It wasn’t much to look at. Some concrete pillars, some buckled girders, some plastic sheeting.  Beyond it, the compound was scruffy and dilapidated. Old women in trances lay on the steps, naked children washed from bowls, flies swarmed around the matoke and the scent of incense hung in the air. I was in the presence of royalty…

Visiting the tombs of the Buganda kings at Kasubi in north-west Kampala really represents the dual nature of being a Unesco World Heritage hunter. Because I was interested in World Heritage Sites I knew that the tomb of the kings had been almost completely destroyed by a fire (was it an accident? was it arson?) less than two years previously and so was unlikely to repay a visit. But because I was interested in World Heritage Sites I also knew that I had to visit it whilst in Kampala. Such is ones lot!

And I was glad I did. Even with the central tomb (the Muzibu Azaala Mpanga) severely damaged there was enough to see to reward the 10,000 shilling entrance fee (and the fight through Kampala’s notorious traffic to get there). While the site may not have been altogether sacred it was certainly ceremonial and so that entrance fee got us a guide, Fred. We entered through the large, low guard hut. Being a guard is a hereditary post filled from certain clans. Service seems to be lifelong, judging from the age of the guard I met. Fred explained the significance of the site. When a king of the Buganda kingdom – the kabaka – died he was interred in the location of his palace. His successor would need to establish a new palace in a different location and, when the time came, be buried there. And so on and so forth. Kasubi was unusual because four successive ssekabakai, spanning the period 1835 to 1969, were buried here.  He led s through the royal drum house (the Ndoga Obukaba) where a heap of drums (and a large wooden model cannon from the late 19th century) were stored. The drums were used to communicate over distances. Carrying on we reached the inner courtyard (the Olugya). The central tomb stood straight ahead at the far side of a semicircular fenced enclosure.

Fred explained that the tomb was once the largest thatched building of its type. Not much remained to view now, though he assured me that the Baganda will restore it through a combination of traditional and high-tech skills. They possess 3D scans of what it used to look like (and which has reassured them that the bodies of the four ssekabakai, buried 13 feet underground in the ‘forest’, are still in place and intact). The delay, he told me, was with the ancient skills – knowledge of ancient techniques has more or less died out so they were having to train up new craftsmen from scratch.

A touch of homeliness was provided that other areas of the site were inhabited. The women we met were queens of Buganda – or more properly the descendants of queens. When a kabaka died, his widows were relocated to the compound. They then raised their families here. I don’t know what the protocol is with widows and descendants remarrying but there were small children running around and the last kabaka to be buried here died in 1969. The wives themselves had a simple open-air graveyard at the rear of the property. Rather than being interred in an underground ‘forest’ within a large house they had an enviable hillside setting looking out over Makarere University and the city centre.

A word should perhaps be said about nomenclature. The country of Uganda takes its name from the kingdom of Buganda. The people of that kingdom are called the Baganda (or just Ganda for short) and an individual member of the tribe is a Muganda. Their language is called Luganda. And their heartlands were around the north-west of Lake Victoria, the area where Uganda’s capital, Kampala, sits. The kingdom still has some remnant authority, though the level of toleration shown to it by the national government ebbs and flows. When the British established their ‘Protectorate’ over Uganda in 1894 they largely did so on the basis of the centralised administrative system already set up by Buganda. Individual Baganda were promoted within the Protectorate – the British had a love of sponsoring certain favoured tribes or castes within their empire. Buganda was, perhaps, fortunate that at the time the British reached what is now Uganda their kingdom was regionally dominant. Had they arrived a century earlier perhaps the rival Kingdom of Bunyoro out towards Lake Albert would have been the centre of the Protectorate instead. Regardless of Buganda’s dominant position in the new colony, this did not mean that relationships were always good. The second of the four ssekabakai buried here, Mwanga II, died in the Seychelles after being exiled by the British. Ironically enough, the fourth, Edward Muteesa II, was knighted by the British but still died in exile – this time in London - after having fallen out with Uganda’s post-independence president Milton Obote who abolished Uganda’s kingdoms. While Yoweri Museveni later reintroduced the kingdoms it is perhaps of note that the tomb burnt down during a period of unrest concerning the rights and powers of the Buganda Kingdom. Despite the promise of a full investigation, the cause of the fire is still unknown.

World Heritage-iness: 2

My Experience: 2

(Visited Dec 2011)