Alex Mukulu

Alex Mukulu was born in 1954 in Misebe, Ssingo County, in the Kingdom of Buganda, in what is now central Uganda. His parents were Paulo Kayizi Lugaizi and Victoria Ndagire, a daughter of Prince Yokana Kimbugwe of Lungujja. The Observer newspaper placed his birth in Namutamba village in present-day Mityana District, and noted that he often spoke about his roots.

He attended Namilyango College and then Kololo Secondary School in Kampala for his A-levels. He credited part of his artistic development to Father Grimes of Namasagali before going on to Makerere University, where he majored in film and drama.

Mukulu's first play, Muzukulu wa Kabangala, was produced in 1977. He described it as a kind of true story about a young man who chooses to go against the current. It was followed by a steady stream of productions, among them Engule ya Kamukukulu (1978), Springs of Tears (1979), The Celebrity (1983), I Killed the Archbishop (1984), Gwanga Mujje (1985), Wounds of Africa (1988), Peasants Cry (1989), Excuse Me Mzungu (1992), The Guest of Honour (1994), Seven Workers of Uganda (1995) and Radio Mambo Bado (1996).

His best known work, 30 Years of Bananas, was staged in the early 1990s and published as a book by Oxford University Press in 1993. Its central character, Kaleekeezi, is a Rwandan refugee who lives through Uganda's successive governments, a device Mukulu said let him look at the country's history from a relatively neutral position. The play put caricatures of Uganda's presidents since 1962 on stage, which he said no one had done before, and argued that a peaceful country could have achieved in five years what Uganda had managed in thirty. He considered it his most successful production.

In November 2007 his Journey to Self-Realization was performed at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala, in front of Queen Elizabeth II. In 2012 he directed the production marking the 50th anniversary of Uganda's independence at Kololo Independence Grounds, and he received an Independence Medal.

He also presented on Radio Simba in the late 1990s, worked in music and trained performers. Television audiences knew him as a tough, uncompromising judge on Yolesa Ekitone, a talent search programme on Bukedde TV. His later plays included A Good Muganda Case (2021) and The People's President (2022), and in 2024 he returned to the National Theatre in Kampala with Kulunkalu ne Kulumbisi, a local adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which he used to mentor younger theatre makers.

Mukulu was closely attached to Buganda and its culture, and the Katikiro of Buganda, Charles Peter Mayiga, said after his death that he had served Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II. The Daily Monitor published a photograph of him at his home in Ggaba in 1997. He was known for outspoken views on politics and society, which he often expressed with humour.

Alex Mukulu died on the afternoon of Saturday 15 August 2026, aged 72. The Daily Monitor reported that he had been battling illness for the previous couple of months; the cause of death was not made public. Wikipedia records that he died at Kiruddu General Referral Hospital in Kampala.

His death was reported the same day by New Vision and the Daily Monitor and prompted tributes from across Uganda's entertainment and theatre world. The Katikiro of Buganda, Charles Peter Mayiga, described him as a trainer, actor, songwriter and musician who loved Buganda culture, and the National Unity Platform leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu called him an "unapologetic voice of reason" in Uganda's entertainment industry.

Mukulu's stage career ran for more than four decades and placed him among the most important Ugandan dramatists of his generation, alongside writers such as Mary Karoro Okurut, Goretti Kyomuhendo, Susan Kiguli and Austin Bukenya. 30 Years of Bananas remains his signature work, an early example of Ugandan theatre openly satirising the country's rulers. Through his plays, his television judging and his work with young performers he influenced several generations of Ugandan artists, and the Daily Monitor described him as a bridge between generations in the country's creative industry.