Petty-Bourgeois Politics and Class War Over Land in Acholi Part II
Are Acholi proponents of backwardness or justified sceptics of state-led development?
The land issue in Acholi has mainly been looked at from journalistic reportage or conventional ethnic or regional analytical framework, which precludes any serious analysis and conceptual understanding of issues beyond their obvious manifestations. Lacking in theoretical depth, whether of the contending theories of social change and historical development, and taking as an article of faith, the class neutrality of the state, it simply amplifies dogmatic state assertions, which portrays the dispute as a struggle between the forces of change or modernisation, against those of reaction of primordial irrationalities. Their tacit logic is that Acholiland is a backward pre-capitalist social formation, under siege by the forces of traditionalism who use tribal ideologies to resist modernisation, so that the market and capitalist formations are necessary as agencies for socioeconomic transformation (See Acholi MPs boycott land meet, The New Vision, 4 December 2006; Acholi leaders, Govt., fight over land in the sub-region, Sunday Monitor, 6-12, December 2006; Acholi MPs are misleading people, The New Vision, 23 November 2006; and Politicking won't help Acholi, New Vision 21 November 2006).
Looked at closely, these arguments for development and investments, issued from political rostrums and newspaper columns, are devoid of any specific policy contents and propositions. This leaves the issue vague and no more than dogmatic smokescreens calculated to obscure their lack of theoretical depth as well as dubious machinations none of the proponents have the courage to spell out clearly. Which suggests that the government is acting in bad faith; or it understands the negative consequences of its agenda, but livid at setting it out in clear terms for fear of the hostility it would engender in Acholi. Simplistic and vacuous ministerial statements that the state has a mandate to develop Acholi, cannot substitute for a concrete, well-articulated development plan or investment policy or strategy that ought to be subjected to informed and meaningful disciplinary debate by stakeholders (See Govt warns Acholi MPs on land talk, New Vision 7 December 2006).
Left in generalities, the state case is not helped by the centrality of dubious public figures such as Omara Atubo, Hilary Onek, and Owiny Dollo, politicians from the northern region who are not particularly known for confidence, integrity and trust.Therefore, extrapolated from UTV, Mabira, Shimoni and Butabika land give-aways; the rush of land acquisition in Bunyoro after oil wells were sunk there; and the mendacity and obsequiousness of the three northern politicians who head two key ministries and a department decisive in land use planning and policy processes, justify Acholi scepticisms. Moreover, the Acholi or their leaders cannot be expected to relinquish their inalienable rights to take charge of their destiny or question the appropriateness of a development or investment plan, conceived without their inputs and outside their own hierarchies of need and priorities.
Thus uncritical talk of development and investments, unanchored in the acknowledgement of the existential conditions, inequalities and injustices wrought by the unending conflict and the imperatives for social and distributive justice, flies in the face of the realities and need in Acholi. The social and economic infrastructures are in shambles. People lack the basic necessity of life; food, shelter and clothing, and live in permanent state of uncertainty and insecurity induced by the collapse of cultural, social, and moral structures, as well as civic governance, justice system and the rule of law. In addition, the intractable conflict and violence depleted livestock from households; drove families off their land into the concentration camps, making even subsistence production and social reproduction a difficult contemplation. One would think that any serious state concerns would first have to focus on rehabilitation of degraded social and economic infrastructures, and human resources development.
Private investments in factories and agro industries advocated by state proponents would not have desirable impact on the level of poverty, since the skills pool is non-existent, due to collapsed education system, and high education and social costs that put majority of Acholi children out of schools in the last twenty-one years. In that period, only petty bourgeois families who could afford to move or send their children to schools outside Acholi, could boast the luxury of a secondary or higher education. Limited or diminished access to resources, education and economic opportunities for the majority has given rise to growing inequalities and socioeconomic fault lines for future conflicts in the sub-region.
