THE STORY OF THE VERY GREAT LEGENDARY STANISLAUS MUGWANYA

By Dr.  G. H. Kkolokolo  (Paris / France)

And, who was Stanislaus Mugwanya?

Stanislaus Mugwanya.

Chevalier Stanislaus Mugwanya, K.S.S., O.B.E., M.S.S. He was so famous, that is the reason why is he so famous  with outstanding contribution, the reason why he is remembered many years after his death on 28th November 1938. Stanislaus Mugwanya the Great was a man of very humble beginning, he was one of the foremost Baganda chiefs renowned for his courage and heroism during wars  and for his exceptional intellectual wits as an efficient administrator and wonderful edifier of Buganda Kingdom and of  the Ugandan nation. He was one of those brave men who pulled Buganda out of incessant civil wars  that eventually led to the signing of the 1900 Agreement that led to the creation of modern Buganda in modern Uganda. Earlier on in 1890 Mugwanya had been appointed County chief of Buruuli where he proved his competences as a formidable leader!  Later in 1893, in order to bring to a lull the stiff intestinal religious quarrels that were threatening the ideal of Buganda, the then British Administrator, Sir Gerald Portal, decided to appoint Mugwanya the official Catholic Katikkiro (Prime Minister)  jointly sharing the premiership with Apollo Kaggwa (later knighted by Britain in 1903 to become the famous  Sir Apollo Kaggwa), a notable Protestant chief who on the signing of the 1900 Agreement officially became the sole Katikkiro of Buganda (1900 – 1923) and Mugwanya becoming the first Omulamuzi (Chief Justice) of Buganda (1900 – 1921), and this was in respect of the proposal of the then British Commissioner, Sir Harry Johnson. And from that time Buganda knew three very important  chiefs  as ministers : The Katikkiro (Sir Apollo Kaggwa), the Omulamuzi (Chevalier Stanislaus Mugwanya), and the Omuwanika (Minister of finance, Hon Zakaria Kizito Kisingiri). According to the Sir Harry Johnson arrangement, the Katikkiro had always got to be Protestant and the Omulamuzi, a Catholic. And now,  these three chiefs were later to become very legendary  when the 1900 Agreement made them regents to act on behalf of the three-year old infant Kabaka Daudi Chwa II whom the Agreement granted the title of His Highness  and thirteen years later was to be knighted by the British monarch to become Sir Daudi Chwa II. The three regents acted in that capacity from 1897 to 1914 when the young Kabaka reached maturity.

Mugwanya was to a greater part the infant Kabaka’s foster parent. He helped raise this Kabaka for very many years. He inculcated in him several of his personal gifts / qualities that made the Kabaka a very extremely wise leader. In fact, Sir Daudi Chwa II was one of the first people in East African to come up with the idea of the region’s independence. This gave rise to the birth of multitudes of nationalist movements that started agitating for independence.  And when he died in November 1939 mourning was deep among his subjects who gave him a triumphant funeral at the Kasubi royal tombs where his burial lasted two full days!   

One of the outstanding attributes accorded to Mugwanya was his incessant effort to create that atmosphere of peace and mutual understanding among people.  Mugwanya was a man of peace and he invested his wonderful personality in peace, truth and justice.  He is known to have contributed so smartly to all efforts that  finally brought about peace in Buganda following a spate of endless  religious wars. In this, he had the sympathy and respect of British Captain Lugard with whom peace was arranged in 1892 and Buganda was formally free from this yoke of civil wars. As a great judge, Mugwanya initiated many  measures that formed the nucleus of important elements of justice that were copied in many places around. And this led to the official Buganda Courts Proclamation   of 1916  by which  the British formally recognized the importance of Buganda Courts, hence therefore of the local native courts.    

Mugwanya was equally a very outstanding man of God. His great love for the people  and his contribution to church activities in the promotion of peoples needs in matters of development made him a model of generosity to God and to his country.

