{UAH} Scrambling for the promised land: land acquisitions and the politics of representation in post-war Acholi, northern Uganda

Introduction: struggles over land in the wake of war

Over the last few years, one of the most frequently and hotly debated issues concerning the political economy of sub-Saharan Africa has been the rise of large-scale land acquisitions (among an already vast literature, see Cotula [2012] and Zoomers [2010]). This continent-wide tendency is also visible in Uganda, where, as elsewhere, it takes on different regional expressions. In Acholi sub-region, northern Uganda, land acquisitions are particularly sensitive, occurring as they do in the wake of long-standing displacement of the majority of population and their recent uncertain return. For two decades, the region suffered from rebellions and civil war. Armed conflict subsided in 2006, but the majority of the displaced population only began to return home a few years later after having been forced to spend many years in refugee camps. Their resettlement has been complicated by many factors. The vast, fertile and oil-rich land in Acholi has attracted the attention of prospective investors, willing and able to take advantage of an impoverished population. In addition to the many local land disputes at household and village levels, the region has recently witnessed a growing number of cases of controversial purchases, leases and allocations; all of this is fuelling anxiety and tension among local communities.

As the internally displaced population returns home and as attempts at large-scale acquisition of land intensify, the regulatory framework is being put to test. Through the 1995 constitution and the 1998 Land Act, customary tenure – the dominant tenure form in the region – is constitutionally and legally anchored and, in an African comparative perspective, strongly supported, at least on paper (Alden Wily, 2011, p. 745). Security of tenure for ordinary Acholi evidently depends on much more than the letter of the law. The interpretation and application of law in practice may be an entirely different matter, linked as it normally is to processes of individuals, groups and institutions claiming and exercising authority in other spheres of society (Alden Wily, 2012). Furthermore, 'customary land tenure' is merely an umbrella term for a wide set of relations, and any particular context is regulated in the interface between law and practice, and in some cases by practice alone (Cotula, 2007; Pottier, 2005). The coexistence in Acholi of relatively strong legislation with regard to land, and the extreme social, economic and political vulnerability that characterises the region makes it particularly relevant to interrogate how, in the interplay between law and practice, different social forces seek to access land with particular emphasis on the implications for security of tenure in terms of effective control (Borras & Franco, 2012, p. 55). The present article argues the necessity of analysing the politics of land acquisitions in a manner that carefully examines the nuances of the local context, including competing local interests. Many actors aspire for political involvement around land issues through demand-making and interest representation, and do so in many overlapping statutory and customary arenas, such as clans, councils and courts. How does the politics of demand-making and interest representation in this multiplicity of arenas shape the modes of regulating access to land in Acholi, or, in the terminology used here, the form and content of the land tenure regime?

This article explores the issue of social and political struggles around large-scale land acquisitions by examining a controversial case in Acholi sub-region. It draws on secondary literature for the wider context and on a combination of media reports, official documentation and interviews and observations conducted during fieldwork in 2009 and 2010 for empirical details. The case made national headlines in 2007. When it became known that the Madhvani Group, a local business conglomerate, had the intention of getting access to 40,000 hectares in Amuru in the western part of Acholi for the purpose of growing sugar cane, the response was fierce and immediate. Sections of local communities and opposition politicians were adamant in demanding that any investor may operate only with the consent of the local population, and the matter has continued to evoke strong reactions. The case went to court, but struggles over regulating access have been fought in a number of other arenas at local and national levels.

The first section of the article presents an overview of the literature on land conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, and then engages with theoretical perspectives on the political struggles over land. The second section discusses recent land issues in Uganda and outlines the main features of the land tenure regime in Acholi sub-region. Section three then moves on to examine the empirical case, following which the concluding section offers an analytical summary of the findings by relating them to the theoretical arguments.

Land struggles and land tenure regimes

The first part of this section situates and theorises competition over resources and the forms of stratification that follow. In the second part, I link the socio-economic processes identified in the literature to their political regulation by developing theoretical arguments about mechanisms of access, institutional mediation and interest representation. These arguments are anchored in an analytical framework drawing on the concept of land tenure regimes, denoting the rules and practices that regulate access to land.

