Cyprien Mutagwanya, a reluctant royal lover (1882)

6The making of “sodomy” into a sin by the Christian missionaries must have seemed a strong paradox to the Baganda. Until the 1890s, missionaries were exclusively men. They lived together and enthusiastically invited the companionship of boys. They entertained very close, even intimate (although not necessarily sexual) relationships with some of their converts and servants. Initially, when they arrived in Buganda, they were horrified and quick to refuse gifts of young women, but willingly accepted boys. After a while, they reluctantly accepted elderly women for cooking and farming. Later however, but on rare occasions, they discreetly gave refuge to female runaway slaves and the kin of persecuted Christians.

7These behaviours seemed most bizarre to the Baganda. It could be argued that missionaries must have seemed extreme, exclusive and radically homosexual to the Baganda. Musisi goes further and argues that Mwanga might even have thought the missionaries were engaging in sexual relations with his pages and lovers (Musisi 2020, 135–36). She implies that “snake eaters,” the pejorative and intriguing common nickname used for Christians in Buganda at the time had a sexual undertone. Another example suggests something similar. In November 1885, Mwanga went into an unusual fit of rage after the CMS missionaries refused to disclose the names of the pages who had informed them of the murder of Bishop Hannington. The king was expected to keep his composure in public. Infuriated, he lost control and insulted Alexander Makckay and Robert Ashe, calling them Bagwawa which Mackay translates as “low savages” and Ashe as “the most insulting term in the language.” According to Father Modeste Raux, the term refers to “sodomy.”4 The sexual orientation of the Catholic and Protestant missionaries must have seemed suspicious for many Baganda.

8However, the confusion must not have lasted too long, as by the mid-1880s it was becoming common knowledge that “sodomy” was taboo for Christians. King Mwanga himself asked for confirmation of this prohibition in 1886.5 Musisi notes how quickly Christian gender norms were adopted by page converts. She suggests that by “emphasizing biological determinism, the missionaries’ gender model upheld the notion that every individual man in the patriarchal gender order is automatically in a dominant position and every woman automatically in a position of subordination”6 was an idea that appealed to the young pages.

9In consequence, with the conversion to Christianity and especially baptism, submitting to royal sexual desire became a sin. It could close the path to redemption which pages in constant fear for their lives so desperately desired. Some pages became extremely determined to avoid sexual intimacies even if it meant denying the king his wishes (Murray and Roscoe 1998a, XVIII). Mukasa (probably Anatoli Mukasa), André Kiwanuka (baptised in 1885, mutilated during the persecution in 1886, and future Catholic Justice minister in the 1920s, witness for the inquiry into the Uganda Martyrs, the “Apostolic Process”) and Cyprien Mutagwanya (also an early Christian and Catholic, a colonial county chief) risked their lives and chose exile rather than a life of honours and the king’s sexual favours.7 Cyprien Mutagwanya’s strategies to avoid King Mutesa’s unwanted sexual solicitations between December 1881 and January 1882 are best documented by the White Fathers:

A young king’s page, whom he uses to satisfy his passions, comes full of shame to ask us how he could extricate himself from this bad situation. If he refused, it would be a case of death. The poor page feels the remorse of his conscience. First not knowing what to do, I advised him to pray [to] God well, then after some thoughts I rubbed his face with croton oil. The King when he will see his darling after the pimples erupt, will believe he is sick and lose taste for him: that is what the poor child hopes.8

10Pretending to be sick was the standard strategy to avoid a sexual partner as we have mentioned. Father Lourdel used strong and very painful lotions to help his converts achieve this aim. This method cannot be repeated indefinitely and unfortunately for Cyprien Mutagwanya, the king was consistent in his passion:

The young catechumen whom we had rubbed with croton oil some time ago to get him out from the unfortunate situation he was in because of the shameful passion the king has for him, found himself in the same situation again a few days ago. Mtésa, seeing he had recovered, called him again, but the poor child came out victorious on that dangerous occasion; while the king was making him his infamous propositions, he repeated with fervour gloria patri, etc… he refused and by an extraordinary fortune, the king left him alone.9

11Cyprien Mutagwanya was allowed to refuse this time. After being rebuked, King Mutesa continued to be insistent nonetheless and what followed is surprising:

The king who had seemed to leave Mtaguagna [Mutagwanya] alone for a few days came back at it again the day before yesterday, he tried to force him to sleep with a Mbeja [Mbejja princess]. Mtaguagna [Mutagwanya] bravely refused. The king does not know what this means. It could be that he will have him killed. He [Mutagwuagnya] came this morning to warn us of all this and to tell us that we might never see him again. This poor child seems determined to die rather than accept the king’s shameful order.10

12This extract leads one to wonder if the expressions used in the previous extract—infâmes propositions and infâmes passions—had anything to do with men who have sex with men. In theory, any sex outside wedlock could be called infâmes by the French missionaries, but given the context in the sources (satisfaire ses infâmes passions; l’infâme passion du roi pour lui; Le roi lorsqu’il reverra son chéri), the same-sex desires of the king are clearly stated. In Rwanda, Sarah Watkins writes that Rugaju was not only the lover of King Gahindiro but also shared women with him (Watkins 2017). It is likely that King Mutesa’s sexual practices included sharing other lovers with his lovers. It is unexpected that the king tried to coerce Mutagwanya into sleeping with a princess (most likely a sister or a cousin to the king, but it could also be one of his daughters or nieces) who were integrated into the royal harem since King Suna (c.1830–1856).11 Royal incest was a fairly common practice in Buganda at that time, but as the kings’ wives numbered in the thousands, it is clear he did not have carnal knowledge with most of them. Since the reign of King Kamanya (c.1812–c.1830) or King Suna, death was the penalty for sleeping with the king’s daughters or sisters.12 Many pages lost their lives because of this.13

13In Mutagwanya’s case, an explanation would be that King Mutesa was testing his lover to see if his lack of compliance was due to a preference for women. But while a princess was female compared to the king; she was male compared to a page. Our categories of heterosexual or homosexual are quite inadequate to describe the sexual intercourse of a young page with a Ganda princess—which might explain why they were so scandalous and unlawful. King Mutesa’s demands on Mutagwanya implied quite a number of varied transgressions beyond sodomy!

