Northern Uganda Messenger Post

Recently, David Onen Achana II, who is often inaccurately referred to by the media and ignoramouses as "Acholi Paramount Chief", waded into controversy by seeming to oposed positions of Acholi parliamentarians on large land acquisitions for so-called investors. Local people and their political and traditional leaders had made it clear that, any large-scale agro-investments that take away considerable acreages of land from the local population, could not be considered or approved at the moment until all the foricibly displaced and confined people in the concentration camps of northern Uganda have been resettled to their original homesteads and land. Only after an assessment of their needs and the carrying capacity of Acholiland have been established, could any intelligent planning and particular land uses be approved, beyong that necessary for basic needs, self-reliance, food self-sufficiency and food security. Unfortunately, David Onen Achana II, the chairperson of Acholi Cou...

Madhvani Amuru out-growers scheme modern slavery no Acholi should support! By Okello Lucima[1] Why Onek is not collegial with Acholi MPs (APG) I would like to comment on Hilary Onek's "Acholi MPs need to educate the public on land" (New Vision, 13 February 2008), which was a rejoinder to Mark Odongkara's letter; "Onek is Acholi first" (Sunday Monitor, 03 February 2008). The subjects of these exchanges and concerns is the squabbles over the Madhvani Amuru land saga and Onek's lack of interest in perceived threats to Acholi customary land from the state, those connected to the state, and the ruling National Resistance Movement / Army (NRM/A). This is noted in contrast to the active voices of his colleagues in the Acholi Parliamentary Group (APG), who have been on the battlefront in underlining the unjust and immoral imports of a "gold rush" for land in the Acholi region, ahead of a properly planned and managed disbandment of concentration ca...

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 Achol...

A class war and democratic struggle for equality and the control of resources has pitted legislators from Acholi –a northern fraction of the petty bourgeoisie- against the ruling NRM /A political class and bureaucratic petty bourgeoisie- a predominantly southwestern fraction. The Ugandan state, the popular press and political commentators represent the tensions as Acholi ethnocentricity and xenophobia. We would like object to this superficial presentation, but posit that the struggle is in fact an "interclass affair" and "intraclass politics", a product of the intersection of the dialectic of class and ethnicity, which in turn is induced by the uneasy tensions between centring (international) and decentring (local) elements of the forces of globalisation. Therefore, it is the objective consequence of the dual articulation of the kin-based moral economies and capitalist commodity production. Contrary to Omara Atubo's contention, the land debate cannot be disconne...