'Dini ya Msambwa (Religion of the Ancestor) is an African traditional religion that has been labeled an anti-colonial religion. [1] It is practiced primarily among speakers of the Luhya language of Western Kenya. [2]
'Dini ya Msambwa (Religion of the Ancestor) is an African traditional religion that has been labeled an anti-colonial religion. [1] It is practiced primarily among speakers of the Luhya language of Western Kenya. [2]
Dini ya Msambwa stood against colonialism during the British colonial rule of Kenya. Among other things, it criticized the undermining, by the British colonial government, of elder authority and of the cultural values that had held Kenyan peoples together for ages.
The first European to reach the Bukusu was Joseph Thomson, who upon arriving in 1883, found the Bukusu living in fortified villages surrounded by moats. These were a protection against raids from the Uasin Gishu people and the Teso people. British administration was established in North Nyanza in 1894. The following year the Bukusu killed 25 soldiers of the Sudanese garrison and a punitive expedition was undertaken against them. Their fortified villages were stormed by Sudanese troops and Africans from other tribes, and the fighting ended when the Bukusu acknowledged British rule and promised to abandon their villages. Today they live in scattered homesteads. [3]
The old authority of the tribal elders had been undermined with the advent of colonial rule. It was the elders in turn who had lent power to the old tribal religion or African traditional religion and hence it too was also undermined. Left in a spiritual vacuum, many Bukusu and Luhya, insecure in the rapidly-changing world, gravitated naturally into Christianity. [3] Masinde, being an elder, refused to convert.
The religion was founded by Elijah Masinde in 1936. After Kenyan independence in 1968, Dini ya Msambwa was declared illegal and Masinde was arrested for fomenting hatred of the Christian religion. [4] Dini Ya Msambwa takes the form of an African traditional religion; its followers worshipping through ancestral Spirits (known as Msambwa) in shrines. The veneration of ancestors is an important part of the religion.
The Kenya African National Union (KANU) is a Kenyan political party that ruled for nearly 40 years after Kenya's independence from British colonial rule in 1963 until its electoral loss in 2002. It was known as Kenya African Union (KAU) from 1944 but due to pressure from the colonial government, KAU changed its name to Kenya African Study Union (KASU) mainly because all political parties were banned in 1939 following the start of the Second World War. In 1946 KASU rebranded itself into KAU following the resignation of Harry Thuku as president due to internal differences between the moderates who wanted peaceful negotiations and the militants who wanted to use force, the latter forming the Aanake a forty, which later became the Mau Mau. His post was then occupied by James Gichuru, who stepped down for Jomo Kenyatta in 1947 as president of KAU. The KAU was banned by the colonial government from 1952 to 1960. It was re-established by James Gichuru in 1960 and renamed KANU on 14 May 1960 after a merger with Tom Mboya's Kenya Independence Movement.
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The Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) was a political party in Kenya. It was founded in 1960 when several leading politicians refused to join Jomo Kenyatta's Kenya African National Union (KANU). It was led by Ronald Ngala who was joined by Moi's Kalenjin Political Alliance, the Masai United Front, the Kenya African Peoples Party, the Coast African Political Union, Masinde Muliro's Baluhya Political Union and the Somali National Front. The separate tribal organisations were to retain their identity and so, from the very start, KADU based its political approach on tribalism. KADU's aim was to defend the interests of the so-called KAMATUSA as well as the British settlers, against the imagined future dominance of the larger Luo and Kikuyu that comprised the majority of KANU's membership, when it became inevitable that Kenya will achieve its independence. The KADU objective was to work towards a multiracial self government within the existing colonial political system. After release of Jomo Kenyatta, KADU was becoming increasingly popular with European settlers and, on the whole, repudiated Kenyatta's leadership. KADU's plan at Lancaster meetings was devised by European supporters, essentially to protect prevailing British settlers land rights.
Masaba (Lumasaaba), sometimes known as Gisu (Lugisu) after one of its dialects, is a Bantu language spoken by more than two million people in East Africa. The Gisu dialect in eastern Uganda is mutually intelligible with Bukusu, spoken by ethnic Luhya in western Kenya. Masaba is the local name of Mount Elgon and the name of the son of the ancestor of the Gisu tribe. Like other Bantu languages, Lumasaba nouns are divided into several sets of noun classes. These are similar to the genders in Germanic and Romance languages, except that instead of the usual two or three, there are around eighteen different noun classes. The language has a quite complex verb morphology.
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Elijah Masinde ( 1910/1912-1987) was a Bukusu activist.
The Gisu people, or Bamasaba people of Elgon, are a Bantu tribe of the Masaba people of eastern Uganda, closely related to the Bukusu people of Kenya. Bamasaba live mainly in the Mbale District of Uganda on the slopes of Mount Elgon.
The Masaba people, or Bamasaaba, are a Bantu people inhabiting the eastern Ugandan districts of Sironko, Manafwa, Bududa, Mbale,Namisindwa and Bulambuli. They are closely related to the Bukusu and Luhya of Western Kenya. They are mainly agricultural people, farming coffee, millet, bananas and sorghum on small-holder plots. Maize became popular with the coming of Europeans in the late 1890s.
Henry Pius Masinde Muliro was a Kenyan politician from the Bukusu sub-tribe of the larger Abaluhya people of western Kenya. He was one of the central figures in the shaping of the political landscape in Kenya. A renowned anti-colonial activist, he campaigned for the restoration of multi-party democracy in Kenya in his later years. He was a ruthless negotiator and a proponent of peaceful but focused politics. He had a reputation for integrity rivaled only by Ngala. He was considered by some as one of the best leaders that never became president, it has been speculated that had he not died, he may have beaten Moi for the presidency in 1992.
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