2 - On Fertility & Misfortune

Summary

The Nyabingi spirit is best known to Africanist scholars for the role it played in anti-colonial struggles in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Uganda in the early part of the twentieth century – but in South-western Uganda in particular. Probably tracing its origin to late eighteenth-century Northern Rwanda (Edel, 1957: 154; Hansen, 1995: 146; although cf. Philipps, 1928: 313–14; Bessell, 1938: 73; Hopkins, 1970: 262–4). Nyabingi first came to the attention of the German administration of Rwanda1 sometime around 1907, when Muhumuza, the mother of a previously unsuccessful claimant to the Rwandan throne, drew on the spirit's powers for the purposes of bolstering support for a reassertion of her son's claim. Basing herself in the mountains of Ndorwa, a region straddling the present-day Rwanda-Uganda border, Muhumuza gained considerable support among the local population by styling herself a Nyabingi ‘priestess’. Convinced that her activities posed a significant threat to the rule of King Musinga, the German colonial government of Rwanda, themselves trying to bolster Musinga's authority, interpreted Muhumuza's activities as anti-European and eventually forced her to flee into British territory to the north (Louis cited in Hopkins, 1970: 268). However, once inside the Uganda Protectorate, Muhumuza continued to draw on the support of her Nyabingi adherents, and now became explicitly anti-European, eventually claiming to be ‘Queen of Ndorwa, liberator of European domination’ (ibid.: 271). On 28 September 1911, the British raided her encampment, captured her, and subsequently imprisoned her in Kampala until her death in 1945 (ibid.; Hansen, 1995: 148).