Colonialism and Social Transformation: Elite formation and social inequalities among Acholi of Uganda

In the last part, we indicated that the problems of leadership in Acholi are directly linked to issues of social inequalities, class and historical elite competition. To understand this, we need to outline historical and social processes and mechanisms that led to the emergence of particular social and economic classes in Acholi from the advent of colonialism to the present.

First, British colonialism and missionary education introduced social inequalities in Acholi through unequal access to missionary education and subsequently white collar work. One needed to have been converted and persuaded of the value of missionary education. There was created therefore, social groups of believers and non believers with all their positive and negative connotations and antagonism. In most cases, the chiefly households were the first to embrace Christianity and protestant missionary education. As a result, they formed the nucleus of Acholi elite. As descendants of chiefly households, they believed they had a right to rule or lead. The only exceptions to this trend were the members of commoner clans who became catholic converts of French or Italian missionaries and educated in catholic missionary schools. Thus the protestant, catholic and pagan differentiations, privileges and disadvantages were born.

Second, in extending and consolidating British colonial rule, the policy of direct rule outside Buganda saw the removal of traditional chiefs (Rwodi Moo) in Acholi and their replacement with (clerical chiefs ) Rwodi Kalam. This shifted political patronage, privilege and access to resources away from chiefly elite and handed them over to the control of professional elite, the products of missionary education. Like the children of their Rwodi Moo predecessors before them, the children of Rwodi Kalam had privileged access to the most prestigious missionary schools in the protectorate, modelling them along British aristocratic class snobbery. Consequently, they had a head start in the protectorate civil service and later native and district councils where they controlled enormous social and economic resources, and wielded considerable political power and discretions in their distribution. These were the first social groups in Acholi to whom career was open to talent, although still with considerable political patronage attendant to the value of collaboration with colonialism against the traditional princely households. Shorn of their ancestral rights and traditional privileges, traditional chiefly lineages yearned for the past golden age and nursed grudges and resentments against the new and rising lineages of clerical chiefs and their colonial benefactors.

The third social group, the descendants of Second World War veterans and rich peasant farmers were the first group whose access to education, career and privilege did not depend on tradition or colonial patronage. On demobilisation, their parents had understood the value of education, or children of rich peasants who benefited from the cotton boom and urged their descendants to seek knowledge through education. These were the ones susceptible to embrace liberal democratic politics and even leftist radicalism that eschewed traditionalism and challenged the arbitrary powers of colonial collaborator class in their local areas. They were the men and women who were to champion nationalist and liberation politics, and joined political parties to advance the causes for human moral equality, the rights of man / woman and for independence from colonial rule. They therefore became the natural allies of dethroned Acholi princely households and lineages against the clerical chiefs and the colonial state. This alliance was not to restore chiefs, but for self-determination and democratic rights.


After independence, they emerged as the new ruling political elite, and used their political power, access to the state and resources to advance their interests and establish strong family social and political dynasties in their local communities in Acholi. Like other elite social groups before them, whom they competed with and whose patronised privileges they had resented and despised, they felt educated, wealthy and had earned the right for themselves or their descendants to lead or be on the forefront of leadership in their local areas and nationally. As a consequence, a political oligarchy of sorts emerged in Acholi, among the leaders of Uganda National Congress (UNC), Democratic Party (DP) and later Uganda People's Congress (UPC).


The fourth group is that of the Acholi Diasporas, forced to flee on account of political persecutions, well founded fears and in search of opportunities that were closed out to them by the new rulers from the south of the country. Some left in the early 1980s during the second UPC administration, but the majority arrived after Museveni and the NRM seized power in 1986. Therefore, it is as socially and politically diverse as the Acholi society itself. But it is worth noting from the outset that the most dynamic of these diaspora communities are to be found in the USA, UK, Scandinavia, and to some extent Canada (the significance of this will be apparent later).

The most interesting aspect of the creation of Acholi diaspora is that, like or together with higher education, it or they acted as social equaliser and catalyst of sort. Unlike previous flight where only the families of high government technocrats, ministers, diplomats, politicians and wealthy businessmen fled the country, this time a cross section of Acholi society, families and individuals took flight. Young men and women on their own fled the country for safety and better opportunities. Families spent their last coins and savings to spirit their children out of the country into the safety of Europe, North America and other places of exile. This was to save them from reprisals and victimisation by the new regime and also remove them from potential recruitment by insurgents. As a result, a microcosm of the Acholi society at home was recreated in the diaspora, only this time with initially almost flattened social and class distinctions, except for very few who had accumulated enough wealth to support a comparable middle class lifestyle immediately in exile. Although prior economic and social status to a limited extent aided others in adjusting to a new social, economic and cultural setting, largely everyone started from scratch. These Sudden social convulsions and transformations gave rise to antagonisms and Acholi diaspora class snobbish terms of and its contrast, dong warom, to whose concepts and significances we will return shortly.

To round off this outline, it is important to note that living in open and democratic societies with limitless opportunities, the Acholi diaspora has prospered significantly with corresponding social, economic and political impact on Acholi society at home. Through education, ingenuity and working class ethics of hard work and self-reliance, a self-made middle class by both European and North American standard of material and social wellbeing and lifestyle has taken shape parallel to a similar social and economic class at home. It is also useful to observe that, in some cases, the more prosperous an Acholi in the diaspora or at home has become, the more moderate and accommodating their politics. This is to say, they can work with the status quo and tend to seek rapprochement with the regime at home, rather than radical, confrontational and activist politics favoured by the majority both at home and in the diaspora. This is to say, they seek acceptance and integration as opposed to justice, equity and accountability. As to why this should be the case, we will attempt to answer in a moment under problems of leadership in Acholi.

Before we embark on that task, we would like to urge the reader to bear in mind that it is into this changing circumstances of increased social differentiation, conflicts, the erosion of old ethnic bonds, and the rising importance of the individual that the old traditional chiefly households were re-inserted by elite politics, international NGO project-shopping and the desire of the NRM government to scuttle the rise of progressive politics of young Acholi men and women (at home and in the diaspora) outside the familiar family, social and political dynasties of old Acholi politics.