Royal wedding: Our best wishes

This newspaper offers hearty congratulations to the Isebantu and Inhebantu of Busoga on their wedding day that was successfully staged at Christ’s Cathedral Bugembe in Jinja City. We also send best wishes to His Majesty William Gabula Nadiope IV and Her Royal Highness Jovia Mutesi for a long and happy married life together.

Evidently, the royal couple and their relatives can look back on the colourful event with nothing but happiness. While royal weddings are renowned for the theatre that is packed in them, it is also always instructive to cut through this as well as the cultural meaning and historical weight that they bring forth. 

The royal wedding brought together cultural leaders from Buganda, Bunyoro, Tooro, and Bugisu, to mention but four, highlighting the potential of such events to bring together rather than tear our 61-year-old nation apart. 

This, we believe, is vitally important given the inevitable, if slightly divisive, conversation the country has recently been holding around sharing the proverbial national cake.

Given that Busoga Kingdom now has a relatively young royal couple at its helm, it will be fascinating to see if the monarchy evolves into the mid-21st Century on their watch. 

We might have not gotten a royal kiss at the function, but the need for our cultural institutions to adapt to changes in the world (and they are not few) will be of great utility; certainly not to their detriment.

Traditionally, queens in this part of the world played what passed for insignificant roles. They were there to be seen; not heard. 

This has changed, markedly, with the voice of Busoga’s first Inhebantu—Lady Alice Muloki—as well as that of the current Nnabagereka of Buganda—Sylvia Nagginda—anything but muted. 

They spotlighted (and, in the case of the Nnabagereka, continue to do so) different causes, empowering the marginalised along the way.

For now, there is little to work with so as to hazard a guess as to what role Busoga’s young royal couple intend to play in their kingdom and possibly beyond. We nevertheless join their subjects in sharing a sense of the future, of renewal and even of optimism. 

The November 18’s ceremony was not short on glamour, colour and crowds. It did cause great pleasure and was widely enjoyed by royals well-wishers who took in the atmosphere, first, in Bugembe and, later, at Igenge Hill. Its wider significance will continue to unfold as the young couple mould the Igenge palace according to their tastes and preferences. We wish them every good fortune in, hopefully, the several years ahead.