The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
The death of another iconic Ugandan playwright is a funeral for Ugandan theatre.
COMMENT | NNANDA KIZITO SSERUWAGI | Alex Edward Mukulu Kabangala has joined Byron Kawadwa, Rose Mbowa, John Ruganda, Elvania Zirimu, and Robert Serumaga in death, or perhaps in eternity as the memory of Uganda’s artistic expression in theatre. In life, Alex Mukulu described the Uganda National Theatre as a fading shadow of its name, practically existing as a venue for wedding meetings. In death, Ugandan theatre could be walking its funeral march alongside his.
I last saw Alex Mukulu in 2024 at the National Theatre, when he staged one of his last plays, Kulunkalu ne Kulumbisi, a Luganda adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The play was staged twice a day every day from March 29 to April 21. At 70 years young, Mukulu had the bones and the nerve to pull off such a performance in the company of mostly teenagers and children in his cast.
I cannot put a finger on the exact moment I became acutely infatuated with Alex Mukulu’s work. But I can remember the feeling of tasting his song, “Omusango gwa’Bwavu” or “Abe’Namutamba” (The Trial/Case of the Poor) for the first time. It was uniquely rhythmic and symphonic. It is one of those songs with two titles colliding evenly, blurring what the original title was.
The song is a searing criticism of corrupt leaders and explores themes of systemic poverty, social injustice, and the struggles of ordinary people. It has a strong, distinct, catchy pulse and a grand, complex, layered symphony. It fluently blends traditional folk-style storytelling (kadongokamu) with a classical orchestra to do the timeless magic it does with your ears and soul. This is not surprising, since Alex Mukulu was the only Ugandan artist I ever heard discussing classical music and referencing Beethoven, Mozart, and Handel. They must have scratched influence on him in some way. His music catalogue compensated for its length with its depth. It consists of similarly melodic, harmonious, rhythmic, symphonic and enigmatic songs such as Dolikalidijjo, Empilivuma, Ogye Odemu Onkwaane, Nkulinze, Ensobi, Wakinyonyi, BannaKampala nga Boogera, Nanyinimu, and many others.
Mukulu was a dear friend of another Ugandan all-time great, Philly Bongoley Lutaaya, who passed away in 1989. By Mukulu’s account, the two shared an apartment on Namirembe Road in the 1970s and 80s. They must have been quite a persuasion on each other, since Mukulu’s work shares underlying qualities with Philly’s, especially in the cadences that punctuated their music. Not only was Mukulu’s music unique for its orchestral tinge, but also for its abstractness. It was philosophical. It was both non-representational and open to interpretation. I doubt Mukulu himself would ever conclusively interpret his own work. The best example of what I am trying to describe is his song Dolikalidijjo. I began with his music, although Alex was primarily a playwright, because his music introduced me to his life and the rest of his work.
The enduring legacy of Alex Mukulu is that of the father of protest theatre in Uganda. I know some may find Byron Kawadwa a more appealing contender for this place. I will leave judgement to history. What Alex achieved was to turn the stage into a platform for political expression, while equally entertaining his audience. In an interview with BBS Telefayina, Alex revealed that the first play he ever staged was “Kabangala Asasudde” in 1964. So, his career spanned 62 years!
For over five decades, Alex Mukulu’s art fearlessly critiqued social injustice, political hypocrisy, poverty, cultural identity, and the struggles of ordinary Ugandans. His genius or ingenuity must have been in how he skilfully engaged political themes while surviving the state’s constraints and retribution.
Mukulu needled the NRM government with one of his best-known works, 30 Years of Bananas (published by Oxford University Press in 1993), which came out at the 30th anniversary of Uganda’s independence. As early as 1990, when the NRM was still largely a popular political organisation and revolutionary movement, Alex Mukulu was already reading between the lines and smelling tribal favouritism, elite capture, and other political vices. He used the metaphor and allegory of bananas to represent the promise of a recently independent country that was decaying into a self-serving rot of bad governance.
If we look back at Uganda’s post-independence turbulence and place the body of Mukulu’s work parallel to the journey Uganda has trekked, we realise that it spans the full arc of that history, right from the Amin years to the Museveni incumbency. Besides his youthful works of the 60s, Mukulu’s mature work can be traced from the 1970s, beginning with Muzukulu wa Kabangala (1977), then Engule ya Kamukukulu (1978) and Springs of Tears (1979). In the 1980s, he produced the Cigarette (1980), Opera Bakisimba (1980), Twin Opera (1980), The Celebrity (1983), I killed the Archbishop (1984), Gwanga Mujje (1985), Mbasalidde ga Nkolwa (1985), Stop it with 11 men (1986), Liberator kid (1987), The Drunkards (1986/7), The Wounds of Africa (1988), and Peasants Cry (1989). In the 1990s, he produced 30 Years of Bananas (1991), Excuse Me Mzungu (1992), The Guest of Honour (1994), among others. In other words, Mukulu’s career was punctuated by a running commentary on Uganda’s tempestuous political transitions.
A highlight of his illustrious career from the early 2000s was his presentation of Uganda’s Journey to Self-Realization at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in 2007. Mukulu’s excellent production got a standing ovation from Queen Elizabeth II and President Yoweri Museveni. This was perhaps Mukulu’s grandest stage, since millions of people were watching around the world. His physical audience also included sixteen presidents and twenty prime ministers. Mukulu would later go on to achieve his most concrete official honour in 2012 when he received the Independence Medal for his contribution to the country’s cultural life.
Mukulu’s sense of discipline as a person and an artist became apparent to most people when he adjudicated Yolesa Ekitone (which translates to “Showcase Your Talent” in Luganda). In this popular Ugandan reality television talent show, which was formatted like America’s Got Talent or The X Factor, Alex Mukulu cemented his legacy on television. He single-handedly made the show famous and viral due to his effortless, dry wit as the head judge, often offering funny yet harsh, blunt, uncompromising critiques of the contestants who performed poorly. Some of his viral bits of feedback to contestants were not even on their art but rather on their hygiene. In that sense, he wasn’t just an artist but a responsible elder in society guiding the youth. Only the general public could have been surprised by Mukulu’s proclivities. Veteran theatre actor Phillip Luswata, a student of Mukulu, recounts Mukulu’s discipline as a theatre director in two words: he was a “slave driver”.
In the evening of his life, when I watched him perform Kulunkalu ne Kulumbisi, he was still confronting political themes of tribalism and religious sectarianism even when he was adapting Romeo and Juliet. His adaptation depicted ethnic tensions between Ugandan communities. Only Mukulu could have transmuted a foreign classic from being staged as a pure romance, but instead modified it to speak to Uganda’s specific socio-political fault lines.
With Mukulu’s death, a page has been plucked from the history of Ugandan theatre. His peers have described his stoic individualism, reflecting on how he was a loner who, even in death, died as quietly as the private life he had nested for himself in his easy house in Mengo. I think it was that individuality and nonconformity that stimulated his interesting and reflective mind, his immense and bottomless mental exploration, and ultimately his artistic creation. Antiquity will look back on his work with pride. I trust that his artistry will rival time.
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The writer is a Ugandan thinking about Uganda.
