Land and the People – Breaking the Links in Uganda

By Betty Okot, PhD student in Sociology  

Where I come from, land means more than real estate, a slice of earth, which can be farmed, inherited, built on, sold or bought. In most of Uganda, including Acholiland, land equates to history, heritage, identity, belonging, rights, and relationships and so on. It creates social security and contains worlds of social, cultural and religious beliefs systems. However, when these collide with the idea of creating a market in land, the people who live on and work the land suffer. In Uganda, land tenure relations are changing fast, but no one is asking how these wrenching, drastic changes will transform the lives of people who depend on land for their identity and social status as well as their livelihoods.

What is happening now is similar to what happened in England between the 14th and 18th centuries when enclosures, a massive land grab by the ruling class, drove small farmers off land they had tilled for centuries and turned them into low-waged labourers on what was once their land. And in that regard, suffice to say, they lost the heritage constructed around land, but their landlessness then meant they were disposed to supply the cheap labour needed at the nascent stages of the industrial revolution. Do modern Ugandans want or need to go through the same process?

My study examines the rapidly changing land tenure relations in Uganda. It also focuses on post-conflict Acholiland (Northern Uganda) where the introduction of new but chaotically-administered land policies that encourage land sales and massive commercialised farming, are leading to land grabs and disputes, which are creating a profound and ubiquitous social crisis. As Acholiland emerged from almost a quarter of a century of violent insurgency, the region has become wracked by land conflicts. In their 2010 report entitled ‘Land or Else’, Gareth McKibben and James Bean captured the essence of land conflicts in post-conflict Acholiland. From about 1996 to 2007 nearly 90% of the Acholi population were forced off their land and dumped in displacement camps where they were fed and watered but left to rot in idleness. This removal from the land into displacement camps followed brutal attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) or possibly by the Uganda army. Now they have returned, but a pall of grim memories of death and displacement hangs over the whole society. The people find themselves lost between vague memories of the way things were done – almost an entire generation of elders has died while they were in the camps – and new laws and government structures that they have no access to and do not understand.

Through interviews and other means of gathering information and ideas, I have reached the conclusion that for the Acholi region, this transition period is not just about land. It also embodies the Acholi struggle for the legitimacy of their own ways and the attempt to define or redefine, express and uphold their communal land rights. This is not mere sentimentality – a return to the past. It also correlates with their desire to rebuild and recover from the ravages of war and grow wealth again but all within a culture and social system that remains anchored in the land.

In my study of the significance of land in Acholi sociology, I am investigating how the long insurgency in Northern Uganda has transformed land relations among the Acholi and how customary notions of tenure have changed. Professor J. P. Ocitti’s (1973) work, ‘African Indigenous Education as Practiced by the Acholi of Uganda’ explains that traditionally the Acholi had four main types of tenure relating to the uses of land: farmland, settlement, grazing and hunting. Each was governed by traditional laws within customary tenure. To me, these are the key four tenets that framed Acholi social practices and their philosophy of identity. They also defined their sense of spirituality, belonging, family and community relationships and their wider social relations; livelihood security, generational continuity through entrustment in land and so on.

Theirs was a strong system supported by hierarchies of ownership and kinship links that originate from the head of a family right through to the Rwot (Chief) at the top of the hierarchy. His position as chief makes him the custodian of the people’s collective land rights. Acholi is a decentralised society of about 54 major clans and several sub-clans; each clan is headed by a Rwot (Chief). Collectively, the 54 clans make up the Acholi Chiefdom, now headed by Rwot Achana II, (Paramount Chief). Each major clan and its sub-clans, occupy a particular geographical place in Acholiland from which they derive identity, kinship, belonging and so on. Nevertheless, this social organisation is only important and real because it is inextricably linked to the land. Thus you hear of the Rwot of Patiko or son of Patiko, Rwot of Atiak or people of Atiak. Patiko and Atiak are places in Acholiland but they are also the clan names and clansmen’s identity. However, this structure was destabilised by the forced removal of the Acholi from their customary lands at the peak of the Kony rebellion and their encampment as internally displaced peoples (IDPs). Removed from the land, the new generations could not learn the traditional cultural knowledge, practices and skills, especially awareness of the land, how it was divided, used and cared for. Not only was that relationship between people and land distorted but the knowledge about it could no longer be accurately handed down. With this, the scene was already set for a chaotic return to the land at the end of the war. And meanwhile new state laws and practices on land tenure had been decreed that were not understood or even known about by the vast majority of Acholi people. All this created easy opportunities for land grabbers and illegal sales that threaten the land rights of tens of thousands of Acholi people. Unsurprisingly this phenomenon also created a new conflict that ostensibly set the Acholi against the state and proponents of a free market in land. In that light, my study argues that the impact of a sudden and chaotic replacing of customary tenure by free market ideas in Acholi will be landlessness and a new class of impoverished or even unskilled landless labourers. Such a change would also destroy the system of social security which was provided by collective land rights or ownership.

