The fate of the people of Kitara is said to have been determined by a god that set out to test his sons. One was crowned a king, the second was named a herder and another, a farmer.
In the grasslands of central Uganda, near Ntusi, the ground still keeps the outline of the empire that one graced its earth. Miles of ditches and banks, among the largest earthworks in the East African interior, enclose the place the neighbours came to call Bigo bya Mugenyi, the fort of the stranger. When the archaeologist Merrick Posnansky excavated the site in 1960, he was reading the only handwriting a vanished state had left behind: earth moved by many hands around great cattle-kraals and a royal centre, dated to roughly the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The people of the surrounding region remember the empire. It was Kitara, and its rulers were the Bacwezi, demigods who reigned in a golden age and then, in every telling, disappeared.
The heirs of Kitara are today a whole family of people, far larger than any single kingdom. Linguists call them the Rutara people. In their own mouths they are the Banyakitara — the people of Kitara. Their closely related tongues — Runyoro and Rutooro, Runyankore and Rukiga, Ruhaya and Runyambo — are gathered under the one name Runyakitara. They spill across four modern countries. In Uganda they are the Banyoro and Batooro of the west, the Banyankole and Bakiga of the south-west, the Bahororo of Rujumbura, and a scatter of smaller peoples. Across the border, in the Kagera region of Tanzania on the western shore of Lake Victoria, are the Bahaya and the Banyambo, whom some linguists take to be closest of all to the ancestral homeland. The name Banyakitara is itself a modern act of gathering, a way of naming a kinship older than any of the borders that now cut through it.
Here we tell the somewhat similar tales of the founding stories common among the kingdoms that once made up the mighty Kitara kingdom.
The Banyoro, Batooro and Banyankole People
In the beginning, Ruhanga, the maker, known to the Bakiga also as Kazooba, the sun, lived in the heavens with his younger brother, Nkya. But Nkya was restless. He grew bored with the sameness of their existence and complained that there was nothing new to see. In response, Ruhanga created a world. He threw a stone into the air, and it became the sun. For a while, Nkya was pleased. But the satisfaction did not last. Soon, he complained again. The sun burned constantly, he said, and there was nowhere to escape its heat.
So Ruhanga moved the sun towards the west and covered it with a cloud. He took another stone and cast it into the sky and it became the moon. Then Ruhanga created the rhythm of day and night. He ordered Nkya to sleep and made the cock to crow when the night had passed, so that its call would wake him. He covered the earth with grasses and trees, giving Nkya shade beneath their leaves. The world was beginning to take shape.
But Ruhanga had more to attend to. He instructed Nkya to remain on the earth while he went to the heavens to attend to his affairs. While in heaven, Ruhanga saw that his hands were dirty and proceeded to wash them, resulting in a downpour or rain on earth. Nkya, who was still on earth, got drenched and complained to his brother. Ruhanga instructed him to create shelter out of grass but soon realised Nkya had no tools. So Ruhanga made a knife, a hammer and an axe out of a rock and with them, Nkya made a hut.
Of course, by now, it is established that Nkya was somewhat a chronic complainer. Hence it is not surprising that soon he had a new matter that needed attention from his brother, Ruhanga, for Nkya had gotten bored again and needed something to look at. So Ruhanga created shrubs, flowers, sheep, goats, cows, a creeper and cows, and showed Nkya how to milk the latter. This time, Nkya had so many things to occupy him in the new world that he was impressed. He enjoyed his life on earth, but tending to everything was a lot of work. So Ruhanga gave him a son, whom Nkya called Kantu.
In time, the work was still too much for Nkya and Kantu, so Ruhanga gave Nkya three more sons. But there was a problem. All four sons were called Kantu. Ruhanga therefore devised a series of tests to determine what each son was suited for and to give them names according to how they performed.
The first test began with a journey. Nkya hid three different items along a path distant from their home, namely the head of an ox, a basket of sweet potatoes and strips of ox hide, and asked the boys to go find them.
