Prison Labour Resources under British Administration among the Lugbara (1914-1962)
On June 16, 1910, following King Leopold’s death, the Lado Enclave was formally transferred to the Anglo-Egyptian administration (Prothero 1920: 23; Blake 1997: xv). Four years later, on April 21, 1914, the territory was ceded to the Uganda Protectorate (Leopold 2006: 187; Acemah 2013). Although the Belgian administration had withdrawn, the prison system and labour remained and were adopted by the British administration.
When the West Nile region was transferred to the British Protectorate in Uganda, Arua Township was established in June 1914 with Sir Alfred Evelyn Weatherhead as the District Commissioner for the West Nile District (Middleton 1971: 16). In the same year, a district jail was established in Arua to keep offenders and suspects under custody. The establishment of this prison was guided by the Uganda Prison Ordinance enacted earlier in 1903, which had established the Uganda Prison Service. The colonial administration further established fifteen gazetted prisons and one judicial lock-up throughout the Protectorate. Hoima was the provincial headquarter for the Northern Province composed of Acholi and Lango regions and the West Nile District (Uganda Protectorate 1913: 3-5). According to Rasil Opindu, there was a clear difference in the way prisons and prison labour was organized under the British colonial administration in the West Nile District in comparison with the Belgian counterpart. The shift was from ruthless body torture of the suspect or criminal under the Belgians, to an intensive exploitation of prison labour under the British colonial administration.
The prison institution had the responsibility to rehabilitate offenders through a regime of hard work. Rasil Opindu reminisced: ‘a year after my father Awudele gave Jerekede (Sir Alfred Evelyn Weatherhead) land to establish the colonial headquarter, Weatherhead, the District Commissioner, introduced new laws among the Lugbara and began the construction of the Arua prison in 1915’ (Interview Rasil Opindu 2014). In 1919 the administration began to levy taxes and implement extensive forced labour programmes (Leopold 2005b: 214). This resulted in the arrest and detention of a number of tax defaulters. Writing about British colonial Africa in general, Hynd (2015:260) states that the great majority of jailed Africans were imprisoned for minor infractions, mainly defaulting on tax payments and failure to pay fines for minor offenses.
In 1919, Governor Sir Robert Coryndon (1918-1922) proclaimed the Native Law and Native Authority Ordinance of 1919, which led to the establishment of the Native Courts in the West Nile District. The first set of chiefs appointed were Nubi who had served in Emin Pasha’s forces and the King’s African Rifles (KAR). Fademulla Ali Adu (Akutre Anyule), a Nubi who had made his first contact with the British officers at the time the district boundary was being surveyed, was appointed chief of Aringa (Blake 1997: 3; Leopold 2006: 189). Sultan Fademulla (Fadl el Mula) Murjan of Aringa, who had joined the ranks of the King’s African Rifles, was appointed Wakil of Rumogi in 1916. The Nubi chiefs became colonial agents for mobilizing prisoners and labour for the colonial administration.
The colonial chiefs were employed as civil servants to support the administration of the district. Under the Native Law Ordinance of 1919, the Governor constituted native councils and prescribed the extent of the authority they might exercise including in appropriating community and prison labour as resources for the self-financing of the protectorate. The native councils had powers to amend native law by resolution and fix penalties for the breach of such law. This was subject to the Governor’s powers of disallowance (Morris & Read 1966: 35). The Native Law and Native Authority Ordinance of 1919 was part of an apparatus to legitimize indirect rule in the chief-less and non-kingdom societies such as the Lugbara in the northern part of Uganda. It defined ‘chief’ to mean ‘any officer of an African local government recognized by the government as a chief and exercising collective authority’ (Ibingira 1973: 22-23).