Three nations · Nine generations · One voice
Roots
In Buganda you are never only yourself. To introduce yourself, you must name your father, his father, your clan, its totem, its motto — identity spoken aloud as genealogy. This is that introduction, made in full.
House I · Buganda, Uganda
Ennyonyi ya Nseenene
The clan of the grasshopper
The Nseenene take the grasshopper as their totem — not only a sign but a season. Twice a year, when the rains come, the swarms rise over Buganda and are gathered: a delicacy, a harvest, a small green promise of abundance. To this clan you do not eat your own totem. You honour it.
The clan remembers its beginning as a migration. Kiroboozi, a herdsman on the slopes of Mugamba Hill, had three children who drove their cattle down through Bwera into Ggomba: Buyonga, Kalibbala — and their sister, Nnandawula. A woman remembered by name in a line that counts itself through fathers. Her name did not end. It was carried, and carried, and given again — until it arrived here, spelled the way I spell it.
Through Buyonga's daughter Wannyana, mother of Kabaka Kimera, the third king of Buganda, the clan is woven into the founding of a throne — which is why our praise still calls on Nakimera, of Kimera. And the name I carry, Kagwa, is the name of Sir Apolo Kagwa — Katikkiro of Buganda for thirty-six years, regent to a child-king, and the first man to write our history down so it could not be lost. The colossus of Buganda.
Omubala · the clan motto
“Ggwe mpagi, ggwe luwaga;
Nakimera muka Ssuuna.”
“You are the pillar, you are the support-beam.” The ones who hold the house up.
- Totem
- Nseenene · the grasshopper
- Clan head
- Mugalula
- Seats
- Kisozi · Lweza, Busujju
And in our own telling: I come from the line of Kabombola, who reigns from Kyakasuku; from Segoma in Kayenje. Names the internet does not keep — only the family does.
House II · amaXhosa, South Africa
AmaTshawe
The founding royal house
Every Xhosa king traces back to one ancestor: Tshawe. And the way he came to the throne is the part I love. He was not the eldest, not the Great House heir — he was the junior son. When their father died, his brothers Cirha and Jwarha held the senior claims. Tshawe took warriors, met them in the field, and won the kingship — then held it for his line forever. The oldest royal house in South Africa begins with a younger child who refused to be minor.
This house keeps its memory two ways. The isiduko — the clan name — passes from father to child and matters more than any surname; to know a person's isiduko is to know their ancestors and be able to praise them. And the imbongi, the praise-poet, walks beside the chief and recites the deeds of the house out loud. History, kept as performed poetry.
I was born into a nation that appoints a poet to remember the family — and then I became one.
House III · amaHlubi, South Africa
KwaMsimanga
The scattered kingdom
The Msimanga are amaHlubi — an Nguni people old enough to count kings back to the 1300s, down to Langalibalele. Then, around 1818, the Mfecane — the great scattering. The Hlubi kingdom was shattered; its people fled north, west, into other nations, into refuge. That is why a Msimanga can be found today in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe. The spread of the clan across four countries is a fingerprint of that flight — and my own life across nations is the same story, still moving.
Its praises are real, and they are poetry: the one who descends in a grain-basket while commoners come down on foot — an image of rank folded into a single line, spoken to greet and to honour.
Izithakazelo · the clan praises
Thabizolo, Nonkosi, Mlotshwa,
wena owehla ngesilulu
abafokazane behla ngezinyawo,
Pembe kaLokothwayo,
Ngelengele!
Praise-names carried, not translated — the way they are meant to be spoken. isiHlubi, the language they belong to, is endangered now; to say them at all is to keep them alive.
And so, the introduction
I am of the grasshopper and the throne of Buganda; of the royal house of Tshawe; of the scattered kingdom of the Hlubi. Three nations gave me their names and their poetry. I am the one they appointed to remember — and I remember in verse.
Nseenene · AmaTshawe · Msimanga · Nine generations documented
Clan histories drawn from the Buganda Kingdom, South African History Online, the Ulwazi Programme, and family record. Verified histories and praise-poetry; the family's own line and names are held as family memory.