Uganda's past, Ugandan futures: debates over equality and inclusion in 1979-80

Lead Research Organisation: Durham University
Department Name: History

Abstract

This project will show why the past matters to Uganda's future. Designed around a focused study of a key moment - the months following Idi Amin's fall from power in 1979 - it will create an interdisciplinary team that works together to improve understanding of the past and disseminate that knowledge to multiple audiences in Uganda to inform contemporary debates about persistent inequality and exclusion . Through this process of research and dissemination, the project will contribute to SDGs 4, 5 and 10.
A series of workshops will bring early-career researchers together with more experienced colleagues. In a context where early-career Ugandan scholars face severe challenges in securing research experience and mentoring, the project will make possible a programme of archival and interview research that allows early-career scholars to develop their research skills and to enrich the team through their distinctive perspectives and insights, and will enable the sharing of ideas on analysis and dissemination. Through the involvement of media (newspaper and local radio) and a civil society partner whose work focuses on promoting gender equality, the project will co-produce outputs that present research results to non-academic audiences, demonstrating the ability of research in the humanities to speak to contemporary challenges, showcasing the importance of scholarship that is sometimes undervalued, and consistently underfunded, in contemporary Uganda.
Amin's fall opened a moment of possibility. Seventeen years after independence - years that had seen the abrogation of the constitution, the introduction of one-party rule, a military coup and a prolonged period of destabilising and terrifying violence - Ugandans had the opportunity to start again. The next year and a half saw active, multi-vocal debates over the future. In newspapers, on the radio, in urban streets and in villages, Ugandans pondered and argued - and took action - in pursuit of multiple visions of a Ugandan future.
The unhappy end to those turbulent months - the rigged elections of December 1980 that brought former president Milton Obote back to power - has meant that the period has been largely ignored in scholarship, remembered simply as a time of the creeping spread of Obote's influence. The project will challenge that presentation, and resurrect this as a time of hope, and of a contest over the future. This actively engaged an elite but also spread far more widely to a public that was - for the first time in many years - able to ask critical questions about what it might mean to be Ugandan, and about who should hold authority. The questions of the time were pressing, and multiple, for colonial and post-colonial states had created new kinds of inequality and exclusion, disadvantaging women and marginalizing whole regions of the country: what form should political representation take? How could inequality be overcome? What would it mean to be a good citizen of a new Uganda?
Those questions remain pressing today. The project will look back to the debates of those few hectic months - captured in newspapers and radio broadcasts of the time, and still live in the memories of those who took part - to recover a history of popular, as well as elite, debate over the nature of government and citizenship. It will produce an edited collection for academic audiences; and a series of media outputs - from newspaper articles to blog posts to radio talkshows - for wider audiences. Working with partners from civil society, the project will develop a model for using research-based knowledge of the past in contemporary policy and grassroots debates. Through research and co-production of outputs the project will create a team, involving early-career Ugandan scholars, that can bid successfully for further funding; and will show public and policy-makers how useful and important the study of the past can be.

