The ‘war against Acholi has not ended yet’. What does that mean?

I am not a mega land, or the things we build on it, especially concrete and mortar. Part of it is because I fear the fury that land disputes tend to provoke everywhere around the world. And also, there is a part of me that thinks lands – and buildings - tie our imagination.
I am fascinated though, when people do creative things with land to create life – ie farm it for food. Or, like the hardy peasants in the Sahel, create forests and oases out of deserts with little more hoes and minds that draw from a thousand years of African ingenuity. And the politics of land too can be riveting.

And with that I landed on the story in the Monitor online, which reported: “Police in Gulu on Monday foiled a demonstration staged by Acholi MPs under their umbrella Acholi Parliamentary Group (APG).
“The demonstration by MPs who were armed with placards written on ‘War Against Acholi has not ended yet’, ‘Leave Apaa land to the historical owners’ follows last month’s attacks on Acholi community in Apaa parish in which at least 2,100 people were displaced and sought refuge in Goro B and Juka villages.”
It is interesting, the interplay between conflict and land. Some of us should remember what happened in the Teso sub-region, when the rebellions and the Kampala’s violent counterinsurgency ended, around 1990.
The National Resistance Army (later renamed Uganda People’s Defence Forces) and the myriad of rebel groups, among other things, stole the people’s cattle.

Farming in Teso was mainly by ox plough, so after the war ended, the people struggled. The conflict there didn’t last as long as it did in northern Uganda, but still long enough for the land to fallow marvelously. Thus when peace returned, and even though they had no cattle to plough with, we had these incredible stories. In Kampala and further, places that were peaceful, and had seen large investments via the money that followed NRM assumption of power, drought conditions, and low productivity had led to low food productions. The potatoes being sold in Kampala were coming from Teso! The irony of it was just too much.

There is a similar dynamic in the north, except that this time, it was sim sim produced incredible yields in the lands that had been rested during the wars, and fellows became Ugandan shilling billionaires exporting the stuff. But the war in the north was different in its impact on land than that in Teso (not to mention Luweero), not just because it took longer, but other factors too. First, it happened after the Land Act of 1998. After that law, and the “redistribution” of land in the Ankole Ranch Scheme holdings, many small holders flogged their new land, pocketed the profits, and went looking for cheaper land. Most of them went northwards, and the fringes of Buganda.

By now, a mix of honest business people, and corrupt fellows who had stolen lots of public money, were also buying land at prices people upcountry couldn’t refuse, forcing them to head further afield to look for places to settle.

Meanwhile, Uganda’s population boomed. Additionally, unlike Teso, the phenomenon of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps was pervasive.
In part, it was driven by a controversial scorched earth policy to burn all food fields, championed by UPDF officers, some of whom in later years, sought to present themselves as democrats after they fell out with President Museveni.

In newsrooms, some of us started getting reports that the military was remaking the land in the north, and creating new facts on the ground that would “make it difficult for the Acholi to reclaim it.” In the newsroom we were conflicted. We didn’t want to do reporting that would inflame “sectarian” feelings further, and postpone the possibility of a settlement. We erred on the side of caution.
The stories we were being told were that in some places soldiers, and it wasn’t clear whether they were rogue or acting per official policy, were clearing trees, digging up anthills, and even removing certain types of shrubs.

You wouldn’t think of it, but in the villages where people don’t use directional or distance markers, if you took someone who had been away in an IDP camp for eight years back to his home, and he couldn’t see a tree, anthill, or vegetation he or she recognised, they would not be able to tell you where their house once stood, or which was their land.
Though there is no indication that this happened on an industrial scale in the north, clearly it is playing out in some areas. In part, it is enabling big land speculators from as far away as Kampala, to move in and stake claims.
In that sense, the MPs are right that the “War Against Acholi has not ended yet.”

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data. visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site. Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3