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- Colonial rule followed the classic 'divide and rule' pattern
- Under the British, the North was considered a labour reserve for southern plantations, and as a source of army recruits
- Many Ugandans have come to identify themselves with their ethnic group rather than with citizenship of the Ugandan nation state
- Following Uganda's independence, power in government was progressively consolidated among politicians of northern origin
- Idi
Amin, with the tacit support of the UK, US and Israeli governments
toppled northern led government led by Milton Obote in 1971
- In
recent times the Movement system led by Museveni has come increasingly
under attack as monopolising political space, and centralising
political power
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"British rule in Uganda followed the
classic 'divide and rule' pattern, accentuating the pre-existing ethnic
divisions in the Protectorate with several large, and many smaller
ethnic groups. Uganda is often conveniently divided into the 'North',
dominated by Luo and Nilotics; the 'Centre' dominated by a balance of
power between the Bantu-speaking Baganda and Banyoro; and the
'Southwest' dominated by the Bantu-speaking Banyakole and related
groups. Under the British, the North was considered a labour reserve
for southern plantations, and as a source of army recruits, and was
marginalised in economic development plans, with most investment and
planning favouring the Baganda region around Kampala. These ethnic and
regional divisions laid down by the British sowed the seeds for a
series of national crises since independence, in that many Ugandans
have come to identify themselves with their ethnic group rather than
with citizenship of the Ugandan nation state. They also served to
entrench a series of damaging ethnic stereotypes (particularly relating
to the Acholi as dangerous, militaristic, aggressive barbarians), which
have fuelled ethnic tension and produced fear among Ugandans over the
past 50 years.
Independence
Following Uganda's independence, power in
government was progressively consolidated among politicians of northern
origin led by Milton Obote, a Lango from Lira. Obote came to power via
democratic means, leading the protestant based Uganda People's Congress
(UPC). Unfortunately, during the following years, he progressively
marginalised other political representation, including the Catholic
Church linked Democratic Party (DP), and non-northern ethnic groups. He
also built links with the USSR, and flirted with Marxism, a move which
was to prove his downfall when in 1971 he was toppled by his army chief
Idi Amin, with the tacit support of the UK, US and Israeli governments.
Initially, Amin was content to implement
policies suggested by his foreign backers, and to represent the
interests of the Sudanic speaking peoples from his region in the
North-west of Uganda. Unfortunately Amin's rule degenerated into an
anarchic misrule, and in 1979, he was finally toppled by an invading
army of Tanzanian "liberators". Obote, a personal ally of Tanzanian
President Julius Nyerere, was then returned to power amid accusations
of fraud and rigged elections, and true to the tradition of Ugandan
politics, set about swiftly reorganizing the army, returning Langi and
Acholi officers to prominent positions, as well as reorienting the
government to reflect his northern constituency. The army's name was
changed to the Ugandan National Liberation Army (UNLA) and it quickly
embarked upon an operation of trying to quell the rebel insurgencies
that had sprung up over the previous years, including that of Yoweri
Museveni, the National Resistance Army (NRA). In this process, the
Obote regime waged a military campaign against both rebel groups and
the civilian populations that they were affiliated with, thereby
wielding state terror as an instrument of war. Of particular importance
was the battle fought between the UNLA and the NRA in the area of
Luwero in Central Uganda.
Museveni and the Movement
The NRA was constituted mainly by soldiers
from Museveni's home area of Ankole in south-western Uganda, but was
supported by ethnic Tutsi soldiers from Rwanda. The Rwandan connection
emerged from the close ethnic ties between the two groups along the
Rwanda/Uganda border, and also from the fact that Museveni had
developed a strong friendship with Paul Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi, while
the two had been resident in Dar es Salaam. Their rebellion began in
the southwest, but quickly moved up into the central region and into
Luwero specifically, where for the next five years a brutal war was
waged between the NRA and the UNLA on territory which is home to the
Buganda people.
Museveni's motivation for beginning this
conflict with the government was ostensibly to challenge Obote's
legitimacy following what he claimed to have been rigged elections in
1980. He also sought to redress the balance of power in Uganda, this
time in favour of his own people in the southwest region of the
country, and to revenge the wrongs that he felt had been visited upon
Bantu Ugandans in the south and southwest during the 18 years of
northern rule.
