Kadoko Alexander.
Kadoko Alexander was arrested for admitting to a persecutor that he was a Christian and placed in the stocks, where he spent days before he was burnt to death on June 5, 1886. This account of his death is provided by Robert P. Ashe — an English missionary in Uganda at the time — who, in a letter titled A Brief Notice of Those Who Have Been Killed in Buganda for the Testimony of Jesus, published as part of a larger collection Massacres in Uganda in the Church Missionary Gleaner of December 1886. When Kadoko went to see his captured colleagues, he was also detained.
The Catholic priest and historian John F. Faupel says he was martyred on June 3 (not June 5). Faupel also disagrees with the manner of his death, claiming that Mukajanga mockingly told him to finish up his Tonto (banana cider) lest his friends leave him, only to club him to death on turning to pick up his gourd. The body was afterward burnt to ashes. Mukajanga was the leading executioner in killing Christians, collectively called the Uganda Martyrs. Ashe’s work is a primary source, while Faupel writes much later. None of them witnessed his execution.
The grandson of the great Ganda (from Buganda) warrior Namunjulirwa, Kadoko was a noble. He grew up as a page in Muteesa I’s court, certain to one day occupy a chieftaincy, and when that time came, he was appointed a Nanfumbambi, the head of the servants of the Ssekiboobo — the county chief of Kyaggwe in Buganda. Ashe describes the position and role of Nanfumbambi and how it had evolved to their time, saying (for instance) that only a Nanfumbambi wore bells around their ankles in Buganda. The legend was that a much-loved Nanfumbambi was caught eavesdropping on the kabaka. But rather than be fired, the kabaka ordered him to wear the bells to be notified whenever he approached.
Of the Ndiga (sheep) clan in Buganda’s clan system, Kadoko was baptized an Anglican/Protestant in July 1883 by Philip O’Flaherty or Ashe. The latter had arrived in Uganda on May 2, 1883, while the former had been the only ordained English missionary since his arrival on March 18, 1881. This makes him one of the first Anglicans in Uganda, as the first Anglican/Protestant baptism occurred on March 18, 1882, and not many were baptized between then and his baptism.
The Kadokos were the first Ugandans to adopt European and biblical names upon baptism, and he likely drew his Christian name from Alexander Murdoch Mackay, the de facto head of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Uganda. In a rather peculiar instance, Sembera Kumumbo Mackay, Uganda’s first Anglican, adopted Mackay’s surname rather than his baptismal name, which Kadoko easily took up. The name, however, appears in records as Aligizanda, Alexandra, and Alexandro. The first is an attempt at Luganda-nizing it, while the last two are foreign variants that show how Baganda struggled to use foreign names.
Kadoko is called an inconsistent Christian in Two Kings of Uganda without substantiating what the author meant. The claim is repeated years later by another English religious administrator and historian, John V. Taylor, in his Growth of the Church in Uganda. Most missionaries saw the baptism of Africans as a leadership development program requiring them to propagate the new religion upon baptism. To them, these were the consistent Christians. For Kadoko, while he had become a Christian, his day job was that of a Nanfumbambi, which required him to be away from missionaries and the mission station for sustained periods. Kadoko lived in the capital and Kyaggwe, leaving him little time to participate in activities at Nateete, the location of the mission station.
Nevertheless, being a Christian in Buganda soon became a mark of death when Muteesa I died on October 10, 1884, and was succeeded by his son, Mwanga II. In the first months of his reign, Mwanga was guarded on his feelings and views about Christianity and missionaries, even inviting back to Buganda Catholics [White Fathers] who had left in 1882. But as soon as they returned, it became clear that he intended to accept none of his subjects from becoming Christians, even if it meant killing some to discourage conversions. At the beginning of his first full year as kabaka, he ordered three Christians to be killed, one of whom was only eleven or twelve.
In the same year, Kadoko was stripped of his chieftaincy as a Nanfumbambi for alleged rumormongering and whipped on the katikkiro’s (prime minister) orders — a one Mukasa who kept his position from Muteesa’s reign. Word got to missionaries that the kabaka and katikkiro planned to kill them and their converts. Kadoko was suspected of spreading the rumor and was dropped as the Nanfumbambi. Mwanga and the Mukasa denied the allegation. Except for James Hannington, killed in Busoga, Mwanga never killed any missionary on Buganda soil. And interestingly, Kadoko bounced back with another chieftaincy.
