Bamanya, Yekoyada (1915–1996)
By Daniel M. Matte
Daniel M. Matte, D.Min. (Adventist University of Africa, Nairobi, Kenya), is currently the president of Uganda Union Mission. He previously served as the Uganda Union Mission executive secretary. He also served as president of a field, a departmental director and a frontline pastor. He is married to Sarah Mbambu Matte and they have seven children.
First Published: March 22, 2021
Pastor Yekoyada Bamanya was a Seventh-day Adventist pastor from Bunyoro, western Uganda. He was one of the first graduates of Nhwanga Training School, which was the first Seventh-day Adventist school in Uganda.
Early Life
A Munyoro by tribe, Yekoyada Bamanya was born December 13, 1915, in Kakindo sub county in Kikwaya village in the current Kakumiro district.1 This area is part of the historical lost counties of Bugangaizi in Ugandan political history. His father was Erizaphani Buteraba Byoya of the Bachwezi clan. This clan is one of the historical clans in Bunyoro, having established one of the famous traditional dynasties in the pre-modern history of Uganda which ruled much of the present-day Uganda, parts of Kenya, and parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.2 His mother was Elizabeth Ruyenje. Yekoyada Bamanya had four older siblings–one sister and four brothers.3 Little is known about this family. He was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church on November 15, 1934, just seven years after the Seventh-day Adventist Church opened its work in Uganda in 1927, but it is not clear how he received the Seventh-day Adventist message.4
Marriage, Education and Early Ministry
Yekoyada Bamanya married Alice Kirungi at Nchwanga on April 27, 1943,5 and God blessed them with the following children: Yayeri Kisembo, Miriam Tusubira, Enock Nyamuleta, Nuha Kasaija, Betty Kibudde, Norah Mugisa, Margret Kirungi, Keziah Mirembe, Lydia Patience, John Bamanya, and Coleb Tumusiime—seven daughters and four sons.
Pastor Bamanya’s service record shows that he finished primary six at Nchwanga in 1938. In 1935 and 1936 he taught at Rwega in Mubende.6 This seems to indicate that he was working and studying at the same time. Rwega must have had a subgrade school which only operated part time. According to his oldest daughter, Yayeri Kisembo, Pastor Bamanya trained at Nchwanga and at Kamagambo in Kisii, Kenya, but she did not know what kind of training her father received in these two places.7 It is likely he received both primary education and some ministerial training at Nchwanga and teacher training education at Kamagambo. According to Pastor Bamanya’s service record, he was in training from 1937 to 1942, at Nchwanga and Kamagambo consecutively.8 This is a period of six years. Records indicate that the Seventh-day Adventist Church educational work in Uganda started at Nchwanga in February 1932.9
The pioneer principal of Adventist education at Nchwanga, Vagn Rasmussen, reported in the Advent Survey, the official organ of the Northern European Division, in June 1933, that the pioneer training class at Nchwanga, which opened in February 1932, was composed of the brightest young men selected from the eight groups of believers at that time, and that the class had 16 students, of whom seven were Baganda, seven were Banyoro, and two were Banyarwanda. He goes on to say that the oldest in this class was 27 years old, while the youngest was 15.10 Bamanya was 17 years old when this class opened at Nchwanga. Whether he was part of this pioneer class is not known.
Records indicate that Bamanya was a pioneer teacher at Bugema School of Evangelists in 1948. According to the Southern Africa Division Outlook of June 1948, M. H. Sparrow, who was the superintendent of the East African Union in 1948, is quoted reporting that the Committee of the East African Union had voted to open a school of Evangelists at Bugema in 1948, with Elder C. J. Hyde from Nyanchwa Mission in Kenya as the head of the department of evangelism at the school. He goes on to say that Pastor Bamanya was appointed by the Uganda Field administration to assist in the teaching duties at the East African Union school of evangelists at Bugema. It is further reported that the language of instruction for this inaugural evangelists’ two-year program was English.11 This assignment suggests that Pastor Bamanya was considered skilled and knowledgeable enough to be entrusted with such a duty. The same article reports that there was no accommodation at Bugema for opening the union school of evangelists, so the leadership of Uganda Field offered the facilities at Nchwanga for this purpose.12 The pioneer class was composed of 42 students selected from Uganda Field, Kenya Field, and Tanganyika Field, with each field contributing 14 students. All the pioneer students were married and had to meet an entry qualification of standard six.13 According to the same article, Pastor Bamanya was ordained into the gospel ministry during a special service on April 3, 1948, at Nchwanga, before he could begin the duty of being an instructor of evangelists.14
Subsequent Ministry
Pastor Bamanya officially started his service for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1935 as a teacher at Rwega in Mubende. He did this work for two years and went back for more training. The record shows that from 1937 to 1942, he was in training both at Nchwanga and Kamagambo. After he left Kamagambo in 1942, his service record shows that he worked as a Bible Instructor at Nchwanga from 1943 to 1945. From 1946 to 1947, he served as an evangelist in Kakoro in eastern Uganda. From 1948 to 1949 he worked at Nchwanga as a Bible teacher. This assignment is understood to have been the one of teaching the inaugural class of the union class of pioneer evangelists drawn from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika (now Tanzania). This is the class that should have started at Bugema, but was taken to Nchwanga because of lack of adequate accommodation at Bugema.