Petty bourgeois politics and a popular democratic discourse
Certainly, it is clear that neither Acholi or northerners, nor southerners generally, but their respective fractions of the petty bourgeoisie, locked in intraclass competition for the control of the state, economic advantage and privilege, which politicise ethnicity in their struggles. In 1981, the NRM/A, and the southern fraction used ethnicity to mobilise against the nationalist fraction dominated by UPC, propagandising it in its various permutations as northern, Acholi or Anyanya. In our particular case, it is clear that at this historical juncture, the northern fraction is selfless, in acting once again outside and seemingly against its class interest, in what Saul and Nicos Poulantzas call the commission of social or class suicide; to represent a popular-democratic struggle by identifying with the exploited and oppressed masses, rather than be imprisoned within the narrow individualistic and acquisitive economic interests of their own class.
Moreover, the northern fraction, coming from historically less centralised societies, derive their positions from individual rights and freedom, rather than entrenched traditional privileges of feudal rights and entitlements that seem to define the political consciousness and insubordination of their southern counterparts. Therefore, the politics of the northern fraction is informed by civic citizenship and a pan-Ugandan nationalism that has historically been a rarity in the south. As a result, they are better placed to unify the national democratic forces and lead a popular democratic struggle less tied to ethnicity than class, economics and utilitarian considerations.
In concrete terms, the chaos in land rationalisation policy, land use planning, acquisition and distribution conventions are countrywide. In addition, opposition to threats of land grabbing in Acholi is not a unified position. Attesting to the class nature of the disputes, NRM party bureaucrats or allies in Acholi support arbitrary state appropriation of land to allocate to so-called investors. Colonels Otema Awany, Walter Ochora, Lt. Okot Lapolo, Nahaman Ojwe, Maj. Gen. Julius Oketa, Hon. Hilary Onek, E. Y. Komakech, Owiny Dollo and their cohorts in Acholi, are members of the petty bourgeoisie, the political class inside the state who benefited from the privatisation of state properties or easy access to political power and privilege, and used the state to amass wealth beyond their means, amidst the impoverishment and destitution in northern Uganda. In most if not all cases, these are people who are unelectable in Acholi, directly appointed by the President or elected under questionable circumstances. Other than their class interests and political patrons, they represent no one and they have no basis on which to speak on the issue of land, and less so be elevated above the direct and elected representatives of the people.
In contrast, those opposed to such schemes are Acholi MPs, elected district council leaders and civil society activists who belong to opposition parties and are the petty-bourgeois fractions inside the state but outside of the ruling political class. Unlike their counterparts in the NRM/A political oligarchy from northern \nUganda, these are fractions of the petty bourgeoisie whose relative prosperity and economic privileges were acquired largely independent of state patronage. As a result, their petty-bourgeois politics closely identify with the masses, and their hope for victory in the intraclass competition depends on mobilising a strong base within the peasantry, and allying with and unifying other nationalist fractions of the petty bourgeoisie outside the state in a popular-democratic struggle.
In a situation of social and economic normalcy, and in an environment of individual, ndemocratic, economic and social freedom, this fraction of the petty bourgeoisie would and should be as interested in private accumulation as much as those doing so now. This class, acquisitive and possessive individualist nature of the petty-bourgeois can be illustrated by Hon. Ogenga Latigo's 500 acres of land in Amuro; and the near unanimous clamour by MPs for the state funded vehicle schemes. However, their sense of justice and fairness, and responsibility to their constituents make the notion of unchecked land sales untenable in the current circumstances in Acholi, when the entire population lack the most basic necessity and the survival of the entire society is at risk. This is a picture the ethnic model is unable to discern or understand, let alone define the content of opposition to and support for a haphazard and chaotic state land use, acquisition, and distribution mechanisms.
Certainly, some limited ground may be conceded to simplified and generalised understanding of the drama underway as a contest for Acholi soul and future, but only if it supposes that of Ugandan nationhood as well. Even such concession would very dangerously take appearances for reality too far, and risk obscuring the real issues at stake, and ghettoise the struggle in an ethnic enclave, closing it off to the broader, popular, national democratic forces. (Such mistakes were made by the nationalist democratic forces on the early, largely peasant resistance and uprisings in Acholi, Lango and Teso in 1980s, and later LRM/A insurgency in Acholi. Witness the disconnection between official national opposition political discourses and the LRM/A insurgency).
