We shall secede…’ - narratives of marginalisation in post war participatory recovery of Acholi, northern Uganda
Date
2018
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A Journal of Language, Culture and Communication
Abstract
Set in a remote part of Acholi, on the northern side of Murchison Falls National Park, northern Uganda,
this paper focuses on the efforts of the local community in Pabit Parish as they rebuild their agricultural
livelihoods in the aftermath of the 20-year civil war. Their struggle to recover, however, hung in the balance
as problem animals started to destroy their crops. Their recovery became even more uncertain when their
efforts to dialogue with the government about the unfair wildlife policy remained unheeded. Meanwhile,
the Acholi Culture and Tourism Centre project set up by Purongo Sub County Local Government to
supplement the people’s agricultural livelihoods was marred in conflicts that threatened its very existence.
What had started as a post war participatory development thus turned out to be an arena of conflict.Using
ethnographic methods of data collection integrated within a case study, this study focuses on the tourism
centre project. Premised on principles of participation, the project had been considered instrumental, not
only in the protection of wildlife in Murchison Falls Park which would attract more tourists, and thus more
revenue to the community from commercial tourism, but also through promoting agricultural livelihoods,
the mainstay of the local economy. However, the reluctance of wildlife officials to engage communities in
policy discussions, and internal weaknesses in the governance structural systems, combine to frustrate
efforts in the local community to recover their livelihoods for a better standard of living.
Description
At the time the ceasefire agreement between rebels of the Lords’ Resistance Army (LRA) and the
government of Uganda was signed in 2006, the number of people that had been forced into
Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps across the northern region had risen to more than 1.8
million, about 90% of the country’s population (Mabikke 2011: 3; Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre and Norwegian Refugee Council 2009: 4), up from 1.3 million in 2005 (Boas
and Hatloy 2005: 1). Although all their homesteads had been reclaimed by bush, their houses
destroyed, and the majority of them had lost their livelihood assets, especially livestock (Boas and
Hatloy 2005: 1, Weeks 2002: 32-35, Gersony 1997: 81, Gelsdorf, Maxwell and Mazurana 2012:
2), in 2008, all IDP camps were decommissioned by the State and IDPs told to ‘return to where
the war found you’ (Whyte, Babiiha, Mukyala, and Meinert 2012: 3). With the economy of the
region in ruins, poverty was widespread, yet houses needed to be repaired or rebuilt, homesteads
re-established and fields prepared for cultivation (Obika, Otto-Adel, Babiiha and Whyte,
forthcoming) as part of re-establishing household food and livelihood security. By the time I started
conducting this study in 2009, WFP and other relief agencies had already stopped distributing
relief food and other basic necessities to those who still remained in the numerous IDP camps
across the region, citing lack of resources (UN-RSG of IDPs 29 July, 2009); yet even for those that
had gone back to the villages the situation was not any better. Basic services such as education,
health, and clean water were yet to be restored to these villages, and where they were already being
provided they were quite inadequate, resulting in some categories of community members
remaining in the camps (Whyte et al 2012: 2-4, IDMC and NRC 2009: 4-7).
Rebel leader Joseph Kony’s reluctance to sign the comprehensive peace agreement scared
local communities into thinking that the relative peace experienced in the region during the peace
Keywords
Agricultural livelihoods, post war recovery, marginalisation, participation, wildlife policy