In the previous chapter, we explored competing political agendas between the DP branches of Acholiland and Ankole. As Uganda neared independence, Benedicto Kiwanuka's leadership was undermined by delegates in Ankole. In late colonial Buganda, Catholic democratisation engendered different political possibilities and competition for Catholic constituents throughout the kingdom. As Carol Summers has shown, Catholic debates about public power in late colonial Buganda were intertwined with older ideas about mobility, authority, and inclusion. In his quest to push for a liberal democratic nationalism, Benedicto Kiwanuka found himself in direct opposition with two of Buganda's most influential late colonial Catholic politicians: the former Catholic seminarian Semakula Mulumba, formerly Brother Francis; and Aloysius Darlington Lubowa, the chief justice (omulamuzi) of Buganda. Lubowa was the most politically influential Catholic royalist in late colonial Buganda.

We begin this chapter by exploring Kiwanuka's and Mulumba's fraught relationship, and the larger fissures in Buganda's Catholic community that their relationship embodied. The tumultuous relationship between these two Catholic intellectuals shows how southern Ugandan activists struggled to control Catholic patronage and patriarchal authority. Kiwanuka's approach to public politics was acutely masculine, contributing to DP's failure to empower women's political movements. Mulumba threatened traditional Catholic religious hierarchies, including that of Bishop Joseph Kiwanuka, the epitome of Ganda clerical authority. To undermine Catholic priestly authority further, Mulumba supported the controversial career of Matia Kigaanira Ssewannyana, a Catholic lay person who became a priest for Kibuuka, the Ganda god of war. We then turn to A. D. Lubowa. In the late 1950s, it was symbolically and electorally important for Kiwanuka to secure the backing of the Catholic county of Buddu, and Buganda's Catholic counties more broadly. Ultimately, though, the government of Buganda and Kabaka Yekka carried Buddu and the majority of Buganda. For Catholic royalists, such as Lubowa, the obligation to serve Buganda's kingship outweighed the authority of Uganda's newfangled political parties – even if the DP membership was predominantly Catholic.