Kigwa

Kigwa (personal name Sabizeze), the celestial being who fell from heaven, son of Nkuba; first ancestor of the Banyiginya and head of the Ibimanuka. Two interlocking origin accounts are preserved: the dynastic poem Ubucurabwenge has Nkuba beget Kigwa beget Muntu, while the Childless-Couple tale has Imana grant Kigwa (with his brother Lututsi and a sister) to the barren Nyinakigwa; the corpus identifies both as the same royal-line Kigwa. Demigod as a divinely-descended apical ancestor. Named in the batch prose of banyaruanda_nkuba and banyaruanda_imana; materialized here.

Parentage

• Nkuba
• Nyinakigwa

Children

• Muntu

Domains

• celestial ancestry
• royal lineage origin

Powers

• fall from heaven as the apical royal ancestor

Relations

• father: Nkuba
• father of: Muntu
• sibling: Lututsi
• sibling: Nyinabatutsi

Sources

• Marcel d'Hertefelt & A. Coupez, La royauté sacrée de l'ancien Rwanda (1964).
• Alexis Kagame, Ubucurabwenge / Inganji Karinga.
• Harold Scheub, A Dictionary of African Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2000), s.v. Imana.