Uganda, as an imagined territorial state and a tragic human drama, was the “child” of the late nineteenth-century European expansionist violence. This child came into imperial “existence” in 1890, following the Anglo-German Agreement. Since that time, it has experienced intense political violence. Indeed, it has become an important example of a state that continues to be ravaged by harrowing political violence.
This study focuses on why intense political violence persisted in Uganda from 1890 to 1979. It also examines how both state and non-state actors responded to the phenomenon and the effects of political violence on the society. The utility, types, intensity and location of political violence are also highlighted. The central argument is that the most significant factor accounting for the persistence of intense political violence is the severe crisis of legitimacy of the state, its institutions, political incumbents and their challengers. This violence, both a cause and effect of the crisis of legitimacy, in turn, has exacerbated and sustained the severe crisis of legitimacy—thus, completing the vicious cycle. On the most general level, it suggests that societies experiencing prolonged and severe crises of legitimacy are prone to intense and persistent political violence. Other secondary propositions are (i) more often than not, political violence is employed alongside other non-violent political methods to address the crisis of legitimacy by enlisting support, cooperation, compromise, control and compliance; (ii) in specific instances of intense power contestation, political violence is employed as an abbreviated method of conflict elimination or conflict resolution or revenge; (iii) a despotically strong and infrastructurally strong state by its very nature has a severe crisis of legitimacy and is an important site of political violence. Such a state will exhibit stability of a police state; (iv) a despotically strong but infrastructurally weak state is an important site of political violence and instability; (v) a despotically weak and infrastructurally weak state is an important site of political violence and widespread anarchy; (vi) a despotically weak but infrastructurally strong state is an important site of political legitimacy and sustainable rights-based stability; (vii) response to political violence is influenced by many and constantly changing variables: legitimacy of the state, its institutions, political incumbents and their challengers; perceptions and nature of threat; duration of conflict; contested and/or imagined histories of relations between the protagonists; contested and/or imagined histories of relations between the protagonists and secondary targets; history of relations between the protagonists and spillover targets; coercive potentials of the protagonists; objectives, strategies, tactics, targets and effects of political violence; and relations between the protagonists and other stakeholders; and (viii) effects of political violence depend on a host of variables: relations between the protagonists; relations between the protagonists and secondary targets; relations between the protagonists and other stakeholders; and objectives, targets, nature, duration, intensity, histories and location of political violence.1
A Working Definition of Political Violence
Discussions about political violence have produced more confusion than clarity. For one thing there is little agreement on the meaning of the word, the phenomenon it is meant to describe, how to study it, what causes it, how it affects societies, how people respond to it or what to do with it. Differences of opinion mirror diverse assumptions about human nature, the nature and functions of the state, the nature and functions of political violence as well as the conceptual frameworks and methodologies employed to unravel the phenomenon.2 This lack of consensus is compounded by the usage of important but equally ambiguous concepts in the study of political violence: “politics,” “violence,” “instability,” “aggression,” “protest,” “conflict,” “crisis” and “disorder.”3 For example, politics is often defined narrowly or broadly in terms of one or some of the following notions: “policy, power, authority, legitimacy, state, conflict and allocation of resources.”4 Similarly, “violence” is often defined ambiguously in terms of one or more of the following: coercive power, authority, violation, injustice, force, physical force, legitimate force or illegitimate force.5 This syndrome of terminological confusion is further hopelessly complicated by the competing political beliefs of scholars and whose side the scholars choose in the conflicts they study.6
In this study, two dominant and competing definitions of political violence are highlighted. The first is based on the assumption that the state is a necessary and legitimate form of political organization. This assumption, which is derived from that of contractualistic civil society and is influenced by the tendency of structural functionalism, suggests that the primary roles of the state are to manage conflicts and maintain desired socio-economic and political equilibrium. Since political violence is disruptive to the equilibrium, this viewpoint contends, state actions “fall into some other category such as legitimate force, social control, regime coercion, or conflict management.”7 Political violence, it follows from this perspective, stems primarily from illegitimate actions of non-state actors.8 The leading proponent of this perspective is T.R. Gurr. According to him:
This functional concept of political violence—that excludes acts of violence from “above” and within the apex of power structure—has been applied to studies of political violence in many parts of the world.10political violence refers to all collective attacks within a political community against the political regime, its actors – including competing political groups as well as incumbents – or its policies. The concept represents a set of events, a common property of which is the actual or threatened use of violence, but the explanation is not limited to that property. The concept subsumes revolution, ordinarily defined as a fundamental sociopolitical change accomplished through violence. It includes guerrilla wars, coup d’état, rebellions, and riots.9
Gurr’s definition of political violence, which is still widely used by some scholars from underdeveloped societies, was influenced in part by the desire to help the US government, whose contribution to the research is acknowledged, control the “urban disorder” or the violence that characterized the height of the civil rights movements in the 1960s. In keeping, in part, with the objective of the study, violence from “above” or by state actors did not constitute political violence.11 This concept, with its ideologically loaded assumptions about the legitimacy of the state and its institutions, however, has serious problems. To begin with, could the state, its institutions and the incumbents that maintained key elements of the institutions of slavery and the apartheid policy against African-Americans be perceived, at least by the primary victims of the policy and the system, as legitimate? Did African-Americans not perceive and experience white supremacy and the apartheid policy as acts of political violence against them?12 Similar questions can be posed about how the indigenous peoples of Australasia and the Americas, for example, who faced systematic and consciously anticipated mass exterminations and genocides perceive the “colonial” settler state, its institutions and the incumbents. In the context of Africa, Uganda included, Gurr’s definition runs into equally serious difficulties: who considered the colonial state, which was integral to the construction of violent European imperial hegemony, as legitimate? Who considers the neocolonial state in Africa, which inherited and preserved key elements of the colonial state, as legitimate? Are the states, institutions and incumbents not a major source of conflict and political violence in neocolonial Africa? Informed answers to these questions do not support Gurr’s assumptions and definition.13 Perhaps, the flaws inherent in the assumptions and definition contributed to Gurr’s endorsement of the second perspective.
