From Thursday to Monday morning, Nyege Nyege International Festival has been turning a certain part of Jinja upside down.
Hotels were booked out by Wednesday; guest houses doubled their rates from Jinja, Njeru, and, in some cases, Mbiko; yet some locals in these areas did not even know the festival was happening in the first place. But that is a story for another day.
Nyege Nyege Festival 2024 came back from many things. For the best years, the festival keeps coming back from Uganda’s moral custodians, who are always trying to have the festival cancelled. In fact, for the past five editions, the week leading to the festival week has always been an exchange in both boardrooms and social media.
From the late Ethics minister, Fr Simon Lokodo, claiming Nyege Nyege Festival was targeting Uganda’s young generation to enroll them in homosexuality, to Speaker Anita Among claiming the same, to pastors and social media users adding their voices, the festival seems to have held fort.
The last and almost the most vicious blow the festival has had to deal with was the 2023 terror alert by the American Embassy. Being a festival people travel to Uganda to attend, the alert affected numbers, mood, and feel.
In 2024, Nyege Nyege Festival bounced back from all this, just at the look of things, yet within the margins of the festival, it is clear the whole thing has been scarred by the fights, and it is really strained.
First attack
It should be noted that in 2018, the late Fr Simon Lokodo launched an attack on the festival, claiming it was a space where people are trained to become gay.
That year, the festival had partnered with telecom giants MTN as the title sponsors; the festival would be renamed MTN Nyege Nyege Festival, an arrangement that was supposed to last for three years.
The attack on Nyege Nyege by Fr Lokodo was disastrous; the festival ended up taking place and was more successful than the editions between 2015 and 2017 combined.
The festival that year had artistes from all over the globe, most notably a young South African rapper and traditional electronic artiste, Sho Madjozi. Nine months later, after her performances at the Nyege Nyege Festival, she won a BET award and later captivated the world with the single John Cena.
At that point, Nyege Nyege Festival was not just a big Ugandan festival, it was being rated as the biggest African dance music festival, only being rivalled by MTN Bushfire in Swaziland.