14Cyprien Mutagwanya’s obstinacy eventually led, not to his execution as he feared, but only to his disgrace.14 In 1883, after being expelled from the palace, he chose to defect from Buganda, a treason worthy of the death penalty. He took refuge in Catholic missions south of Lake Victoria in Bukumbi (close to Mwanza) and Tabora, beyond the king’s reach. He only came back to Buganda in 1889 with King Mwanga—who by that time had been chased away by a military coup from Buganda and had also taken refuge with the White Fathers. He became one of the major generals during the religious wars of 1888–1890 and an important Catholic chief thereafter.15

The Uganda Martyrs, “sodomy” and subversion

15By the time Mwanga became king in 1884, Christian hostility towards homosexual practices was well known. This led to Mwanga’s growing frustration. Many informants described it. For exemple Mathia Kasi, an early convert to Christianity:

King Mwanga very much desired to commit the sin of sodomy with these Catholic youths because their bodies were very beautiful. But they did not consent because religion forbids these things. So, the king started hating them and made a crime of that religion that encouraged them to deny him what he asked for.16

16Mwanga was also annoyed by the resistance to his royal will. After the White Fathers returned to Buganda in 1885, Mwanga complained to them about his stubborn Christian pages on several occasions. As Father Lourdel put it in the mission diary:

In spite of the polite and kind manner that he [Mwanga] took to make me understand how dissatisfied he was, he was deeply mortified that one of his slaves [‘slave’ is metaphor here for servant, lowly page and subject] had refused to do something, condemned by his [the slave’s] conscience, that he, Emperor of all Baganda, to whose slightest desire everyone bowed, had ordered him to do.17

17Mwanga felt humiliated that that lowly pages dared refuse him. It could also be seen as subversive that the Christian God’s rules would supersede or rival the king’s, even among Mwanga’s closest subjects.

18In the absence of the missionaries between 1882 and 1885, Catholic page leaders at court, such as Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe and Charles Lwanga, were well organised to resist homosexual demands which to some extent included those of the king. Worse, Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, blinded by faith or made foolhardy by Mwanga’s outward friendship, went as far as admonishing the king:

Initially he [Joseph Balikuddembe] was the king’s favourite friend. This Joseph relied on this close friendship to reprimand the king and prevent him from committing the sin of Sodom. Then the king said: “Could a simple servant reprimand me the king in person! Let me make him die!” These words I heard them myself with my own ears.18

19Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe was at the same time attempting to convert the king. Initially, Mwanga seemed to have listened favourably and pondered the idea of conversion. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, however, overplayed his hand. This led Mwanga, fed by slander against the head page by political and religious rivals, to feel despised and insulted.

20In November 1885, in a very tense international context, fearing invasion, King Mwanga ordered the execution of a CMS Bishop, Hannington, on the road to Uganda. Then, as an afterthought, the king ordered the execution of some leading Christians, namely the Catholic Musalosalo Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe (later beatified). This is how Cyprien Kamya (page in the 1880s) recalls it:

Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe slept in the same house as the king did. Seeing that the king committed wicked actions with boys, he attempted several times to divert him from that. This, it is Joseph himself who told me when he used to come to see me in my residence in the capital. That is the true motive that in the mind of the king had Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe killed. But this motive could not be admitted in public that is why the king used the following pretexts: 1) Joseph wanted to prevent me from killing the white man [Hannington]. 2) He also brought me medicine that nearly killed me.19

21Cyprien Kamya probably overemphasises the role of Mwanga’s sexual frustration in Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe’s execution. The other elements are crucial, including Mwanga’s fear of British reprisals for killing Hannington on 29th October 1885. Mwanga had hoped to be able to blame his neighbours, the Basoga and the “savages” to the East, for his misdeed. He suspected Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe of having warned the British missionaries in the capital, and having leaked information about the part played by the king in the murder. His faith in Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe was also shaken when on 13th November, on his advice, the king took some medicine from Father Lourdel, to which he reacted badly. Though Mwanga recovered, he suspected a plot to poison him in retribution for Hannington.20 Joseph Mukasa was arrested and executed the next day.

22However, there is more to this poison affair than meets the eye. In Ganda conceptions of the time, a remedy, here opium pills, was to be accompanied by some proscription. In this case, it was understood by the king’s entourage that Joseph Mukasa had not warned the king that opium pills were incompatible with “sodomy.” In their mind, logically, a Christian medicine should respect Christian proscription—sodomy. Mwanga, ignorant of the incompatibility and feeling better, had fun with his lovers and therefore subsequently almost died (Médard 2005, 84–86).

23The disagreements over sexual access to pages between Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe and Mwanga created tension between them, but it is likely that Joseph Kamya’s memory is playing tricks on him. He is pushing into the past what led to the persecution in May 1886 to November 1885. However, the poison accusation and the immediate cause of the death of the future Saint, Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, were linked to the Christian proscription of “sodomy.”

24The tensions subsided for a few months but flared up in a general persecution in May 1886. On 25th May, King Mwanga came back from an unfruitful hippopotamus hunt, and surprised his favourite lover Mwafu (a young page, son of the Prime Minister Mukasa) being instructed into Christianity.21 He broke into a fit of rage and a persecution that lasted a few months followed.

25Arrests alternated with periods of lull. Christian pages paid a particularly heavy toll since avoiding arrests and hiding was difficult for them. They were surprised by the persecution in the royal enclosure where they lived and were personally known by the king and his closest advisers. Officially, 22 Roman Catholics and 23 Protestants were martyred between 31 January 1885 and 27 January 1887. In the Uganda context of religious rivalry, it is likely that the latter tally of Protestant victims was adjusted so as to not fall below that of the Roman Catholics. Around a hundred people lost their lives, mostly Christians, many of them anonymous but also some of their family and kin, innocent suspects wrongfully accused and also unfortunate passers-by arrested at random as was the custom in Buganda. Others were arrested and later pardoned, or redeemed often after being beaten, tortured or mutilated. Many Christians fled, hid, went into exile. The estates and homes of suspected Christians were raided and looted. Women, children, and slaves that had not fled were captured and were sold into slavery, or held at ransom to be redeemed by their family or more rarely by the missionaries.

26The role of same-sex intimacies in the Christian persecution of 1886 is debated.22 It should be remembered that King Mwanga was in his late teens and was the same age as his pages. At first, two simplistic interpretations opposed each other. One stated that the martyrs were killed because they refused to satisfy the king’s sexual needs, the other because they were spies. As Kevin Ward remarked, no single factor can explain religious persecutions (Ward 2002, 89). The estrangement of King Mwanga from his Christian supporters developed over a wide array of factors. The martyrs were killed for a number of reasons. Wavering loyalty and fear of invasion or retribution for Hannington’s murder were important causes. Other reasons were linked to court infighting—settling old scores, rivalry between Christians and Muslims, threatened older chiefs eliminating their younger Christian rivals, etc.—and Christian radical provocations against the old beliefs (destruction of sacred objects and killing sacred animals, etc.). These reasons have already been well studied.23 What is quite certain is that the final spark that led to persecution was the discovery by the king of the conversion of his mignon Mwafu. That explains why killing and torturing started on a whim on 25 May 1886.

