Uganda’s most unapologetically outspoken socialite, Shanitah Namuyibwa, better known as Bad Black, has done it again. In a recent interview, the controversial personality dropped one of her most striking admissions yet, confirming without a flicker of hesitation that she practices witchcraft, visits traditional shrines on a regular basis, and even knows how to use the Emindi, a traditional tobacco pipe used in ancestral rituals.
Straight Talk, No Filter
When the interviewer asked whether she had ever bewitched anyone, most people in her position would deflect, laugh it off, or give a carefully worded non-answer. Bad Black did none of that. Her response was immediate and unapologetic. According to the interview covered by Mbu, she stated plainly that she has entered traditional shrines not once or twice, but frequently, and that even the ancestral spirits tied to her clan have a hold on her.
Her exact words left little room for interpretation. She confirmed knowing how to puff the Emindi pipe, a detail that signals more than passing curiosity about traditional practices. It suggests genuine participation in rituals that require both knowledge and initiation. For many Ugandans, the Emindi is not a prop or a cultural curiosity. It carries deep spiritual weight within certain clan traditions, and using it correctly is not something you stumble into accidentally.
Why She Turns to Traditional Practices
Bad Black explained that her visits to traditional shrines are not random acts of desperation. She goes there when she is looking for solutions, implying a deliberate, considered approach to a spiritual system she clearly does not treat as taboo. This is a woman who has lived an extraordinarily turbulent public life, from legal battles to personal upheaval, and it appears she has found in ancestral tradition a resource she trusts.
That framing matters. There is a significant difference between someone who dabbles in the occult out of curiosity and someone who integrates traditional healing and spiritual consultation into how they navigate life’s challenges. Bad Black seems to fall firmly in the latter camp. The mention of her clan’s ancestral spirits sitting on her head is particularly telling. In many Ugandan cultural contexts, that kind of language describes a person who has been spiritually claimed or chosen by lineage spirits, often a serious designation that comes with both responsibility and power.
A Country Divided on Traditional Belief
Uganda occupies a complex spiritual landscape. Christianity and Islam both claim enormous followings, yet traditional beliefs, ancestral worship, and shrine-based healing practices have never disappeared. They run quietly beneath the surface of modern life, consulted by businesspeople, politicians, and everyday citizens who would never admit it publicly. Bad Black’s willingness to speak openly about her practices is, in that context, genuinely unusual.
The reaction to her confession has been predictably split. Some Ugandans see her honesty as refreshing, a rare instance of someone refusing to perform respectability while privately doing something entirely different. Others find the open acknowledgment of witchcraft troubling, particularly given the religious conservatism that shapes much of public discourse in the country. But Bad Black has built her brand on saying what others will not, and this is consistent with that identity.
The Socialite Who Never Plays It Safe
To understand why this confession lands the way it does, you have to understand who Bad Black is in Uganda’s cultural conversation. She has been a fixture in tabloid headlines for years, never far from controversy, never particularly interested in managing her image in conventional ways. Where other celebrities carefully curate what they reveal about their private lives, she tends to swing the door wide open.
That quality makes her fascinating and, depending on your perspective, either deeply authentic or recklessly self-destructive. Her willingness to speak about traditional shrines and ancestral spirits with the same casual ease that someone else might discuss their church attendance says something about how she moves through the world. She does not appear to segment her life into publicly acceptable and privately shameful categories.
What This Reveals About Public Honesty and Cultural Identity
There is a broader conversation worth having here. Uganda, like many African countries, carries a complicated relationship with indigenous spiritual practice. Colonial history, missionary influence, and the resulting social stigma have pushed many traditional beliefs underground, where they are practiced privately but denied publicly. Bad Black’s confession, whether she intended it this way or not, pokes at that contradiction.
Many people who publicly condemn witchcraft visit shrines when the stakes feel high enough. The hypocrisy is not unique to Uganda, and it is not unique to any class or profession. What is rare is someone of public prominence saying, plainly, that they do it, they do it often, and they are not embarrassed about it.
That kind of honesty cuts through a lot of noise. It does not mean everyone must agree with her choices or share her beliefs. But it does invite a more honest national conversation about what people actually believe, what they actually do, and why the gap between those two things is often so wide.
So here is the question worth sitting with: in a society where so many practice traditional beliefs privately while condemning them publicly, is Bad Black’s raw honesty actually more culturally respectful than the silence of those who do the same thing but refuse to admit it? Drop your thoughts below.