Nevertheless, this is not just about land laws and land rights. My study draws on wider sociological arguments for non-monetary values of land embodied in customary laws elsewhere. Moreover, what has happened to land ownership and use in Acholi transcends the boundaries of what I term in the study as ‘land activism’. It resonates wherever socio-economic and political transformations involve the fundamental relationship between land and the people. Similar issues have arisen in Latin America, Asia and the rest of Africa, and they are likely to become more frequent wherever the commoditisation of land has set the state, the people and business against each other.


Betty Okot is a PhD student, supervised by Dr Jane Parish and Professor Pnina Werbner

Masculinity in the dock

By Bill Dixon

A jury at Nottingham Crown Court are told that a Derby man was responsible for the death of six of his ten children in a house fire when a plot to frame his ex-girlfriend went tragically wrong. Five male members of staff at the Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester are accused of abusing the young women they were paid to teach. The world’s most famous disabled sportsman, a Paralympic champion and, uniquely, an Olympian too, is in custody in Pretoria facing allegations of murder after the woman in his life was shot four times. Also in South Africa, a 17 year old girl is gang-raped, mutilated and left for dead by an unknown number of men.

Only one of these men – Chetham’s former director of music, Michael Brewer – has been convicted of any offence and you may well ask what links events in council-owned semi in Derby last May with behaviour at an elite music school over the last 40 years, the shooting of a minor local celebrity in a luxury home on an exclusive, gated golf estate and a brutal attack on a very ordinary working class young woman who seems to have spent her last few hours at a sports bar. For some observers Mick Philpott’s domestic arrangements make him an archetypal member of what Charles Murray famously called the underclass. The men responsible for attacking Anene Booysen in the farming town of Bredasdorp may turn out to be, like her, black and not very well off. But if class or ‘race’ are relevant here, how do we explain the behaviour of not one but five brilliant musicians in prestigious and relatively well paid jobs? And what about the national and international sporting icon that is (or was) Oscar Pistorius?

The common factor of course is that all these alleged offenders are men. And they are accused of either killing or abusing children or women, often, as in the case of the Chetham’s teachers and the Bredasdorp rape-murderers, very young women or girls. We do not know whether the allegations made against these men are true and may never know exactly why they did what they did. But one thing is clear from what we have been told thus far: the ability of these men to exercise power over a woman or women more generally is likely to be deeply implicated in their behaviour.

According to the prosecution, Philpott was a ‘very controlling and manipulative man’ who wanted to punish his ex-lover for rejecting him. The teachers at Chetham were confident that they could treat their young pupils as they pleased, and molest them more or less at will. That several of them went on to successful careers elsewhere suggests that their confidence was not entirely misplaced. Anene Booysen would have had no chance when she was set upon by a group of older, stronger men. Precisely what happened at the Pistorius residence in the early hours of Valentine’s Day remains a mystery. But the omens are not good and it would be no surprise if Reeva Steenkamp was not the victim of mistaken identity but the latest in a long line of women to have stepped out of line too often or too far and paid the ultimate price at the hands of a very angry man.

None of this is to say that men are to blame for everything that is wrong with the world. Being a man myself, I hope not. But it has been a very bad week indeed for certain kinds of hegemonic masculinity.

What is the Precariat? Sociology Seminar, 27th February

By Mark Featherstone

On 27^th February the Sociology Seminar will host Guy Standing, Professor of Development Studies at the University of London, who will talk about his recent book The Precariat. The notion of the precariat, which first emerged in Pierre Bourdieu’s work on neoliberal capitalism in the 1990s, is particularly important today because of the economic crisis that has engulfed global capitalism. The concept itself refers to a global class of people who survive on the basis of low wage, unstable, work in the post-fordist economy where the need for labour is always uncertain and short term. For this reason, the precariat does not form a traditional class, such as the Marxist proletariat or working class, but instead comprises a strange shifting, amorphous, category of people. In this respect, the precariat is much closer to the Marxist idea of the lumpenproletariat than a traditional class grouping. Similar to the lumpenproletariat who represented the dregs of the Marxist class system, the precariat has no clear sense of identity, because the people of the precarious mass may have very little in common with each other. As such, the precariat has no clear politics of its own, but for this precise reason represents a potentially dangerous reservoir of people who might be easily exploited by powerful rhetoric able to form them into an angry mob organised against marginal others. In this respect Standing’s great worry about the precariat is that it may easily turn to fascism under conditions of economic recession. I agree that this is a real threat across Europe especially, where immigration is a constant cause of unrest. In many respects this shift to the right through the mobilisation of the precariat is already taking place today. This is not surprising. Psychologically speaking the impact of recession and economic instability on people who are already living on the edge is that they seek to save themselves by turning against others who appear weak, the losers of late capitalism. As Max Weber and then later Erich Fromm explained, this is the sado-masochistic psychopathology of capitalist society. The very competitive nature of capitalism means that it is always in danger of tipping over into authoritarianism and fascism when conditions become bleak and I have written about this very threat on the blog over the course of the last four years. Against this very real dystopian threat, Standing proposes a new utopian politics adequate to address the condition of the precariat. I think that the invention of this new utopian politics for the disenfranchised is perhaps the task of sociology and politics today. We need this to avert the alternative, a dystopian politics of sado-masochistic violence similar to those explored by Erich Fromm in his work on fascist psychology.   