When they came upon the items, each brother made a different choice. The eldest found a way to take the basket of potatoes for himself alone while the second born chose the stripes of hide, considering how they would be useful for tying the cows when milking them. The youngest, who didn’t want to be left out, carried the final item — an oxhead.
A second test was set by Nkya for the brothers. This time, he gave them pots of milk with instructions not to spill the milk throughout the night. The youngest fell asleep and spilled all his milk. When he woke up and realised what had happened, he turned to his brothers for help. They gave him some of their own milk, allowing him to fill his pot again. He never fell asleep again, having rested enough. The older brother, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. As the night wore on, he eventually fell asleep and spilled most of his milk. He too asked his brothers to come to his rescue but they had already given part of what they had to the youngest, and there was not enough left to restore the eldest's pot. They refused to give him any more.
By morning, Nkya came to see how his sons had fared and was pleased to find the youngest awake with his pot still full. But the other brothers were not about to let him take all the credit. They told their father how the youngest had actually spilled his milk first and that had helped him replace what he had lost.
Nkya considered this carefully. The youngest had failed first, but he had not allowed the mistake to become the end of the test. He had asked his brothers for help, and they had chosen to help him and this impressed Nkya greatly. Nkya also remembered that in the first test, he had also carried the ox head all the way home without knowing what purpose it might eventually serve.
There was something in that which Nkya valued. Hence, he named the youngest Kakama and gave him authority over his brothers and the earth. Then he turned to the second-born. The boy's choice at the junction had already revealed where his interests lay. While his brothers had seen food and an object whose purpose they did not understand, he had seen cattle and immediately thought about how the ox hide could be put to use. Nkya named him Kahima and entrusted him with the cattle. The eldest received a very different fate. His first test had exposed his unwillingness to share, and the second had ended with an empty pot. He had nothing to show his father when morning came. Nkya named him Kairu and assigned him the task of working the land to produce food for his brothers and their descendants. The three brothers had therefore left the same home, walked the same road and faced the same tests, yet each emerged with a different place in the world.
According to tradition, these distinctions continue to influence the lifestyle of the Bunyoro people to date. The descendants of Kakama became associated with the Omukama, the royal institution of Bunyoro, with kingship passing through his line. The descendants of Kahima became the Bahima, whose lives are closely associated with cattle keeping. For the Bunyoro people, cattle are not simply animals to be tended, they are an important part of the wealth and identity attached to the group. The descendants of Kairu became the Bairu, associated with cultivation and agricultural work. They work the land and produce food.
It is not hard to see what such a story does, and the region's own historians have said it plainly: the tale was, in the words of more than one of them, concocted so as to make the Bairu accept their subordinate position to the Bahima as something supernatural. A social order of pastoralist masters over farming commoners is lifted out of history and written into creation, so that to be a Mwiru — junior, serving, tied to the hoe — is not to have lost anything, but to occupy the place the creator assigned before one was born.
Bunyoro: Origins of the Batembuzi and Bacwezi
The story of Bunyoro moves from the origin of the people and their occupations, to the origin of the kingdom itself. According to Bunyoro oral traditions, the Batembuzi (the word means ‘the pioneers/harbingers.’ It also is used to represent gods who descended from heaven.) were the founders of Bunyoro kingdom. Their story is deeply wrapped in mythology, and accounts of their reigns do not always agree on the names, order or dates of the kings. In some stories, the story begins with the first man — Kintu, who had three sons. In this account, however, we begin with Ruhanga and King Isaza, who is remembered as the last god who descended from heaven.
The story takes us back to a world divided between heaven and the underworld. Ruhanga, ruled in heaven, while the underworld was inhabited by those who had been cast out from above. Among Ruhanga's descendants was King Isaza. Unlike the others, he was curious about the world below. He ventured into the underworld and became fascinated by the people who lived there. What began as an exploration turned into a much longer stay when Isaza fell in love with a princess of the underworld. He, however, could not go back home because he had stayed too long in the underworld. So he remained there, married the princess and had a son, a Bawezi (demigod), named Isimbwa.