Similarly, Mugwanya was able to build a parish on his village (Bukeerere) where he had a magnificent home housing, among other things, a family chapel  in which the Blessed Sacrament was kept day and night on  special permission from the Pope. And it’s this Chapel which  later became his tomb to house  his grave and that of his heir, Yoanna Mulo Mugwanya.                                                                                                                                                   

It’s important to point out that mass wasn’t celebrated daily in this Chapel in spite of the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in it. For his daily mass Mugwanya and family would go to Nnamiryango Parish or to Nnamugongo Parish. And everybody had to wake up at six! On several occasions, late Sir Edward Muteesa II,  then a pupil at Buddo Primary School and on his  term holidays at Mugwanya’s  home, would be one of the regular early morning mass attendants in company of Mugwanya’s grand-children who all would sit on a mat placed before his prie-dieu. And it was because of this early influence from Mugwanya that Kabaka Sir Edward was very conversant with Catholic liturgy and prayers. On one occasion during his second exile in London he was heard singing the Credo when watching a Catholic Church service on TV !                                                                      

Stanislaus Mugwanya’s official chair in the official sitting room at Bukeerere                                       

Faith made Mugwanya a man of trust to rely on in everything. In 1911 he was one of the very few notables Buganda chose to officially welcome and identify the body of Kabaka Mwanga II who had died in exile in the Seychelles Islands in 1903. Mwanga together with his Bunyoro colleague Kabarega had been deposed by the British and taken to exile, first in Somalia at Kisimayo and then in Seychelles on the main Mahé Island at Pointe Conan  in Intendance Bay from where they were recommended to stay at a more prestigious Beau Vallon locality. Mwanga died there on 08.05.1903  following a malady that brought about swellings on his body, and was temporarily buried there in a metallic coffin, in anticipation of transfering his body back to Uganda  as the Buganda Lukiiko had consistently requested. On arrival to Uganda at Port Bell Mwanga’s slightly embalmed remains  were taken to Basiima House at Mmengo where mourners kept a four-day vigil over the strongly sealed casket. Then it was  taken to Nnamirembe Cathedral for a funeral service and then after the procession marched to Kasubi royal tombs where a brick and cement grave had been prepared. Then, following an earlier request by the Buganda Lukiiko, the coffin had to be opened first in order to authentify the remains and also to permit the young Kabaka Daudi Chwa II to have a look at his father who was deported when he was hardly three years old. In the presence of Mugwanya and a few others Mwanga’s slightly well preserved remains were carefully examined and authentified, and young Kabaka Chwa II had an occasion to look at his father before he covered the corpse with a traditional bark cloth. Then the  heavy coffin was lowered into the grave. And Mwanga was thus buried as a Kabaka and in his kingdom!  Accompanying the body from Seychelles were some of Mwanga’s entourage who had been living with him in exile. They included Mwanga’s daughter, young Princess Mary Mazzi, born  to a Seychellois woman in 1901.  Mary Mazzi lived for the rest of her life in Uganda and was  a pole of strong attraction during the canonization ceremonies of the Uganda Martyrs in Rome.                                                                                                                                                 

Mugwanya did very many other things  to show his commitment to faith. At the time when the wave of religious persecution in Buganda was aimed at maiming Christianity he would take into hiding his fellow Christians to save them from the atrocities of brutality.  In 1903 on the founding of the Bannabiikira Religious Congregation at Bwanda (Masaka) he was the first chief to recommend and present his daughter to the Congregation. And in the early twenties he organized a wedding day ceremony for his three sons who all married the same day in the presence of Kabaka Sir Daudi Chwa II and Bishop Streicher. Even in sorrow, Mugwanya looked to God for comfort and consolation. This was seen the day he lost his first son, Kabuusu the father of Matayo Mugwanya (SMACK) the former Minister of Justice at Mmengo and Minister of Lands and Mineral Resources in the DP Govt.(1961 – 1962). This Kabuusu was one of the first Ugandans ever to buy a motorcycle. One day, when on a commission, his motorcycle went out of control, it slid and Kabuusu was mortally wounded. From that time the place of the accident, a junction on the Kampala – Masaka Rd, came to be known as Kabuusu Station. The accident brought about a very profound heartfelt sorrow in the family! It was only Mugwanya’s deep spirituality that helped ease the situation.