27Part of this debate is also linked to the sources. Thoonen, a Catholic priest belonging to the Mill Hill missions, published in 1941 the first authoritative and meticulous history of the Uganda Martyrs (Thoonen [1941] 1942). He especially insisted on the importance of homosexuality in the 1886 persecution. He noted that there were few mentions of King Mwanga’s taste for boys in the early sources published by the White Fathers, and that Ganda witnesses only mentioned this factor in the second phase of the inquiry into the sanctity of the Uganda Martyrs, the “Apostolic Process” of 1912–1914, and not in the initial one, the “Informative or Ordinary Process” of 1887–1888. This sparked off later debates. The making of saints in the Roman Catholic Church is a very ancient, long and meticulous bureaucratic process. First, candidates to sainthood must be declared “servants of God.” At the end of the following stage, they are made “venerable.” After a further process, they are “beatified” and become “blessed” and lastly, they are “canonised” and become “saints.” In the case of the Uganda Martyrs, they went through an accelerated procedure. A preliminary enquiry—the “Informative or Ordinary Process”—was carried out in 1887–1888 in Buganda. In 1912, the Vatican administration—the Sacred Congregation of Rites—deemed these results sufficient to declare the martyrs “venerable.” A second much more thorough and in-depth inquiry—the “Apostolic Process”—was then conducted in Uganda in 1912–1914, which led to the martyrs being beatified in 1920 and later canonised in 1964.

28Recent authors have built on Thoonen’s comments to contest the validity of European and Catholic Ganda sources on same-sex practices in Buganda. However, none of these authors are historians, and they have not taken the trouble of going back to the original documents.24 Without basic groundwork, only fruitless speculations can be achieved. In 1941, Thoonen used transcripts of both the “Informative or Ordinary Process” of 1887–1888 and the “Apostolic Process” of 1912–1914 but relied only on documents published by the White Fathers.25 He did not have access, as we have today, to the wide array of unpublished correspondence and diaries from the White Fathers’ Archives^.26

29The White Fathers were reluctant to publish on sexual matters. They did write about these topics, as we have seen, but in more private internal correspondence. During the first days of persecution, the importance of the sexual conflict was immediately noted by European missionary witnesses. The mission’s diary mentions this reason on the 25 May 1886 just hours after the beginning of the persecutions:

A young Christian of the Basarosaros called Sebugguao [Denis Ssebuggwawo, one of the Uganda Martyrs], the son or nephew of Katikiro [prime minister], was surprised by the king himself while he was instructing one of his friends [Mwafu the son of the Katikiro and lover of Mwanga, so Ssebuggwawo’s relative]. The king asked him what are you doing there. I am teaching religion to my comrade. So, the king agitated by the Namalsi affair [a Protestant princess who had just committed a sacrilege] and long since irritated by the young Christian children refusing him an action condemned by their conscience, asked for his sword. […] The first victim had been sacrificed.27

30On the same day, Father Denoit also mentions the royal love for boys as a reason in his journal:

Where does this sudden change [the start of the persecutions] come from? From anger stirred up by the hemp smoke. But the anger comes from the evil passions that prevail. The king knowing that our religions condemn them, believes that our Christians will condemn him also, and will not want him anymore. From this he concludes that Christians must be destroyed.28

31A month later in a letter to cardinal Lavigerie, Father Lourdel gives 4 reasons for the persecution the third being Mwanga’s frustrated sexual desires:

The 3rd was the impossibility to satisfy his [Mwanga’s] passions on the young pages, who once instructed [in religion], would refuse him what God forbids.29

32Their comments cannot be explained by the necessities of conforming to canon law requirements. The letter ordering an inquiry into the beatification of the Uganda Martyrs and setting out the first guidelines on the process was written by Cardinal Lavigerie only in November 1886.30 The missionaries mentioning same-sex intimacies in the Buganda capital earlier in 1886 were not aware of the future importance of “sodomy” in the beatification process. Robert Ashe and Alexander Mackay from the CMS both also noted “sodomy” as being the “spark” of the persecution.31 They refer to a different incident than the one implicating Mwafu, that we will come back to later, but the implications are the same. They were Protestant missionaries and had no knowledge of canon law. They likened the Catholic cult of saints to superstition and idolatry.

33The major question raised by Thoonen is why King Mwanga’s taste for boys is so apparent in interviews from Ganda survivors dating from 1912–1914 and absent in the ones dating from 1887 (Thoonen [1941] 1942, 169). Three major reasons come to mind. First, the oldest document is much shorter and much less detailed (65 pages / 525 pages). The format of the first inquiry is much more constrained by the missionaries, the answers less spontaneous and more limited. Secondly, the 1887 enquiry was of a clandestine nature, as the White Fathers had to be cautious in their questions and proceedings while King Mwanga was still in full power. Only 7 survivors were questioned (as opposed to 20 between 1912 and 1914). The third and most important reason is that the survivors were not asked the same questions. In 1887, Cardinal Lavigerie, in response to rumours published in European newspapers, instructed his missionaries to make especially sure the Catholic Martyrs were not Protestant and that they had not been executed because of alleged adultery with the king’s wives.32 For the missionaries in Uganda in 1887, King Mwanga’s taste for boys was obvious and not contentious. It did not need further obscene and embarrassing treatment.

34In 1913, on the other hand, the cause of the persecution was an important issue. Insistence on “sodomy” can be explained by the necessities of canon law. To become saints, the Ganda Catholics had to fall victim of religious persecutions and not of political or criminal affairs. The refusal of ungodly behaviours allowed the martyrs to be beatified. It does not mean that all the martyrs had to be in sexual conflict with the king, only that the king’s dissatisfaction with Christians was based on religious grounds. Many other reasons were also dutifully written down during the enquiries. In 1912–1914, the witnesses were asked specific questions about what caused the persecution. Many insisted that the martyrs committed no crime apart from angering the king by refusing his sexual demands. It must be remembered that the enquiry was very solemn and the witnesses were sworn in with the most severe religious threats imaginable. Most of these very pious Ganda Catholics would have been too terrified to lie deliberately, collectively and risk damnation.

35To conclude, in May 1886, British and French missionaries were unanimous in mentioning that Christian prohibition of “sodomy” was a key element in King Mwanga’s murderous rage. Later in 1912–1914, African Catholic survivors also shared this unanimity.33 The necessities on making African saints may have led to overemphasising the importance of same-sex intimacies, in particular in Thoonen’s book, but it did not invent their importance. Interestingly, as early as 1912, a very influent Ganda Catholic, Stanislas Mugwanya, successfully pressured the White Fathers into censoring this aspect for the Ugandan audience. He did not wish to antagonise the young Daudi Cwa and remind him of his father’s misdeeds.34 For decades, King Mwanga’s taste for boys was explained to anglophone and francophone audiences, but not to Luganda speakers.

