Political, economic and cultural factors are fundamental to the studies presented here. They all build on PhD research undertaken in connection with the Building Stronger Universities Programme, a partnership between Gulu and three Danish universities funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Under the theme ‘Rights, Resources and Gender’, PhD research focused on northern Uganda, a region where these topics were especially significant given its history. Geographically distant from the centre of political and economic power, it has a distinctive colonial and post-colonial history. The long war between national military forces and the Lord’s Resistance Army (1986-2006), with its internment of the population in camps, had massive effects on rights, resources and gender. Issues of transitional justice (MacDonald and Porter 2016) are still prominent after the war. So are rights to land, the only material resource remaining for many after leaving the camps (Meinert and Whyte 2023). Gender relations are an issue all over Uganda, but in northern Uganda they are marked by the distortion of life in the camps (Dolan 2009; Whyte et al. 2013) and efforts to establish claims to land after the camps closed (Hopwood 2016). It is within this setting that our contributors have considered the making and uses of resources.
Agatha Alidri examines prison labour as a human resource during the colonial period, with continuities up to the present. From the early days of British rule, prisoners were required to work; their labour was supposed to offset the costs of their incarceration and contribute to colonial revenue. Basing on archival records and interviews of elderly people in West Nile, she describes the situation in Arua, placing it within the overall context of the Ugandan colonial prison services. In an approach similar to that of Richardson and Weszkalnys (2014), she argues that prison labour resources were created and sustained through an apparatus that promulgated new laws, established courts to enforce them, imprisoned those who broke the laws and justified imprisonment by a racist ideology about civilising Africans. Alidri’s concept of apparatus, comparable to the notion of assembly, broadens the perspective from the resource itself (labouring bodies) to the institutions and discourses that produced and justified penal labour. Over time, the value of this human resource was recognized more and more explicitly. Today there is clear affirmation of the need to make prisoners labour—whether on prison farms and public works, in prison workshops, or to maintain the facility. Prisons are grossly overcrowded, with more prisoners on remand than convicts. Arua prison, in West Nile District, has an occupancy rate of 611%. As a resource, prison labour has been made abundant.
Charles Okumu’s piece on the great writer Okot p’Bitek reflects on the colonial period as well. Okot grew up and received his British education before Uganda’s independence in 1962. Much of his work is about the effects of colonialism and European influence on Acholi society and culture. Okumu explores the ways in which Okot drew on his own experience and knowledge in his novel Lak Tar (White Teeth) and his most famous poem ‘Song of Lawino’. From his parents Okot imbibed a style of storytelling and an appreciation of poetry, song and dance. From his anthropological studies at Oxford, he gained some distance and came to see Acholi culture as a rich resource—for his academic work, but even more for his literary creations. The term ‘auto-ethnography’ usually refers to studies carried out by scholars doing research in their own culture. Okumu suggests that Okot was an auto-ethnographic poet. He used his knowledge, some of which was developed through anthropological fieldwork, to write poetry packed with ethnographic detail and critical reflections on the state of Acholi culture. In recreating the Acholi world in his writing, he made it a literary resource. What he might otherwise have taken for granted, became a resource used to long-lasting effect and consumed far beyond the narrow circle of those who read his academic works.