Diss. Uppsala : Univ., 2003.

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Diss.--Uppsala University, 2003. / Bibliogr. p. 321-349.

The aim of this thesis will be to decipher why Acholi ethnic identity remained such a critical political tool in late and post-colonial Uganda, from 1950-1985, just before the outbreak of civil war in 1986. The thesis will centre not on the inevitability of the war, but will instead focus on the political processes that preceded it. It will seek fill a gap in a historiography of a people whose contribution to the Ugandan nation state goes beyond that of collective suffering, violence, paramilitary warfare and ethnic conflict. To effectively do this there will be an assessment of how Acholi gender, class and social hierarchies, religious identities, regional identifications and the much-touted ‘martial’ identity have been utilised internally and externally to politically reinforce Acholi ethnicity in late-colonial and post-colonial Uganda. Ugandan political engagement has continually allowed the politics of ethnicity to take a centre stage. Even in the present day, Uganda remains ethnically and regionally divided between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’. Bantu-speaking ethnic groups in the southern, central and western Uganda, including the Baganda, Basoga, Bagisu, Banyoro, Batoro, and Banyankole, dominate the South. The North, which is home to the Nilotic groups, encompasses the Acholi, Lango, Madi, Alur, Iteso, and the Karamojong peoples. Historically, the political and ethnic divisions between the peoples of Northern and Southern Uganda have contributed to the country’s contentious post-colonial history. This thesis will argue that political hostilities between the peoples of the two regions were a by-product of the economic and political policies of the colonial government and the administrations that followed. Regional demarcations, sanctioned by the British and adopted by post-colonial regimes, reinforced strong ethnically divided local governments founded on pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Acholi socio-political institutions. Economic underdevelopment played a large part in fostering political tensions between Northern and Southern Uganda and served as useful tool for Acholi power brokers to negotiate for political and economic capital with the state, by utilising the politics of regional differentiation through the ‘Northern identity.’ Consequently, with onset of decolonisation Ugandan ‘nationalism’ became a localised movement driven by ethnically homogenous local governments and kingdoms. For the Acholi ethnic group, the most visible of their colonial and post-colonial identities has been that of the ‘martial race’. Acholi soldiers joined the army largely as a means to access job opportunities, and by doing so they became the representatives of state coercion and violence. Yet those that joined did not do so to deliberately suppress other ethnic groups: rather employment opportunities were limited in the locality and the army corps provided access to economic and social mobility. Despite being the most visible identity nationally, the ‘martial identity’ has not been the most dominant locally, or even the driving force within the Acholi polity in the last thirty-five years. Acholi late-colonial and post-colonial history has been informed by the historical processes that have shaped the relationship between the Acholi ‘moral ethnicity’ and ‘political tribalism’. The latter provided an opportunity for politically minded Acholi to participate within national politics, yet the former kept them tied to the locality. As the political representation of the Acholi outside the region ‘political tribalism’ was combative, utilising religious, clan, and regional identities to make demands against the state. The prominence of ethnopolitics within national politics ensured that within the repertoire of the Acholi ‘cultural tool kit’, ethnopolitics remained the dominant tool for external political engagement.

This is a socio-cultural ethnography in five chapters about motorcycles and lifecycles in post-civil war northern Uganda. People of the Acholi sub-region endured civil war between 1986 and 2006. Many of them anticipate another violent, politically motivated upheaval in Uganda. Drawing on 23 months of field research between 2014 and early 2017, the author focused on ethnic Acholi motorcycle-taxi drivers known as bodabodas to explore how men raised during wartime make a life as internal migrants on their own, contested territory. The bodabodas’ experience as men attempting to fulfill moral responsibilities that preceded them and will also outlast them allowed the author to interrogate movement philosophically and ethnographically and with deeply historical dimensions. Results show the bodabodas’ and their passengers’ multiple uses and ideas of movement and memory as they navigate opportunities and constraints linking rural and urban aspirations and livelihoods in this setting. Specifically, results reveal how, for both men and women, cultural understanding of and claiming a rightful place in a region recovering from war is paradoxically forged not through settlement or rootedness but through continuous transportation as provided by the motorcycle taxis. Moving around is what keeps aspirations of place and destination (literally and figuratively: a home, an education, an office job) in play as both vital and meaningful. It keeps afloat stories of both responsibility fulfillment and personal freedom. The study thus contributes to the anthropology of youth, of internal migration, and of rural and urban transformation in East-Central Africa. The author’s method involved more than 1,000 trips as a passenger. The author interviewed 126 individuals (105 males, 21 females), gathered oral life histories, conducted mapping exercises, and drew on archival materials in the Uganda National Archives and Gulu District Archives. With native speakers of the Acholi language, the author translated poems, songs, proverbs, and folktales of relevance to migration, livelihoods, and cultural understandings of “home and away” in this tumultuous region. A key source for historical change comparisons were the 1950s-era ethnographic fieldnotes of anthropologist Paula Hirsch Foster at Boston University’s African Studies Library. / 2021-02-05T00:00:00Z

