Kakumba, Mark

Anglican Martyr of the Buganda Kingdom

Kakumba Mark is remembered as one of the Uganda Martyrs, executed on January 31, 1885, at Mpiima-Erebera, Busega, in present-day Uganda. Along with fellow converts Serwanga Noah and Rugalama Joseph, he was condemned by Ssekabaka (deceased king) Mwanga II to “a slow burning death” for refusing to renounce Christianity. [1] He was approximately fifteen or sixteen years old when he died.

The executions, which occurred just a few months after Mwanga ascended to the throne of Buganda, marked the first recorded martyrdoms of African Christian converts in Uganda. This was also the beginning of a period of violent persecution that profoundly influenced the history of Christianity in the region and beyond.

In his memory, a poem titled “Serwanga, Kakumba, and Ashe’s Boy,” composed by the English poet Hugh Fickling, was published in The Church Missionary Gleaner (a Church Missionary Society (CMS) periodical) in October 1885. It celebrated his courage and reflected the shock and inspiration his martyrdom stirred among Christians in Britain.

The surname Kakumba, which remains common in Uganda today, indicates membership in the Ffumbe (civet cat) clan, one of the clans within Buganda’s complex social and kinship system. His baptismal name, Mark, rendered in CMS records as Mako or Maliko, was derived from the author of the Gospel of Mark. Both renderings are Luganda forms of Mark.

Apollo Kaggwa (later Sir), the long-serving former Katikkiro (prime minister) of Buganda and a chronicler of its customs, referred to him as Kakumba “Noah” and his colleague Serwanga as “Mark.” However, most primary sources identify Kakumba as Mark and Serwanga as Noah.

Kakumba was baptized on December 25, 1883, by Robert P. Ashe and Philip O’Flaherty during Uganda’s first recorded public Christmas celebration. Fifteen others, including his colleague Serwanga, were baptized on the same day. [2] This baptism occurred less than two years after Uganda’s first Anglican baptism on March 18, 1882, making Kakumba one of the first Christian converts in Uganda.

Mwanga, who was only nineteen when he was crowned kabaka on October 25, 1884, quickly became impulsive and distrustful of missionaries and what they were teaching his subjects. [3] This occurred even after he had invited Roman Catholic missionaries to return to Buganda from Bukumbi (in present-day Tanzania), where they had taken refuge after a conflict with Muteesa, his father, in 1882.

By January 1885, tensions had escalated significantly. Mwanga suspected that the missionaries were conspiring to depart Buganda with some of his subjects, an act he interpreted as treasonous. He ordered his guards (Bambowa) to raid the CMS mission at Nateete, Kampala, where Alexander Murdoch Mackay and several young converts lived and studied. [4]

On January 30, 1885, Mwanga’s soldiers captured several converts, including Kakumba, and were taken to Mengo, the royal capital, where he faced a brief and arbitrary trial before Mwanga. He was accused of disobedience and of “looking into the mouth” of the kabaka—an idiomatic expression meaning disrespecting an elder or elders.

Many of the arrested converts recanted under pressure or were ransomed by relatives or friends. [5] Mackay (for instance) secured the release of one convert named Sambo, whereas other chiefs intervened on behalf of their kin. A woman named Sarah Nakimu Nalwanga, wife of Lutamaguzi Henry Wright, was also among the arrested and was charged with possessing Christian manuscripts. She was initially sentenced to witness Kakumba’s execution. [6] However, once it was revealed that she was a member of the royal family, she was pardoned and released.

For Kakumba, Mwanga dismissed the missionaries’ pleas for mercy and ordered that he be burned alive to death.

On January 31, 1885, he was paraded through the streets to the execution site. On the way there, the chief executioner, Mujaasi Kapalaga, mocked him, saying that if Jesus Christ was truly a Saviour, then let him save him. [7] Witnesses also reported that during the march, Kakumba stated that Islam, Mujaasi’s religion, was also a peaceful faith opposed to violence, yet this fell on deaf ears.