Isimbwa who had inherited the curious spirit of his father, on the other hand, eventually found his way back to the land from which his father had come. However, the kingdom he found was no longer under the rule of his family.
A former gatekeeper named Bukuku had seized the throne. Bukuku knew that his claim to kingship was questionable. He also knew of a prophecy that one of his descendants would eventually overthrow him. The prophecy terrified him enough to turn against his own daughter, Nyinamwiru, who was his only child. Nyinamwiru was said to be exceptionally beautiful, and Bukuku feared that her beauty could lead to the birth of the very child the prophecy had warned him about. So he cut off one of her breasts, removed one of her eyes and imprisoned her, hoping to make her undesirable to any man.
As fate would have it, the plan did not prevent the prophecy. It only delayed it. During his travels, Isimbwa came upon the place where Nyinamwiru was being held. He saw the woman behind the cruelty inflicted upon her and fell in love with her. He freed her from captivity, and the two eventually married. Their union produced a son whom they named Ndahura.
When Bukuku discovered that his daughter had escaped and given birth to a boy, he feared the prophecy had finally arrived. He ordered that the child be found before he could grow into a man. When Ndahura was captured, Bukuku attempted to kill him by throwing him into a river. Nyinamwiru pleaded with her father to spare her son and promised to leave the kingdom with him, but Bukuku would not change his mind and threw the baby into the river.
Somehow, Ndahura survived. Watched over by the gods, his umbilical cord caught on a branch, keeping him from being carried away by the current. A porter who witnessed what had happened rescued him and hid him inside a cave. But saving the child was only the beginning of the problem. The porter had no way to feed a newborn. According to the legend, help came from an unexpected place. The same gods who had saved him from being drowned made the walls of the cave grow tens of breasts that had enough milk to feed all the babies in the kingdom. The place became known as Amabeere ga Nyinamwiru, which translates as Nyinamwiru's breasts.
Ndahura remained hidden there until he had grown. Eventually, he was able to leave the cave and join other young people, unaware that the king who ruled the kingdom was the same man who had once tried to kill him.
Bukuku had grown wealthy by this time, particularly through his enormous herd of long-horned cattle which had previously belonged to Ndahura’s father before his sojourn to the underworld. Among them was a prized cow he named Bihogo; a cow he simply adored because of its perfect all-brown colour.
Ndahura would eventually find himself working among the young men who tended Bukuku's cattle. One day, a lion attacked the herd and killed Bukuku’s treasured cow. He was furious. His favourite cow was dead, and he wanted to know who had been responsible for allowing it to happen. So he ordered a search for the herdsman believed to have been at fault.
Ndahura, realising that the king's anger could put his life in danger, went to find Bukuku himself. He entered the king's quarters and waited until Bukuku was seated. Then he speared him from behind. The king, shocked that anyone had managed to penetrate his heavily guarded palace, inquired who the young lad was. Proudly, Ndahura revealed his identity. He declared himself Isimbwa's son, Isaza's descendant and therefore the rightful heir to the throne that Bukuku had taken.
With Bukuku dead, Ndahura took the throne. The people welcomed his reign, particularly because of his lineage. The traditions surrounding his reign grew into some of the most enduring stories of the ancient Kitara world. Ndahura is remembered as a powerful ruler and warrior, and traditions surrounding the Bacwezi associate his reign and those of his successors with a period of expansion and cultural transformation. In particular, he expanded the kingdom as far as western Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, southern Uganda, eastern Congo and parts of northern Tanzania.
He was eventually succeeded by Wamara, his son, who continued the royal line. But the era of the Batembuzi and Bachwezi was drawing towards its end. Disease raged in the land and weakened Bunyoro’s economy, making it easy for the Babiito, the historically recorded subsequent rulers of Bunyoro, to take over, marking the beginning of the Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom.
In the storylines we have explored so far, it is important to note that Batembuzis and Bachwezis never died. They often disappeared and became spirits their descendants worshipped. Kubandwa, the religion of the Kitara people is built on them; the spirits of the vanished rulers are often invoked through trained mediums.
