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Political Activism and Other Life Forms in Colonial Buganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

Jonathon L. Earle
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Abstract:

This article uses recently unearthed private papers and ethnographic fieldwork to explore the intersection of political practice and environmental ideation in colonial Buganda. In the early to mid-1900s, colonial administrators sought to draw Ganda interlocutors into abstract conversations about a natural world that was devoid of political power. Through Witchcraft Ordinances, imperial administrators sought to distance spirits, rocks, trees, snakes, and other life forms from the concrete world of social movement and dissent. But in late colonial Uganda, the trade unionist Erieza Bwete and the influential spirit prophet Kibuuka Kigaanira navigated environmental spaces that were imbued with political significance. Uganda’s economic and national histories, informed by methodologies that privileged philosophical materialism, overlooked how interactions with multispecies animated anticolonial politics and larger debates about authority. To challenge these earlier assumptions, this article shows how colonial literati and a late colonial prophet interacted with a natural world that was deeply political to conceptualize independence and challenge colonial power.

Résumé:

Cet article utilise à la fois des documents privés récemment redécouverts mais aussi un travail de terrain ethnographique pour explorer l’intersection de la pratique politique et de la formation des idées sur l’environnement dans le Bouganda colonial. Au début des années 1900, les administrateurs coloniaux cherchaient à attirer les interlocuteurs ganda dans des conversations abstraites sur un monde naturel dépourvu de tout pouvoir politique. Grâce à des ordonnances sur la sorcellerie, les administrateurs impériaux ont cherché à éloigner esprits, rochers, arbres, serpents et autres formes de vie du monde concret de tout mouvement social et toute dissidence. Mais à la fin de l’ère coloniale ougandaise, la syndicaliste Erieza Bwete et le prophète spirituel influent Kibuuka Kigaanira ont navigué dans des espaces environnementaux imprégnés de signification politique. Les histoires économiques et nationales de l’Ouganda, éclairées par des méthodologies qui privilégiaient le matérialisme philosophique, négligeaient la façon dont les interactions multi-espèces animaient la politique anticoloniale et des débats plus larges sur l’autorité. Pour remettre en question ces suppositions antérieures, cet article montre comment les lettrés coloniaux et un prophète colonial tardif ont interagi avec un monde naturel profondément politique pour conceptualiser l’indépendance et mettre au défi le pouvoir colonial.

Type
Towards Multispecies History
Information
History in Africa , Volume 45 , June 2018 , pp. 373 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2018 

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