                                                       

Mugwanya and some Baganda chiefs.

In 1913 in what appeared to be a real spiritual adventure, Mugwanya, with a number of chiefs, travelled  abroad a journey that was organized and headed by Bishop Henri Streicher. They visited Algiers and were very warmly received at Maison-Carrée which at that time was the Mother House and the official training centre and scholasticate of the White Fathers’ Society. The Superior General, Bishop Léon Livinhac, one of the first group of missionaries to arrive in Uganda, was indeed very glad to welcome them. They stayed there for several weeks. Then they left for Rome where they were very well received by  Pope Benedict XV and all members of the Roman Curia. From there the delegation went to the Marian Shrine of Lourdes in France.  And finally they set off for London where they visited Mill Hill, former seat of the Mill Hill Fathers. They were recived by Bishop Hanlon who had already worked as a missionary in Uganda. He led them to Cambridge University where they  received a heroic welcome from the university authorities who were moved by this visit. They also visited a number of other  academic institutions including a college where Mugwanya succeeded to place his son Benedict Kisaaliita Mugwanya, probably the first Ugandan to study in Britain. And it was also on the occasion of this visit that Mugwanya placed an order to buy  two important items : a metallic coffin in which he was buried, and a  special  kind of generator which he used to light his country home at Bukeerere, and he was the first person in Uganda to own such a  generator.  Before he left Britain for Uganda, Mugwanya was received in audience by His Majesty King George V at Buckingham Palace London.  

                                                                                                                                           
On his return to Uganda Mugwanya received a triumphant welcome. A special tea party was organized at Nnajjanankumbi, one of Kampala’s prestigious suburbs, and was attended by a high panorama of prominent personalities who included Kabaka Sir Daudi Chwa II.  Mugwanya narrated his trip to an attentive public who in return gave him lots of gifts  to express their joy over his return to Uganda.

Stanislaus Mugwanya, so heightened by this trip which highlighted to infinite heights his outstanding profile, continued to serve as Buganda’s Minister of Justice for a number of years until he retired in 1921 and withdrew to Bukeerere but would regularly be seen in his sumptuous Lubaga home which he used to visit quite often and where he would stay on a number of occasions. Mugwanya’s retirement was a thing which was received as shocking news all over Buganda and delegations came to him to request a back down. But now already at 72 and was much older than his fellow ministers Mugwanya felt the urge for a well-merited retirement which the Kabaka, after a lot of hesitation, finally accepted.                                                                   The then British Protectorate Government granted him a pension and a gratuity. The Buganda Lukiiko authorised a service of two local policemen (askaris) and he had in addition benefitted from a labour service manned by detainees from a nearby Ggombolola (sub-county) headquarters.

