It is a tempting hypothesis, though it is never mentioned in sources, and the king did not keep male guests overnight in the royal enclosure, but elsewhere in the capital, so it makes their role as sexual entertainment to his guests less likely or more marginal. Slaves, usually female, were a more likely and attested gift to an honoured guest.

65Sources are scarce but seem to indicate a wide range of sexual activities in the palace. On one hand, this is not surprising in an intensively competitive sex scene where the king was all powerful. On the other, this goes against the logics of sacred kingship, which would have tended to imprison the king, including his sex life, in strict rituals and taboos. Sexual intimacies between pages56 and between the chiefs and the pages seems to have been common. As Musisi notes, the “boot camp” like atmosphere of the royal palace environment was favourable to “genital and nongenital bonding” among the pages (Musisi 2020, 122–24). This is how Ham Mukasa remembered King Mutesa’s court when he first arrived there as page in 1883:

I think I must have been about twelve years old when I entered the king’s household. I found the court full of the vilest customs, introduced by the Arabs and the Turks (the people that came from Egypt) [Egypt was nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire at the time].
I was much afraid, for my parents had told me not to agree to such things; for they told me if I did such things I would die at once. But in spite of this I was compelled to join with the rest. (Mukasa 1904*, 176)

66While same-sex intimacies seem to have been the norm in the royal enclosure, things were also more complicated. The kings seemed at times to have enjoyed participating or watching others in sexual activities. The princesses and pages were central in these erotic games.57 In the reign of King Mwanga, Saidi Lutaya the Kawuta played an important role in these royal pastimes.58 It is not clear if he played this part because of his very close friendship with the king or because it was a part of his function as Kawuta (the highest position in the king’s enclosure).

67Parallel to these collective practices, a violent obsession on exclusivity seems to also have existed, which is a paradox. The king enforced with brutal violence his sexual monopoly on thousands of wives and hundreds of pages. A horrified White Father in charge of the mission diary in 1881 reported:

Not a day goes by without several negroes being executed. A great many are condemned for alleged adultery with the king’s wives.59

68In 1881, a White Father missionary notes that King Mutesa treated his page-lovers in the same jealous way as his favourite wives:

The King has given to that child [Cyprien Mutagwanya, one of Mutesa’s reluctant lovers] a guard as he does to his most precious wives, to make sure he does not go with others. Another catechumen is in the same position as the former.60

69It is extremely clear in this passage that the king considered these pages as women. Young boys (before puberty) and old men (impotent), as mentioned in the text, were used to keep guard and maintain the king’s sexual monopoly, with the limits one can easily imagine.

70This passage feeds a debate on how to understand the relation between the king and the pages. It shows that the king treated his favourite male lovers in the same manner as his favourite female ones. This confirms that the status of pages was extremely similar to that of a wife. However, there has been a tendency among scholars to associate homosexual intimacies to a patron-client relation rather than marriage. In varied places and times, scholars have contended that same-sex intimacies fed into the patron-client relation.61 In the same manner, Musisi argues, “The norms surrounding men’s sexuality emphasised collective and productive clientele roles in the kingdom’s political economy. In this context, male-male sexual encounters in the palace could be interpreted as a form of political labour that youth performed along with other duties appropriate to clientele relationships” (Musisi 2020, 129). This is to say that sex is work exchanged in the hierarchical and patron-client relation of pages. As we have seen, vocabulary in expressions referring to men who have sex with men in Luganda borrow from work semantics (the verb okukola and the noun Omulimu). This also echoes with Holly Hanson underlining (but with no sexual undertone) the importance of the language of love in patron-client relations in Buganda (Hanson 2003).

71Patron-client relations are defined by being outside of kinship and marriage relations (Médard 1976, 103). When kin and family are concerned the obligations can be very similar, but the social dynamics are radically different. In French, we distinguish “clientèle” from “parentèle,” in other words kins from followers. There are other concepts to describe the latter relations (nepotism, etc). Marriage (between a dependant and his benefactors’ daughter for example) clearly can link a client to a patron, however rather than overlapping, the relation evolves from clientship to kinship.