The disappearance of the Bachwezi did not end their royal line. According to tradition, it spread into several dynasties across the Great Lakes. In Bunyoro, the Babiito emerged as the new ruling dynasty under Rukidi Mpuga, whose father was Cwezi and whose mother was of Luo ancestry. Nyoro tradition also remembers Rukidi as the twin of Kato Kimera, who became one of the earliest kings of Buganda. Their shared ancestry became part of the traditions linking the two royal houses.
Further south, another branch of the Cwezi family was remembered through Ruhinda, the son of Wamara and a servant woman named Njunaki. Left behind as keeper of the royal drum when the Cwezi fled, Ruhinda carried the regalia away and founded, in tradition, both Nkore in Uganda and Karagwe across the water in Tanzania. One line of kings ran north, the other south, and between them they stitched the whole family — Bunyoro, Tooro, Nkore, Mpororo, the Haya lands — to the same vanished source, Kitara.
The Breaking of Kitara Into Smaller Kingdoms
Bunyoro, the Eldest of them All
Bunyoro was the heartland and the eldest of the kingdoms, the direct heir of Kitara, ruled by the Omukama of the Babiito line and keeper of the Cwezi memory. At its height its influence reached across much of the region, and it remembered itself, with reason, as the centre of the world. It also paid the steepest price for that grandeur. When the British came, the Omukama Kabalega (king) fought them for the better part of a decade. The kingdom was eventually broken for its defiance, its king captured and sent into exile, and several counties of Bunyoro territory were transferred to Buganda under British rule. These counties became known as the ‘lost counties,’ and would poison regional politics for generations afterward.
Bunyoro is Further Partitioned
Tooro emerged from the western provinces of Bunyoro in the nineteenth century, when a Bunyoro prince named Kaboyo was appointed to govern the region around the Rwenzori Mountains. Around 1830, he stopped sending cattle tribute to Bunyoro, declared himself king and took the name Olimi I.
When his father died, Kaboyo still refused to return to Bunyoro to claim the senior throne. He remained in Tooro, maintaining his separate kingdom. Bunyoro attempted more than once to bring the breakaway kingdom back under its authority, and Tooro was eventually subdued before regaining its independence in 1891 during the period of British intervention in the region.
The kingdom was abolished alongside Uganda's other traditional kingdoms in 1967 and restored in 1993. Its people and language remained closely connected to those of Bunyoro, and the two share cultural traditions such as empááko, the system of praise names including Amooti, Akiiki, Abwooli, Atwooki and Adyeeri, used when addressing a Munyoro or Mutooro.
Mpororo
Not every Kitara kingdom that broke away survived and the Bahororo represent this cautionary tale. In the mid-seventeenth century a prince of the Bashambo clan, Kahaya Rutindangyezi, traditionally associated with the ruling house of Rwanda, built the kingdom of Mpororo across what is now the Uganda–Rwanda borderland. Its people became the Bahororo, the people of Mpororo. Within a century it had shattered, fragmenting around 1775 into a half-dozen small states under Kahaya's sons and then dissolving altogether under pressure from Rwanda and its neighbours. Some Bahororo returned to Rwanda, some sought refuge in Rujumbura, and some, stranded among cultivators with no kingdom left to rank them, simply sank into the status of Bairu.
The Haya and the Nyambo
In the Kagera region of north-western Tanzania, along the western shore of Lake Victoria, live the Bahaya and the Banyambo, and their kingdoms are bound to the Ugandan ones by the same dynastic thread. Karagwe's royal traditions traced its ruling Hinda dynasty to Ruhinda, the same Cwezi son who founded Nkore, and was ruled by his Hinda descendants. The Haya kingdom of Kiziba, one of several Haya kingdoms, by contrast, was ruled by the Bito, the very clan that ruled Bunyoro in the north. The pastoralist and cultivator pattern reappears here in local dress, the herding Banyambo and the fishing, farming Bahaya, and the Kubandwa spirit-cult followed the dynasties south, such that kings in Tanzania, like kings in Uganda, were connected to traditions involving Cwezi spirits and mediums.