Gauging by the state of the debate so far, the same error is about to be repeated by the progressive nationalist fraction of the petty bourgeoisie. It failed to capture, build alliance, forge class cohesion to lead and transform the 1980s popular resistance against the NRM / A into a national democratic struggle. On the current class war over land in Acholi, it seems hesitant to frame it in national and democratic discourses, that recognises a historical moment to force progressive agrarian reforms policies and programmes that would ensure food security, sustainable rural ecology and livelihood systems. We need to look past the Onek, Museveni, Omara-Atubo and their little dictators in the district. Behind all these land manoeuvring, the World Bank and its privatisation programme is writ large. For those who have not heard, there is an Acholi Private Sector Development programme which is set up in every district. What are they up to? Who benefits from their work?
Conclusion
The dispute over land in Acholi and the grandiose sense of entitlements among the heroes of Luwero war must be understood in no uncertain terms than their naked class contents. These are the people who stripped the Ugandan state of its assets, disinherited the majority of Ugandans of their stakes in national wealth - socially produced under previous nationalist governments- and used its illegally and privately appropriated proceeds to enrich themselves, suppress, dominate and dispossess others of their rights and means of livelihood. They have held the state and the people hostage to an ethnocentric hegemony. Acholi MPs and their allies, by no means unified, are justified in opposing such predatory acquisition and land speculation using capital looted from the state. The state will ignore at its perils, the inequalities it imposed on others.
It is perhaps fitting to end this with a West African folklore of a cricket and a hunter. Scurrying away for dear life after sensing the lumbering movement of the hunter, the cricket is spied by the hunter who had killed and carried an elephant on his head. Staggering under the weight of the booty on his head, the hunter resolves to dig out the cricket with one foot while balancing on the other. With both hands tightly gripping the kill on his head, and his foot digging after the cricket in the hole, he loses his balance, stumbles and lurches forward, and the elephant carcass crushes him to death.
The land issue in Acholi has mainly been looked at from journalistic reportage or conventional ethnic or regional analytical framework, which precludes any serious analysis and conceptual understanding of issues beyond their obvious manifestations. Lacking in theoretical depth, whether of the contending theories of social change and historical development, and taking as an article of faith, the class neutrality of the state, it simply amplifies dogmatic state assertions, which portrays the dispute as a struggle between the forces of change or modernisation, against those of reaction of primordial irrationalities. Their tacit logic is that Acholiland is a backward pre-capitalist social formation, under siege by the forces of traditionalism who use tribal ideologies to resist modernisation, so that the market and capitalist formations are necessary as agencies for socioeconomic transformation (See Acholi MPs boycott land meet, The New Vision, 4 December 2006; Acholi leaders, Govt., fight over land in the sub-region, Sunday Monitor, 6-12, December 2006; Acholi MPs are misleading people, The New Vision, 23 November 2006; and Politicking won't help Acholi, New Vision 21 November 2006).
Looked at closely, these arguments for development and investments, issued from political rostrums and newspaper columns, are devoid of any specific policy contents and propositions. This leaves the issue vague and no more than dogmatic smokescreens calculated to obscure their lack of theoretical depth as well as dubious machinations none of the proponents have the courage to spell out clearly. Which suggests that the government is acting in bad faith; or it understands the negative consequences of its agenda, but livid at setting it out in clear terms for fear of the hostility it would engender in Acholi. Simplistic and vacuous ministerial statements that the state has a mandate to develop Acholi, cannot substitute for a concrete, well-articulated development plan or investment policy or strategy that ought to be subjected to informed and meaningful disciplinary debate by stakeholders (See Govt warns Acholi MPs on land talk, New Vision 7 December 2006).