72As usual, the analytical issue relates to how well the local Ganda conceptions fit in with universal sociological categories. In the late 19th century, patronage ideology and language had become hegemonic in Buganda’s society. Patrons had replaced kins in many of their roles including at times, for example, in the gifting of wives and paying of dowries. Carol Summers has convincingly argued that marriage in Buganda was symbolically modelled on patron-client relations (Summers 2017, 112–17). However, if the vocabulary and symbols in formal marriages borrowed much from patron-client relation, they also borrowed from other registers. The English word “marriage” does not properly reflect the multiplicity of perhaps a dozen statuses that missionaries tried to mould into the Christian meaning.

73If we go back to male intimacies, the local conception around Kusenga (the verb: to become client), Bwami / Musenze (the actors: patron/client) as they were collected in the 20th century, never mention same-sex intimacies. Such a statement would have been unlikely at the time when most research was undertaken, so it is hard to exclude it on this basis. In what manner were sexual intimacies understood to add to or overlap with patronage or kinship? If we come back to the royal pages of Buganda, they were clearly treated like slaves and women. The two statuses increasingly overlapped during the 19th century. As the pages grew up, they fitted into the patronage network to the point of epitomising it. I would argue the king treated his favourite page lovers as his wives rather than as his clients, but later in life made them into his most faithful clients. Pages, sons of chiefs as much as slaves, were akin to slaves and women until they grew into men and clients, and sometimes powerful chiefs. Let us remember that with the growth of the slave trade, the status of women become more and more akin to that of slaves, and that of slaves—even male slaves—to women. In other words, slavery was naturalised in Buganda through gender in a similar way as it was naturalised through race in America. I would also argue that slave boys in Buganda in general, but not slave girls, shared a similar evolution with the pages, from slave akin to women, to the status of client and grown free man (Mukopi in luganda). I would, also argue that marriage and clientship in Buganda were separated by gender (wives or slaves for women / clients for men). Therefore, by leaving court where they were but women to the king, pages became men again.

74We could also argue that the gender of the royal pages was particularly blurred and that however similar, the Baganda did distinguish between pages and wives in the royal setting. We have no idea what the royal reaction was to anatomical women that had sex with other anatomical women inside his harem. The king however, feared his pages would have intercourse with his female wives. Keeping faithful thousands of lonely wives living with hundreds of teenage pages was a major undertaking. Ruthless and spectacular violence did not suffice.

75In this context, same-sex intimacies were also understood to keep the pages away from the royal wives. In 1886, King Mwanga explained to Father Lourdel that “sodomy” was an ancient and useful practice that diverted teenage pages from his wives:

The king then takes me aside and makes the only objection with some truth. Is it true he said that we forbade sodomy? I answered that for that matter, our religion forbade it. The king attempted to convince me of its necessity to prevent his pages to go with his wives; this custom existed from the times of my predecessors the Kabakas. I answered that a good Christian if he practices his religion well is capable of being chaste.62

76Encouraging same-sex intimacies among pages to prevent them from having sex with the king’s wives is obviously in contradiction with considering pages as wives. Father Lourdel mentions this functionalist understanding of “sodomy” as early as 1882 in polygamous settings even outside the royal enclosure.63 This idea does not seem to originate from Europe. The structure of the text indicates rather that Lourdel was borrowing it from the Baganda. With time, pioneering missionaries like him adopted many Ganda thoughts and customs during their long stay in Africa.64 Obviously, none of these methods—including Christian chastity—were sufficient to keep royal women from the pages (and vice versa). Pages were continuously having affairs with royal women and both were routinely being executed on the slightest suspicion.65

77Informed by the Muslim traders about the use of eunuchs by royals elsewhere in the world,66 the kings of Buganda decided to obtain their own. According to Father Raux, the emasculated pages formed the category of pages called Bagulé, “the favourites.”67 Instead of choosing young foreign slave boys, they preyed upon their very favourite pages. Here is how John Kasyrie, Stanislas Mugwanya’s official biographer described Mutesa’s decision to castrate some pages:

