Dr. Jacob Katumusiime is Ansai Institute Global Fellow and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Johannesburg. Jacob is the 2024 Winner of the Rahamon Bello Award for the Best PhD in African and Diaspora Studies. He researches on the intersections of Culture and Politics, navigating questions of colonialism, postcolonialism and decolonization, and exploring issues of identity, citizenship, social movements, political violence and diasporic lives. Jacob holds an Interdisciplinary PhD in Social Studies, a Master of Philosophy in Social Studies and a Bachelor of Arts with Education (First Class) from Makerere University, Uganda.
Please tell me a little bit about yourself and the project that led you to the Global Fellows.
Jacob is my name. Jacob Katumusiime! I hold an Interdisciplinary PhD in Social Studies. I majored in Cultural studies and minored in Political studies.
My PhD work was an attempt to look at the intersection between religion and politics. But I had to get an entry point. That entry point was something that confounds me: the proliferation of independent religious movements in post-colonial Africa.
Here in Africa we have very many religious movements especially breaking away from the institutionalized church; the institutionalized church being the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and the Orthodox Church. We have over 10,000 independent religious movements that have broken away from the church in Africa. So the question becomes, how do we understand the emergence of these religious movements? And how do we understand specifically the movements’ turn to violence? That is how I conceived my PhD research, and I focused specifically on this particular religious movement called the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTCG).
The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was a religious movement that broke away from the Catholic Church in Uganda in 1989, and then formally became an independent NGO in 1993. On March 17th, 2000, this religious movement committed an act of what, in my work, I call mass murder-suicide. I call it mass murder-suicide because the leaders of the movement gathered all the members of the religious movement in a church, locked themselves in too, and then burned themselves up. So the leaders committed an act of mass murder, but they also committed suicide. That's why I call it mass murder-suicide. Over 600 members of that religious movement perished on that day.
In the aftermath of this incident, international media, national media, religious scholars, were all thinking that this was an act of mass suicide because the leaders had died. But then when the authorities started investigations into the religious movements’ last days, they realized that before this inferno in which 600 people died, over 400 other people had also been earlier killed and buried in mass graves around the different places affiliated to the religious movement. With this discovery, the narrative changed from mass suicide, to mass murder.
And when the authorities recognized that one particular leader of the religious movement, Joseph Kibweteere, was not seen at the site of the inferno where the other leaders had perished, the mass murder narrative became stabilized.
This is how I enter into the research work that I do about the religious movement. How can we tell this story properly? How can we make the emergence of this religious movement, and its eruption into violence thinkable?
I have wanted to build from this case, of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, to speak about many other religious movements that we see arising. You shall, for example, recall the most recent horror of the Shakahola Forest incident in Kenya where members of the Good News International Ministries church perished in an act of death-fasting. Up to now, 2025, the Kenyan government is discovering mass graves related to the religious movement.
And my argument is that the proliferation of these religious movements and their occasional propulsion into violence is thinkable within the separatist legacy of the colonial state. The separationist legacy being this enduring logic of governance that the colonial state instituted, where you define people, divide them, and rule over them. So, you shall find that these religious movements arise because of feelings of marginalization at different levels. And the people who feel marginalized choose to create movements such as these. Marginalization also often fuels the movements’ resort to violence.
And when you study this Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, it enables you to understand the connection between religion and politics. Look, the modern secular state has tried to tell us that there's this separation between the church and the state. But when you look at the formation of these religious movements you see how the state is often involved in their formation.
Can you tell me more about that?
Look, when the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God was formed, breaking away from the Catholic Church, the major contention was the marginalization of Banyaruguru Priests from the Bishopric of Mbarara Catholic Diocese - now an Archdiocese, in Ankole. In two decades, Banyaruguru Catholic priests were twice passed over for the Bishopric in favour of the Banyankole ethnic majority. The Banyaruguru, it was argued, are non-native to Ankole. This is colonial nation-state politics at play. The Banyaruguru Catholic Priests, Father Paul Ikazire, Father Dominic Kataribaabo would link up with other frustrated members of the Postcolonial Ugandan state, to form a break away religious movement which, while it was a critique against the Catholic Church in Uganda, it was in reality a critique of the nature of governance in the Postcolony. This religious movement was not fully legitimate because the state and the church were against it. So between 1989, when the religious movement was founded, and 1993, it was struggling. It had numbers, but remained operating underground. In 1993, however, the state gave it a certificate of registration as a non-governmental organization, as an NGO, which legitimized its operations.
This is how most of these religious movements proliferate because they get these certificates of registration as non-governmental organizations. So, this is how the state really promotes these various religious movements. It manufactures them. And in post-colonial Africa, these religious movements also lend their support to governments. Their survival depends on them voting for governments that have enabled them to become legitimate - to become stakeholders. So it's often a two-way thing. The state is deeply involved - in both its politics and its policies.
Now, there is a gentleman called Joseph Kibwetere, who is the most renowned member of this religious movement, and whom we could think about. In fact, my Book Manuscript is titled, The Separationist Legacy: Joseph Kibweteere, Independent Religious Movements and Violence in Post-Colonial Africa.
Joseph Kibweteere was a rich man for his time. He had a 24-room bungalow. At that time, the 1960s, he was a rich guy. And not just rich, but educated. By 1960, Uganda was in the struggle for independence and party politics was introduced, and Kibwetere subscribed to the Democratic Party. And during that time, the Democratic Party in Uganda was largely a Catholic entity.