Left in generalities, the state case is not helped by the centrality of dubious public figures such as Omara Atubo, Hilary Onek, and Owiny Dollo, politicians from the northern region who are not particularly known for confidence, integrity and trust.Therefore, extrapolated from UTV, Mabira, Shimoni and Butabika land give-aways; the rush of land acquisition in Bunyoro after oil wells were sunk there; and the mendacity and obsequiousness of the three northern politicians who head two key ministries and a department decisive in land use planning and policy processes, justify Acholi scepticisms. Moreover, the Acholi or their leaders cannot be expected to relinquish their inalienable rights to take charge of their destiny or question the appropriateness of a development or investment plan, conceived without their inputs and outside their own hierarchies of need and priorities.
Thus uncritical talk of development and investments, unanchored in the acknowledgement of the existential conditions, inequalities and injustices wrought by the unending conflict and the imperatives for social and distributive justice, flies in the face of the realities and need in Acholi. The social and economic infrastructures are in shambles. People lack the basic necessity of life; food, shelter and clothing, and live in permanent state of uncertainty and insecurity induced by the collapse of cultural, social, and moral structures, as well as civic governance, justice system and the rule of law. In addition, the intractable conflict and violence depleted livestock from households; drove families off their land into the concentration camps, making even subsistence production and social reproduction a difficult contemplation. One would think that any serious state concerns would first have to focus on rehabilitation of degraded social and economic infrastructures, and human resources development.
Private investments in factories and agro industries advocated by state proponents would not have desirable impact on the level of poverty, since the skills pool is non-existent, due to collapsed education system, and high education and social costs that put majority of Acholi children out of schools in the last twenty-one years. In that period, only petty bourgeois families who could afford to move or send their children to schools outside Acholi, could boast the luxury of a secondary or higher education. Limited or diminished access to resources, education and economic opportunities for the majority has given rise to growing inequalities and socioeconomic fault lines for future conflicts in the sub-region.
Petty bourgeois politics and a popular democratic discourse
Certainly, it is clear that neither Acholi or northerners, nor southerners generally, but their respective fractions of the petty bourgeoisie, locked in intraclass competition for the control of the state, economic advantage and privilege, which politicise ethnicity in their struggles. In 1981, the NRM/A, and the southern fraction used ethnicity to mobilise against the nationalist fraction dominated by UPC, propagandising it in its various permutations as northern, Acholi or Anyanya. In our particular case, it is clear that at this historical juncture, the northern fraction is selfless, in acting once again outside and seemingly against its class interest, in what Saul and Nicos Poulantzas call the commission of social or class suicide; to represent a popular-democratic struggle by identifying with the exploited and oppressed masses, rather than be imprisoned within the narrow individualistic and acquisitive economic interests of their own class.
Moreover, the northern fraction, coming from historically less centralised societies, derive their positions from individual rights and freedom, rather than entrenched traditional privileges of feudal rights and entitlements that seem to define the political consciousness and insubordination of their southern counterparts. Therefore, the politics of the northern fraction is informed by civic citizenship and a pan-Ugandan nationalism that has historically been a rarity in the south. As a result, they are better placed to unify the national democratic forces and lead a popular democratic struggle less tied to ethnicity than class, economics and utilitarian considerations.
In concrete terms, the chaos in land rationalisation policy, land use planning, acquisition and distribution conventions are countrywide. In addition, opposition to threats of land grabbing in Acholi is not a unified position. Attesting to the class nature of the disputes, NRM party bureaucrats or allies in Acholi support arbitrary state appropriation of land to allocate to so-called investors. Colonels Otema Awany, Walter Ochora, Lt. Okot Lapolo, Nahaman Ojwe, Maj. Gen. Julius Oketa, Hon. Hilary Onek, E. Y. Komakech, Owiny Dollo and their cohorts in Acholi, are members of the petty bourgeoisie, the political class inside the state who benefited from the privatisation of state properties or easy access to political power and privilege, and used the state to amass wealth beyond their means, amidst the impoverishment and destitution in northern Uganda. In most if not all cases, these are people who are unelectable in Acholi, directly appointed by the President or elected under questionable circumstances. Other than their class interests and political patrons, they represent no one and they have no basis on which to speak on the issue of land, and less so be elevated above the direct and elected representatives of the people.
