The Masque of Africa_ Glimpses of African Belief - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,13
exposed roots of trees planted beyond the eucalyptus.
At the top of the zigzagging path was the first part of the formal, religious shrine. It looked modest: a low cave in the rock, not going in very deep, where there were clay bottles, spears, and a few baskets with offerings. The guide said that eggs were the standard offerings. A python lived in the little cave and came from time to time to eat the eggs. I could see no sign of the python’s passage into or out of the cave.
We were on the path to the shrine hut. It was hidden by trees, but there was no diviner present that morning and no one volunteered to take us higher. When the diviner was present there would of course be fees. But we were only visitors; we had no needs that called for a diviner’s attention. We didn’t have questions for the oracle of the waterfall; and I felt we shouldn’t intrude any more.
Later I learned that the shrine—possibly only the shrine hut—had been burnt down more than once by Christians who, extraordinarily, were claiming this ancient site for themselves. A high man of the church had come to the shrine and cleansed it of its ancient spirits. To get rid of spirits, therefore, the church had to acknowledge that they existed. And, to add to the confusion, there was a signboard (close to the footbridge across the pool) that appeared to make a legal claim to the place in the name of the Kabaka Foundation.
It was time to go. And time to pay. The guide had to be paid for attending, and for helping me up the slippery path over the exposed tree roots by the eucalyptus. And when we got to the iron gate there was a further charge, for entering. It would have been like that, too, at the oracles in the classical word. The world always had its dues.
Later there were Prince Kassim’s words about the sacrifices of Mukono district and the sacrifices especially at the Sezibwa waterfall.
I had asked about the burning down of the shrine there. It seemed to me a strange thing to have happened at a place sanctified by the visit of Kabaka Mwanga in the 1880s.
Prince Kassim said, “The shrine was burnt because it is a place where a lot of human sacrifice was going on. Three months ago they found a body of a young child very mutilated.”
As always, there were many sides to the sacred.
PRINCE KASSIM stood for an important segment of the Ugandan jigsaw. He was a prince of the royal house of Buganda and was related to the Kabakas. At the same time, by this same royal descent, but from the Muslim side of Mutesa I, he was the Muslim leader of Uganda.
He said, “It is true that the foreign religions took over the command of the society. They converted the leaders and the flock followed. They did it by putting up institutions of education where the young were taught that African gods were many and they required animal and human sacrifice. I am not an authority on traditional religion. I don’t know where traditional religion begins and voodoo starts, but I do know that both are entwined. The Kabaka was head of traditional religion in the old days, but he abdicated in favour of the Anglican church, and is now seen as the head of the church here. My own attitude is that the power of traditional religion is myth and superstition. Because of my educational background I have been told it is a pack of lies. I grew up comfortable with the idea of one God. The Arabs came to Kabaka Sunna’s court for ivory and slaves, and according to our history an Arab slaver called Ibrahim Battuta challenged Sunna’s brutality to his subjects. He told the king he could not behave in this brutal way to his subjects as there was life after death and accountability. The king who was a god in his own right was surprised, and fascinated that there was life after death. Before Sunna there was a belief that death was final and one just went in to the spirit world. They broke the king’s jaw, to make the king’s ghost powerless, and he simply went into the void. The saying that ‘he has dropped his jaw’ meant that the king was dead. Many things happened afterwards. The religious wars from 1888 to 1894 turned Bagandan society upside down.”