36However, if the evidence shows that the Christian taboo on “sodomy” played a major role in King Mwanga’s murderous rage against his pages, it does not seem that refusing the king’s sexual demands was commonly considered a crime worthy of death. For instance, in 1882, Cyprien Mutagwanya was “only” chased from the palace.35 As late as the 1890s, pages were usually flogged and fined for this offence.36 For example, in 1887, Simeon Sebuta, another page who was reluctant to be a royal lover, was beaten.37

S… [Simeon Sebuta] neophyte of the king’s house was roughly caned on Mwanga’s order because he refused to take part in the depravities of his companions. We have had our martyrs of faith, maybe we shall have those of chastity.38

37A few months earlier, the rejected King Mwanga had threatened to murder the same Simeon Sebuta. Here is how the incident is recounted in the mission diary:

During the expedition the young Sebuta [Siméon Sebuta who survived Namugongo and later became a Protestant convert] was supposed to be forced to a shameful act but he refused—the kaouta [the Kawuta, Saidi Lutaya] insisted on behalf of the King—same refusal. The King then said: I am going to shoot him with a gun on leaving or have him thrown in the Nyanza [lake]. “Kale (so be it) said Sebuta” but when it was the time of departure, he managed slip into in the first boats and return without incident.39

38Why murder when the king could just order him executed? He had hundreds of professional hangmen (bambowa) surrounding him at all times. Executions were very common in Buganda, but seldom did a person lose life without a trial. That means that King Mwanga did not consider refusing him sex a triable offence. Aleni Nganda was a small Catholic chief in 1913, he had been a page of King Mwanga in the 1880s. He survived the 1886 persecution with a severe beating. He testified that “this lewdness was shameful, the king could not publicly say he hated Christians because they absolutely refused to commit it.”40 The king dared not officially kill those reluctant to be his lovers for this motive. Whilst his restraint may have been based on legal grounds, it was most likely because it would have been shameful and unbecoming for him to acknowledge he did not inspire irresistible desire and submission among all his “female” subjects.

39Nevertheless, King Mwanga’s reluctant mignons feared to be executed for their refusals and were terrorised.41 Frustrating the king’s desire and angering a despot with power of life and death is always very dangerous and foolhardy. However, their crime was not officially sexual. Léon Kyakwogera, a survivor of the 1886 persecution, claimed King Mwanga considered these refusals an insult:

Sometimes, King Mwanga would call them [the future martyrs, pages of Mwanga] to do wicked things with him, but them they would refuse absolutely. That is why the king disliked them and would tell them: “you are insulting me!” Their refusal to do this wickedness, that is what the king called an “insult.”42

40Disobedience and lack of respect could justify the death sentence, but not sexual reluctance. It was a crime of lèse-majesté; arrogance or foolhardiness, depending on the point of view, which was their true crime.

41Sources on the Uganda Martyrs allow us further understanding of the tensions around same-sex intimacies in the royal court of Buganda. It explains why the Roman Catholic missionaries were more concerned about same-sex intimacies than the Protestants. They also explain why the Muslims kept being accused of propagating homosexuality and encouraging the 1886 persecution.

42Avoiding the king’s desire was mostly important for the Christians closest to the king. It was a crucial preoccupation among the mostly Catholic pages of Kisalosalo, those of the king’s house and latrines, among whom the king kept or recruited his lovers (Protestant pages were mostly in other sections and less likely to attract the kings’ sexual attention). The number of Catholic converts among the Basalosalo and especially among the kings’ “mignons” makes one wonder if the prohibition of same-sex intimacies was not one of the several motives for conversion. It was more than the pages just discovering that the practice was prohibited by the new Christian faith. For some converts, the religious prohibition gave meaning to their pre-existing reluctance to have sex with the king. A number of pages chose to risk the kings’ wrath rather than accept to sleep with him.43 Aleni Nganda puts it in this manner:

What is said concerning the lust of Mwanga, is the pure truth. Those that Mwanga solicited most to do these sorts of things were: Mugagga [Saint], Gyavira [Saint], Welabe [Charles Welabe, pardoned at the last minute at Namugongo], Sebuta [Siméon Sebuta, pardoned at the last minute at Namugongo], Kizito [Saint] and a few others. There were even two pages who ran away to Bunyoro to free themselves of this wickedness. Those two pages are Andrea Kiwanuka and Mukasa.
I am certain that was the motive that led to Andrea’s flight, but whether it was the motive that led to Mukasa’s flight, I am not sure.44

43In 1886, the future saints Mugagga Lubowa (c. 16 years old), Gyavira Musoke (c.15 years old), Kizito (c.14 years old) could have obtained pardon and lived, had they accepted to continue being the king’s lovers (which was not the case of all Uganda Martyrs). The handful of survivors who were pardoned at the last minute at the Namugongo execution site were the king’s lovers. Does their fanatic determination hide that they preferred a horrible death rather than to share the king’s bed? Did they really choose death over rape as much as God against king?

44Among the other pages, notably the mostly Protestant pages of the Gwanika (the royal treasure), fear of unwarranted sexual solicitation existed, but less from the king than from peers and courtesans. The Protestant Apolo Kagwa had an easier task protecting his boys than the Catholic Honorat Nyonyintono. The new religious taboo on “sodomy” was a very marginal issue for older Christians living outside the palace, especially those settled far from the capital. They were away from the missionary gaze and the capital gossips, and were too old and too distant to consistently attract royal lust.

45As we have noted, Arabs or Muslims are often accused of introducing “sodomy” to Buganda.45 Some witnesses are very precise concerning King Mwanga, as explained by Désiré Wamala, one of the most faithful pages to Mwanga (Wright 1971, 51):

Mwanga’s chiefs and especially the Muslims like Mberengé, Kyambadde, Musissi Murwewo liked these deeds of Sodom a lot, because of this they encouraged the king by their words to hate the Christians that refused to commit these actions and to put them to death.46

46Another witness, Aleni Nganda, confirms the exact same thing:

It was the Muslims that encouraged the king to like these impure practices very much. Here are the names of the most important of them. Lutaya, Kyambadde who had Sebuggwawo killed, Musisi Murwewo, Mberenge Senkubuge. Those ones never left the king neither day nor night.47

47Let us first note that Aleni Nganda, then a Catholic page, was unmercifully beaten by Musisi Murwewo and Kyambadde on King Mwanga’s order during the 1886 persecutions.48 These men were major Muslim Ganda figures. They were among Mwanga’s closest friends. Saidi Lutaya was Mwanga’s most faithful friend throughout his reign. In the 1880s, he was Kawuta, the king’s chief cook, the most senior chief of the palace. Abudalakadiri Kyambadde was very active in the persecution of 1886 though he lost his own brother Jean-Marie Muzeyi (who was beatified later on) in the persecution. In 1887, he was Apolo Kagwa’s rival to head the royal treasury (Gwanika) which explains in part his interest in purging the court of Christians.49 Abudalakadiri Kyambadde became Prime Minister of King Kalema’s new Muslim regime in 1888. Sirimani Mberenge served King Mwanga as page in the 1880s. Though he was a leader of the Muslim Party during the religious wars, he was among the first to accept Mwanga’s rule again in 1892.50 Not much is known about Musisi Murwewo. He is regarded by Wright as being a “Pagan” chief of substance (Wright 1971, 21). Both Aleni Nganda and Désiré Wamala considered him Muslim. Most Ganda chiefs in the 1870s and 1880s were or had been nominally Muslim but much like the king, few accepted to be circumcised, give up beer or fast during Ramadan. It is only in 1888, when King Kalema converted to Islam that many had to choose between Islam and the old gods of their fathers.

