World Ark Magazine - November/December 2008 - (Page 17)

“The African leadership uses ethnicity to stay in power,” said Aaron Mukwaya, a professor of political science at Makarere University. “Not because they want ethnicity, or they want tribalism, but because these are the methods they use to stay in power.” This system of defining identity based on local heritages rather than a national one can fuel internal conflict. “Whenever you amass too much power, you exclude others and that exclusion is sometimes expressed in terms of tribe or in terms of region,” Mukwaya said. “The problems in northern Uganda, in eastern Congo and in the south of Sudan are problems of permanent exclusion.” Just how identity in Africa can be redefined to create modern nation-states remains a mystery. It is a giant experiment currently being carried out across the continent. “I don’t think that anyone has figured out the formula for a nation yet,” Wainaina said. “Not enough time has passed to know what they are becoming. Experts can talk what they talk, but we just don’t know.” In northern Uganda, Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army have been waging war against the government of Yoweri Museveni for 20 years. Kony said he wanted to overthrow the government in Kampala and rule the country according to the Ten Commandments. The fighting has caused a huge amount of suffering, with nearly 2 million people displaced, 20,000 children abducted or killed, and the equivalent of $1.7 billion wasted. The International Criminal Court has indicted Kony and his lieutenants for war crimes. I sat down on a couch, filled a cup with tea and took a samosa from a dish on the table. I asked about the situation in Gulu. “It’s been calm for about two years now,” Otto said. There haven’t been any attacks since peace talks started, and Gulu is now the third-fastest growing city in Uganda. “Do you have any ideas about the root causes of the fighting?” I asked. Otto thought for a minute. “Well, yes,” he said. “The government was very quick to say that this conflict was caused by soldiers seeking their past glory. But one thing we know is that the British divided this country between North and South. They developed the South. They gave them education and commerce. And for the North, it was a labor reservoir. That was the design, and that division remains.” Otto said that early on, his organization held a meeting with community members to ask what the cause of the war was. What they said was “self-preservation.” Soon after the fighting that brought Museveni to power in 1986, the government issued a call for all soldiers to disarm and present themselves at the army barracks. But in the late 1970s Uganda’s most notorious dictator, Idi Amin, issued a similar call. And when the soldiers showed up, they were all killed. “So they said, ‘No, we are not going to die like chickens.’ That’s what we mean by self-preservation. They did not have any political agenda. They just wanted to survive with their guns.” Some of these soldiers formed an independent army. Even though several wars still rage in this region, there are more and more places like Kampala, where life is hard, but where normalcy has begun to seem almost normal. An uneasy peace had settled on the city of Gulu, near the center of the conflict, since peace talks began in 2006. I wanted to see how the place was recovering and what the region’s prospects looked like. I also wondered if there wasn’t more behind the caricature of Kony as a simple madman. At the humble headquarters of Human Rights Focus, an organization started in 1994 to help resolve the conflict, founder James Otto welcomed me into his office. He was a tall and jovial man whose grasp of the situation was wide and deep. He was also one of the first advocates of peace talks. Others joined the mystical rebel leader Alice Lakwena. Others joined her cousin, Joseph Kony. “Do you think one of the factors has been political exclusion?” I asked. “To a certain extent, yes,” Otto said. “When it comes to resource allocation, the exclusion is there. It is very glaring. And there is an anxiety that has engulfed the greater North. With the voting in 2006, Uganda unfortunately became so divided that it became two political countries. Now we need a program that can weld the two countries. We need someone who is a nationalist by conviction.” www.heifer.org November/December 2008 | WORLD ARK 17 http://www.heifer.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Ark Magazine - November/December 2008

World Ark Magazine - November/December 2008 Contents Letters For the Record The Good Life Asked and Answered Finding Peace in Africa Sierra Leone on the Mend The Roma: A People Apart Mixed Media Heifer Bulletin Heifer Spirit Calendar First Person

World Ark Magazine - November/December 2008

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