Performing Kusamira: The Shifting Visibility of Spiritual Healing in Southern Uganda, 1993–2010

Public performances of spirit possession ritual in East Africa predate the colonial encounter by four hundred years. Over the past hundred years, the visibility of ritual practitioners in southern Uganda has undergone major shifts. However, their continuing activities testify to the value that people in this region place in kusamira spiritual healing as a form of local knowedge and indigenous scientific practice. This paper examines how healers’ associations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in contemporary Buganda and Busoga (southern Uganda) are re-shaping the visibility of these practices. These groups move a local dialectic of wellness into a broader discourse of health and wellness relating to the value of indigenous knowledge.

This recent history emerges from a historical trajectory of changing visibility for kusamira practitioners. European explorers commented on popular healers during the late nineteenth century. After Uganda became a British colony in 1900, administrative policies and Christian missionization pushed kusamira into less public settings.  Ritualists appear in colonial-era literature as “secret societies.” Independence in 1962 might have eased constraints, but when President Milton Obote abolished traditional kingdoms in Uganda in 1966, many other cultural institutions also suffered. During the 1970s, Idi Amin’s regime oppressed religious and ethnic minorities. Not until 1995 did the new Constitution of Uganda cultivate an atmosphere more conducive to cultural and religious plurality. Ugandans responded with apparent respect for the value of kusamira as a culturally relevant medicinal and spiritual science. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote traditional medicine have since expanded their activities, and Uganda has seen immense growth in the number of publicly recognized local healers. This work examines healers’ plural motivations for aligning with these groups, how the groups affect healers’ public visibility and socio-political influence, and how they link local practices with a broader discourse on the value of indigenous knowledge.