48These men where consistently King Mwanga’s closest friends and sometimes lovers. In the intense rivalry for the king’s favours in court politics, intimacies with the king made the favourite dangerous and hated by his rivals. To a great extent, what sources are describing in religious terms are intense personal rivalries among the courtiers, especially between Muslim and Christian pages. The rivalry to become Musalosalo is a good illustration of this. After Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe’s execution in November 1885, King Mwanga briefly chose one of his Muslim followers, Bwami Kirungi, to be Musalosalo. The following month he was discovered to be the lover of the queen sister and executed.51 The future saint, Charles Lwanga, succeeded him, only to be executed in June 1886. A month later, another Catholic page, Honorat Nyonyintono, recovering from his mutilation, became Musalosalo,52 a position he held until he successfully staged a coup in 1888. He died in battle the following year fighting the Muslims. In 1886, Muslim courtiers and pages were the ones that had most to gain from the fall of their Christian rivals. Not surprisingly, they were the most active in the persecution.53 This is confirmed by Jacques Semugoma, a Catholic colonial chief in 1913, who was a page in 1886. He summarised the role of the Muslims in the following manner:

Then they [the Muslims] started slandering the Christians to the king. Yet the king because he smoked hemp and liked the ‘actions’ done with boys very much, listened favourably to his great chiefs, took the side of the pagans and the Muslims and abandoned completely the side of the Christians.54

49A specific incident in May 1886 explains why the Muslims’ taste for boys is so often connected to the persecutions in the mind of contemporary Christian survivors. The Protestant missionary Robert Ashe described the event as follows:

[Ashe was given this information the 22nd May 1886 by Tomasi Senfuma, servant to a sister of Mwanga and future deacon] Matia [Matia Gayiya who survived the persecution] who had lately been baptised had dared, though indirectly, to disobey the commands of the king. This boy was the son of the chief Mugula, and himself held the office of Sabagabo in the Kitongole of the “Bagalagala” or pages.
A Mahometan reader, Kawuta [Saidi Lutaya], head of cooks and considerable chief, made a request at Mwanga’s baraza that the page Sabagabo should be handed over to him for an evil purpose, to which the king acceded. Sabagabo, however, bravely stood out against the shameful treatment to which the chief wished to subject him. And it was a splendid act of disobedience which when reported to Mwanga, served to set the spark to the train which had already been laid.
The next day Alexandro Nafumbambi now Mutebe—his new chieftainship—[Alexander Kadoko was an important Protestant chief. Nafumbambi was the 2nd ranking chief in Kyagwe and Mutebe was a chieftainship around the capital. He perished during the persecutions] came and told us that Sabagabo had been badly beaten and was lying in the stocks. And then we heard the terrible news that Christian readers had been seized and many put to death.55

50This affair is intriguing. The issue is not King Mwanga’s lust for a page, but the lust of one of his Muslim friends and a major palace chief. The request is made openly during the royal public audience, which is unusual and surprising. Matia Gayiya is not a mere 12- or 14-year-old junior page. His father was a chief and he was an important head page, maybe in his late teens or early twenties. Matia Gayiya was Sabagabo of Kigalagala, which means he was the 3rd ranking chief of the Bagalagala pages. He held a very strategic position as guardian of one of the royal enclosure gates.56 This incident goes beyond the question of consent or religious prohibition. Saidi Lutaya Kawuta’s unusual public demand was humiliating. The Kawuta was treating the proud Sabagabo of Kigalagala as an object, a female slave or child. His request to the king was not driven by lust only, but probably by a desire for revenge, a display of his manly power to degrade the arrogant head page and gatekeeper. Honour, as much as religion, explains Matia Gayiya’s staunch and open refusal to submit.

51However, beyond personal rivalries and jeering stereotypes, there seems to have been a real rift that polarised pages and courtiers over same-sex intimacies. Testimonies in the “Apostolic Process” give the impression that pages were radically divided on the issue of same-sex intimacies. The Muslims would have been fervent practitioners and Christians would have regarded “sodomy” as repugnant. “Pagan” pages are presented as being more indifferent on the subject—they were said to be preoccupied with polygamy and to fear circumcision. Ham Mukasa confirms the intensity of this split. In 1886, he was already baptised but still took some liberties with the rules of his new Protestant faith. He comments on the courtier’s reaction in 1886, when he was compelled to flee the persecution and was then later pardoned by King Mwanga:

Then several of the men who had wished me to join them in their wicked practices, because I had refused now went and told the king I was a reader [a convert]. These men wished me to be killed just out of spite. I therefore ran away from Mengo [the royal capital] and hid (Mukasa (1904*, 184).
Many people were disappointed to hear the king say this [that he was pardoned], for they wished me to be put to death because I had refused to join them in their evil deeds.57

52What is interesting in Ham Mukasa’s autobiography is that he insists that his refusal to practice same-sex intimacies was not religious—he feared for his health, he thought same-sex intimacies provoked a dropsy-like disease—and he does not incriminate Muslims in this matter (Mukasa 1904*, 186). This implies that the religious nature of the cleavage around same-sex intimacies was exaggerated by Catholic witnesses—paradoxically, most of them had practised Islam before converting to Christianity. These elements would suggest that opposing converts and factions aligned themselves on a pre-existing non-religious rift.

53While not the sole reason for the rift between Mwanga and his Christian followers that led to the Uganda Martyrs in 1886, tension around same-sex intimacies was the spark that led to the persecutions. Rejection or acceptance of homosexual practices seemed to have deeply divided pages at the royal court. It seems that male same-sex intimacies were the norm, and encouraged at court. It was likely to be imposed even on reluctant participants. Pages were divided on the question by taste, loneliness, love, desire, pain, hierarchy, honour, rape and ambition. The opposition between Christian pages (opposed to same-sex intimacies) and Muslim pages (favourable to same-sex intimacies) was structured around this rift (and others). This religious rivalry covered and hid the more varied and older individual dynamics that led to seeking or rejecting same-sex intimacies among pages and courtiers.

54The Uganda Martyrs later rose to pre-eminence especially after the 1920s and in the 1960s after the beatification and the canonisation. The 3rd of June 1886, the day the greatest number of Christians were put to death at Namugongo (close to Kampala), has been a national public holiday in Uganda since 1975. Every year it attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the Martyrs’ shrines in Namugono. The day celebrates the faith and determination of the Martyrs and the glorious resistance of young boys against tyranny. However, the sexual aspects have long been put aside and were not emphasised to the Ugandan public. It is only with the growing literacy in English that the knowledge of this issue has slowly spread. The debates around homosexuality during the last two decades has risen awareness around Mwanga’s desire for boys, but also provoked staunch denial of it as impossible and un-African.

55The persecution did not last, although the threat lingered.58 By 1887, King Mwanga was showering favours on his Christian (and Muslim) pages and recruited among them a “personal” guard trained for modern warfare and equipped with rifles.

