Northern Uganda Messenger Post

The individual, rational choice, elite politics and the erosion of ethnic bonds. In my previous musings, I indicated that the scramble for land in Acholi is the result of class conflict and the struggle for political power by elite groups. This involves the national elite allied to the state, with easy access to political power and resources, in alliance with their friends and class ideologues in Acholi on the one hand (national resistance movement, ie NRM & Co). On the other hand, we got another section of the Acholi middle class and political elite, outside of the ruling party but affiliated with opposition politics, articulating national democratic positions and seemingly committing class suicide by championing the rights of the poor and marginalized (Acholi parliamentary Group, ie APG & Co). I drew the attention of the reader to the fact that under normal circumstances, both of these elite fractions belong to the same social and economic class, and would all strive to maxim...

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...