Land acquisitions, competition and social stratification

Recent overview articles (Bernstein, 2004; Berry, 2002, 2009; Peters, 2004, 2009) point to the multidimensional nature of the land question in Africa and summarise rich and growing evidence from across the continent of increasing competition and conflict over land over the last two decades. Land is not only an economic resource for agricultural production and accumulation for individuals, agribusiness and the state, but it is also a source of social status, political power and cultural heritage and belonging, something accentuated by its territorial dimension. Combinations of demographic, economic, ecological and political factors generate a galaxy of forms of competition and conflict, ranging from intra- and inter-family feuds to acquisition processes shaped by governmental and business actors at the international level (Berry, 2002, pp. 638–639; Peters, 2004, pp. 301–305); all competition crucially involves struggles over political connections. Creating access to land is linked to defining, recognising and exercising private and public authority in a broad sense (Berry, 2009, p. 24; Lentz, 2006; Peters, 2009, p. 1321; Sikor & Lund, 2009).

The observation about the interplay between access to resources and the exercise of authority is approached from a particular angle in Peters' key argument: that struggles over land are premised on social relations of domination and develop in ways that more often than not reinforce social differentiation, revolving around accumulation among the better off and survival for the majority (Peters, 2004, p. 305; 2009, p. 1319). Peters' emphasis on stratification of opportunities and constraints, systematically benefiting the wealthy and powerful, is in explicit contrast to what she calls 'a currently influential approach […] which privileges flexibility and indeterminacy in analyses of social relationships over land' (2004, p. 269). This article broadly shares Peters' concern with the importance of analysing not only the nuances of local settings, but also more general patterns of domination.

Whereas relationships over land are not, then, characterised by flexibility for all and open-ended negotiability, conflict dynamics are nevertheless contradictory. Bernstein (2005, pp. 87–89) and Peters (2004, pp. 301–302, 305) argue that in most of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, competition over land 'in the context of a generalized crisis of reproduction' (Bernstein, 2005, p. 92) is linked to social differentiation, which may be described as a class dynamics of sorts. However, both Bernstein and Peters stress that it is a class formation dynamic that is typically played out in fragmented and overlapping ways along lines of gender, ethnicity, clan and generation. This is said to be the case both for the forms of social stratification and for the political struggles around them. Such complexity is well articulated by Bernstein (2004, p. 218):

The translation of such 'social facts' into 'political facts' […] includes how the kinds of processes sketched are mediated through the often fragile political alliances and erratic practices of local accumulators and the similarly erratic, and contested, interventions of the local state, in which 'native'/'stranger' distinctions, 'squatting' and eviction also feature.

Elsewhere, Bernstein (2005, pp. 87–88) suggests three reasons why fragmentation of conflict types and identities should be the typical pattern: the absence in much of Africa of both large-scale landed property and generalised land alienation of a Latin American variant; the fractured nature of local state and society along lines of ethnicity promoted by colonialism and rarely discontinued after it; and the limited historical experience of popular rural political organisation. Similarly, Boone (2013) argues that the level of authoritative jurisdiction of land can be predicted to correspond to the scope of conflicts around the same, to the effect that land tenure regimes under customary authority, be they centred on household or chieftaincy, tend to localise conflicts and deflect them away from public political decision-making so as to undercut the prospects for broad-based mobilisation. Structural and subjective factors thus combine in generating multiple forms of political identities and organisation, often structured by local dynamics, hence making the politics of claiming access highly variable.

Access to land: mechanisms, regulation and representation

One theoretical perspective for approaching the multiplicity of actors, arenas and strategies in relation to resources has been proposed by Ribot and Peluso (2003), who argue that analysts would do well to broaden their scope of inquiry from concerns with legal and legitimate claims to property to the study of mechanisms for gaining, controlling and maintaining access in a broader sense. They define access as 'the ability to benefit from things – including material objects, persons, institutions and symbols'. (2003, p. 153). Rather than concentrating on 'bundles of rights', including the rights to use, manage and transfer land, Ribot and Peluso suggest that 'bundles of powers' (2003, p. 154) are necessary for understanding the 'array of institutions, social and political-economic relations and discursive strategies that shape benefit flows' (2003, p. 157) – or in other words: the capacity to control the use, management, transfer and so on, based on rights or not.