A Catholic king’s cumbersome passion for boys and hemp (1888–1892)

56King Mwanga was overthrown in 1888 and eventually took refuge south of Lake Victoria, at the Catholic mission of Bukumbi (close to Mwanza in today’s Tanzania). He repented openly of his earlier sexual behaviour (amongst other things) and became a Roman Catholic catechumen. He respected the new sexual taboos for a few months, as long as he lived in exile in the Roman Catholic Mission (from 17 December 1888 to 27 April 1889). After he returned to Buganda and regained his throne later on in 1889/1890, he resumed his habits discreetly at first, but by 1891 it became public knowledge again.59

57In the 1880s and early 1890s, the White Fathers did not believe Christian obligations and those of Kabakaship were compatible. As Bishop Hirth wrote to his family:

Mwanga himself will remain a slave not to his superstitions, which he no longer believes, but to his passions. […] A negro king has much to do to reach Christian morality. Mwanga has however made some progress compared to his father Mtesa.60

58As can be seen in this passage, the bishop, though he doubted Mwanga could truly become Christian, was not wholly negative about the king. In this passage and the following ones, the king is shown by the missionaries as making genuine if insufficient efforts to conversion. Globally they had little faith in Mwanga’s strength of character (and same-sex intimacies were only part of the obstacles to accepting his full conversion). The initial intentions of Cardinal Charles Lavigerie and Father Siméon Lourdel were to baptise King Mwanga on his death bed, in pericolo morte.61 Here is what is noted in the Rubaga Mission diary in 1890:

The king sends to ask us for a cross and a rosary. He has lost, says he, those he had received in Bukumbi. This poor king, since he has returned to Uganda, says his rosary every evening with all his pages that have been baptised. Let us hope this good practice begets him at least the grace of a good death [in other words: that he should be baptised on his death bed and saved]. But this sad monarch is so full of contradictions.62

59This emergency ritual allows one to save the soul of a dying unbaptised person knowing that subsequent death does not leave time to sin again after the sacrament. Most of Mwanga’s sins, including his passion for boys, could be tolerated and redeemed as long as he was not baptised. Father Siméon Lourdel and Cardinal Charles Lavigerie died in 1890 and 1892, respectively, and their successors were not as pragmatic, nor as experienced. Some even felt that baptism would save King Mwanga from a just retribution in Hell for his persecution of the Uganda Martyrs in 1886. The anonymous missionary writing the diary in October 1890 notes:

It is his passions [allusions to his homosexuality later on 4 Nov. 1890 confirm that the diary is alluding to his passion for boys] that prevent him to choose the side of truth that he sees, or it is the Good Lord that does not wish that the persecutor becomes the friend of persecuted.63

60With the number of converts growing at a fast pace, the fear of consequence and contagion of the king’s bad example also grew. In 1891, King Mwanga’s sexual behaviour became a growing source of friction between him and the leading Ganda Catholic leaders (more than with the missionaries directly). Ironically, royal polygamy seemed more tolerated.64 The great Christian chiefs continued to send their sisters as wives to the king (as well as boys as pages). Both Protestant and Catholic chiefs hoped the heir to the throne would be born from a mother of their confession (the Protestants won the race in 1896).

61Another of King Mwanga’s sins was considered to be hemp smoking. This was closely linked in the missionaries’ minds to his sexual preferences.65 In their mind “sodomy” and hemp were two sides of a same coin. The CMS missionary and anthropologist John Roscoe who taught King Mwanga put it thus:

Much of Mwanga’s so-called bloodthirsty nature was doubtless due to Indian hemp smoking; this vice to which he had become addicted shattered his nerves. The drug had an injurious effect upon him, his moral character was undermined, and he yielded to the worst of passions of nature, while his powers of self-restraint were weakened. (Roscoe 1921*, 115)

62In the mind of the Europeans, drugs inhibited the capacities for self-control. At that time, the sin was not that King Mwanga desired men or boys, but that he was incapable of controlling his “pulsions.” Masculinity in 19th century Europe was all about control. The change from the idea of a “sodomite” to a “homosexual,” in other words, the transformation from a reprehensible act to the essence of a “perverted” person, was an ongoing process in the 1880s and 1890s in Europe.

63As with “sodomy” and syphilis, hemp, like all evils, was said to have been brought by the Arabs to Buganda (Stuhlmann 1894*, 181). Contrary to this belief, hemp was widespread in the interior of Africa well before the caravans from Zanzibar reached Buganda in the 1840s. In the 19th century, hemp was widely available on the coast. Porters from the coast or from Unyamwezi (in today’s central Tanzania) smoked hemp heavily and regularly to walk through the hardship of their arduous journey (Rockel 2006, 146–48). Plants and seeds circulated with the travellers. Caravans may have brought new varieties to the interior. The potency of the drug varies greatly from one sub-variety to another, and the caravans may have brought with them more popular new varieties. Though it was not introduced by the Arabs in the 19th century, cannabis was clearly associated with the Muslim caravan lifestyle.

64It is said in Buganda that hemp smoking was made a capital offence by King Mutesa.66 Actually, it was a similarly whimsical law as the one we mentioned earlier: the law of April 1880 wherein men dressed in a feminine manner were outlawed. It was an arbitrary rule made to produce the adequate number of criminal victims for a human sacrifice. Father Levesque explains this clearly in a letter to one of his brethren in October 1881:

The king has a right of life and death on all and when he wants to have people killed, he gets people caught almost indistinctly or under a pretext, thus I was assured that his majesty was having tied and burned all those that were caught smoking Djaï or hemp.67

65The women captured were probably not executed but enslaved and distributed to the king’s chiefs a few months later.68 The effect of the ban did not probably last. Later, in the 20th century, the short-lived brutal objectives of the law were conveniently forgotten. The law was used to contrast the good, enlightened, manly King Mutesa to his wicked homosexual and hemp smoking son Mwanga.

66Hemp smoking was very fashionable in King Mwanga’s court and among young Christian fighters during the religious wars of 1888–1890.69 Hemp also became associated with Zanzibar and Nyamwezi porters and elephant hunters. Hemp smokers were modern men with guns, which to a great extent defined what it was to be a Christian Ganda in the late 1880s. It became a religious issue after the war. Both Protestant and Catholic missions frowned upon its use and the social meaning of these practices changed.

67In the 1890s, hemp (bangi in Kiswahili or enjaye in Luganda) became associated with a specific category of people; the last “pagan” groups with military might, the “pagan” elephant hunters called “futabangi.” Elephant hunters were among the first and the last to convert to Islam and Christianity. Many of them were protected by King Mwanga who needed their ivory for international trade. At the same time, hemp ceased to be associated with cool young men, but became the primitive habit of the old religion with its trance practices and spirit possession. Hemp in 1891 had become more than a widespread drug with dubious effects, it was the symbol of “pagan” defiance and danger.70

68During 1891, tensions around the king’s “bad habits” (and other political issues) built up to a crisis.71 In December 1891, the main Catholic chiefs decided to act. With the objective of putting an end to smoking Indian hemp and the practice of “sodomy,” they organised a big clean-up of the palace:

