MISR SEMINAR SERIES
Book Discussion
Gender Innovation and the Politics of Sex in the Kingdom of Buganda, 1880 -1900
By Prof. Henri Médard (IFRA Nairobi / AMU / IMAF)
Discussants : Prof. Samwiri Lwanga-Lunyiigo & Dr. David Ngendo-Tshimba
This book started as an annoyed historian’s answer to “the myth of heterosexual Africa” and today’s growing homophobia in Africa. Using unique sources on African sexuality mainly written by African religious and political actors and French Catholic missionaries in late nineteenth-century Buganda, this work tries to understand and shed new light on the under-studied history and politics of sex in an African polity on the cusp of a full-blown European hegemony. It is the history of the ritual and ideological making of an African sacred kingship, the story of globalization, and of conversion to Islam and Christianity. It is also the story of colonial conquest and resistance. Lastly, the book sketches the historical contours of the first anti-sodomy law of Uganda in 1896 and the tale of the last independent King of Buganda, Mwanga II.