ACHOLI LAND GRAB
Acholi land issues are thorny and contentious largely because of many falsehoods or distorted public discourses inspired by sinister motives of aggrandizement. According to M. Foucault, a “discourse” is a historically contingent social system that produces knowledge and meaning. Discourses transmit, produce, and reinforce power – but also can expose and undermine it.
There have been several discourses sustained about Acholi and Acholi land specifically. For this article, two discourses need urgent redressing; a) that the Acholi land is free and unused; and b) that the Acholi people are sectarian for resisting the surge of Balaalo pastoralists and land grabbers. These two discourses require urgent debunking!
There are opportunistic Ugandans who assume to have better ideas of how to use Acholi land which they consider free and unused and go about propagating discourses to justify land appropriation. These discourses, therefore, afford them the reprieve to appropriate and annex Acholi land as was the case in 2021 with the annexation of Apaa to Adjumani.
Acholi land is not “unused”, “free” or “available” for grabs. Period! Historical facts dispute this discourse and illuminate a plot to perpetrate economic annihilation of the Acholi. For the record, the Acholi people capably preserved and managed their land communally and productively before 1986. This Acholi region was once wealthy –produced a variety of high-quality food crops twice a year, and cash crops such as cotton and coffee throughout the year. Acholi people are hard-working farmers, hunters, and entrepreneurs like every other group in Uganda.
The pre-Museveni Acholi land relied on cattle, goats, sheep, fowls, and farming for their livelihood. Every Acholi who lived outside Acholiland would return home during public holidays to replenish their own food stocks. The two decades of war in northern Uganda profoundly disrupted this trend of economic growth and stability. The dispossession of cattle from Acholi and the internment of nearly 1.7 million Acholi people from their homesteads should be prominently illuminated to debunk this discourse. The enduring effects of that war cannot be underwritten in countering this discourse, either.
Honest Ugandans and the Balaalo have no basis to sustain the discourse that Acholi is sectarian. Recently, the surge of Balaalo into the Acholi region gained traction and is generating a lot of tension. The Balaalo are nomadic pastoralists previously known to Acholi in their capacity as kraal attendants – before 1986. Even with their questionable origins, privileges, and consciousness, the Balaalo should be respectful of Acholi and show courtesy. Unfortunately, the forceful ones are university graduates, armed, and most rear their cattle remotely via cell phones.
Key characteristics of this group that are resentful, include indiscipline, arrogance, violence, and a strange sense of entitlement to Acholi land.
Most of the pre-NRM/A Balaalos were paupers who were propertyless with no claim to Acholiland, except for their excessive affinity and care skills for cows as their competency. Most were employees – cattle keepers - that Acholi families treated very well. The short-horned cattle in Acholiland were commonplace and plentifully entrusted to the Balaalos. Every Acholi who owned cattle also employed Balaalos and paid them by agreement, mainly in gallons of milk. This arrangement was amicable as the Balaalo made more money from selling milk than if they were paid monthly wages. They were housed and given land to cultivate food. Some were even married wives and settled as part of Acholi families.
I know this because my father had lots of herds of cattle in Pajule, and my grandfather had almost 250 cows that lurked gracefully at the foot of Atoo hills in Aswa county. There never was a problem of trust or misunderstanding between Acholi families that own cattle and their Balaalo employees. I stand to be corrected on this. On a few occasions, however, some Balaalo tried to accumulate their stock by stealing calves. I never heard of a Mulaalo being mistreated over such, however, we know that most became NRA spies in the heat towards 1986.
Thus, the correct counter-discourse should be such that, Acholi land was dispossessed of cattle and its socioeconomic life potential by means of war, de-stocking, and mass displacement. As such, the NRM/A junta mistreated Acholi on many fronts. The dispossession of its livestock is only one of those, economic annihilation and subsequent protracted violence against the people need to be comprehensively redressed and not perpetrated.
The ongoing surge of the Balaalo with their cattle, however, reminds the Acholi of how treacherous it is to trust your former employees who turned against you, ransacked your home, killed and humiliated your people, and interned your population in squalor. Acholi needs breathing space to recover from the long-term effects of that “social transformation” that Museveni curated for them.
It is shameful that the Balaalo are now returning to grab Acholi land, which they know its potential quite well. In that equation, how will the Acholi person benefit from Balaalo harassment and land appropriation?
It is important to note that, while the Acholi are now caught defending their dispossessed land, there has not been a genuine effort on the side of the government to properly restock the region.
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