Planned Impact

The project has two overall objectives in terms of impact, one of which will lead to the other.
The first is to use research on Uganda's recent past - in this case, the period 1979-80, which saw an efflorescence of debate about governance and the nature of citizenship - to contribute to continuing contemporary debates over inequality and exclusion in Uganda. In particular, it will challenge assumptions that current patterns of inequality and exclusion are inevitable, or that they were simply unquestioned in the past. By exploring previous debates over these issues, the project will show that the present grows from past decisions, and that there are - and have been - other possibilities.
The second is to use this example to demonstrate the wider relevance of interdisciplinary research on the past, involving humanities techniques, to contemporary debates. Informed by an awareness that institutions matter, but may be used in different ways, it will also use those past debates to encourage contemporary reflection on a key question: how do the formal structures of government and representation engage with popular ideas about proper behaviour: how do people look to create government that is moral? The project will show that Uganda's past is itself an intellectual resource for meeting the challenges of the future, and will involve a partnership with media and civil society that allows the production of outputs that reach advocacy groups, policy-makers and the public at large.
Inequality and exclusion continue to be major development challenges for Uganda. At independence in 1962, the country was marked by significant disparities. These took an evidently gendered form: in Uganda, as in much of colonial Africa, men had benefited disproportionately from the educational and employment opportunities created by colonialism, and the state-centred developmentalist economy that emerged from colonial rule was very much male-dominated. Disparities were also regional, with wealth and educational achievement concentrated in southern/central Uganda, and especially in the kingdom of Buganda.
The situation was complicated by disagreements over how to manage cultural diversity, and in particular the place and role of customary authority - a challenge that centred on the nature and role of the kingdom of Buganda itself. These questions - how to enable women's political inclusion; how to overcome political (and consequent economic) centralisation; how to build on diversity rather than suppressing - have continued to be at the heart of Uganda's politics. Reforms introduced since 1986 - creating new forms of representation for women, channelling resources through a local government system with multiple levels of elected representation - have created new institutional forms to address these challenges but are far from overcoming them, and in Uganda (again, as elsewhere in Africa) formal decentralisation seems in some ways to have enhanced central control.
There continues to be debate over institutional forms, and this project will draw on the brief, but intense debates of 1979-80 to contribute to these. It will do justice to innovative ideas about equality and citizenship that have been forgotten or neglected.
In reaching those audiences, the project will use an innovative programme of co-production with non-academic partners to demonstrate that study of the past can be both productive and relevant, and that humanities researchers can work with media and civil society to improve wider understandings of the complex roots of inequality and poverty. The project will challenge a presentism in Ugandan public life and combat an apparent tendency to discount certain forms of scholarship - in particular in the humanities - as luxuries that are irrelevant to the needs of a developing country.

Publications

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Description This project was curtailed by a combination of COVID (which delayed the planned activities) and the GCRF cuts (which meant that it was not possible to resume the activities when travel became possible). However, by moving workshops online and through a programme of online mentoring combined with field research by members of the team in Uganda, we were able to develop the individual and collective research skills of the team and produce some initial online publications through the project blog. Subsequent to the termination of AHRC funding, we were able to continue the project through minor grant awards from the British Institute in Eastern Africa and the French Institute for Research in Africa; and we secured funds from the French Embassy in Kampala for a project workshop to develop publications from the project. That workshop was held in May 2022. We have subsequently secured additional GNCA funding for another in-person workshop to be held in Gulu in March 2023; that funding has also supported two additional online meetings
The key findings of the work so far are:
That Uganda's attempted political transition in 1979-80 was undermined from the outset by the exclusion of women from key institutions;
That - despite a rhetoric of democracy - the formal institutions of political transition were entirely dominated by educated men, many of whom had been exiles in the Amin period;
That the exclusiveness of the transition institutions left them without popular support against the military, who were able to overturn the civilian government and hijack the transition
Exploitation Route The material from the blog has already been circulating amongst scholars who work on Uganda, and we were able to engage media practitioners in Uganda through one online workshop; this led to one discussion programme on an FM radio station in western Uganda. The May 2022 workshop, while inept on the scale originally planned (because of the funding cuts) allowed us to develop media engagement, and on the basis of that we are currently working on a series of short radio broadcasts for an FM station in western Uganda. These will present research to an Ugandan audience and will engage that audience in the research (through a format that allows phone-in and written questions and contributions). We expect the first of these to be broadcast in late March, with the series running into April 2023. If possible, we will replicate this experiment with other FM stations elsewhere in Uganda - we will use the March 2023 workshop to explore that possibility. Through these events, people in Uganda can debate the historical lessons of this period for Uganda's politics.
The workshop in Gulu will involve a public event to present research findings to a local audience; it will help members of the team to develop their papers for the ECAS conference; and it will be aimed at further developing draft papers for a final publication. We now have agreement with a French publisher specialising in open access online publications for a book, written with a Ugandan audience in mind; each member of the team is taking responsibility for one chapter of this book, which we aim to finalise in August 2023. We expect that this book, like the radio broadcasts and the website, will serve to encourage debates about inequality and development within Uganda as well as providing a significant boost to the careers of Ugandan members of the team.
Sectors Government

