How it began
Barkcloth making is an ancient craft of the Baganda, who live in the Buganda kingdom in southern Uganda. Historians do not agree on exactly how it began. Baganda historians attribute it to one of the groups that migrated to Buganda between the 13th and 16th centuries, and its origins may go back to the founding of the kingdom. It has been made continuously since the 18th century.
How it works
Men harvest the inner bark of the mutuba tree (Ficus natalensis) in the rainy seasons by making two horizontal cuts and a vertical one and peeling the bark away. The trunk is wrapped in green banana leaves so the bark regrows in about a year. The bark is softened by steaming or hot water, then folded, stretched and beaten for hours with wooden mallets. The fibers felt together into cloth, which is patched, stretched and dried in the sun to a soft red-brown.
How it spread
At first only the king, royals and selected royal servants could use barkcloth. In the second half of the 18th century it was opened to commoners, and Kabaka Ssemakookiro is believed to have ordered all Baganda men to grow barkcloth trees and make cloth. Workshops stood in almost every village. Barkcloth served as dress, bedding, tribute, dowry and burial wrapping, and was traded to neighboring peoples such as the Bahima of Ankole.
Who pushed back
Swahili-Arab traders brought woven textiles in the mid-19th century. Christian missionaries later stigmatized barkcloth as tied to indigenous ritual. Under the British protectorate it was no longer owed as tribute and was not accepted for tax, and cotton farming, introduced in 1902, took up the same season as bark harvesting. Production declined.
What lasted
Barkcloth remained the cloth of coronations, funerals and succession rites. After the British deported the kabaka in 1953, Baganda wore it as a sign of mourning and loyalty and of protest against colonial rule. Kabaka Ronald Mutebi II wore a barkcloth robe at his coronation in July 1993.
Where it stands today
UNESCO proclaimed barkcloth making in Uganda a masterpiece of intangible heritage in 2005 and inscribed it on its Representative List in 2008. Production has been encouraged in Buganda, and the cloth is now also made into hats, bags, cushions, wall hangings and artworks for tourist and export markets.