These arguments, which are drawn on in the analysis in this article for purposes of capturing the significant interplay between law and practice, suggest that strategies for accessing land, including claims for land rights, are made from a range of interrelated perspectives for overlapping purposes. It further means that the politicisation of such social struggles is likely to attract a great number of actors, all of whom claim to be legitimate and authoritative representatives or adjudicators in matters of land, and who bring concerns and disputes to various arenas, including courts, political assemblies, the media or the popular politics of the streets. As emphasised by Sikor and Lund (2009), contestation over material resources at the same time constitute struggles over the making and authorisation of the more or less formal institutions that regulate access.

Such institutional crystallisation by way of mediation of structural processes and agency may be captured analytically by the concept of land tenure regimes, denoting the laws, rules, norms and practices that regulate access to land for use, control, ownership, transfer and so on. The capacity of various actors to make use of institutions will differ significantly, as will the autonomy and capacity of institutions in relation to different social forces. Actors' choices of modes of engagement and arenas for pursuing their interests will depend on the manner in which regimes are organised in terms of rules, channels and arenas, as well as on the competing acquisition strategies of other actors. They may use, override or bypass laws and formal arenas, drawing on different instruments of domination and resistance for getting access, such as law, administration, policy, money and violence (Ribot & Peluso, 2003). Within parameters of relations of domination, laws and rules are constantly contested by political practices and locally specific and often informal social institutions; this is particularly salient in the context of customary tenure.

While customary tenure has an acknowledged openness expressed in shifting local practices, this does not preclude competition and commodification. As has been repeatedly emphasised, customary land tenure regimes are neither inherently weak in preserving security of tenure due to the absence of formalised ownership nor intrinsically protective or egalitarian. There are many examples of how customary practices might encompass a layering of protected access, from the individual to the communal (Peters, 2009, p. 1318), as well as of how they under other circumstances may uphold forms of inequality (Alden Wily, 2011, p. 737; Peters, 2009, p. 1319). It is posited here that variations in security of tenure is not so much determined by the tenure form per se as by the social, economic and political relations that shape its content. In the context of intensified competition, it is not surprising that most particular instances of customary tenure are arenas for contestation, and that the flexibility of the tenure form opens up for many mechanisms of seeking access as well as for many actors and institutions aspiring to regulate these processes. One example of competition over access to customary land is de facto commodification through the so-called vernacular land markets (Chimhovu & Woodhouse, 2006) or informal formalisation – a wide array of transfer techniques beyond the legal title (Peters, 2009, p. 1320). Discussing the prospects for customary tenure in the context of the recent wave of large-scale land acquisitions, Alden Wily (2011, pp. 733, 736) shows that forests, grazing land and other unfarmed lands appear to be particularly targeted.

In view of the unwritten character of customary law and the current weakness of many of the formal institutions that relate to it, one may expect a fairly wide scope for, and significance of, the practices of access, including demand-making and interest representation. The most obvious expression of interest representation is party politics; this article discusses the role played by representatives of political parties locally and nationally. The politics of interest representation in a broader sense is often discussed in terms of state–civil society relations (for the theoretical debate, see Gibbon [1996] and White [1994]; for the debate on civil society in Africa, see the volumes edited by Harbeson, Rothchild, & Chazan [1994] and Kasfir [1998]). Against perspectives that tend to view civil society as a pluralising social phenomenon with relatively homogeneous core properties and liberal-democratic political implications (Diamond, 1994), it is argued here that civil society is better understood as an analytical as opposed to a prescriptive term for a wide range of more or less formal social groups without specific predetermined political properties.

The composition of civil society emerges from the organisation around social relations, and state institutions and policies are shaped by demands from domestic and external political forces, including those in civil society. The state intervenes in different ways on behalf of certain groups in civil society and subordinates others (for extended versions of this argument, see Gibbon [2001] and Sjögren [2001]). This perspective is better equipped to capture the theoretical interplay, the empirical diversity and the contradictory political orientations of state–civil society relations, and will be used in this article to analyse how various civil society groups engage with the conflict in rather different ways. The complexity of representation is visible not only through the many actors that engage in it, but also with regard to the many arenas that they target. One consequence of customary tenure being generally anchored in statutory law, but vaguely operationalised and weakly implemented, is legal pluralism and institutional confusion. Actors bring their claims to different arenas for authoritative interpretation and decision-making, further complicating interest representation.