Democracy and Justice

Culture

Heritage

Museums and Collections

Security and Diplomacy

URL https://uganda1979.hypotheses.org/
 
Description The project was designed to have two kinds of impact relevant to ODA. The first was to encourage public awareness about this period of Ugandan history - in which questions of equality, fairness and good governance were the subject of much discussion in the national media - in the hope that this would inform and enrich current public discussions on these issues. The second related specifically to capacity building in academia, especially for early career academics and those associated with institutions on the northern and western fringes of Uganda. It is frankly hard to assess impact in terms of public debate. We cannot demonstrate any measurable change in attitudes, let alone policy, as a result of the radio broadcasts, blog posts or the lecture and public dialogue event. However, we can say that the research has consistently highlighted questions of inequality and why this persists. The research has had a strong focus on gender in the debates of 1979-80. The research has asked why women were largely excluded from national debates and why there was so little discussion of the whole question of women's representation; it has also explored how women's political and social work at a local level, which was much more significant and has been a focus of interview work intended to recover and highlight the significance of this. These questions have been the topic of posts on the project blog, and three of the chapters in the forthcoming book will be devoted to them. The project has also looked at the disconnect between local politics at the edges of Uganda and 'national' politics, and the consequent incoherence of some of the key political initiatives of the time: this too is a theme in the book. We can say with more confidence that the project has had an impact on capacity building. The Ugandan partners in the team - three women and four men - all began the project in late 2019 as early career scholars. Four (Agatha Alidri, Jessica Kabasiita, Jacqueline Namukasa and Evarist Ngabirano) have now completed doctorates; three now hold relatively senior posts in their institutions. This was not the sole or direct result of the project (all began their doctorates before this project began, and they were working on diverse topics), but like all members of the team, they have benefited from the series of workshops run through the project (online, and then in person. These covered research techniques, document analysis, writing for academic and wider audiences (including an online workshop with Ugandan journalists), and presenting academic conference papers. Through the project, they have gained experience in writing blogs and scripts for radio and have taken part in an international conference (the European Conference on African Studies in Cologne, participation in which was funded through the follow-up award from CNRS). We are currently finalising the manuscript for a collectively-authored book; we have a contract for this with the French open access publisher Africae, and we expect to deliver the manuscript to them by the end of March. Each member of the team is leading on one chapter of the book, and the shared process of editing and revision - much of it online - has been an important part of our work together. Anatoli Lwassampijja, another team member is currently writing up his thesis and was recently awarded a fellowship by the University of Michigan; he felt that his experience with the project was crucial in securing that fellowship. In this capacity-building, the focus has remained consistently on activities in Uganda and for Ugandan team members: while the disruption to GCRF funding meant that these were mostly online, the additional funding from the French Embassy and Newton allowed us to hold two in-person workshops, as well as the public dialogue event.
Sector Other
Impact Types Societal

 
Description Funding for final workshop and conference
Amount € 1,730 (EUR)
Organisation French Institute for Research in Africa 
Sector Academic/University
Country Kenya
Start 04/2022 
End 05/2022
 
Description GNCA funding - GCRF and Newton
Amount £24,578 (GBP)
Organisation Newton Fund 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 12/2022 
End 03/2023
 
Description FM radio programme 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact on 4 August 2021 Moses Akugizibwe, one of the project Co-Is, was special guest on a phone-in discussion programme on Clouds FM, a regional radio station in western Uganda. This resulted from an online workshop with press and radio journalists held as part of the project, on 25 June 2021. Moses talked about his own research (on elite politics in the region 1979-80) and responded to a series of questions and comments from the radio audience. Clouds FM do not have a means of measuring their audience, but they believe it was several hundred. As a result of the programme, Moses identified potential further informants for research and was able to conduct some interviews (AHRC funding had ended at this point, and Moses used funds provided by the British Institute as part of the initial project plan).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Public lecture and discussion 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact In March 2023 we organised a public lecture, followed by a debate, in Gulu, northern Uganda. The invited audience included academics and students from Hulu University and local figures from civil society and the media as well as the general public. The event was well-attended and led to a lively discussion and question ns answer session.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Television interview 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact As part of the public lecture and discussion in Gulu, the PI and one of the Co_s were interviewed by NTV Uganda, the main Uganda television news network. The interviews, and a clip from the lecture, were broadcast on the national news.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=POQRm3aK3l0
 
Description Three FM radio broadcasts 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact With funding through GNCA, we produced scripts for three 15 minute radio broadcasts that set out project findings. These were translated into the local language in western Uganda by our partner, Voice of Toro radio and broadcast. The broadcast was followed by a phone-in slot allowing members of the audience to share memories of the period. It was not possible to measure the audience precisely.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023