This thesis applies interdisciplinary approaches to explore interactions between two forms of community governance in Acholiland from 1898 to 2010, locating itself within Peace Studies. One form, kaka, was “traditional”, featuring varied forms of “facultative mutualisms” among two or more gangi agnates – with one gang as dominant in the realm. Gangi were kinship-based polities. Like kaka, gangi manifested autopoietic attributes and strong internal “fiduciary cultures”. Then in the 1900s, kaka as governing systems were reshuffled under colonialism and a tribal unit, the Acholi Local Government was created and was subordinated to the Uganda state. Unlike kaka, Acholi Local Government was hierarchal and has consistently been redesigned by various postcolonial governments in their attempts to renegotiate, reshape and control the Acholi people. The study advances a concept of community governance as “socialpolitical” and moral, and counters that kaka was about brotherhoods - not rulersubject relationships. It further distinguishes what was “traditional” from “customary” systems, and demonstrates how colonialism in Acholiland, and a crisis of legitimacy manifested in a trifurcation of authorities, with: i) the despotic civil service - the “customary system”, fusing modernity and the African tradition, ii) a reshuffled kaka system as traditional, and, iii) the cross-modern, manifested as kinematic lugwok paco, linking ethno-governance with the nascent national and global arenas. The study concludes that both colonialism and “coloniality” have reshuffled the mores of kaka along an African neo-patrimonial legitimacy. Conversely, Acholiland is a “limited statehood” – manifesting a higher order of societal entropy - where the “rule by law and customs” dovetail with violence and poverty, demonstrating a genre of exceptionalism.

This research is based on fieldwork that was carried out in the post-conflict villages of Adunu and Kom in the Acholi region of northern Uganda. It argues that a woman’s maintained access to customary land within these villages is determined not only by her sex and by provisions within Acholi customary law, but also by her marital and parental status as framed by patriarchal ideologies and power relations. It shows that if women wish to retain and hold on to land that is socially (and sometimes, legally) meant to be ‘theirs’, they must be prepared constantly to bargain and negotiate with either their husband, their husband’s lineage or their own natal clan. They must also conform to gendered norms concerning female behaviour, especially those that pertain to their sexuality and reproductive abilities. It is by adopting such strategies and, often, by making concessions, that they will be able to, in most cases, maintain access to land, particularly if land is in abundance. The thesis also shows that women’s food security is contingent on the gendered relations that they have and maintain with male family members and also on factors that are external, be these climate change or their ability to farm effectively. By looking at the relevance of gender relations in land access and food security, through a gender awareness lens and a feminist ethnography, this thesis provides a nuanced understanding of how women maintain access to customary land and how they can achieve food security, albeit within a male dominated system.

This thesis applies interdisciplinary approaches to explore interactions between two forms of community governance in Acholiland from 1898 to 2010, locating itself within Peace Studies. One form, kaka, was “traditional”, featuring varied forms of “facultative mutualisms” among two or more gangi agnates – with one gang as dominant in the realm. Gangi were kinship-based polities. Like kaka, gangi manifested autopoietic attributes and strong internal “fiduciary cultures”. Then in the 1900s, kaka as governing systems were reshuffled under colonialism and a tribal unit, the Acholi Local Government was created and was subordinated to the Uganda state. Unlike kaka, Acholi Local Government was hierarchal and has consistently been redesigned by various postcolonial governments in their attempts to renegotiate, reshape and control the Acholi people. The study advances a concept of community governance as “socialpolitical” and moral, and counters that kaka was about brotherhoods - not rulersubject relationships. It further distinguishes what was “traditional” from “customary” systems, and demonstrates how colonialism in Acholiland, and a crisis of legitimacy manifested in a trifurcation of authorities, with: i) the despotic civil service - the “customary system”, fusing modernity and the African tradition, ii) a reshuffled kaka system as traditional, and, iii) the cross-modern, manifested as kinematic lugwok paco, linking ethno-governance with the nascent national and global arenas. The study concludes that both colonialism and “coloniality” have reshuffled the mores of kaka along an African neo-patrimonial legitimacy. Conversely, Acholiland is a “limited statehood” – manifesting a higher order of societal entropy - where the “rule by law and customs” dovetail with violence and poverty, demonstrating a genre of exceptionalism.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / After a war of nearly two decades in the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda many families and communities were physically, socially, economically and psychologically devastated. A myriad of other concomitant effects of the war such as distorted gender relations in households and undue exposure of vulnerable children to the menace of hazardous child labour manifest in the communities today. A plethora of non-government organisations has worked in the Acholi subregion trying to transform the communities after the war, but these challenges remain thus compromising social justice and the well-being of children.

This research is based on fieldwork that was carried out in the post-conflict villages of Adunu and Kom in the Acholi region of northern Uganda. It argues that a woman’s maintained access to customary land within these villages is determined not only by her sex and by provisions within Acholi customary law, but also by her marital and parental status as framed by patriarchal ideologies and power relations. It shows that if women wish to retain and hold on to land that is socially (and sometimes, legally) meant to be ‘theirs’, they must be prepared constantly to bargain and negotiate with either their husband, their husband’s lineage or their own natal clan. They must also conform to gendered norms concerning female behaviour, especially those that pertain to their sexuality and reproductive abilities. It is by adopting such strategies and, often, by making concessions, that they will be able to, in most cases, maintain access to land, particularly if land is in abundance. The thesis also shows that women’s food security is contingent on the gendered relations that they have and maintain with male family members and also on factors that are external, be these climate change or their ability to farm effectively. By looking at the relevance of gender relations in land access and food security, through a gender awareness lens and a feminist ethnography, this thesis provides a nuanced understanding of how women maintain access to customary land and how they can achieve food security, albeit within a male dominated system.