At Mpiima-Erebera, his hands were severed to prevent resistance. He was then thrown into the flames. Mwanga had issued an additional instruction that his body be dismembered once dead and that the remains be scattered across the capital to deter others from becoming Christians.

Kakumba’s final moments are described slightly differently. Joseph Mullins, previously Secretary of the Colonial and Continental Church Society and author of The Wonderful Story of Uganda (1904), wrote that Kakumba (and his two colleagues) sang the Swahili hymn “Killa siku tuusifu!” (“Let us praise each day”) as they burned. Ashe, in Uganda at the time, disputed this, claiming that the hymn was sung on their way to the execution site rather than during the burning. Nonetheless, all accounts agree that the youthful Christian faced death with extraordinary calmness and faith.

News of his martyrdom spread quickly through CMS missionary networks in London, England, where the society was headquartered. Kakumba’s bravery was celebrated in sermons, hymns, poems, and memorial writings, symbolizing the strength and sincerity of African Christianity. [8] As a result, his death inspired renewed missionary enthusiasm for East Africa, especially for Buganda.

The site of Kakumba’s execution remained known among local Christians for decades. On May 22, 1905, twenty years after his death, Bishop Alfred R. Tucker of Uganda, Bishop Frank Weston of Zanzibar and Reverend Ernest Millar, consecrated the site as a memorial. A Muslim eyewitness, identified by Kaggwa, guided them to the location. Some of the martyrs’ remains were found and verified by Bishop Weston, who held doctorates in both medicine and divinity. [9]

Decades later, on January 28, 1984, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, dedicated Busega Martyrs Memorial Church, built on the site where Kakumba was martyred. Earlier, Bishop Tucker had also dedicated the first chapel at King’s College Budo in Wakiso, Uganda, in his memory, reaffirming his lasting place in Uganda’s Christian educational history.

Today, many parishes across Uganda honor Kakumba by name, including St. Mark Kakumba Church in Kyanja, Kampala. His life continues to be celebrated as a symbol of youthful devotion, courage, and faith. As one of the first martyrs in Uganda, his testimony helped shape and strengthen a church that has since become one of the largest Anglican provinces in sub-Saharan Africa. [10]

Kimeze Teketwe

Notes:

1. Church Missionary Gleaner, vol. 14, no. 164 (1887), p. 88.
2. Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record, vol. 14 (1886), p. 883.
3. Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 28 (1903), p. 525.
4. Alexander Murdoch Mackay was at the time the head of the CMS mission station located in Nateete, Kampala.
5. Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record, vol. 10 (1885), p. 718.
6. Ibid., p. 718.
7. Church Missionary Gleaner, vol. 12, no. 142 (1885), p. 117.
8. Church Missionary Gleaner, vol. 14, no. 164 (1887), p. 88.
9. Church Missionary Intelligencer, vol. 30 (1905), p. 670.
10. Andrew McKinnon, “Demography of Anglicans in Sub-Saharan Africa: Estimating the Population of Anglicans in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda,” Journal of Anglican Studies 18, no. 1 (2020): 44–66.

Sources:

Adam Matthew Digital. Primary Sources for Teaching and Research. London: Sage Publishers, 2024.

Ashe, Robert P. Two Kings of Uganda. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1889.

———. Chronicles of Uganda. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1894.

Faupel, John F. African Holocaust: The Story of the Uganda Martyrs. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1962.

Stock, Eugene. The History of the Church Missionary Society: Its Environment, Its Men, and Its Work. London: Church Missionary Society, 1899.

Teketwe, Kimeze. “The Woman between Us: Sarah Nakimu Nalwanga and the Founding of Uganda’s Anglican Tradition.” Journal of Anglican Studies (2023): 1–14.

———. “Philip O’Flaherty and the Irish Roots of Uganda’s Protestantism.” Missiology: An International Review 52, no. 2 (2024).

This biography, submitted on March 22, 2026, was researched and written by Kimeze Teketwe, an international education professional and historian of early colonial East Africa. Teketwe holds graduate degrees in international educational development and global leadership from the University of Pennsylvania and Fuller Theological Seminary, respectively.