The politics of land in Uganda and Acholi

In order to discuss the land tenure regime in Acholi, it is necessary to first summarise recent developments of land matters at the national level. The modern history of Uganda has to a large extent revolved around land. After independence in 1962, relations between successive central governments and regions and localities have been consistently unstable, and land has been a key political resource for stirring up or calming tensions. After taking over state power in 1986, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) found itself facing the land question with dual loyalties to consider between landed interests and radicals who pushed for land reform. The principles for a new legal and institutional framework for governing land were incorporated into the 1995 constitution, following which their operationalisation was pushed forward a few years (Green, 2006, pp. 376–377).

By the time the Land Act was passed by the parliament in June 1998, the above-mentioned divide in the NRM was reproduced in the legislation. The Act states that land is vested with the people of Uganda and recognises four systems of land tenure: freehold, leasehold, mailo and customary tenure. At the policy level, however, the Act pulled in different directions: it claimed to create security of tenure for different categories of occupants, including those covered by customary tenure, but at the same time sought to promote a land market for liberalised production, thereby essentially privileging private tenure and undermining customary tenure. Its instruments for implementation were vague and contradictory, and funding proved to be inadequate. The general assessment is that rather than having enabled a productive compromise, the Act produced a stalemate (Green, 2006, p. 377; Hunt, 2004). It should also be noted that while legislation and systems for land administration have been in place since the late 1990s, albeit imperfectly implemented, developments in the policy area have been lagging. After many years, a final draft of the National Land Policy was presented to the Cabinet in March 2011, but has as yet not been adopted by the parliament. Indistinct policy directions and weak implementation is one reason land issues have refused to go away. Another is the – partly related – spread of land conflicts across the country; for a recent national overview of its different forms and regional spread, see Rugadya (2009). Some of the conflicts are local, often ethno-regional, in nature. Others are cases of alleged land grabbing – rampant over the last decade – in which the government has frequently been accused of being negligent or complicit (The Independent, January 3, 2012; National Association of Professional Environmentalists 2012; Oxfam, 2011). These trends have triggered widespread protests with critics accusing the government of acting in bad faith, and have further polarised the debate on land, one instance of which being a strand of popular and elite discourse centred on perceived land grabbing by ethnic outsiders.

The emerging Acholi land tenure regime

The structural features that condition contemporary Acholi society and politics are historically rooted in the uneven regional development of Uganda. Lopsided economic expansion strategies and state structures of indirect rule under colonialism resulted in deep regional disparities. The northern parts of Uganda, including Acholi, essentially served as a 'labour reservoir for the cash crop economy of the south' (Mamdani, 1976, p. 52) as well as for the police, the armed forces and the civil service (Branch, 2011, p. 50). However, from 1962 to 1986, national political and military power was vested in groupings from different parts of the north. With the takeover of state power by the NRM in 1986, power suddenly shifted to the south. This intensified the leadership crisis in Acholi that had begun during the 1970s and 1980s, and would, during the years of war and displacement, develop into a profound social crisis (Branch, 2011, pp. 56–62). For 20 years, between 1986 and 2006, the Acholi region suffered from war, with subsequent rebel groups, most notoriously the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighting the government and attacking the civilian population. At the same time, government troops committed gross human rights violations. It is estimated that more than one million Acholi lived in camps for internally displaced, where, by government policy, they had been forced to reside during the last few years of the conflict; for elaborate analyses, see Branch (2011) and Finnström (2008). Since 2006, the sub-region has seen relative peace. While the vast majority of the population has now left the camps, many were hesitant to do so for several years, due to uncertainty over where and what to return to. Another aspect, crucial for understanding interest representation in Acholi, is that the government's long-standing heavy-handed military presence and simultaneous political marginalisation of the sub-region made it a solid opposition stronghold; it was not until the 2011 elections that the NRM succeeded in making inroads there.