It seemed as though most pages were not trustworthy and the Lubiri [the royal enclosure] women were usually unsafe from them. Kabaka [King Mutesa] was irritated but had long stopped the massacres [because of converting to Islam and Christianity], so he ordered those rebellious pages to be castrated. This advice was given by the Arabs. Many of the castrated slaves have survived to this day and what saved Mugwanya was carefulness. [p.205/9] Kabaka ordered some slaves at Bubuga [the queen-sister’s residence] to be castrated, including Mugwanya. Nkinzi Lubuga [Queen Sister] had many slaves but could not trace any rebellious spirit in Mugwanya, and so she informed Kabaka to exclude Mugwanya because he was a respectable boy. She would have noticed how Mugwanya compared with his fellow pages. Thus, Mugwanya was saved by his carefulness.
Although Kabaka was confused and had done well to resist massacring people this action was very cruel. The castrated were noticed by their nakedness. It was not that the arrested were caught red-handed and then pardoned death, then given that punishment. Kabaka chose handsome boys as pages and he accused them because of their appearance saying if they were not punished, they would cause trouble in the palace (Mbiri). Those we remember most who were punished in that fashion were handsome men. (Kasirye 1963*, 204/8–205/9)

78These comments are interesting in that they agree that mutilation mitigated a crime worthy of death—in this case having sexual intercourse with the queen sister, but by extension with any royal woman. This innovation is connected to the new religious context. Since Mutesa had converted to Islam in 1867, he had stopped practising, or at least drastically reduced, the number of ritual executions performed for the royal cult (Kiwendo) (Médard 2007, 371–74). A Roman Catholic, Kasyrie only implicitly acknowledges the role of Islam in stopping human sacrifices, but he squarely puts the blame of castration and eunuchs on the Arabs. But Kasirye then goes on to criticise the unsound legal justification of the mutilations and their tyrannical and cruel nature. The victims had committed no crime, they were chosen only because they were handsome. It is hard to tell if the text is acknowledging implicitly that the king’s real motives were making the pretty pages into sexual objects.

79The carrying out of proper justice procedures was considered very important in Buganda. Mugwanya would have been especially aware of this miscarriage of justice since during the colonial period until his retirement, Mugwanya was the Chief Justice of Buganda. To make thing worse he viewed the penalty as obscene. Other sources, like the Rubaga Diary here, confirm that royal orders for emasculations concerned handsome boys and were to a great extent whimsical, though they were disguised as punishment.

A king’s page having dipped the end of one of his majesty’s garments in sauce is condemned to the sentence of castration. The operation is done, the page dies almost at once. The king learns of it, he is furious, not against himself for having given the order, but against the executioner. He orders at once for the executioner’s house to be plundered and for him to be killed if he is encountered. The king then starts crying after his page […] My page, my beautiful page, I just wanted to punish you and they have killed you—and the king wept.68

80As it is often the case elsewhere in the world, these mutilations were not exclusively intended to provide guards for the royal wives and kinless servants to the crown—the kings also aspired to possess eunuchs as sexual objects. Bartholomew Zimbe was a former page and early Protestant convert. He survived the Christian persecution. He explained clearly, in his history of Buganda, how during the persecution, rather than having his Christian lovers executed like the other converts, Mwanga chose to have some of them mutilated instead:

[last days of May 1886, when the King started to persecute Christians] Nyonyintono came in. The Kabaka knew that he was a follower of the Pope, of the Catholic religion. He was the Muyinda Omusalosalo [the head of one of the page regiments] and was a warm friend of Mwanga so much that he would call him Mr Nyonyintono. The Kabaka asked, where have you been to leave me govern the palace alone when you know you are my second in command? I have been out in the foregrounds Your Highness. Mwanga at this said, I love you very much and will not kill you, but you shall be castrated and then come back to govern with me. He was taken to Mutundwe where men were castrated in the Sekabaka Mutesa and Mwanga times and the Kabaka’s command was carried out. On the following day he sent down to that place more of his favourite boys he knew were following the new religions. They were Andereya Kiwanuka, the Mumyuka of Kigalagala [subchief in a page regiment], Muduaguma, Kisakasolo, Mbwa, [Siméon] Nsubuga Mutuba I of Kigalagala [subchief in a page regiment] now Kiyimba (Ssaza chief of Bugangazzi) and about six others. Of these, two died and the Kabaka was angry and ordered the execution of those who had carried out the castration badly.69

81The sexual aspect of making his lovers into eunuchs is made even more clear in the Rubaga Diary concerning one of the victims mentioned above, the Catholic page Siméon Nsubuga:

