But save for the new beautiful fence made of reinforced reeds and the mainframe of the hut-like mausoleum, the tombs are yet to regain their proud spot in Kampala’s skyline.
Now, the kingdom at Mengo assures Ugandans and aspiring tourists that the royal tombs shall be up and running in the next 18 months, having finished the cultural bottlenecks that could not be circumvented in the restoration process.
Last week Katikkiro Charles Peter Mayiga inspected the site’s ongoing works, and said the tombs are finally ready to be thatched as one of the final stages of their restoration.
“I’m here today with my colleagues to inform Buganda that we are embarking on the stage of thatching the tomb’s roof. That’s what is next. The first stages and cultural rituals have been completed, and now we are focusing on the roof. But this is not a one-week job,” Mayiga said at Kasubi.
Before the June 5, 2010 fire, all the huts that make up the royal tombs boasted roofs thatched with thick layers of grass, which only fueled the inferno. That the interior and walls were mostly wood and bark cloth did not help matters, but the kingdom is determined to restore them with exact precision to the original blueprint.
Katikkiro Mayiga said there has not been any laziness in the restoration of the tombs, despite the work taking more than 11 years to complete.
He attributed the slow progress of the restoration, especially of the main mausoleum, to cultural norms and rites associated with the tombs that have to be followed closely to make sure that the tombs are restored in the right way without altering any of the cultural prerequisites.
“In all the 11 years since the fire, there has been no lag in the pursuit of restoring Muzibu-Azaala-Mpanga [the biggest building]. There has been planning, modeling and fundraising; we have consulted on traditions and rites. All that was necessary because this tomb is very important when it comes to Buganda rites and traditions. While the contractor had deadlines, we always knew [we could not bypass some processes],” Mayiga, speaking in Luganda, said.
ROYAL TRADITION
When Buganda’s 35th king, Kabaka Muteesa I died in 1884, it was decided that he be buried in his palace at Kasubi, which is where Muzibu-Azaala-Mpanga stands to-date, built in 1882.
The round, spacious palace had been designed with unique architecture that comprised mainly wooden, sturdy poles, stacks of reeds (emmuli), finished on the interior with high walls draped in bark cloth and completed with a huge grass-thatched roof that almost kissed the ground on the sides. No wonder in 2001, UNESCO gave it world heritage site status.
In 1938, Kabaka Daudi Chwa II gave the royal tombs a face-lift, reinforcing the walls with brick and mortar, to increase their longevity. The current works are the only other time Muzibu-Azaala-Mpanga has been heavily retouched.
After Muteesa I’s death, the three subsequent kabakas – Mwanga, Chwa and Muteesa II – chose not to be interred in their respective palaces, willing instead to be laid to rest at Kasubi with the great Ssekabaka credited with welcoming European missionaries and teachers to Buganda and Uganda, among other achievements. Buganda presently has several palaces in different counties, with Bulange Mengo being the kingdom’s main seat.
Other members of the royal family are also buried at Kasubi, but Muzibu-Azaala-Mpanga – the palace-turned-mausoleum – houses the four great kings’ remains, thus its importance and attention to traditional detail during its restoration.
“When it comes to beautification, we do have our traditional bark cloth that we use extensively in the interior. Also, the doorways are not supposed to be like this; there is a traditional, Buganda, way of doing this, that was followed through the generations, and we intend to restore it exactly that way,” Norman Kavuma Ssegirinya, one of the royal designers, said.
In the original design, 52 rings hold up the roof, each representing a clan in Buganda; each of these clans has special duties in the restoration process – the Ngeye clan, for example, is in charge of the roofing; the restoration also involves a tripartite effort – central government, UNESCO and Buganda – due to its world heritage site status.
According to Mayiga, the government of Uganda has contributed Shs 2.3 billion towards the restoration works. The works also received donations from Japan, among others. The burial grounds sitting on 64 acres of prime land also have smaller huts that were once the houses of Muteesa I’s wives.
The site also has an open cemetery where other members of the royal family are buried, as well as a sacred forest (ekibira), where the fallen kings’ spirits are believed to dwell and only a select few members of the kingdom can access that part of the site. Not even a sitting Kabaka accesses this part of the royal site, although his katikkiro (prime minister) does.
18 MORE MONTHS
On the question of when the tombs will be completed, the head of the restoration committee Hajji Kaddu Kiberu said he expects the restoration work on the tombs to be completed in about one and a half years.
Because the main building is massive, a lot of grass is expected to go into the roofing, if the contractor is to follow the architectural design to the dot. When the tombs were originally built, finding grass to thatch people’s houses was not a hard task; now due to modernization and disappearing grasslands, contractors may have to search kilometres away for the right grass.
“We need a lot of grass. Whoever can donate grass for the roof, we welcome you,” Kiberu said.
The work of restoring these tombs is being done through inherited roles in the various clans. The descendants of the Baganda who built the original palace are the ones doing the same work their ancestors did, according to their clans.
Ssegirinya said he and his colleagues are designing the tomb using bark cloth and other materials sourced from nature. An unenviable job, seeing how many of those original materials such as reeds are increasingly hard to come by as the wild countryside quickly disappears.
Meanwhile, Buganda spokesperson Noah Kiyimba said the inferno that destroyed these tombs has been a huge blow to tourism in Buganda. Many tourists used to come from all over the world to visit these tombs that are just four kilometres and a simple 15-minute drive from the city centre.
The tombs were earning Buganda kingdom at least $100,000 a year, according to Kiyimba.
“As Buganda kingdom, we have lost so much revenue because of this fire. In the 11 years, the kingdom has lost about $1.5m in tourism revenue,” Kiyimba said.
He said many people the world over are anxious to see the tombs restored so that they can come and live the site’s unique history and the ingenuity of the tombs’ restoration.