The second perspective on political violence questions the legitimacy of the state, its institutions, the incumbents and their challengers. It also questions whose interests the equilibrium serves, the need to preserve the equilibrium and whether political violence is necessarily dysfunctional. It then presents political violence in terms of perceived threats and power contests involving both state and non-state actors. One of the most influential proponents of this view is H.L. Nieburg. According to him, political violence is an act “of disruption, destruction, injury whose purpose, choice of targets or victims, surrounding circumstances, implementation, and/or effects have political significance, that tend to modify the behavior of others in a bargaining situation that has consequences for the social system.”14 While E. Zimmermann, among other scholars, acknowledged that this is a better definition, he cautioned that the concept of bargaining, as espoused by Nieburg, is problematic and has to be used with great care.15
For the purpose of this study, the definition offered by Nieburg is modified and grounded in the growing knowledge of the political history of the kleptocratic and despotic state, Uganda. Here, political violence is defined as an act of violence or threat of violence, destruction, injury, disruption, dislocation and deprivation whose perceived objectives and/or perceived effects have political significance for the society. This broad definition emphasizes the significance of perception, whether objective or subjective, in understanding political violence in Uganda. This emphasis is warranted for two reasons. First, since the construction of the colonial state, the social, the economic and the “private” have become the larger political. In addition, since the invention of the state, the state and its institutions have been fused with the regime and, in many instances, with the political incumbents and the ruling political “party.” In such a territorial state, any and every form of violence is potentially political violence. Second, the tragic history and nature of political violence and other forms of conflicts in Uganda have blurred the distinction between subjective and objective realities. Indeed, from the vantage point of actors in conflict, construction of reality is a subjective enterprise that depends on one’s location in society and one’s selective understanding, imagination and interpretation of past and present history.
Two examples will illustrate the need for this emphasis. Joshua Mukasa (a Muganda) and George Ogwang (a Lango) were neighbors near the Agakhan High School in Kampala. Mukasa perceived the Museveni regime as legitimate because it brought to an end what he referred to as political violence by the “Anyanya” (dark-skinned foreigners), as the Acoli and Langi were referred to in the political south of Uganda in the first two decades of Museveni rule. In this instance, the Museveni regime secured the right to govern or political legitimacy by dislodging the previous Langi and Acoli-led governments which were a major threat to the security of the people of Buganda. Mukasa maintained his view despite the fact that some Baganda, including supporters of the late Dr. Andrew Kayira and some Baganda monarchists who wanted to get rid of the Museveni regime, did not view the regime as legitimate. Mukasa also perceived every form of violence perpetrated by the “Anyanaya” as political violence.
Ogwang, on the other hand, perceived the Museveni regime as having a profound crisis of legitimacy because, in his view, it was dominated by Tutsi refugees who disguised themselves as Banyankole and Ugandan Banyarwanda. In addition, Ogwang maintained that the regime had engaged in deliberate marginalization and extermination of the Langi. Ogwang maintained his perception of the regime despite the fact that some Langi, who were highly placed in the Museveni regime, did not share his view. He also perceived any form of violence perpetrated by the “Tutsi refugees,” whose membership, in Ogwang’s mind, now included anybody from the political south, as political violence.
In June 1992, the two neighbors were violently robbed by the same armed “Tutsi refugees” or “Banyankole” robbers. According to Mukasa, the robbery was an ordinary crime that was not sanctioned by the regime. The fact that the robbers were “Banyankole” like Museveni, he explained, did not mean that the robbery was politically motivated. Given Mukasa’s location in society, as a Muganda, and his particular imagination and interpretation of past and present history of the country, the incident did not alter his relations with the regime or with the Banyankole.16
Ogwang, on the other hand, perceived the armed robbery as an act of political violence because, according to him, “Tutsi refugees are punishing us [Langi] for whatever violence and humiliation they suffered during Obote’s rule. They also tell us repeatedly that this is their government.” In this instance, Ogwang’s vulnerable position in the country, as a Lango, and his selective understanding and interpretation of past and present history of the country made him perceive the incident differently. In the end, the incident increased Ogwang’s opposition to the regime.17
In 2009, Mukasa and Ogwang switched their perceptions. This time, Ogwang, who realized that the only way to survive...