Malaki, Musajjakawa
c. 1875 to 1929
Malakite Church
Uganda

    Musajjakawa Malaki was a Christian leader who formed a separatist church, the Society of the One Almighty God, popularly known as the Malakites.
    Malaki, a Baganda, was twice refused baptism by Anglican missionaries, and in 1914 he founded the Malakite movement, which soon developed into a formal denomination that claimed more than 90,000 adherents within seven years. The Malakites were also the first independent church in Uganda.
    Although the Malakites were a religious group, they also carried the seeds of anticolonial dissent. The movement was confined almost entirely to the Baganda, Uganda's dominant ethnic group, which by 1914 was substantially Christian. Malaki taught that Western medicine was to be rejected, which created conflict with both the missionaries and the government. Perhaps more serious was his advocacy of land redistribution. The Malakites proposed that ancestral lands be the property of clans rather than of individuals. This proposal was a threat to the local chiefs. The incident that brought about the suppression of the Malakites by the colonial government, however, was their refusal to cooperate in a vaccination program. Malaki himself died as the result of a hunger strike.
    The movement declined swiftly from its peak in 1921 until it disappeared around 1930. The Malakites' church was among the very few large independent churches in Africa that have collapsed. Its appearance caused the missionary churches to reconsider their attitudes toward African religious aspirations.
Norbert C. Brockman

Bibliography:
Lipschutz, Mark R., and R. Kent Rasmussen. Dictionary of African Historical Biography. 2nd edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

This article is reproduced, with permission, from An African Biographical Dictionary, copyright © 1994, edited by Norbert C. Brockman, Santa Barbara, California. All rights reserved.
source : http://www.dacb.org/stories/uganda/malaki_musaj1.html


    The Bamalaki (followers of Malaki) who called their movement K.O.A.B.-- an abbreviation of Katonda omu ayinza byona which means "God is omnipotent"-- were dissident protestants whose faith rested on their devotion to the Bible. Malaki was a disciple of Joswa Kate Mugema, a rich and influential Buganda chief who refused to recognize any authority but the Bible and differed from the protestants on many religious principles. He regarded Saturday as the Sabbath and requested the British authorities to accept this officially. To do so would have created difficulties at work and administrative problems, and thus Mugema clashed with the British on this issue. He began comparing himself to Moses who was sent by God to Pharoah (in this case, the British Government) and gave his nation a new code of laws. Mugema violently fought any sign of idol worship. He forbade his followers to eat pork, but allowed polygamy, claiming that the patriarch Abraham married more than one wife. In this too, he deviated from accepted Christian practice. But the most important principle in the new faith, which spread rapidly through Uganda (in 1921 there were about 100,000 believers), was violent opposition to the use of medicines and immunizations for humans and animals. Doctors were regarded as Satan's representatives. If God could save man from the burning fiery furnace (Daniel 3), he could definitely help them in time of illness, no matter how severe. There was no need for human aid--faith alone would suffice. The Malaki referred to the Old Testament on this question, quoting amongst many other verses, Jeremiah 46:11: In vein shall you use many medicines; for you shall not be cured. Their objection to immunization during an outbreak of plague resulted in violence between them and the British authorities. Their leader Malaki was exiled to northern Uganda in 1926 and died that year of a protracted hunger strike.
source : http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/uganda1.html


    The main proponent of the spread of Malakitism in eastern Uganda was Semei Kakungulu, who - embittered with the colonial authorities after his retirmeent from the 'presidency' of Busoga in 1913 - heartily embraced the anti-establishmentarianism of the breakaway faith. Kakungulu withdrew from politics to focus his attention on spiritual matters, he soon started to develop his own variations on the established Malakite doctrines, leading to a dispute that would eventually split the Mbale Malakites into two opposing factions. The key issue was male circumcision, which most other Malakites regarded as sacrilege. The true reason behind the widespread Malakite objection to circumcision was rooted in Kiganda tradition, which forbade bodily mutilation of any sort. But this was rationalised away by claiming that circumcision was the way of the Abayudaya, people who don't believe in Jesus Christ.
    The present-day Abayudaya communitu was founded in 1920, when Kakungulu, fed up with the wuarrelling, announced to the Malakites that 'because of your insults... I have separated completely from you and stay with those who want to be circumcised: and wa wil be known as the Jews'. Kakungulu - at the age of 50 - was circumcised along with his first-born son. He circumcised all his subsequently born sons eight days after their birth, and gave all his children Old Tertament names. In 1922, he published an idiosyncratic Luganda religions text steeped in the Jewish religion, demanding complete faith in the Old Testament and all its commandments from himself and his followers.

Philip Briggs, Uganda, 5th: The Bradt Travel Guide, p.438-39
Bradt Travel Guides, 2007 - 512 pages
source : Google Books