In Acholi, land as a political issue is fairly recent. Because of the war, the 1998 Land Act did not begin to have an impact until lately. Legislation as such was at first not controversial. This is perhaps unsurprising; as stated above, customary tenure is protected by Ugandan law – the Land Act recognises 'local customary regulation' (Government of Uganda, 1998, section 3(1)(d)). Polarisation, however, became evident when, in 2007, the government tabled a motion with the aim of revising the Land Act. Among other controversial matters, the proposals included a widened scope for the government in expropriating land for development. The Land (Amendment) Bill also included a proposal about protecting occupants 'claiming interest in land under customary tenure' against evictions, as stated in Clause 32B. This attracted fierce criticism from Members of Parliament from the greater north, including Acholi, Lango, Teso and Karamoja, who voiced the fear that this would be open to abuse and serve as an opening for grabbing of land. This concern was particularly strongly felt in Acholi, as resettlement had only just begun. After two years of intense debate, the Bill was passed by the parliament in November 2009. By that time, Clause 32B had been dropped, to the effect that the opposition to the Bill by the Members of Parliament from northern Uganda softened.

While at a general level legal issues are relatively straightforward, their application in practice has turned out to be much more complicated. Clan leaders are to be in charge of land allocation and dispute resolution, although land disputes can be (and often are) taken to the statutory legal system through Local Council and Magistrate courts as well. Customary land is typically unregistered and under the ownership (in a loose sense) and custody of one of several social units, in Acholi ranging from the individual to the clan, but cannot be sold without the consent of all parties involved. Under the current law there is no titling in areas covered by customary law, but an approximate, Certificates of Customary Ownership (CCOs), was introduced by the 1998 Land Act; it was however not available until 2012. The introduction of CCOs has been viewed with suspicion by proponents of customary tenure who regard it as a way of introducing freehold through the back door. Meanwhile, land continues to be sold in vernacular markets.

Land administration has proven to be deficient. In line with general political directions, administration was decentralised by the Land Act, which also created a number of institutions with respective mandates to regulate demarcation, registration, dispute resolution and so on. The subdivision of districts, such as the 2010 carving out of Nwoya district from Amuru, has created still more fiscally and administratively weak entities. Implementation has been predictably weak. As the proposed National Land Policy acknowledges, 'The land administration system is inadequately resourced and performing poorly below expected standards with tendencies of fraud and corruption. The dual system of land administration (the formal/statutory and informal/customary) breeds conflict, confusion and overlaps in institutional mandates' (Government of Uganda, 2011, p. 7). One example of this would be that after a long period of erratic existence, District Land Tribunals were discontinued in 2006. Another statutory institution, District Land Boards, was tasked with, among other things, holding and allocating land deemed not to belong to any individual or institution; this has played an important role in the empirical case examined in this article.

Turning to the more informal aspects of the land tenure regime in Acholi, Sebina-Zziwa, Nabacwa, Mwebaza, Bogere, and Achiro (2008) identify four recent major shifts that seriously impede the effective functionality of customary tenure; for similar observations and arguments, see Adoko and Levine (2004). The first shift is demographic, which, just like anywhere, means that more people share the same (or possibly less – ecological factors are not taken into account by the authors) amount of resources. The second one is political. The policy of decentralisation and the introduction of ever more districts and associated sub-units bring about new boundaries and political structures, new political constellations and power struggles, and new institutional channels for accessing land. The third shift is social. Life in the camps has torn the social fabric apart. Clan leaders have often lost their specific knowledge, and their authority has been weakened.

The fourth shift is economic. At the macro-level, the national policy orientation promotes privatisation; at the micro-level, this creates incentives to treat land as not merely a cultural asset. Under current conditions, land is turning into a commodity. The soil is extremely fertile after largely having lain fallow for a decade and attracts a lot of attention. Suspicion has been rife among the local population for years that outsiders or local elites are either planning to grab the land or buy it at a throwaway price (Adoko & Levine, 2004, p. 15; Atkinson, 2008; Finnström, 2008, pp. 174–180), and tension has been heightened by rumours of oil deposits. All of this has triggered what was frequently referred to in conversations during fieldwork as 'a mad scramble for land' in Acholi region in general, and in Amuru and Nwoya districts in the south-western part of the sub-region in particular. This scramble encompasses different types of potential and existing conflicts, such as boundary disputes that occur at many levels: within and between families and households; clans and communities; parishes, sub-counties and districts; and large-scale land acquisitions which come by way of well-connected individuals who, often situated in the nexus of political, business and military activity, have been able to make use of the fluid and uncertain situation for personal gain (Adoko & Levine, 2004, pp. 49–55; Refugee Law Project, 2012; Sebina-Zziwa et al., 2008, pp. 14–15).

