Deceased: Namirembe Diocese Bishop Emeritus Samuel Balagadde Ssekadde
For Saint Paul Cathedral Namirembe churchgoers, who had kept close contact with Samuel Balagadde Mikisesangwa Ssekadde 15 years after he retired as their bishop, the man of God, who was born on January 31, 1944, appeared to be still strong. Still agile. Death was the last thing they expected. If anything, Allen Ssekadde, the wife of the fourth bishop of the largest and oldest diocese in Uganda’s Anglican Community, attracted more worrisome glances. Yet she will bury her husband on October 17.
Ssekadde has been hailed as a bold and vocal prelate who never shied away from a fight. This is why he was approached when Namirembe Diocese’s current bishop Moses Banja chose to dissolve a choir steeped in history due to indiscipline and impunity. Wilberforce Kityo Luwalira, Banja’s predecessor, was overlooked because playing safe is what saw him shoot up the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Not Ssekadde. Even after he had long retired to his countryside home that hugs Lake Victoria in Entebbe, he never kept quiet if things were going wrong.
Took no prisoners
True to form, Ssekadde dealt with the choir debacle in a manner that only he could. Anxious choir members had worked the lines to reach out to him. After hearing their side of the story, Ssekadde boldly spoke to the media. He also asked the Namirembe leadership to reconsider their position and have the choir reinstated. His views in retirement weren’t only restricted to Namirembe Diocese as he recently came out when the Anglican Church was deadlocked over who would be the bishop of Luweero Diocese. The contentious matter had seen a couple of Anglicans take the archbishop to the courts of law.
“Because I am out of the power structure, I don't know how the leadership carried out the process of vetting. I don’t want to go into the gymnastics, but the archbishop should rehabilitate Rev [Godfrey] Kasana whose consecration was stopped at the last minute even after the special attires for the bishop had been purchased.
Whether he will go through the current Luweero bishop, but he must rehabilitate him,” Ssekadde said, citing how in 1997 Rev Can Akisoferi Maguzi had been elected by the House of Bishops to be the bishop of West Buganda, his election only to be cancelled by then Archbishop Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo on grounds that he had been rejected by the Anglicans of West Buganda.
Ssekadde said Maguzi’s election had been communicated to the Lambeth conference—which is primarily a means of joint consultation for Anglican leaders on internal Anglican matters, relations with other churches and religions, and theological, social, and international questions—but now it had been cancelled.
“After his election was cancelled, Maguzi fell into the lake and nearly died. What happened to Maguzi has happened in Luweero. Kasana needs psychologists. It’s not a small thing because this rejection went to everyone close to him. He might even commit suicide. The Church needs to rehabilitate him,” Ssekadde offered.
Such counsel cemented Ssekadde’s status as a ‘Mr Fix-it.’
“He never used to chicken out of any issue. Either he could help you directly or he could call other people to help you following his intervention. And once he made a decision, he never wanted it to be contradicted. He was very firm in his beliefs,” a Namirembe Cathedral churchgoer, who preferred anonymity so that he could speak freely, noted.
His worldview
It is believed that the undergraduate degree Ssekadde completed in Social Work and Social Administration at Makerere University impacted the way he administered the diocese. He, for one, started what was termed the “Bishop’s clinics” in which people didn’t have to make an appointment with him if they intended to see him. All one had to do was to turn up on this specific day at the bishop’s office in Namirembe and Ssekadde would give them an audience on a first-come, first-serve basis.
“I think Bishop Ssekadde, unlike other bishops that have come after him, understood the society. It was through the bishop’s clinic that he came to know what was going on in the diocese. People would turn up and confide in him the wrongs the clergy were committing and once he verified them he would act. He punished many clergy through demotions or even banishing them. Those who repented and were willing to reform were brought back into the system because he believed in forgiveness,” a close associate of Ssekadde said. But not all was well during Ssekadde’s tenure as bishop of Namirembe, a diocese famed for being with a lot of property.
His blemishes
By the time Ssekadde retired in 2009, it was alleged that he was involved in the sale of church land. The allegations were so grave that at one time it was said land near the provincial offices in Namirembe had been bought by proxies of businessman Hassan Basajjabalaba, who had plans of constructing a mosque. However, once Basajjabalaba’s veil had been lifted church leaders petitioned President Museveni, an Anglican, who ordered the businessman to forget that land. The reasoning was that it would have been an ugly site to construct a mosque near Namirembe Cathedral, the centre of Anglicanism. This after all was a place where Ssekadde once ordered a beer company to put down a small billboard erected at the road leading to the cathedral.
Another blemish on Ssekadde’s career as the bishop of Namirembe was that he had attempted to defy the laid-out rule within the constitution of the Church of Uganda that bishops retire the day they clock 65 years. Ssekadde, who took over the reins of Namirembe Diocese in 1994 from Misaeri Kitemaggwa Kauma, always knew that his tenure would end in 2009 when he clocked 65 years. However, when choosing his successor became a protracted battle, Ssekadde, according to sources, decided to hang onto the seat until his successor was confirmed. This didn’t augur well with then Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, who later in 2009 asked him in a letter to hand over the episcopal jurisdiction of Namirembe Diocese. Whether Ssekadde indeed wanted to violate the constitution of the church he had dedicated his entire adult life to remains debatable, but what he made clear was that he was also not beyond reproach.
In his memoir titled Covenant Love, Marriage, Mission Ministry, Ssekadde mentions how he gave his life to Jesus Christ in 1964 when he was a student at Lubiri Senior Secondary School.
“After qualifying as a teacher, I taught in Katikamu Sabamala (1967). When I was working in Kigezi, I had fallen short of the glory of God, entrapped into desires of the flesh like fornication. My fear for the Lord grew cold and thus my relationship with God was compromised,”’ Ssekadde wrote. “ All the Christian values I had been instilled at home while growing up were compromised. I continued attending church for prayers but my heart had grown cold.”
Still, in his role as a teacher, he was transferred to Nakasongola Buruuli Secondary School, where he met Can Erizefani Waalwo. The rest is history.
“Since I was a committed church attendant, he assigned me to be a church usher but my heart was lost in the things of this world. Canon in the long run asked me if I could study priesthood, he felt I was a promising minister. I did not like it but it gradually sank with time. Was God reviving my childhood desire to become a priest? God indeed awakened these feelings within me but my life was in a fallen state. I accepted to go for training but my life wasn’t yet transformed through God’s word,” Ssekadde revealed.
‘Encouraged us’
One of Ssekadde’s students at Namugongo Martyrs Seminary was Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu, who is now the archbishop of Uganda.
“He encouraged us to study more. I went to the seminary with a certificate as a lay reader (Omubuulizi). His inspiration was to go for a Master's at Birmingham University even if he already had substantial academic qualifications. I was challenged,” Kaziimba said of Ssekadde.
He added: “A reverend canon, who, as a teacher by profession, spoke good English, had authority and commanded respect, and yet goes back to study? From this, I too continued studying until the doctorate level.”
When he was born in the Luweero triangle, Ssekadde’s parents, Michael Kobe Kiyingi and Tolofaiya Kyobe Kiyingi, wanted him to serve the Anglican Church and that’s what he did. This explains why he was buried on October 17, in Namirembe’s cathedral cemetery together with other Anglican greats. He is survived by a widow and six children.
