Lugya Bbosa Tabula. He claims to be the rightful head of the Ndiga clan. PHOTO | FILE
When the Ndiga clan head, Daniel Bbosa Kakeedo, was assassinated on February 25, many thought the real mastermind(s) would never be apprehended. Yet, at the crime scene, there was an indication that this was an ugly climax of a clan wrangle. For one, the assailants, riding on a motorcycle, were almost immediately identified as belonging to the Ndiga clan.
While Enock Serunkuuma did not survive the wrath of the mob that descended on him, Noah Lugya lived to die another day. The information he and other suspects—including Milly Naluwenda, the secretary of Kisekwa, Buganda’s traditional court—furnished the police would prove vital.
In his dissertation titled “Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Collective Wellbeing in Buganda”, Neil Kodesh explains that the Kisekwa court restored the Kabaka after the shackles were taken off the kingdom in 1993.
The Kisekawa court is responsible for hearing clan leadership disputes. The wrangle of the leadership of the Ndiga clan has dragged on for nearly 480 years. The court moved to end the wrangles when it nullified Bbosa’s leadership after evidence was presented that he wasn’t the rightful holder of the position.
The court, Kodesh writes, has consistently ruled that those who lead clans are picked on grounds of ancestry, not capabilities. Kodesh gives an example of a petition that was brought by elders in the Crow (Namungoona) clan. Therein they wanted to have the clan’s young leader dismissed on grounds of disrespect and offensive behaviour. The court, however, dismissed the petition on the grounds that “in Ganda clan traditions, the clan head is not chosen for his capabilities but rather according to his ancestry (Obuzaale).”
“Throughout its rulings, the court followed the guiding principle that all appointments must follow the proper hereditary line of inheritance. And its members continuously stressed the significance of proving one’s ancestry,” Kodesh writes in his thesis, adding: “The importance the court attached to a person’s ability to demonstrate his ancestry through knowledgeable- and widely sanctioned presentation of the burial sites located on the clan’s Butaka (estates) illustrates how control over the discourse surrounding ancestral graves remains a critical component of establishing authority over clan networks.”
Ndiga standoff
In the Ndiga clan case, it was thought the ruling delivered by the Kisekwa panel that included Joseph Kateregga, Wilson Ssentoogo, Lubega Ssebende, Deogratious Kasozi, Jamil Ssewanyana, George Makumbi, and Samuel Walusimbi would end the leadership dispute. The aforesaid dispute came up after a section of the Ndiga clan members questioned the authenticity of the clan head known by the title of Lwomwa or Nnamusota. They also questioned the process through which the clan heads have been chosen for over four centuries.
Lwomwa Bbosa appealed to Kabaka Mutebi, who is the final interpreter of Ganda customs and norms. To date, the Kabaka has never given his judgement; something that annoyed Lugya Bbosa Tabula, who was fingered by Lugya and others as the mastermind of Lwomwa Bbosa’s killing. Tabula had led the efforts to overturn Bbosa’s leadership, accusing him of wrongfully holding the office. Tabula also took exception to the fact that Bbosa had disrupted the clan leadership by installing a head in a way contrary to the Buganda culture.
Tabula claimed that the leadership of the clan was supposed to be in the hands of the descendants of Kamya Tabula, a son of the first clan head. He added that more than 400 years ago, Kamya Tabula was supposed to take over clan leadership after his father Lwomwa Kalyesubula, but, due to his infancy, guardians, including Sserunkuuma of Mpomi, Namusota of Maziba, Luwanga of Mpomi, and Ssemiti of Buyonga Mawokota were chosen to administer the clan on a rotational basis until the infant Kamya reached maturity.
Tabula alleged that these guardians instead chose to retain the clan leadership and their descendants have held it on a rotational basis to date. This, in his assessment, has denied a chance to the rightful heirs while stamping out all calls to return the leadership to the Tabula descendants.
No regrets
These are the claims that Tabula repeated when he was this past week charged at the Buganda Road Court with being the mastermind of Bbosa’s assassination.
“I killed [Bbosa] because I’m fighting for what is rightfully mine. I’m fighting just like the Kabaka fought for the seat of his forefathers,” Tabula, a peasant from Mpigi, said.
He also accused Kabaka Mutebi of not delivering justice contrary to the oath he took in 1993 when he was crowned at Naggalabi, Buddo, Wakiso District.
“You promised to deliver justice as the head of all clan leaders. You have given clan leadership to people who are selling clan estates. I would never have done such a thing. I will continue to fight for what’s rightfully mine even when I go to prison,” Tabula fumed.
Tabula’s dig comes after a showdown that pitted some clan leaders against the Buganda establishment. At the centre of the showdown was a dispute over the handling of the health of the Kabaka. After, Kabaka Mutebi came out to make it clear that it was not the clan leaders who put him on the throne. The Kabaka said there are special clan chiefs who play a key role in the coronation process.
“The Kabaka rules over the kingdom with the help of the Katikkiro. The Kabakahas appointed and the Kabaka has no vice-regent,” Kabaka Mutebi said.
Offence taken
The Kabaka’s rather emotional speech came after a group of clan chiefs commonly known as Bataka (custodians of the land), without seeking permission, decided to visit him in Namibia where he was receiving treatment. The Bataka led by Kyaddondo Kasirye Mbugeeramula, the leader of the Nvuma clan, were embarrassed by not just the Kabaka refusing to give them an audience but also the Namibian police, who stopped them from moving around the country.
The Bataka have been at loggerheads with the Mengo establishment after their move to seek financial help from President Museveni, which has been interpreted as a move to undermine the monarchy, was thwarted.
“You have to be careful with people who are having meetings which we don’t know about. The intention is to weaken the monarchy and we aren’t going to allow it,” said Katikkiro (prime minister) Charles Peter Mayiga.
Last year, former Buganda Kingdom minister, now turned Museveni loyalist Joyce Nabbosa Ssebugwawo, delivered a group of Bataka to State House for a meeting with President Museveni. The meeting was rationalised on the grounds that there was a need to restore a connection with the Bataka, three decades after the kingdom’s restoration, following its dissolution by Milton Obote in 1967. It has since emerged that Ms Ssebugwawo, also the junior Information, Communication Technology and National Guidance minister, and acting as Mr Museveni’s intermediary, gave the Bataka money they used to procure land just near the Kabaka’s palace in Mengo.
Although they are held in high esteem, the Bataka were undercut by the controversial 1900 Buganda Agreement. They were excluded from the governance structure of the Buganda Kingdom.
In the agreement, each clan was allotted a piece of land as its burial ground—known as Butaka—and this clan land was sacred as it was not to be controlled by the Kabaka but by the Bataka, who managed it on behalf of their clans. On the other hand, chiefs and other notables, in the agreement, were given freehold land, but the Bataka were left out in the cold as their rights were ignored.
In 1921, the Bataka protested, telling the colonial government that the land in the 1900 Agreement had created a cocoon of people with huge chunks of land whilst the rest had nothing.
“Even the Kabaka (Daudi Chwa) agreed that many Bataka had been dispossessed by the 1900 land allocation, yet both the Kabaka and the protectorate officials agreed that it would be impossible to undo the allocation and thus the Bataka nursed their grievances without any hope of redress,” Sam Mayanja, the junior Lands minister, who has extensively researched about land tenure system in Buganda, said.