Other groups – many representing
particular ethnic groups or regional interests, including a faction of
Amin's army – subsequently joined this campaign, united mainly by their
opposition to Obote, rather than by a common ideology. Many atrocities
against civilians were committed by the armed forces at this time,
particularly in the Luwero triangle, and rebels fighting to topple the
government were also known to target civilians perceived to be UPC
sympathisers.
In 1985, Milton Obote was toppled once
again, this time by his Acholi generals, however they were unable to
resist Museveni's continuing rebellion, and in January 1986, following
a breach of the Nairobi peace accord, the National Resistance Army
(NRA) entered Kampala and seized control.
In the years that followed, the NRA
succeeded in pacifying much of the country, and large parts of Uganda
have since enjoyed the fruits of stability, economic recovery and the
rise of the home-grown Movement system. This system notes the sharp
vertical divisions in Ugandan society through religious and ethnic
difference, and assumes that political parties would inevitably become
defined by allegiance to such groupings. As a result no active
political parties have been allowed for most of the past 18 years, and
all Ugandan citizens are said to belong to the Movement.
In recent times however, the Movement
system has come increasingly under attack as monopolising political
space, and centralising political power, while operating as a de facto
political party. This has spurred agitation for the opening up of a
political space in which other parties, including the UPC and DP, might
operate freely. In the lead up to the elections due in 2006 the GoU has
finally permitted the establishment of political parties.
A clear failure of the Movement has been
to develop a mechanism for national reconciliation. In spite of the
fact that the Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights
published a comprehensive report on rights abuses to 1986 in report in
1994, and that the Uganda Human Rights Commission was established in
the following year, few legal cases have been brought against those who
have committed human rights abuses under past regimes. Approaches to
human rights abuses have so far been focused only on punishment rather
than on healing, and there has been no proxy for a 'Truth and
Reconciliation Commission' as part of the process. Instead, past wrongs
have generally been blamed on current members of ethnic groups
associated with particular institutions.
Thus many Ugandan citizens actively
believe the Acholi people to be directly responsible for the wrongs
perpetrated against civilians during the Obote II regime. They believe
this because of the generally held stereotype that the national army at
that time was an Acholi army, even though the Langi dominated the
regime. This attitude goes some way to explaining the indifference
toward, or even support for the suffering that Acholis in northern
Uganda currently experience. Similarly, many Acholi see their
experience in a highly polarised way, and are convinced that the
government and people from the West are seeking revenge against them in
a systematic manner. Some Acholi even speak of other Ugandans as
foreigners, and talk of a plot among other Ugandans to persecute and
destroy the Acholi.
Northern Resistance and the LRA
In spite of the pacification that took
place in much of the rest of Uganda, peace has not yet settled in
Acholiland. Since 1986 five rebel movements have waged a low level war
against the GoU in the region. In 1986, the Uganda People's Democratic
Army (UPDA) began a rebellion in response to Museveni's rise to the
Presidency. The UPDA was largely comprised of remnants of the defeated
UNLA who were predominantly northerners, and they continued fighting
against the new government until 1988 when a peace accord was brokered
between them and the GoU (the Pece Accord).
While some UPDA leaders were successfully
integrated into the army and into the ruling party, mutual suspicion
remained between the Movement and the Acholi people, and this continued
to inform relations between the GoU and the North. In late 1986, these
suspicions were reflected in the appearance of a popular Acholi
uprising known as the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM), led by a spiritualist
named Alice Lakwena. In 1986, Lakwena succeeded in building a
substantial force, partly consisting of old UPDA, which had some
success until it was routed in 1987 in Jinja. Lakwena fled into exile,
but the struggle was carried on first by her father Severino Lukoya,
and since 1989 by a cousin named Joseph Kony. His Lord's Resistance
Army (LRA) continues to fight a low-level guerrilla war with the GoU to
this day, ostensibly in a desire to overthrow President Museveni, to
restore order and legitimacy to the state of Uganda, to cleanse the
nation through the establishment of a government that will rule in
accordance with the 'Ten Commandments'
The fiercest period of fighting in
northern Uganda prior to 2002 was in the mid-1990s when many Acholi
were gathered into IDP camps by the GoU and UPDF for their own
'protection'. Since that time the conflict has fluctuated on a more or
less cyclical basis."(CSOPNU, 10 December 2004, pp. 26-28) |
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Sources:
Civil Society for Peace in Northern Uganda, 10 December 2004, Nowhere to Hide [Internal link]
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