Uganda Martyr Gyaviira Musoke
His father Ssemalago Mubiru of the Lung-fish (Mmamba) clan was an important chief who was in charge of keeping King Ssuuna II’s umbilical cord. He was also a very great friend of the king. He had assigned him another responsibility of keeping the shrine and act as the priest to god Mayanja. Ssemalago was a polygamist with about 50 wives and had about 100 children and one of those was Gyaviira. Musoke Gyaviira was a smart, intelligent, obedient, hard working and well-behaved boy.
That is why his father singled him out, though young as he was, about 15 years of age, and privately prepared him to be his successor. He had secretly trained him in the art of witchcraft and gave him a second name “MAYANJA” (the name of the god to whom in future he would be a priest).
But then, When King Mwanga ascended to the throne he demanded handsome, well-behaved and exceptionally smart boys from his chiefs to serve him as pages which forced Ssemalago to grudgingly lose Musoke Mayanja to the king’s service. His three elder sons in line were not as smart as the young lad and consequently Gyaviira came out as the only boy qualifying for the King’s service.
His own father Ssemalago Mubiru, then took the lad, to King Mwanga’s palace at Mmengo in 1884. Most of the pages, except Charles Lwanga who was the head of all the pages, were afraid of him at first and hardly associated with the new page due to the fact that he was closely connected with the famous witchcraft shrine of god Mayanja at his home.
But Charles Lwanga and the catholic pages were very friendly to him. Charles Lwanga soon started teaching Musoke Mayanja Gyaviira the catholic religion. The boy was interested mainly due to the friendly atmosphere he enjoyed with Lwanga and his fellow catholic pages.
When he took on the Catholic faith he was alienated from his clan and family which clan and family saw him as an out cast because of converting to the Catholic faith but he still carried on with the faith. On the fateful day, 26th May 1886, Gyaviira was one of the martyrs condemned to death by King Mwanga II because of their religion. When he was burnt alive at Namugongo, on 3 June 1886, Gyavira was no more than seventeen years of age.
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