The Madhvani case: sugar cane for development or government grab?

During the then ongoing peace talks between the government of Uganda and the LRA, animated debates arose in the latter months of 2006 about the return of displaced persons and the future of land in Acholi. Against the backdrop of long-standing rumours of investors targeting land, Acholi Members of Parliament and local government leaders repeatedly cautioned against any such attempts (Atkinson, 2008, pp. 6–7). That was the context in which the Madhvani Group in January 2007 made public its intention to acquire land in Acholi to cover an outgrower plantation for sugar cane and a factory to process it; in July that same year this was specified to 40,000 hectares in the western parts of Amuru district. The proposal triggered strong protests. The Acholi Parliamentary Group gave a public warning that any investor who tried to grab land in Acholi would fail – one Member of Parliament (MP) allegedly threatened that they would be speared. The main demands made by the critics of the project were threefold: that no land in Acholi should be allocated until everybody was resettled on their land; that while investments may be welcome, any negotiation needed to be made directly with the community in question; and in the event land was allocated, it needed to be on the basis of lease – selling land would not be an option.

The project had the strong backing of the government, which, according to media reports in November 2008, in early 2008 had directed that half of the requested land, 20,000 hectares, should be leased to the Madhvani Group, and that the Government should hold 40% of the shares in the venture (Atkinson, 2008, p. 7). This reinforced local disapproval; President Museveni and the NRM were deeply unpopular in the region. Around the same time, in November 2008, it, however, transpired that Amuru District Land Board had already done what the government proposed, namely allocated 20,000 hectares to the Madhvani Group for a long-term lease on the pretext that the land in question was unoccupied. This prompted some Members of Parliament and private citizens to take members of the Board, representatives of the Madhvani Group and local politicians to court on the basis of illegal procedures for allocation of customary land. They succeeded in securing a court injunction from the High Court in Gulu, barring any activities in relation to the land in question (Atkinson, 2008, p. 8). The defendants coalesced around Amuru Sugar Works Limited, a company that as its owners has the Madhvani Group, Major General and MP Julius Oketa, holding 1 of the 10 parliamentary seats allocated to the military, and the former acting secretary of Amuru District Land Board. In February 2012, after many years of hearings, Gulu High Court finally ruled in favour of the defendants, thus opening up for the project to go ahead; the complainants stated that they were determined to appeal (Sunday Monitor, February 5, 2012).

Turning to the politics of representation, the Madhvani proposal has drawn many actors into the fray, all claiming an authoritative role in land matters. Starting with political party representatives, Acholi MPs – all of whom but one belonged to the opposition in the 2006–2011 parliament – predictably made much political mileage out of this; some solidified their already strong positions, for others it served as a temporary lifeline, as shown by their electoral defeat in 2011. Furthermore, some opposition MPs and local leaders have also been rumoured to have engaged in dubious land acquisition. On the side of civil society, a controversial role is played by Acholi cultural/traditional leaders under the umbrella of Ker Kwaro Acholi. This institution, headed by the paramount chief, rwotAchana, is a recent creation, formally instated in 2000, that mirrors similar ones in other regions of the country. It seems, however, to enjoy only limited public confidence (Allen, 2006, pp. 147–148). There is a widespread feeling that its top leaders have been compromised; some of them have openly been siding with the Madhvani Group. In 2009, one clan leader was attacked by an agitated crowd following such allegations, and continuously, accusations are being made by the Acholi Parliamentary Group against Ker Kwaro Acholi for clandestine collaboration with the government (Acholi Times, March 26, 2012). On a more theoretical note, it may be suggested that Ker Kwaro Acholi straddles between civil society- and state-like roles, both aspiring to represent the Acholi community in relation to the Madhvani Group and the central government, and claiming regulatory authority with regard to access to land.