26th of December—Bloody revolution that breaks the strength of the hemp smokers party [‘pagans’]. It starts in the Lubiri [royal enclosure] itself, the pages faithful to the Catholic Religion drive out all the Wakafiris [“pagans”] that surround the King and burn their houses. A few men are killed. The king, frightened, thinks it is an attempt against his life.
The Protestant Party does all it can to rally him and promises him more than 50 loads of cloth. The king seems shaken. Eight of his most corrupt pages pass to the Katikiro’s party [Apolo Kagwa, the leader of the Protestant Party is the Katikiro]. For three days while the Catholics negotiate with the king to impose their will on him, the Protestants beat the war drums endlessly. In the British fort and in all the [Protestant] party, protecting the king, who had become Protestant, becomes the only topic.
28th December—our Christians prayed and triumphed. The Rubaga (the king’s sister baptised on White Sunday) has finally convinced her brother. The hemp smokers will no longer have access to the capital. What remains of pagan chiefs in the Catholic Party will be replaced (the Protestants have chased theirs a long time ago, but hemp and polygamy are tolerated as long as one reads).
The king will come twice a week to Rubaga [a hill where the Roman Catholic Cathedral was built] where he will follow [religious] instructions.72

69Here is how Ashe (CMS) summarised this event:

The Roman Catholic chiefs, disgusted with the king’s immoralities, had seized a number of the king’s boy pages, and put them to death.
The king was furious, and at the same time terrified; and it was at this juncture he offered to join the Protestant English faction—not, it will be seen, from any love of English influence or Protestant Christianity, but merely from fear, and dislike of the faction he was now led by […]
This was met by a counter move of the ‘French,’ who suggested the deposition of Mwanga on the ground of his vices, the most unpardonable being his political leaning towards the English!73

70To summarise; Catholic chiefs attempted to chase pages considered “bad characters” from the royal enclosure. The latter resisted; bloodshed occurred; huts were burned. The Protestant forces were mobilised, the British sent soldiers to protect the king, and the Catholic chiefs’ takeover could not be completed. Furious, King Mwanga considered leaving the Roman Catholic Party and joining the Protestant one. Some of his page lovers started changing religious affiliation. Though welcomed by many Ganda Protestant leaders, the proposed religious and political move of Mwanga received a cool welcome from the administration and the CMS.74 The British actors were blind at the time to the political advantages they could gain from the king rallying the Protestant Party, and so Mwanga remained “Catholic.”

71Stanislas Mugwanya, the head of the Catholic Party, suggested to the Protestants that they could depose King Mwanga and install one of the king’s nephews, a child being raised in the Catholic Mission in Bukumbi (in German territory). This offer was strongly rejected (better Mwanga than a potentially pious and staunch Catholic).

72They were stuck in an unfavourable stalemate. There was a growing risk that the Protestant Ganda chiefs might convince the British to be more open minded politically with regard to Mwanga’s religious affiliation. The Catholic queen sister (the Lubuga75) Sarah Nakamanya, negotiated a reconciliation between her brother and the Roman Catholic Party.

73Damages were paid to King Mwanga. He was given more pomp and respect, in exchange for which his Catholic affiliation was made more visible, he agreed to attend church and public Roman Catholic rituals. He was also to give up hemp smoking and his boy lovers, although he was allowed to remain polygamous.

74This 1891 conflict about same sex intimacies in the royal enclosure was mostly an internal quarrel within the Catholic Party. Many of the Catholic chiefs were disappointed with King Mwanga’s religious and political moderation. To be able to rule, Mwanga tried to rise above the quarrels between Protestants and Catholics that had plagued the country since the defeat of the Muslims in 1889. King Mwanga also tried to resist religious polarisation and maintain his power base among the non-converted chiefs who in the 1890s became known as the futabangi (the hemp smokers).

75There was a growing desire among the Catholics for the king to reaffirm his allegiance to the Roman Catholic Party and to show it publicly and without ambiguity. But the ambiguity was not only political, it was also religious. King Mwanga was not baptised and his lifestyle was in many ways opposed to what was expected by the missionaries and the prominent baptised converts. It also gave the wrong signal to the people.

76Inside the party, factions developed. It is interesting that apart from King Mwanga, Bishop Hirth only names three other prominent Ganda Catholic actors: Stanislas Mugwanya, Cyprien Mutagwanya and the queen sister Sarah Nakamanya.

77We have already mentioned Stanislas Mugwanya, the leader of the Catholic Party and highest-ranking Catholic chief from 1889 to 1921. We have also encountered Cyprien Mutagwanya in his attempts to avoid King Mutesa’s sexual demands in 1882. After the victory against the Muslims, he had become a leading Catholic chief.

78A word about the queen sister is necessary. Lubuga in Luganda is usually translated as “queen sister.” She was a half-sister to the king, chosen from among the royal daughters born from a mother belonging to a different clan than the queen mother. She was one of the most powerful people in the kingdom. Some scholars claim Buganda was not a monarchy but a dyarchy ruled by the Kabaka and the Lubuga or even triarchy (with the Queen Mother—Namasole—included). This may have been the case earlier in the kingdom’s history, in particular in the 18th century,76 but by the 19th century the balance of power was overwhelmingly in favour of the king. Even if the Catholic queen sister, Sarah Nakamanya, did not wield as much power as King Mwanga, she was nonetheless a person of considerable power, influence and prestige.

79Stanislas Mugwanya’s leadership among the Catholics from 1889 was contested by younger radicals with closer ties to Mwanga whose leaders were the Catholic general Gabriel Kintu and the Queen Sister Sarah Nakamanya. Cyprien Mutagwanya, belonged to neither faction and his support was key in shifting the internal power balance from one side or the other.

80On the 26th of December 1891, the crackdown on the pages’ sexual and smoking habits was led by Stanislas Mugwanya and Cyprien Mutagwanya. Stanislas Mugwanya belonged to the puritan and most bigoted faction of the Catholic Party, his actions are not surprising. Cyprien Mutagwanya’s actions were more unexpected. Between 1889 and 1892, he was Kawuta, which is often translated as the chief of the royal cooks, a very prestigious position.77 This made him the highest official in the royal enclosure and clearly, he would have been expected to play a key role in purging the palace. Though very attached to the missionaries since his exile south of Lake Victoria after he fled King Mutesa’s court as mentioned earlier, he did not belong to the bigot faction of the party. His sexual behaviour (revealed by his enemies in the party) often put him at odds with the priests, but on heterosexual matters. Contrarily to Stanislas Mugwanya, he was a close friend to King Mwanga since their shared exile in 1888–1889. Cyprien Mutagwanya’s genuine hostility towards royal same-sex intimacies was attested to in 1882. The condemnation of the sin of “sodomy” may have been a key aspect on which they built their alliance.

81This struggle did not benefit Stanislas Mugwanya, but rather it briefly brought his rivals and King Mwanga’s allies inside the party to prominence. To strengthen the new arrangement, Sarah Nakamanya the queen sister married Gabriel Kintu, Stanislas Mugwanya’s main rival, on 13 January 1892.78 Gabriel Kintu was the most successful and feared Catholic general. This marriage would have been a major event if the Catholic Party had not been defeated by the British and Protestants shortly after, and Sarah Nakamanya replaced by a Protestant princess. In theory, before conversion to Christianity, this kind of marriage between the queen sister and Gabriel Kintu, was unheard of. The custom forbidding queen sisters to marry was very ancient, dating even from before King Kamanya’s (c.1812–c.1830) ban on princesses’ marriages.

