GLOSA: DIFERENCIA ENTRE ACCIÓN Y PARTICIPACIÓN O INTERÉS, EN UNA

At colonial occupation the region of today’s Uganda was integrated in the British Empire. Ugandan societies and pre-existing polities thus became integrated in a single colony. But the pacification that came with the forging of this single state comprising of formerly warring ethnic groups, did not do away with certain pre-existing differences, some of which had ethnic undertones as observed. Instead British policies sometimes helped to strengthen such differences. This polarisation continued into self-rule, so that at independence in 1962 the British handed over an already weak state. The situation was compounded by the existence of several power centres that were rooted in ethnicity and religion.

British colonialists often misunderstood pre-existing identities, and local groups tried to manipulate to their advantage the versions of ethnicity that the colonial administration seemed to subscribe to - polarising societies as ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. Over the last century, the status of ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’ kept changing in what today is Uganda, as its societies were successively integrated in different political formations.

For example, Idi Amin’s ethnic cleansing of Langi and Acholi within the army and the labeling of Tito Okello’s 1985 regime as loc Acholi (Acholi regime) variously treated whole groups as ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’ based on ethnicity of the opposing individual leaders. In this way, behaviour of an opponent was perceived as the common position of the rest of his ethnicity. This perception was juxtaposed within individual groups as well. The Acholi for example believed the returning UNLA unclean, and therefore a source of contamination of entire lineages. The entry of an Acholi UNLA soldier into his community would associate the entire group with whatever deeds he might have committed and bring calamities on his group, unless he underwent immediate purification upon return. Their stay and mixing with communities while in a state of impurity therefore contaminated entire communities, over throwing the social order in Acholi. Once the entire group became impure, as in the case of the Acholi, normative systems collapsed. This created a vacuum for the non-social - the spirits in Acholi

cosmology - to take charge through spirit mediums, who also continued the narrative of communal liability. In particular, Alice Auma Lakwena of the HSM and her cousin Joseph Kony of the LRA rallied people for a re-birth of the entire group through insurrections, as the only way out. Anyone who survived was automatically purified. Among such groups therefore ‘liability’ was communally shared.

But the spirit mediums also recognised that other than ethnicity, religion was a powerful mobiliser among the Acholi. Whereas their call for purification aimed at appeasing and mobilising Acholi lineages, they also realised the influences of new religions. Because Catholicism was the predominant faith in Acholi, Kony used the biblical Ten Commandments as the doctrinal basis for his LRA. He later couched it with some Islamic doctrines as he befriended the Sudan government. Kony and his cousin Lakwena therefore instrumentalised ethnicity and religion as tools to legitimise their wars; framed their actions in ethnic and religious discourse; and used feelings of ethnic and religious allegiance to enroll people in their movements. With the call to purify Acholi, they ethnicised the LRA.

As they carried out their ‘purification’ war and communities became difficult to convince the LRA raided civilian communities in Acholi, Lango and Teso for thousands of new recruits through abduction. Kony launched raids purposely to abduct women, youth, girls and children – many times binding them to his group by forcing them to commit gross atrocities on their own families and communities. These recruits became the parents of CBOW within the LRA. This method became the major one in the 1990s as the LRA made a new alliance with the Khartoum Government, setting his bases in the bushes of the southern part of Sudan. Here, he also added a new islamised tone to the doctrinal basis of the LRA, disallowing the rearing of pigs and work on Fridays.

The LRA especially applied the different forms of religion at different times as the need and direction for cultivating legitimacy kept changing. With the onset of mass abduction and massacres in Acholi, the LRA lost credibility among the Acholi, rendering the ethnicity factor irrelevant for mobilisation. But LRA’s activities in neighbouring regions like Lango and Teso continued to be viewed through an ethnic lens, sometimes

leading to inter-ethnic tensions as it did after the February 2004 twin massacres in IDP camps in Abia and Barlonyo.