During the final years of the war, external civil society organisations came to Acholi sub-region. Many of those who have remained now address various aspects of the land in question, though the foreign ones among them are very restricted in offering avenues for interest representation. One locally anchored umbrella organisation with a relatively high degree of credibility, much due to the role of some of its members during the conflict, is Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI). Already during the war, ARLPI confronted the government over alleged plans to acquire land in Acholi. ARLPI's relative moral authority has made it possible for the organisation to create arenas for negotiation, though mainly over local conflicts. The Madhvani saga further witnessed the emergence of Amuru Anti-Land Grabbers Association, a local pressure group which managed to disrupt a high-profile visit to the area, and which transported people to a protest meeting. On closer examination, it appears that this group is a small ad hoc entity run by a local associate of a prominent regional MP.

The Madhvani conflict goes beyond Acholi sub-region and enters the wider scheme of things. A conspicuous feature in the eyes of many critics has been the pronounced role played by the government in pushing for the project, in marked contrast to the rather low-key profile of the Madhvani Group itself. President Museveni himself visited Amuru a number of times in late 2007, only to be told repeatedly that the targeted land was and would remain under customary tenure. Government activity has led to widespread speculation on the topic – brought up by almost every respondent during fieldwork interviews – that the Madhvani Group's sugar cane factory may be just a front activity for the real venture: oil exploration within the designated area; Amuru is within the oil belt. Government intervention in the matter has ebbed and flowed. After an initial period of active engagement, the Government kept a lower profile for some time. However, in the context of a sugar production crisis (and in the comfort of having just won an election), President Museveni in August 2011 reactivated some controversial ideas from the past, namely to allocate large tracts of land to sugar-producing companies. The most contentious of these was the proposal to assign a part of Mabira forest in central Uganda to the Mehta group. The latter suggestion resulted in riots all across the country in 2007 and would be certain to cause conflicts, should the President decide to push it further. But Museveni also referred to the Madhvani project in Amuru, allegedly saying he expected that matter to be concluded within three months, branding the opponents of the project 'enemies of development' (New Vision, August 15, 2011).

The challenged credibility of most actors and arenas for representation renders demand-making fluid and representation unpredictable from the perspective of local communities. These are, to start with, not necessarily united in their views. Even though opposition to the project appears to be fairly widespread, opinions range from hostility to support – the latter mainly being tagged to hopes for employment opportunities. Alliances are tenuous. The resistance to the Madhvani project largely depended upon the foothold created by the court injunction in combination with outspoken political representatives. For some time, it was possible for opposition politicians to create a relatively broad common front, but the 2011 elections, following which a number of NRM parliamentary candidates captured what used to be opposition seats, changed the political dynamic in Acholi. Some of the losing opposition MPs and local councillors formed the Acholi Land Forum after the elections (New Vision, March 22, 2011), but such a pressure group is unlikely to have as much bargaining power as the Acholi Parliamentary Group did, particularly in view of the High Court verdict.

Conclusion

It is entirely predictable that Acholi sub-region should be the target of attention from wealthy groups and individuals. The combination of fertile and supposedly oil-rich lands, a recently displaced and vulnerable population and land tenure regulated by weak political and cultural institutions has opened up for informal manoeuvring. Many modes of accumulation by land acquisition – some of them by dispossession, justificatory narratives about 'unoccupied land' notwithstanding – are visible in post-war Acholi, generating stratification and exclusion (Adoko & Levine, 2004; Sebina-Zziwa et al., 2008). These accumulation projects occur through a wide array of mechanisms of access, with actors combining resources rooted in property, power, status and violence. Coming as it does against the background of recent displacement and long-standing rumours of planned land grabbing, the fierce scramble for land has triggered fear and further conflicts among the local population.

