Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the coronation festival as a set of multi-religious rituals sacralising the king, and argues, that this annual event enables the king to incorporate otherwise disparate religious cults and political groups in his kingdom.

Paper long abstract:

Economic, social and political uncertainty has induced a new dynamic of cultural revival movements in many parts of Africa. In Uganda, the revival of monarchical traditions in the 1990s, augmented by neo-traditions and multi-religious rituals, gives ample evidence of the need to cope with such uncertainty. This paper discusses the role and performativity of multi-religious royal rituals in the light of political and economic hazard, and global evangelization. It takes as a starting point the annual coronation festival (empango) of the Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara, one of the revived kingdoms of Uganda, in which spirit cults legitimize the mythological charter and the social and political order. While officially the Kingdom takes a Christian outlook and acknowledges Islam as the religious affiliation of a minor portion of the local population, it is legitimized by the royal ancestor cult (cwezi) as one of the local spirit cults. Royal ancestor worship, Christian liturgy and Islamic blessing join to a choreographic finely coordinated, partly secret, partly public performance which produces ecumenical and hybrid forms of religious concepts and practices.

By analyzing the performativity of the empango festival as a set of multi-religious rituals sacralising the king, I will argue, that this annual event enables the king to incorporate otherwise disparate religious cults and political groups in his kingdom. At the same time the multi-religious performance creates a semantic ambivalence that provokes the repudiation of the kingdom by fundamentalist Christian groups.