Yet the involvement of girls and women in armed conflict is much older than the state of Uganda. Pre-Ugandan language groups – in their disparate social and political forms often raided each other for women, children and cattle. The Langi of northern Uganda were especially active in the region in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They incessantly fought the Madi and Kuman taking with them women, children and cattle. The Langi also offered mercenary military services to Bunyoro Kingdom for which they were paid trophy girls and other goods. The women and girls were made into wives and the children adopted into warriors’ households. This practice is comparable to the now criminalised use of women and girls for sexual gratification and forced impregnation by armed groups in contemporary African countries. The children they bore are also comparable to the children born of war that resulted from the sexual violence carried out by armed groups on women and girls in many post independent African countries. All three show how sexual exploits were an incentive in the commissioning and perpetration of wars across time and space. They demonstrate how what was a pre- colonial practice kept re-emerging in contemporary times.

With the dawn of British colonialism, inter-ethnic wars were reduced so that it was no longer easy for groups like the Langi to carry out raids on other groups. This also meant there was a break on sourcing for wives through inter-ethnic wars among groups in northern Uganda for much of the colonial period.

In 2004, the ICC issued warrants of arrest to Joseph Kony and four of his commanders for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in northern Uganda. The list of crimes included abduction and sexual violence against women. The indictment is reminiscent of the pacification efforts that put a stop to pre-colonial raids for trophy women and children in Uganda. In old Lango trophy women and girls were seen as legitimate wives and their children treated as legitimate offspring of the households that held their mothers. Second, unlike the trophy wives in old Lango who remained permanently with their Langi husbands, the girls abducted by the LRA later came back

into Lango with children fathered by their captors. To begin to understand the experiences of children born of war in today’s Lango, it is important to first understand the local social institutions and how they relate with crucial aspects of gender and motherhood.

CHAPTER 3. GENDER AND MOTHERHOOD IN RURAL LANGO

3.1. Introduction

Viewing motherhood as an ideological concept allows us to reconstruct the historical architecture of its multiple functions, both durable and contingent, as a productive necessity, a cultural form, and a political institution.87

Women are relational beings whose identities are shaped by social constructions of gender and childbirth. Already Cohen (1977: 5) and Meillassoux (1981: 38) highlighted the fact that through marriage and childbirth, women were instrumental in the negotiation and renegotiation of kinship bonds, for themselves, their offspring and across lineages/groups. More recently, Baines et al., (2013: 1-19) demonstrated this in their analysis of how female survivors of the LRA war in northern Uganda negotiated their social relationships. Baines at al., explored the struggles of single or unmarried mothers to ‘overcome their displacement from family networks, and …restore their status through the performance of Acholi notions of motherhood’. In particular, they traced for the paternal lineages of their children and attempted to make claims on those lineages to secure the future of their children in terms of access to land, residence, inheritance and (future) marriage goods.

In particular, Stephens (2013: 13,45) viewed motherhood as a historical institution, constantly changing, that many language groups in pre and early Uganda appropriated to create networks of relationships and mutual obligations that traversed patrilineal groups. By marrying, Stephen’s North Nyanzan woman could establish alliance between her natal family, lineage and those of her husband. Through marriage, she explains, a woman’s lineage benefited economically from bridewealth, which in turn signified formation of a contractual bond between a woman’s lineage and that of her husband. Through bridewealth payment, her lineage was compensated for her loss and new kinship bonds created.

By marrying outsiders local women in North Nyanza could also play integrative roles; enabling their husbands to establish alliances in the local community, try to achieve social mobility, and use kinship norms to improve their own and their descendants’ social status. But Stephens (2013: 45, 46) text also elaborates how sexual relationships that did not conform to social expectations were viewed as forms of social violence against a woman, her family, lineage and clan.

These ideas of conformity and non-conformity to social norms in a changing society are of particular importance in the understanding of experiences of children conceived in the LRA who return to peacetime Lango. This chapter therefore explains the crucial social context that prevails in Lango. Of particular interest is how these social institutions shape the roles and opportunities of women and their offspring; a phenomenon that has been studied by exploring ‘patrilineal idioms of inclusion and exclusion’ (Schoenbrun in Stephens, 2013: 12).