The Kagera peoples add two things the northern kingdoms cannot. The first is antiquity: the Kagera region contains some of the earliest archaeological evidence associated with Urewe culture and early ironworking in the Great Lakes region, reaching back into the first millennium BCE. Some linguistic scholarship has also placed the homeland of Proto-Rutara in or around the wider Great Lakes region, including areas near Lake Victoria and Kagera, although this remains a scholarly reconstruction rather than an established fact. The second is a story about death. The Haya share with the Nkole a tradition that human beings were once meant to live forever, and that the creator withdrew the gift when the rites owed to a dead animal were refused — a motif also found in other Great Lakes traditions.
The Smaller Houses
Around these larger kingdoms cluster the smaller children of Kitara, each with its own country and calling. The Basongora are the cattle-keepers of the salt-plains below the Rwenzori, a Cwezi-linked people whose communities were heavily disrupted by colonial-era policies, including measures connected to sleeping-sickness control. The Bagungu fish the shores of Lake Albert; the Baruuli and Banyala hold the edge of the Nile; the Batuku, Banyabindi and Babwiisi live in the Semliki country toward the Congo; the Batagwenda and Banyaruguru occupy the marches of old Nkore; the Bakooki keep a small kingdom near the Buganda border. None of them founded an empire, but each is a full inheritor of related languages, shared traditions of creation, and memories of the Cwezi, and together they show how finely the one cloth of Kitara was cut.
The Bakiga
In the steep, terraced highlands of Kigezi, along the Rwandan border, live the Bakiga, the "people of the mountain" who built no kingdom at all. They came, by their own varied traditions, out of the Rwandan borderlands and the wider Bantu drift. No single origin story unites them, and each clan keeps its own. They settled the hills as a society of clans, without a centralised monarchy or hereditary aristocracy. Lineage heads could gain authority through qualities such as character, wealth and courage rather than simply through royal birth. Men bound themselves across clans through omukago, the pact of blood-brotherhood, and Nyabingi, a female spirit represented through mediums, became an important source of religious and political authority. The abagirwa, or mediums, associated with the cult included figures who resisted colonial rule, most famously the Rwandan royal exile Muhumuza, whose activities became especially prominent after 1911.
How the Kitara Mythology Shaped its Society
Laid side by side, the kingdoms of Kitara reveal a frame of great richness. It made order sacred and lineage precious. It produced, in the cattle-cultures of the Bahima and the Banyambo, one of the most refined pastoral aesthetics in Africa, an art of praise-poetry sung to long-horned herds. It kept, in Kubandwa, a spiritual tradition that has retained the presence of the vanished demigods, and it bound related peoples across several countries through shared traditions, languages and memories of Kitara. When something went wrong, the Banyakitara looked to the unseen world of Ruhanga, to the ancestors, and to the Cwezi read through their mediums.
The Kitara mythology made the cultivator's subordination look like the architecture of the cosmos, and it offered the Mwiru no court in which to argue that a single night's milk-pot was no measure of a man, still less of his descendants forever. The concealed victim of the Kitara frame is the farmer, the eldest son punished for one night's tiredness with a servitude that outlived him by five hundred years, and told, all the while, that to accept it was piety.
The reality was always more fluid than the myth allowed. Herder and cultivator intermarried and traded; a Mwiru who won cattle could rise, and a fallen aristocracy, as Mpororo showed, could sink into the Bairu within a generation. Colonial rule later hardened some of these permeable social distinctions by recasting them through the racial language of the "Hamitic hypothesis," which portrayed pastoralist elites as a separate and superior people who had come from elsewhere to rule agricultural populations. Laid over the old myth of the ranked sons, that idea contributed to the rigid racialised hierarchies that developed across parts of the Great Lakes region. In Rwanda, this colonial racialisation of Hutu and Tutsi identities became one of the historical forces that later shaped the politics of exclusion and violence, although it was only one part of the much larger history that culminated in the 1994 genocide.