His last years were a period of spiritual recollection and full devotion to God. He would regularly be seen deeply absorbed in prayers before the Blessed Sacrament in his Chapel. And he was always a joyous host to his spiritual adviser, Rev Fr Joseph van Roojen, of the Mill Hill Fathers, who prepared him for a holy death. A holy death in conformity with that profile whom the public used to take for a living Saint. Yes, Mugwanya throughout his life and career had been very exemplary and this had earned him a special status in people’s daily folklore as a living legend standing for peace and mutual understanding. There was even to this effect two songs  formally composed, during his lifetime, to commemorate him as a grandee of peace and progress in Buganda. The theme of the song praising Mugwanya as a peacemaker predicted that post - Mugwanya Buganda where peace and love of one another will just be a myth!  And the one applauding his contribution to progress called on the general folk to praise Mugwanya as a person who had given his entire life to the welfare of Buganda.  When thousands gathered in Bukeerere village on 13.12.1988 to commemorate  the fifty years of his death, Late Cardinal Emmanual  Nsubuga  moved the congregation in his Homily when he observed to the effect that if Mugwanya didn’t go to heaven then nobody else would go there!   On that occasion members of  Mugwanya’s  family presented to the Cardinal the very dark black tunic Stanislaus Mugwanya used to put on on Fridays as  a sign of weekly atonement  and sacrifice.                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Indeed God had to reward Mugwanya just as notable noble  institutions  were also ever ready to reward him in the course of his great life. On 23. 09. 1912 Pope St. Pius X  awarded him  Papal Knighthood  and was decorated Chevalier of the Order of St. Sylvester, thus becoming the first Black African  to receive such a decoration. In 1914 King George V awarded him an O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire), it’s important to recall at this juncture that the same type of decoration would later on be awarded to Matayo Mugwanya, his grandson in 1956. In the mid thirties Kabaka Sir Daudi Chwa II decorated him Member of the Order of the Shield and Spears (M.S.S.) the first one of his subjects to receive this decoration.                                                                                                                                                 All these glories together with the monuments, roads, institutions that have been named after him, have made Stanislaus Mugwanya a very noble statesman in the region.

Mugwanya’s former chapel at Bukeerere. On his death it became his tomb where he was interred

Stanislaus Mugwanya breathed his last on 28.11.1938 aged 89. He died of old age. And news of his death spread like fire all over the country. Thousands of mourners turned up for his wake. And the burial itself brought countless thousands more. An eye witness said the number of vehicles was difficult to determine as they parked from near the family compound and extended up to a place called Ddembe, two miles away (and this was 1938 !).  Messages of condolences came from every corner of the country and from Europe                                           where Mugwanya was already popular thanks to writings by protectorate administrators and the missionaries. On the day of the funeral  the body was placed in the brass coffin after it had been viewed by relatives, etc. The coffin, on top of which was placed all regalia in form of all decorations awarded to Mugwanya in his lifetime, was then put in the middle of a big shelter specially constructed for the occasion. A requiem mass was conducted. The eulogy was given by a notable White Father missionary, Rev Père Leveux, who praised Mugwanya’s glorious saintly life and encopuraged those present to take him for a true model of perfect excellency. After the service the coffin was conducted in a long procession of religious, relatives, dignitaries, etc. and lowered in the well-built cemented grave in the tomb which Mugwanya  wanted to name Ebweru Teremerwa (death is a must). Four bishops were present, and dozens of priests and religious in addition to religious leaders from other denominations and officials from the Protectorate Government and from Mmengo. Mourners would be seen sorrowfully dropping bits of cotton tufts on the coffin which, in the grave, was placed between four burning candles !!  The burial took several hours due to multitudes of mourners present. Some never even reached the grave! With that holy death, came to pass a legend! A legend that stood firm in the past and is still standing in the present and will continue to stand in the future, in other words, Stanislaus Mugwanya died without passing away! He is still a living glory in people’s  minds! And to the natives of Bukeerere village, Mugwanya is still visibly present in their daily folklore and perhaps in their creative illusion, imagination and hallucination!                                                                                   

A local peasant from that village one day openly told a group of  people assembled on an important occasion somewhere in a Kampala suburb that a number of villagemates claim to have seen, and on a number of occasions, late Stanislaus Mugwanya visibly standing majestically in several places in their locality!!! When I was in Uganda for our centennial celebrations I personally made it a point to pose this question to late Mr Wilfred Kabuusu who succeeded Stanislaus Mugwanya’s heir and was therefore in-charge of  Mugwanya’s property both at Lubaga and at Bukeerere. He replied : «Tomanya !» (You never know!) and he further showed me a script in form of a draft which some authorities were trying to concoct in form of a prayer intention to ask for God’s intercession in favour of Stanislaus Mugwanya’s beatification!