Semei Kakungulu enjoyed at least nine lives in the area of the Uganda Protectorate immediately before, during, and after the imposition of British protectorate rule there at the close of the last century, in his successive roles as elephant hunter, guerilla leader, Ganda chief, border warlord, British ally in military campains, ‘native collector’, colonial client-king, President of the Busoga Lukiko, and leader of the anti-medicine Bamalaki and Bayudaya separatist sects. The purpose of these notes, however, is not to provide more details about these successive phases in Kakungulu’s extraordinary career, but rather to comment briefly on the nine major surviving vernacular accounts of his very full life. The nine vernacular lives of Semei Kakungulu may be seen as a transitional category of Luganda historical writing: transitional in the sense of being the products of the first generation of literate Christians from the kingdom of Buganda in eastern Uganda, Christians who together with incoming Imperial British East African Company and protectorate officials pushed through a ‘Christian revolution’. – Notes.