He was appointed Omutebi, which quickly became his new title and name of reference. The name is derived from the area he was charged to oversee — Kitebi. Here, he, for some time, lived with Sserunkuma Bruno, the Catholic martyr. Some authors say they were half-brothers, while others say he [Sserunkuma] was his nephew. Both their surnames belong to the Ndiga clan, making them relatives regardless. Sserunkuma is also used in Bunyoro, an ethnicity bordering Buganda to the north and northwest.
Meanwhile, Christians continued to be killed, with the climax which claimed Kadoko’s life coming in mid-1886. His lifestyle and personality were partly to blame. First, he loved his beer and saw no shame in moving around with his Tonto-filled gourd. He may have been drunk when he went to see the captured Christians. Second, when he got there, he was asked by a Mumbowa (kabaka’s guard) whether there were Christians in his household and neighborhood, to which he responded, “I am a Christian.” If this is not what the legendary Kadongo Kamu singer Paulo Job Kafeero called “kamwa kabi kassa Siroganga” in Dipo Nazigala, then I do not know what it is. He never returned home.
The two friends he had gone to see were martyred on different days. Walukagga Noah was martyred on June 3, and Kizza Frederick Wigram was martyred on June 5, making it harder to pin down the date of his martyrdom.
On getting the news, Mackay, who was building a boat like his Daisy for Mwanga, rushed to see him, hoping to talk him out of killing Christians, but he was late. Christians, however, continued to be killed throughout 1886 and 1887 as Mwanga said one thing to missionaries but did another in their absence. In early 1888, believing that they were next, Muslims supported by Christians dethroned him.
Kadoko, like his colleagues, was a victim of an emerging revolution that they may not have noticed by even Mwanga. He is recognized as a martyr in the Church of Uganda.
Postscript
O’Flaherty left Uganda at the end of 1885, Ashe in 1886, and Mackay, who never returned to Europe since arriving in 1878, was banished from Buganda in 1887. His departure was conditioned on another missionary replacing him. E. Cyril Gordon, James Hannington’s nephew, stepped up to the challenge, though R. H. Walker soon joined him in July 1887. Mackay settled in Usambiro (present-day Tanzania), where he suddenly died on February 8, 1890.
Interestingly, the exiled Mwanga wrote to Mackay in Usambiro a year earlier, begging for help to reclaim his throne. The rare letter authored on June 25, 1889, is reproduced verbatim below.
“BULINGUGE, June 25th, 1889.
To MR. MACKAY,
I send very many compliments to you and to Mr. Gordon.
After compliments, I, Mwanga, beg of you to help me. Do not remember bygone matters. We are now in a miserable plight, but if you, my fathers, are willing to come and help to restore me to my kingdom, you will be at liberty to do whatever you like.
Formerly I did not know God, but now I know the religion of Jesus Christ. Consider how Kalema has killed all my brothers and sisters; he has killed my children, too, and now there remain only we two princes [ Kalema and himself]. Mr. Mackay, do help me; I have no strength, but if you are with me, I shall be strong. Sir do not imagine that if you restore Mwanga to Buganda he will become bad again. If you find me become bad, then you may drive me from the throne; but I have given up my former ways, and I only wish now to follow your advice.
I am your friend,
(Signed) MWANGA.”
Mwanga was helped back to the throne in October 1889 as Gordon and Walker picked him up from Bulingugwe and proceeded with him to the capital as Kaggwa Apollo (later Sir) led a combined force of exiled Christians who had earlier left Kabula, Ankole, to drive Kalema out of Buganda. Kalema, the only Muslim kabaka in Buganda’s history, sustained injuries from which he died shortly after reaching Bunyoro, where he and his followers sought refuge.
The period from when Mwanga first assumed the throne to his first dethronement was also the last independent reign of a kabaka of Buganda. While Mwanga regained his crown in 1889, he never regained the same kabaka-ship he inherited from his father, Muteesa I.
Bibliography
Ashe, Robert P. Two Kings of Uganda. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1890.
Faupel, John Francis. African Holocaust; New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1962.
Taylor, John V. The Growth of the Church in Buganda: An Attempt at Understanding. London: SCM Press, 1979.