Professor Standing’s seminar will run from 4pm to 7pm and include responses from Professor Clare Holdsworth (Geography, Keele) and Professor Ronnie Lippens (Criminology, Keele). The seminar will be introduced by Dr Mark Featherstone (Sociology, Keele). There is limited space available for this event. If you would like to attend, please e-mail Dr. Featherstone at m.a.featherstone@keele.ac.uk

Michael Gove’s Educational Reforms: A Utilitarian Education System with Little Use Value

By Keely Hughes, PhD student in Sociology

Last week we saw Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education) take a “U-Turn” on his decision to scrap General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSE’s) in core academic subjects and replace them with English Baccalaureate Certificates (EBC’s). He stated in the House of Commons that the decision to replace GCSE’s with EBC’s was “one reform too many” … “a bridge too far”. The questions to be asked are; exactly how much of a reversal is this for Gove? And what type of education system is Gove trying to form?

The Coalition set out their aims for education in the Importance of Teaching White Paper 2010 where a tighter curriculum, rigorous exams and a restructuring of league tables were of high priority, alongside toughening academic subjects, reforming vocational education and increasing schools autonomy. In the context of the aims set out in the 2010 White Paper, the reversal for Gove on the EBC’s is small, as academic rigor will still be enforced, only now through GCSE’s. Gove’s vision for education is a splitting and distinction of the academic and vocational, where the academic becomes the greater good of the two but both nonetheless Gove claims are important for Britain’s economy and society’s contemporary needs. The rhetoric is that these reforms will enable Britain to compete globally with the world’s best education systems and more importantly will provide economic prosperity for Britain’s future. On the surface this does not appear problematic, why shouldn’t our pupils have the right to a world class education securing them a “valuable” position within our economy whether it is academic or vocational. Gove’s vision shows similarity to the tripartite system of education during the post-war era which created to some extent a stasis, where we had pupils trained in vocational education upon which leaving school would take their place within the working class labour force and an academic middle-class high-tech worker maintaining power and generating wealth off the labour force. I believe that this is what Gove is trying to recapture. The problem is however, that during the post-war era we had an industrial sector, which through Thatcherism and the rise of neoliberal capitalism has been eradicated.

Gove is backing away from the idea that every individual can go to university and become a high-tech worker. His two tier education system suggests that he is trying to re-construct an old working class, but there is a problem, we no longer have a working class industry. The implementation of state education for all in the 1870’s was based on utilitarian principles, on a need to train the working-class for the economy. However, the reality today of training individuals as workers for an industrial workforce which does not exist will only lead to our young falling out of the bottom of the working class and joining the ever increasing unemployed class. We have witnessed increasing unemployment levels during the recession and I fail to see how an education system constructed for the training of individuals for an industrial economy will reduce unemployment in the current neoliberal system, which is committed to privatisation, marketization and competition, and which centralises the economy and society around the mechanisms of “consumption”.

I believe that current reforms will leave us with a utilitarian education system which has little “use” value. If we train pupils in vocational education within markets which (1) have a limited use for vocational education and; (2) give higher “value” to academic education, vocational education and training becomes “value-less” and will provide our young with little or no stake in the economy. Youth unemployment, as we have witnessed over the last few years, has risen dramatically and even those with university qualifications are struggling to find work, taking lower-paid jobs which do not match the skills and qualifications gained from university. For individuals where low-paid work matches their skills and qualifications they are again being pushed out of the bottom of the economy by other individuals who are over-qualified taking these limited available jobs. I think that ultimately, a massive underclass will develop. These individuals will be young with no stake in society and in order to survive in an ever increasing high end consumer society will have to take what they cannot buy. This will lead to a rise in the penal state but with cuts in the penal system also, school for those who cannot compete and become high-tech workers will become a disciplinary institution in which education will become about creating workers for an economy without work and socialising behaviour to make people more compliant. This is a million miles away from Gove’s rhetoric of a world-class education for every individual which will secure each individual with a “valuable” place in our economy.

My PhD research at Keele University focuses on these contemporary educational issues, on the relationship between contemporary neoliberal discourses of economic value and its impact upon education for ‘advantaged’ and ‘dis-advantaged’ youth groups, aiming to understand the ways in which social class impacts upon the experience of education in a period of economic stress and educational reform. My main concern is with the extent to which neoliberal education reproduces class division and inequality through its focus on the relationship between education and economic usefulness.