Northern Uganda Messenger Post

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 ...

The social processes and transformations that created one Acholi elite group after the other can be divided into two; internal and external. The external ones were those imposed by the colonial governments, while the internal ones were induced by social differentiation, inequalities, conflicts and aspirations native to Acholi society. For instance, when the colonial government dethroned traditional chiefs and foisted clerical chiefs in their place, it created latent social animosities and conflicts between royal clans and clans of appointed chiefs who used colonial patronage to develop a cadre of civil servants from their own clans and elite networks that sidelined the aristocratic lineages. Nursing the grudge for their rights to rule by the will of ancient temporal and spiritual traditions, the royal clans actively supported nationalist anti-colonial movements against the British and their clerical collaborators who had usurped their power. Therefore, after independence, former margin...