In contrast, those opposed to such schemes are Acholi MPs, elected district council leaders and civil society activists who belong to opposition parties and are the petty-bourgeois fractions inside the state but outside of the ruling political class. Unlike their counterparts in the NRM/A political oligarchy from northern \nUganda, these are fractions of the petty bourgeoisie whose relative prosperity and economic privileges were acquired largely independent of state patronage. As a result, their petty-bourgeois politics closely identify with the masses, and their hope for victory in the intraclass competition depends on mobilising a strong base within the peasantry, and allying with and unifying other nationalist fractions of the petty bourgeoisie outside the state in a popular-democratic struggle.
In a situation of social and economic normalcy, and in an environment of individual, ndemocratic, economic and social freedom, this fraction of the petty bourgeoisie would and should be as interested in private accumulation as much as those doing so now. This class, acquisitive and possessive individualist nature of the petty-bourgeois can be illustrated by Hon. Ogenga Latigo's 500 acres of land in Amuro; and the near unanimous clamour by MPs for the state funded vehicle schemes. However, their sense of justice and fairness, and responsibility to their constituents make the notion of unchecked land sales untenable in the current circumstances in Acholi, when the entire population lack the most basic necessity and the survival of the entire society is at risk. This is a picture the ethnic model is unable to discern or understand, let alone define the content of opposition to and support for a haphazard and chaotic state land use, acquisition, and distribution mechanisms.
Certainly, some limited ground may be conceded to simplified and generalised understanding of the drama underway as a contest for Acholi soul and future, but only if it supposes that of Ugandan nationhood as well. Even such concession would very dangerously take appearances for reality too far, and risk obscuring the real issues at stake, and ghettoise the struggle in an ethnic enclave, closing it off to the broader, popular, national democratic forces. (Such mistakes were made by the nationalist democratic forces on the early, largely peasant resistance and uprisings in Acholi, Lango and Teso in 1980s, and later LRM/A insurgency in Acholi. Witness the disconnection between official national opposition political discourses and the LRM/A insurgency).
Gauging by the state of the debate so far, the same error is about to be repeated by the progressive nationalist fraction of the petty bourgeoisie. It failed to capture, build alliance, forge class cohesion to lead and transform the 1980s popular resistance against the NRM / A into a national democratic struggle. On the current class war over land in Acholi, it seems hesitant to frame it in national and democratic discourses, that recognises a historical moment to force progressive agrarian reforms policies and programmes that would ensure food security, sustainable rural ecology and livelihood systems. We need to look past the Onek, Museveni, Omara-Atubo and their little dictators in the district. Behind all these land manoeuvring, the World Bank and its privatisation programme is writ large. For those who have not heard, there is an Acholi Private Sector Development programme which is set up in every district. What are they up to? Who benefits from their work?
Conclusion
The dispute over land in Acholi and the grandiose sense of entitlements among the heroes of Luwero war must be understood in no uncertain terms than their naked class contents. These are the people who stripped the Ugandan state of its assets, disinherited the majority of Ugandans of their stakes in national wealth - socially produced under previous nationalist governments- and used its illegally and privately appropriated proceeds to enrich themselves, suppress, dominate and dispossess others of their rights and means of livelihood. They have held the state and the people hostage to an ethnocentric hegemony. Acholi MPs and their allies, by no means unified, are justified in opposing such predatory acquisition and land speculation using capital looted from the state. The state will ignore at its perils, the inequalities it imposed on others.
It is perhaps fitting to end this with a West African folklore of a cricket and a hunter. Scurrying away for dear life after sensing the lumbering movement of the hunter, the cricket is spied by the hunter who had killed and carried an elephant on his head. Staggering under the weight of the booty on his head, the hunter resolves to dig out the cricket with one foot while balancing on the other. With both hands tightly gripping the kill on his head, and his foot digging after the cricket in the hole, he loses his balance, stumbles and lurches forward, and the elephant carcass crushes him to death.
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