Kings and traditional chiefs ruled pre-independence Africa for thousands of years, wielding enormous power. But today, through revolutions, military coups and the birth of democratic regimes, they have been replaced as heads of state across the continent, their roles largely confined to religious and cultural activities. They might settle land matters or minor local disputes, but they have no real political power, and no government support in the form of taxation or other subsidies. In some countries, people appear to have forgotten that the kings even exist. A network of these monarchs has been demanding more privileges and benefits, including constitutional recognition. Can we learn from the forgotten kings of Africa? And should they have any recognition at all in the continent today?
Recently, I visited the Nabongo Cultural Centre in Kenya. Nabongo translates as “king” in the Luhya language. The centre was opened in 2008 to remember and celebrate the history of the Wanga Kingdom, which is over a thousand years old. The kingdom was made up of the Luhya people, a Bantu ethnic group, which originally migrated from Egypt through Sudan and settled in Kampala, now the largest city in Uganda. Due to a family feud, one of the princes later fled to Kenya – it was there that the Wanga Kingdom was formed.
At the height of its wealth and influence, the kingdom’s lands covered Jinja in eastern Uganda as well as western Kenya, through Nyanza to Naivasha, near Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi. King Mumia I ruled over this period, ascending to the throne in 1882. He held unimaginable power. As king, he was commander-in-chief, and the final authority on social, criminal and civil cases throughout the vast Wanga territory. According to legend, he wore copper bracelets that possessed magical powers and could, if he so wished, cause the death of a person.
The current King of Wanga, his grandson, King Peter Mumia II, has no power, privilege or government support. We talked over the phone, as the 67-year-old was busy with the small businesses from which he earns a living. “I worked as an accountant and later a sales manager, for 30 years,” he said. “That is how I was able to feed and educate my children. The previous kings received contributions from the citizens, but all is gone.”
Peter Mumia II built the Nabongo Cultural Centre with financial assistance from the Mumia Sugar Company, to honour the memory of the kingdom and of his grandfather. It’s located in Mumias, a small town in Kakamega County that was once the capital of Wanga.
The centre houses a modern library and museum, along with a traditional Wanga homestead and a mausoleum where four Wanga monarchs are buried. As I drove there, I stopped a young man riding a bicycle to ask him for directions. The young man was a university student who lived nearby, but he hardly knew anything about the current king of Wanga. He had only heard of his grandfather, the great King Mumia I. “I learned about the kingdom in high school history, that there was a powerful king called Mumia I,” he said. “But I do not know what happened after independence.”
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The Wanga kingdom lost influence during the British colonial period. At first, Nabongo Mumia was a canny operator when it came to his relationship with the western world. He was the first monarch to receive Europeans in pre-colonial Kenya – among them the Scottish geologist and explorer Joseph Thomson and the English Anglican missionary Bishop James Hannington. Thomson brought King Mumia a British flag and king’s attire, both of which now reside at the Nabongo Cultural Centre.
“The British later gave him a car, followed by guns,” said Beatrice Baraza, the centre administrator. “He was friendly to Europeans, long before Kenya became a colony. King Mumia was the first African in Kenya to own a bicycle.”
After the death of Queen Victoria, he even accepted an invitation to attend the coronation of King Edward VII. But he only ever got as far as the coastal city of Mombasa. His Arab and Swahili friends warned him that if he went further, the British would hold him captive – as they had done with the king of Buganda who was captured in 1899 and exiled to the Seychelles.
While the Wanga kingdom’s influence waned during King Mumia I’s reign, the big blow came after his death with the independence of Kenya in 1963. The Kenyan politicians who negotiated the nation’s new constitution excluded the monarch. “They were of the view that having a monarch in a democratic state would create divided loyalty in the citizens,” Peter Mumia II explained. “That is how my kingdom was left out without legal recognition, support from the state or the people.”
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Wanga is not the only African kingdom at risk of being forgotten. The Buganda Kingdom of Uganda was one of the largest and most respected in east Africa. As with Kenya, Ugandan independence in 1962 brought about a sharp decline in the kingdom’s power. In 1963, the first prime minister of the country, Milton Obote, appointed the king, Sir Kabaka Mutesa II, as ceremonial president. But three years later he changed his mind, suspending the constitution and removing the king.
That same year, Obote’s soldiers attacked the king’s palace. He escaped to Burundi and was later granted exile in London, where he died in 1969 from alcohol poisoning in his Bermondsey flat. There are allegations that he was poisoned by Obote’s secret agents. The prime minister then passed a new constitution abolishing kingdoms and creating one unitary state of Uganda. In 1993, the Ugandan government restored kingdoms – but only for cultural purposes. As in Kenya and elsewhere on the continent, monarchs in Uganda have no political powers.
The current King of Buganda, Muwenda Mutebi II, is a member of the Forum of African Traditional Leaders, a group which is lobbying the African Union to recognise and support traditional rulers like themselves. Peter Mumia II is the treasurer of the group and hosted the 2018 forum at the Nabongo Cultural Centre. The forum was the brainchild of the former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi, who launched the group in 2008 and, as leader, gave himself the title “King of Kings”.
Peter Mumia II said the group’s demand for constitutional inclusion is not about returning absolute political powers, but is instead about seeking some recognition of the fact that they are symbols of unity and authority. “I have visited all African countries as a king and treasurer of the Kings’ Forum,” he said. “There are only a few countries in Africa where traditional rulers are not recognised in law. They include Kenya, Tanzania and Angola. We, as a [group], are lobbying to ensure that the African Union states change their constitutions to include us.”
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Such change looks unlikely. Joseph Kimani, a Nairobi-based lawyer, noted that the African Union has no power to compel member states to change their constitutions in order to include monarchies. It can only pass the idea to the members for them to decide independently. In Kenya, constitutional change would require a national referendum. “What people want in Africa is more democracy and not monarchies,” he said. “Calling for a referendum to introduce monarchies in a constitution will be like a referendum to re-introduce colonialism.”
Some kings are also lobbying for more government funding and benefits, so that they can concentrate on what many of the Forum’s members still believe are their kingly duties – including officiating at ceremonies and settling disputes over marital, inheritance, burial and land matters, in accordance with traditional laws.
But the African population today believes in multi-party democracy. There is little appetite for granting monarchs more funding or rights. “Our heroes who fought for independence are not receiving any money from the state,” said Simon Wanyama, a retired history lecturer. “The same should apply to the kings.”
The African kingdoms, their past power and subsequent decline, are worth remembering as part of the history of the continent. But traditional kings and chiefs have no space in the modern democratic age and deserve no privileges or benefits of any kind. In fact, there is an argument that those receiving state support should have this redirected to other priorities for national development, such as education and infrastructure.
While the great African monarchies should not be forgotten, the kings of old, with their hereditary and unaccountable power, have no place in contemporary Africa.
This article is from the New Humanist winter 2020 edition. Subscribe today.