There was another party called the UPC (Uganda People's Congress), which was largely Protestant. So religion and politics were moving side by side. The British colonial state would help the UPC take over power in Uganda, a thing that frustrated the Catholic community. Joseph Kibwetere, a devout Catholic and Democratic Party stalwart is frustrated.
Being a teacher by training, and observing how Catholics were also being denied admission into Protestant schools, he began a school, Nyakazinga Junior Secondary School, as the first private school in the region of Ankole. He starts admitting Catholics so as to empower them. He believed that with education, individuals would be able to better their lives. His frustrations however continued.
As luck would have it, there was a military coup in Uganda in 1971 and Idi Amin Dada took over power. When Amin took over power, he favored the Democratic Party, which had been demobilized by the UPC government, and the Muslims. So the Muslims and Catholics came into power, and the protestants were pushed out. Catholics like Kibwetere received various political positions during this period. Then in 1979 Amin's government was overthrown, and the UPC government came back to power in 1980. When UPC came back to power, there was a manhunt for everyone who had supported the previous Amin government, and Kibwetere was one of the key members of the previous government so he ran into internal exile. He had gained a lot from the previous government. But while he was in exile, the UPC really destroyed his fortunes.
When the UPC government fell in 1985, Joseph Kibwetere returned from exile, only to find his fortunes gone. This disillusionment led him to visions of the Virgin Mary, in which he was told that this world has gone astray and it needs to go back to the Ten Commandments of God.
So, how was the state involved? You can see that this man was pushed to disillusionment by the state. It is the state that pushed him to start imagining and or receiving these visions of Mary or to start looking for recourse, and he finds it in religion. The Catholic Church in Uganda however refuses to acknowledge the proliferating visions of the Virgin Mary. The other disgruntled Banyaruguru Catholic priests however chose to give the Marian seers legitimacy. Kibwetere joined them, and soon they created a movement. Kibwetere is a man who still has a lot of land and plantations. He could tentatively feed the movement off his farm and finances. The priests could offer spiritual leadership to the movement. And so, this is what became the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.
Now you are currently in Johannesburg, South Africa, correct? And you are a member of our Ansari Institute Global Fellows cohort. Can you tell me about your book proposal and what you plan to do in the year ahead?
Yes, I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg for a year-long and renewable fellowship, and my hope is to publish and find a permanent job by the end of this fellowship. I am so honoured to now be a member of the Ansari Institute Global Fellows cohort. I only can give God the Glory. What else can I say? To imagine that one can come from as far as Nyamitanga, and become an affiliate of Notre Dame, is grace upon grace!
I plan to use this opportunity to finalize my book, which shall have seven sections. The introduction traverses the debates on religion, new religious movements, politics, violence, and also questions of justice, especially that we are talking about a movement that orchestrated the death of over 1000 people. The Introduction Chapter is really to map the different contours of the debates related to religion and violence. I also conceptualize the Separationist Legacy.
Then in Chapter One, I go back to the pre-colonial, to the pre-modern world, to show how religious movements existed, or religion was practiced. Of course, there is a challenge in using the concept ‘religion’ in the pre-colonial world, because religion is a modern conception, but we can talk about spirituality or faith, and talk about what religious praxis in the pre-colonial world was like.
The Second Chapter will be a chapter on Joseph Kibweteere, the main man, the guy who is most remembered for this movement. I will write Joseph Kibwetere's biography and put him in his context. And as I've tried to explain to you, this was a disillusioned man. He was not a born monster, as many narratives project him. I do not celebrate him and neither do I criminalize him. I attempt to humanize him.
The Third Chapter will move from Kibwetere to the religious movement – how the movement began. In this, I trace the Banyaruguru Catholic priests involved. I will talk about Fr. Dominic Kataribaabo, and then Fr. Paul Ikazire, who would later leave the religious movement at the threat of excommunication from the Catholic Church. I also talk about one of the female leaders of the religious movement, Credonia Mwerinde. I contextualize these subjects of the postcolonial state and how they came to form the breakaway religious movement.
In Chapter Four, I move on to talk about the violence. How do we explain the violence of this religious movement? For a people who were calling us to heed to Virgin Mary’s summon to return to the Ten Commandments of God, how do we explain that they committed this mass murder-suicide? I contextualize this violence in the separationist legacy. I show that it is partly the state regulation and victimization of religious movements that led to these acts of violence.
I then move on to the chapter on justice. Chapter Seven. Here, I ask a question: How do we seek justice in such circumstances?
Then my Last Chapter is really an overriding reflection on religious movements in post-colonial Africa now.
How do you think working with a cohort of other thinkers, even though they're not specifically in your field – they're not even specifically in your country – how do you think that will help you in this process?
I am glad that, even when we are in different contexts, we can start to see similar themes. For example, the theme of Leadership in the Catholic Church or Governance of the Postcolonial State. My fellow Global Fellows illuminate my understanding of the workings of the Catholic Church. So, I now have a more global understanding of the Catholic Church and other religious institutions. It is interesting that the more our local contexts are different, the more they are similar. This shall help me in making theoretical interventions. The Ansari Global Institute Fellowship is giving me an opportunity for Comparative Studies in Religion and Politics.
Look, there are things about my research work that I might not be able to see because of my location and biases, but the Ansari fellows and mentors shall help me with a third eye. Someone who does not know anything about what I am writing about is able to look at my work with an eagle’s eye, so they are able to see what I can't easily see. So, it shall open my eyes to themes and debates, and help me to nuance the study.
And finally, engaging in the numerous debates will help reinforce some of the ideas I'm building, and I may also get even more ideas.