The scramble also generates competition for authority over customary tenure. This of course is nothing new. While it may be true that prior to the war, the social, economic and political underpinnings of the land tenure regime were probably more closely connected and internally coherent than are the current ones, this should not be taken to suggest a land tenure regime of the past characterised by communal harmony; it needs to be recalled that the content of customary tenure has been historically shifting and culturally contested and remains so today. Branch (2011, pp. 52–53, 61–62) argues that in the context of Uganda's ethno-regionally fractured polity before and after independence, the construction of a Acholi political identity with internal and national dimensions unfolded through fluid political alliances between a stated-based middle class, another group relying on lineage and generation based authority, and state-appointed chiefs, each with their own interpretation of customary law.

Similar processes are at work in contemporary Acholi, where the responses to land acquisitions are setting off a complex field of interest representation at the level of party politics and civil society. Political representatives, religious institutions, traditional leaders and others claim legitimate authority to define and speak on behalf of the Acholi community. The ways in which such actors intervene in processes of large-scale acquisitions by making claims to authority based on particular notions of community have ramifications for more local and intra-communal land struggles too, at both discursive and practical levels, especially when, as is often the case, different kinds of conflicts interlock. The latter observation points towards a general ambiguity regarding security of tenure under customary law. If respected and effectively upheld, customary tenure may serve as protection of access to land against market-based appropriation. At the same time, and especially if community is defined in terms of ancestry, it may reproduce nativist forms of exclusion internal to the tenure form and set off a logic of fragmentation and localisation (Boone, 2007, pp. 576–580).

A key feature of the Acholi land tenure regime, which in broad terms structures strategic considerations and behaviour, is the disjuncture between legislation on the one hand and institutional and social practices on the other. The post-1998 regime has introduced administrative and legal ambiguity, where relations between the formal and informal elements tend to be contradictory rather than complementary. In contemporary Acholi, legal and institutional multiplicity and weaknesses open up for actors to bring conflicts to arenas at different levels – which they do, from the household to the district. The incorporation of customary tenure into statutory law without clear divisions of labour between entities furthers institutional confusion. In this context, people are likely to take their grievances from one institutional arena to the other without necessarily having much faith in any. The issue of who should exercise authority with regard to land is fundamentally uncertain, and the competition around the rights to define, interpret and execute rules, laws and procedures – the internal 'constitutional' aspects of customary law – easily lends itself to manipulation. While there is a multitude of actors and institutions aspiring to regulate access to land, the majority of the population has limited influence over effective decision-making in any of these institutions. Indeed, landscapes of multiple and competing institutions often tend to create scope for grey-area manoeuvring, and, in the context of poverty and inequality, frequently to the detriment of vulnerable categories.

The uncertainty surrounding administrative and judicial authority makes the territorial and communal scale dynamics of the conflicts rather fluid. There are signs of a localising effect taking place in Acholi, expressed in the growing number of conflicts revolving around clan, and the multiplication of self-proclaimed chieftaincies, to the extent that the prime minister of Ker Kwaro Acholi has banned the creation of new chiefdoms (New Vision, March 16, 2012). Another factor that may deepen localisation is the changing structure of the state in terms of administrative subdivision; however, border disputes may also move the level for fighting out conflict upwards. Obviously, such tendencies complicate the conditions for broad-based politicisation of land issues in general. But there are also examples, including the case analysed here, of conflicts being politicised and elevated to grander scales.

The long-term prospects for resistance to the acquisition project studied here appear uncertain. Local communities are exposed in the wake of war and displacement, and vulnerable to persuasion. Effective demand-making requires continuous presence not only in the courts of law, but also in other arenas of decision-making, including political assemblies and the backrooms of informal deal-making. Disputes of a more distinct local nature are evidently easier to resolve by the use of local mechanisms. The Madhvani case, with its high-stake, high-profile involvement from the President, is different in a double-edged way, in that its particular features have increased the importance of both the exercise of power and resistance to it. In the long run, successful engagement depends on forceful commitment in many arenas not only locally, but also at the level of national politics. It remains to be seen whether the groups claiming to speak on behalf of those resisting the project will have the necessary tenacity, strategic skills and resources for sustained representation.

by Anders Sjögren

Anders Sjögren is lecturer and researcher in the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden, and researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden. This article is part of his ongoing research on land tenure regimes, citizenship and state formation in Kenya and Uganda.

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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"

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