Uganda Tradition Stirs Questions -- Wedding Fight Shows Updating 600-Year-Old Monarchy Isn't Easy

MENGO, Uganda - The palace has no roof. Top ministers moonlight in other jobs. And if anyone at Parliament needs to make a call, they'll have to go to the corner: The phone is broken.

This is Buganda, one of Africa's most glorious and powerful kingdoms until a century ago, when the British converted its subjects into colonial employees. Then Ugandan dictators Milton Obote and Idi Amin, aware of the competition, abolished Buganda altogether in 1966 and turned its palaces into army barracks.

Restored six years ago on condition it stick to cultural affairs and stay out of politics, Buganda is searching for its place at the end of the 20th century.

But what role can a 600-year-old monarchy play in modern life? In a world of nation-states, can a kingdom with enormous emotional influence over its subjects represent them without real political power?

And can a king who went to English prep school, practiced law in London and plans to marry a public-relations executive from Washington relate to the people of one of the poorest nations in the world?

Nothing has called attention to those questions like the controversy over the decision by the "kabaka," or king, 44-year-old Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, to make a 13-year-old girl his "nakku," or "first wife."

Women's and human-rights groups have lambasted the kingdom for retaining the tradition. The nakku traditionally has remained a virgin for life while being responsible for certain ceremonial duties, such as announcing the king's death and calling an end to the communal mourning period.

Kingdom officials insist the wedding, to take place in secret this summer, is simply a ceremony to honor historical nakkus, and they say teenager Sarah Nsobya's life will be unchanged. In late August, the king will marry his real fiancee, a Buganda woman, 35, who went to New York University and until recently worked for the World Bank in Washington.

"Stupidity!" Tucker Lwanga, Buganda's information minister, said of the notion that the nakku wedding is anything but a mock ceremony. "Honestly, I don't know how people get these ideas. Because our kingdom was in abeyance for 30 years, people forget we have cultural things to do."

The truth seems a bit murkier.

Debates shroud wedding

In Sarah's home, the village of Bakka deep in the banana groves and maize fields 35 miles southwest of Kampala, Uganda's capital, residents say the girl has moved out of her parents' mud hut and into a new brick building built by the kingdom. Workers restoring Mengo's "twekobe," or palace, say they have been instructed to build the girl a house.

Details are scarce in Bakka, where the chief has forbidden anyone - including Sarah and her parents - from speaking to outsiders about the nakku ceremony for fear of angering kingdom officials.

Whether real or symbolic, the nakku wedding will ostracize Sarah from her peers and pervert her self-image as the "wife" of an adult, its opponents say.

"None of these people who think it's so prestigious are offering their daughters," said Eva Mulema at the Uganda Association of Women Lawyers. "We value our kabaka, but some rituals are no longer appropriate."

Other signs of the clash between past and present are easy to find. On the streets of the Bugandan capital of Mengo - which is a district in Kampala - women carry briefcases on their heads. In the kingdom's lush forests, chiefs with houndstooth blazers and leather daybooks hold meetings in corn fields. In daily conversation, educated women refer to the king as "baffe" - "husband" in the Luganda language.

The nakku controversy aside, the king's wedding Aug. 27 to Sylvia Luswata will be a huge social event, akin to Britain's royal wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. With Buganda having just come back to life officially, the wedding is only the second opportunity the kingdom has had in 30 years to affirm its power and unity - after Mutebi's coronation in 1993.

Buganda is by far the richest, largest and most politically influential of Uganda's four kingdoms, which together take up about half of the country, and the wedding is expected to draw dignitaries from around the world.

Eighteen committees have been convened to decide everything from what the king and queen will wear to what cake will be served, and chiefs have been instructed to organize dancing and drumming celebrations kingdomwide.

Yet while the kingdom is officially relegated to cultural gatekeeper, it does more than plan social functions.

Buganda has an entire shadow government, from a prime minister and Parliament that meets weekly down to regional councilmen and local chiefs. The Parliament discusses various issues affecting the kingdom and the prime minister passes on its opinions to the Ugandan Parliament.

Kingdom has influence

Without the power to tax, the kingdom can't pay legislators or launch civic projects of its own - much of the palace restoration is being done with donated materials - or even keep the phones running in parliament.

But its influence is very real.

Despite having been under the control first of the British and then of Uganda's military rulers since the late 1800s, many Baganda still view the kingdom as their authority.

Recently, people refused to get vaccinated for polio, suspicious the shots would hurt them, until the king personally ordered them to. They also look to the monarchy for voting guidance during elections.

The king is part cultural leader, part superstar. Contemporary Bagandans follow his exploits abroad in the society pages while traditional types prostrate themselves on the roadside when he passes. As a rule, the king does not appear in public with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni so as not to upstage him.

"The kabaka makes news in this country more than anything else," said Peter Mayiga, a Kampala lawyer and Buganda's minister of youth affairs. "He's a celebrity."

Uganda's other three kingdoms - Toro, Bunyoro and Ankole - started out with less prestige and power and are fading quicker than Buganda into cultural custodians.

When Museveni made the political calculation to restore Ugandans' beloved monarchies in 1993, he opted to leave Ankole, his home kingdom, dormant.

Officially, the government said a survey found that the people of Ankole were divided on reviving the monarchy, but most Ugandans believe Museveni didn't want a king competing with him on his home turf.

The Bagandans aren't giving up so easily. Kingdom officials have already launched an unofficial campaign seeking real power for the monarchy when Ugandans vote next June on whether to return to a multiparty political system.

But the Bagandans know they're walking a fine line. After more than two decades of ethnic strife that killed hundreds of thousands, Uganda's people and its economy are only just now recovering and few are eager to test the tribal waters so soon.

However, to some, the survival of the monarchy is at stake.

"The preservation of the culture depends on the political arrangement you have," said Mayiga, the youth-affairs minister. "After all, what is a king without power?"