From 1950 to 1954 Pastor Bamanya served as a Bible teacher at Bugema. From 1955 to 1957 Pastor Bamanya served as station director at Kakoro, as confirmed by the yearbook of 1956.15 The available service record of Pastor Bamanya stops at 1958, where it is shown that he was working in Itojo, Ankole, in southwestern Uganda as a district leader.16 His daughter indicated that he also worked at Ishaka and then at Kihembo in Fort Portal as a district pastor. His daughter further said that her father retired at Kihembo in Fort Portal in 1977, during the golden jubilee year for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Uganda. He retired from active service after 42 years of productive ministry. The year 1977 is also when the president of the Republic of Uganda, General Idi Amin Dada, on September 20, 1977, announced a ban of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Uganda along with 20 other Christian churches, with the Adventist Church appearing first on the list of the banned and outlawed faiths in Uganda.
What an experience it must have been for Pastor Bamanya to begin his retirement when the Adventist Church had just been banned. Bamanya rested in the Lord on February 13, 1996 at the age of 81 and was buried at his home in Bwenderwa, Kasiisi, in Kabarole political district, about seven kilometers from Fort Portal city. His wife, Alice Kirungi Bamanya, died 22 years later on September 16, 2018 at the age of 90.17
Legacy
Pastor Bamanya was a pioneer in many respects. He was a pioneer graduate of the first Seventh-day Adventist school in Uganda at Nchwanga, and he belongs to the pioneer native and Ugandan church workers.
Later in his ministry, he was among the first Ugandan Bible instructors and also a pioneer Ugandan teacher who taught at Nchwanga, the very first East African Union class of evangelists from East Africa. Later he taught the same course at Bugema. This makes him the first Ugandan religion teacher at Bugema. In 1955 he became the first Ugandan to be appointed station director at a time when all church administrative work was done by foreign missionaries. This indicates the level of dedication he had and the trust the missionaries had in him.
Sources
“Bamanya, Yekoyada.: Service Record from Central Uganda Conference Secretariat Records, Kampala, Uganda.
Rasmussen, Vagn. “The Nchwanga Training School.” The Advent Survey. June 1933.
Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook. https://www.adventistyearbook.org/.
Sparrow, H. M. “Training Pastors and Evangelists.” The Southern Division Mission Outlook, June 1948.
“The Bachwezi Dynasty.” Accessed April 27, 2021. http://www.bunyoro-kitara.org/54.html.
Notes
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Yekoyada Bamanya’s service record, Central Uganda Conference Secretariat Records, Kampala, Uganda.↩
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“The Bachwezi Dynasty,” accessed April 27, 2021, http://www.bunyoro-kitara.org/54.html.↩
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Yayeri Kisembo (Bamanya Yekoyada’s eldest daughter), telephone interview by the author, March 9, 2021.↩
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Yekoyada Bamanya’s service record.↩
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Ibid.↩
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Ibid.↩
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Yayeri Kisembo, telephone interview by the author, March 9, 2021.↩
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Yekoyada Bamanya’s service record.↩
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Vagn Rasmussen, “The Nchwanga Training School,” The Advent Survey, June 1933, 5-6.↩
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Ibid.↩
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H. M. Sparrow, “Training Pastors and Evangelists,” The Southern Division Mission Outlook, June 1948, 3-4.↩
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Ibid.↩
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Ibid.↩
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Ibid.↩
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Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (1956), 61.↩
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Ibid.↩
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Yayeri Kisembo, telephone interview by the author, March 9, 2021.↩