Alan Tacca
The collective emotional devotion providing the energy that drives Buganda’s monarchy has not dried up.
There is, therefore, reason in the institution/monarchy working to preserve the health and wellbeing of its people, and the people working to preserve the health of the Kabaka and the wellbeing of the institution.
It is a mutual enterprise. When you hear voice after voice closing their various appearances on radio or television with a formalised wish or prayer for the Kabaka to live long, you can be fairly certain that the Kabaka also wishes or prays for his people to live long happy lives.
Now, in this enterprise, we may be pre-Christian and pre-Muslim in outlook, shaking rattle-gourds (ensaasi) in shrines to win for the Kabaka the favour of traditional African spirits. Or we may be of Christian or Muslim inclination.
Either way, we may be lucid and remain alert to the limitations of the spirits. Even of God Himself; who, if you do not already know, is in a state of Divine rest.
Or we may be fanatical and overreach our mortal selves. We must then guard against the usual suspects; the pastor or witchdoctor who wants to exploit the Kabaka’s health challenges and con gullible people that the charlatan is a key player in the improved health and preservation of the monarch.
I have heard one or two pastors claiming a prophetic vision that Ronald Mutebi II would be the first Kabaka to live beyond the age of 70. Another claim is that because of our pastors’ special anointing, their prayers would make Jesus see to it that the prophecy came to pass.
It is a marketing device. If the preservation and wellbeing of someone as central as the Kabaka is in the vista and special influence of supposedly anointed pastors, many gullible ordinary devotees would probably flock to their churches and ‘miracle’-packed crusades.
You can also sell fake products to many British citizens by using a royal emblem.
Religion should not be allowed to use the Kabaka as a billboard. The brand of neo-pagan Christian spiritualism being spread around Africa by Pentecostals is as misleading as traditional spirit worship (kusamira) was 200 years ago, or today.
Two weeks ago, chatting with his fellow Pentecostals on radio, Victory Church’s ‘Bishop’ Mukiibi listed four factors that had ensured the Kabaka’s longevity:
1. He is God-fearing.
2. He is wise.
3. Prayers (by him or his subjects).
4. He has a God-given assignment.
Even as he expanded at length on these factors (including wisdom), nowhere did Mukiibi mention or allude to modern medicine.
As I understand, the Kabaka is modestly religious; he is not a fanatic. For a very long time, he has devoted himself to health issues affecting people in Buganda and Uganda, but his advocacy and fundraising have been exclusively towards finding solutions from the sphere of modern medicine.
He wants his people to think and work in the context of sound scientific knowledge and research, not spirit worship; not even Holy Spirit miracles.
The lesson (or wisdom) from this is that for the Kabaka’s own longevity and improved health, and as indeed all the evidence elsewhere indicates, we must primarily thank modern medicine.
Completely regardless of what they believe in, there are subtle ways in which people of faith sometimes enhance their healing processes.
But in the end, it is modern medical practitioners, their tools and drugs that have generally raised life expectancy in societies that have invested in this science. And we must keep our faith there.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