82The coronation ritual may have united the king and his sister in a royal incest but evidence is contradictory. She was not integrated with the other princesses in the royal harem by King Suna (c.1830–1856). Ranking as a king in her own right, she lived on a separate hill in the capital. Her chastity was nonetheless considered most crucial and her brothers ruthlessly attempted to control her sexuality. When King Mwanga allowed his queen sister, Sarah Nakamanya, to marry, he was initiating a major break in tradition and making a huge gesture of goodwill towards the most radical faction of the Catholic Party (Médard 2007, 517–28). Just 11 days after the marriage, religious wars erupted again and opposed King Mwanga and his Catholic supporters to the Protestants and British. The king’s party was defeated. On the run and in disarray, Mwanga briefly took refuge in German-held territory. Demoralised, he sought comfort once more with his page lovers.79 As a disillusioned, long-time missionary in Uganda, Father Levesque, noted toward the end of the war:

Mouanga [Mwanga] who practices more and more acts against nature, will probably join the hemp smokers or the Protestants.80

83After a few months in exile, the defeated king came back to his capital. He kept his throne but was forced to join the Protestant Party. King Mwanga was allowed to keep only a few (about 20) of his favourite Catholic pages. These naturally included some of his lovers. Post-war politics were very tense in the capital. The court was wholly dominated by Protestants. Fearing for their safety and under much pressure, a number of the remaining Catholic pages chose to flee the palace.81 Four of them were arrested during their attempted escape and accused of rifle theft. This is how Captain Lugard recalls the pleading of Father Brard for his parishioners:

[16th April 1892] Père Brard said that the reason the 4 boys had run away was because of the king’s immoral practices—and asked me not to mention it to the king (of course if I did the king would be furious with Brard and would turn dead against the Catholics and priests).82

84To protect the Catholic pages, Father Brard, who was the superior of the Catholic mission in the capital, tried to convince the British that their flight was neither criminal nor religiously or politically motivated, and that instead it was sexually motivated. They were trying to escape the king’s pressing affection. The “sodomy” argument does not appear in the White Fathers’ internal sources in April 1892. Mentions of King Mwanga’s sexuality appeared before and after, in March and in July, but not concerning the pages’ flight.83 The missionaries had more pressing fears for the pages (hunger, fear for their lives, apostasy…). Captain Fredrick Lugard (the future Lord Lugard) makes his homophobia quite plain in his journal.84 It seems Father Brard was aware of his state of mind. Explaining that the pages’ flight was caused by fear of the kings’ lust, was an opportunistic argument. It did not reflect reality. The White Fathers chose to manipulate the British officials’ homophobia to protect their converts.

85As the number of baptised Christians grew among the pages, the White Fathers overall became torn between saving their converts’ souls and political considerations. This was explained well by Monsignor Guillermain slightly later, in 1895. The new bishop was uncomfortable with the policy of Monsignor Hirth, his predecessor, of turning a blind eye on Catholic pages and same-sex intimacies at court.

He [King Mwanga] continues to show us his trust, at least outwardly, but his Lubili [royal enclosure] is more than ever the gathering point of all the worst debauchee. On this matter my Lord what conduct must be adopted concerning the admission to baptism of the youths presented by Mwanga himself? Monsignor Hirth was quite easygoing on this point. But these young people continue their debauchery with the king, even after baptism and become a scandal for all. On the other hand, it is quite difficult to refuse to enrol [for catechism class] young people recommended by the king precisely because they are in [the] Lubili [royal enclosure]. If the king realized that, he could harm us on many occasions. It is also fair to say that all the young people that I mentioned do not return to their former wicked habits. There are many exceptions. If we refused to baptise the pages of the Lubili, the king would soon be surrounded only by pagans and Protestants and it is in the interest of our Kibina [party, in other words the Catholic Party] that some Catholics are in the Lubili.85

86By 1895 when the letter was written, the Catholics had lost political influence in the country to the Protestants. Sin at court became a predominantly religious matter to them. In November 1896, another scandal embroiled the White Fathers’ converts around the enclosure of the Catholic Princes, Mwanga’s nephews and heirs, in Entebbe. The guardian of the princes, Marko Lwanga, forwarded false accusations of “sodomy” against a rival chief to the missionaries.86 This suggests that the potency of “sodomy” accusations when Europeans were involved seemed to have become common knowledge, in 1896 outside the royal palace.

Conclusion

87Sex and despotism are violent bedfellows, yet a page’s refusal of royal sexual demands was not deemed a sufficient crime for execution. Whilst threats of death occurred, they were not carried out. Instead, such a refusal could lead to the stubborn page being flogged, fined, and/or expelled from the court. It would have been the same for women refusing intercourse with the king. In both cases, non-consensual sex could have been forced on them had the king so desired. The only difference between wives and pages is that women would likely be sold into slavery or married off to someone else, rather than expelled from the palace. It is impossible to determine if the crime was considered too menial to justify death or too indecent or humiliating for the king to admit it publicly as justice.

88In 1886, the underlying causes of the persecution against the Christians had little to do with King Mwanga’s sexual frustrations. The growth of European imperial threat, the inter-generational fighting in the royal capital between chiefs and aspiring chiefs, and the rivalry between Christian and Muslim pages inside the royal enclosure were all more important factors. The refusal to satisfy the king’s sexual demands by a growing number of Christian pages does however explain why, after hesitating for months he, in a fit of rage, ordered the persecution of May 1886.

89After losing his throne in 1888, Mwanga reconciled with the survivors of the persecutions. He joined the Catholic Party in 1889. The pioneering White Fathers were initially quite pragmatic on the question of King Mwanga’s addiction to hemp and passion for boys. Monsignor Lavigerie felt that finding a new Constantine or Clovis87 was the most efficient way to convert a kingdom. The French Catholic Church was staunchly royalist in the 19th century. It had been traumatised by the French Revolution and later by the anticlerical stance of the 1871 insurrection of Paris. This leads to the paradox of Catholic White Fathers from republican France holding more respect for the monarchy than Anglican British missionaries. Monsignor Lavigerie and Father Lourdel realistically understood the obstacles to a sacred king’s conversion, and expected King Mwanga only to go through baptism on his death bed. However, the new generation of White Fathers who replaced them had higher standards and expectations than the pioneers. To make matters worse, the meaning of hemp, closely associated with homosexuality in European minds, evolved in Uganda into being closely related to paganism.

90By December 1891, the Christian parties held power, and hostility to the king’s same-sex practices became politicised. Mugwanya, the chief of the Catholic Party, saw his plan to clear the palace of “sin” foiled by the British. It did not bring the political gains he had expected. In April 1892, homophobia was used again as an argument among European actors to protect a few pages against their king’s wrath. By November 1896, Ganda converts had also started using “sodomy” accusations to manipulate Europeans.