How did governance in Acholi dovetail with violence?

Abstract

This thesis applies interdisciplinary approaches to explore interactions between two forms of community governance in Acholiland from 1898 to 2010, locating itself within Peace Studies. One form, kaka, was “traditional”, featuring varied forms of “facultative mutualisms” among two or more gangi agnates – with one gang as dominant in the realm. Gangi were kinship-based polities. Like kaka, gangi manifested autopoietic attributes and strong internal “fiduciary cultures”. Then in the 1900s, kaka as governing systems were reshuffled under colonialism and a tribal unit, the Acholi Local Government was created and was subordinated to the Uganda state. Unlike kaka, Acholi Local Government was hierarchal and has consistently been redesigned by various postcolonial governments in their attempts to renegotiate, reshape and control the Acholi people. The study advances a concept of community governance as “socialpolitical” and moral, and counters that kaka was about brotherhoods - not rulersubject relationships. It further distinguishes what was “traditional” from “customary” systems, and demonstrates how colonialism in Acholiland, and a crisis of legitimacy manifested in a trifurcation of authorities, with: i) the despotic civil service - the “customary system”, fusing modernity and the African tradition, ii) a reshuffled kaka system as traditional, and, iii) the cross-modern, manifested as kinematic lugwok paco, linking ethno-governance with the nascent national and global arenas. The study concludes that both colonialism and “coloniality” have reshuffled the mores of kaka along an African neo-patrimonial legitimacy. Conversely, Acholiland is a “limited statehood” – manifesting a higher order of societal entropy - where the “rule by law and customs” dovetail with violence and poverty, demonstrating a genre of exceptionalism.