On Monday, June 1, 2026, a few people buried legendry Paul Kafeero again. Police pathologists led by AIGP Dr Moses Byaruhanga exhumed the Kadongo Kamu legend’s remains in Buikwe District to collect DNA samples for a paternity suit involving more than 20 claimants.
The mood online and among the general public revealed the fault lines in most Ugandan families. And true to their sentiments, without any empirical data, we conclude in conformity that all our families are no longer at ease; if they ever were. We all have “issues”, including heritage disputes, disowned blood relatives and children, or even deep family hatred, where would-be brothers and sisters are diametrically opposed.
But when a nation must dig up its cultural icons to settle family disputes, it is time to ask hard questions about how we protect legacies that belong to all of us.
Kafeero the teacher, not just the singer.
As scholar and his former girlfriend, Kathryn Barrett-Gaines noted in her 2011 book, One Little Guitar: The Words of Prince Paul Kafeero: “Kadongo Kamu is oral literature… Kafeero’s work is educative, okuyigiriza, to cause to learn.” The words okuyigiriza - to educate, and okuzimba - to build, are engraved on his tombstone in Buikwe.
Kafeero died on May 17, 2007, at 36, but his songs remain textbooks on morality, love, and survival. His rich lyrics for Walumbe Zzaaya, Abakazi Okuwasa, Omwana w’Omuzungu, Musaayi Gwange, Lulimi Lwange, Dipo Nazigala, and others taught generations to think before they acted. He built that empire without inherited land or wealth. Talent, discipline, and cultural resonance did.
That is the estate Uganda should be guarding: intellectual property. Recordings, compositions, performance rights, and moral authority. Unlike land, you cannot divide a master recording into 20 portions without destroying its value. Yet reports of mismanaged assets and unauthorized alterations suggest that is what is happening while the family litigates.
When custom collides with modern wealth
The Buikwe exhumation exposes a structural mismatch. Baganda customary inheritance was designed for physical assets - land, cattle, houses - managed communally by clans and heirs. That system emphasizes lineage and shared custodianship. It worked when wealth was tangible. It fails with self-made, modern empires like Kafeero’s. His wealth is largely intangible: royalties from streaming, radio play, film licensing, and copyright. These require professional administration, transparent accounting, and long-term preservation.
Clan meetings and court adjournments cannot manage a Spotify catalog or negotiate sync licences. The result is predictable: fragmentation. Assets get sold for quick cash, like they already have. Properties lie idle in legal limbo. And the music, Kafeero’s real contribution to Uganda, risks being altered or diluted without oversight. With over 20 children claiming a stake in Kafeero’s estate, the conflict is only growing.
Entitlement depletes. Emulation builds.
It is also worth noting what the dispute reveals about incentives. Kafeero did not inherit musical genius. He forged it. If his children, biological or cultural, find the estate crumbling, the more honorable path is the one he took: build your own legacy.
A man who preached responsibility in songs should inspire responsibility in succession. Relying on royalties from a neglected catalog is short-term. Protecting and expanding that catalog while creating new value is an addition to the body of knowledge he left us.
Notably, public debate around Kafeero’s estate often slides into ad hominem; attacking the person instead of addressing the problem. It is easy to moralise about his personal life and number of relationships. But gossip does not secure royalties. Shame does not preserve recordings.
The relevant question is not how Kafeero lived privately, but how Uganda will keep his public teachings alive, and why his own children cannot learn life from his 21 albums containing 83 masterpieces of oral literature. If we spend the next decade litigating personalities, we will wake up to a catalog damaged beyond repair and a cultural pillar eroded.
A case for trusteeship
This is not a call to erase Baganda tradition. It is a call to adapt it. For cultural icons, self-made entrepreneurs, and public figures whose primary assets are intellectual, Uganda needs succession reforms that prioritize stewardship over division even with physical property.
Registered trustees: A professional board combining family representatives, lawyers, IP experts, and cultural custodians. This board, not ad hoc clan arrangements, should administer complex estates.
Revenue sharing, not asset splitting: Confirmed biological and legally adopted children receive defined percentages of ongoing income. The core assets; master recordings, publishing rights, remain intact and professionally managed. This reduces “one-time grabs” and sustains long-term value.
Preservation mandate: The board’s legal duty must include preventing unauthorized alterations. Kafeero’s lyrics must remain okuyigiriza– to cause to learn. Future listeners deserve the unedited lessons he recorded, while his family may jointly expand the wealth, through the foundation he laid. This can only be achieved, if the estate is jointly and professionally managed.
Incentivize creation: When heirs benefit from a living, growing legacy, they are motivated to protect it and to create their own. That aligns with both customary respect for lineage and modern economic reality.
Bury the dispute, protect the voice
Monday’s exhumation was professional, but it should be the last of its kind. That we needed DNA from a 19-year-old grave shows we lack trust, documentation, and legal tools to resolve paternity and succession without disturbing the dead. As we mark nearly 20 years since Kafeero’s death, let us honour him by safeguarding what he actually left behind: lessons, not land disputes.
Uganda’s cultural giants deserve estates that uplift, not litigate. If we fail, the words okuyigiriza, and okuzimba on Kafeero’s tombstone will read like irony. He taught a nation to build. We could not teach his heirs how to preserve? The time for trusteeship and legal reform is now; before more of Uganda’s cultural treasures are lost to controversy.
The writer is a commentator and journalist.