Siméon Nsubuga mutilated [castrated] during the last persecution and reinstated to his position of small chief of the pages, comes to fetch a remedy, not to be cured but to get ill and avoid in this manner the shameful solicitations from the King who is infatuated with him. Croton oil being known, [I] treat him this time with pure phenic acid. This product leaves on the face and the body large blackish blemishes that induce belief in a skin disease.70

82Pretending to be sick was the standard strategy to avoid sexual relations, including in marriage. It was much used to protect pages from the king by the White Fathers—even overused, considering the comment on croton oil. The successive attempts in making eunuchs were not conclusive. Though a specialised execution site was established in Mutundwe (a hill south of Kampala) too many of the victims died, including great favourites of the kings and the experiments were discontinued. The victims do not seem to have been discriminated against later since many were to achieve outstanding careers during their lifetime—Honorat Nyonyitono, André Kiwanuka and Siméon Nsubuga were among the major Catholic County chiefs.

Conclusion

83When the different logics at play around gender and same-sex intimacies in Buganda in the 19th century are put together, a coherent social system appears, although its originality should not be overemphasised. What is really unique to Buganda is the nature of sources that shed a specific light on social logics surrounding sex and gender. Of course, the combination was specific to Buganda but elements about royal manliness, about power and gender, and about the engendering force of same-sex intimacies can be found across the continent. This combination was also rooted in a wider regional culture. In the Kubandwa possession cult, which is practised across the region for example, male and female spirits possessed (i.e. “married”) men and women indiscriminately (Murray and Roscoe 1998c, 39). In this context Musisi notes the use by a male healer of their genitalia in treating male and female patients (Musisi 2020, 127). Gender was also the fruit of a recent history dating from the end of the 18th century—linked in particular to the exponential rise of slavery and the disputed re-sacralisation of kingship.

84Hierarchy, power, gender and sexuality were built in together. Buganda was a radically hierarchical society in the 19th century. Sexuality was integrated into the power structure. It was inegalitarian and not necessarily consensual. In sexual intercourse, social domination was re-enacted. It distinguished the royals (Balangira), the chiefs (Bwami) and the freemen (Bakopi) from the deliberately blurred categories of women, slaves and children, with the powerful “male” dominating the subjected “female,” whatever the anatomical sex of the partners.

85Same-sex intimacies were a statement, an illustration, and a confirmation of ideological domination. Symbiosis of sex and power can be found across the world in variations and usually in a less radical manner. In Buganda however, gender roles were relative and varying according to who was involved. The same person could be a woman in relation to the king, and a man in relation to a slave. Kenda Mutongi has warned against over-rationalising and reducing sex to ritual (Mutongi, 5). Ritual and symbolic meaning did not prevent participants from pursuing pleasure and other satisfactions. There was also much same-sex intimacies going on among peers and outside any ritual context, but we know even less about that.

86When Buganda’s contact with the rest of the world grew in the 19th century, its extreme and specific gender categories were confronted by radically different and more globalised norms. As Musisi aptly notes, “Buganda’s multiple means of performing masculinities and femininities were at the core of great misunderstandings between the Baganda and their foreign guests” (Musisi 2020, 116). Sexuality in Buganda was subject to various changes when the region opened up to the world from the 1850s. The Muslim traders and adventurers that reached Buganda did not bring same-sex intimacies; they brought a new understanding and new fashionable sexual practices, with more distinct categories that are closer to the contemporary distinction between homosexual and heterosexual relations. In the 1880s, new and old interpretations of sex overlapped. Sources give scanty glimpses of the same-sex practices in the royal capital of Buganda. Evidence points overwhelmingly to same-sex intimacies being strongly embedded in slavery, the royal page regiments and by extension the widely practised institution of fostering youths.

87Sexual practices seem to have been very varied in the royal capital, linked to competition inside the harems of the large households of the Ganda elite. Homosexual practices were encouraged in this polygamous context to divert unmarried youth from the wives of the chief of the enclosure. The results of this method were insufficient, to the point that the kings of Buganda toyed with the idea of recruiting eunuchs. However, the kings imagined eunuchs as sexual objects as much as fail-proof guardians for their wives. They experimented with mutilation on some of their favourite lovers. The cruel death of many of these royal lovers led to the discontinuation of the attempts in to create eunuchs.

88The new religions, Islam and Christianity, did not just introduce new ideas about sexuality, they also carried new prohibitions and the concept of sin.