Myth, Ritual, and Kingship in Buganda

This study offers an interpretation of the ritual and history of kingship among the Baganda tribe of Uganda. Using data collected in ethnographic fieldwork, the author provides an analysis of the kingship in its different aspects and in various domains of tribal life.

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This study offers a new interpretation of the ritual and history of kingship among the Baganda of Uganda. Using data collected in ethnographic fieldwork and interviews at the shrines of dead kings, the book overturns the accepted understanding of the Kabaka (the king) and shows that, despite his power of life and death and the elaborate ritual that separated him from everyone else, the king was not a deity, but rather a man who symbolized the state. The author arrives at this conclusion through an analysis of the kingship in its different aspects and in different domains of tribal life, ranging from the spatial organization of shrines to ideas about death and ontology as manifested in kingship relations and folklore.