conceptions of political personhood and political order. These conceptions need to be historicized and situated socially. Social actors did not have the same capacity to impose their views on who could speak and how. The state, in particular, displayed a special urge in trying to impose its vision of legitimate speech, of the delimitation of what should be said and what should not. But, as we will see, the state was not alone in this.
Many authors before have used practices of discussion to decipher emic conceptions of good government, civility, and morality, and have underlined how local forms of sociability are fruitful cradles of imaginary polities. Collective places of leisure—pubs, clubs, cafés, salons, tea meetings (called addas in India and grins in West Africa), the baraza of Zanzibar, and upper-class clubs in Kenya—have indeed historically been the framework of conservative or innovative solidarities and political ideas, in a more or less intentional way.63 Maurice Agulhon and Edward Thompson in particular emphasized the links between the transformations of sociability practices and the larger evolutions of political culture in eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century France and Britain. There, the creation of “circles,” religious societies, and constitutional clubs opened the way to creating an ethos of equality.64 Many such examples have existed at different times in history.65
Eventually, the underlying question raised in this book has to do with the controversial and emic partitions made by varied people in contemporary Uganda about what can be talked about out loud, and what cannot. This controversial question is particularly relevant in the case of Uganda, given its centrality in the political and religious history of the country.66 But the limits of speech—about what can be said and what cannot—have also been key issues in more recent events and dynamics: the social and economic importance of the so-called “yellow press”;67 the heated controversies around the question of sexual behaviors and preferences;68 and the harsh repression of anthropologist Stella Nyanzi (who researches precisely the injunctions weighing on women’s and men’s speech and behavior in the name of gender conformity).69 Such issues raise tragic and fascinating questions concerning the violent emic negotiations on the borders of the “public sphere.” As Michael Warner has emphasized, the great and controversial partition between the “public” and the “private” realms has been a canvas for thinking about the possibilities of emancipation in Western political thought, while also being a reflection of gendered relations of domination.70
The other reason why this project might be all the more relevant in the Ugandan context is that citizenship and the ways of thinking about oneself as a member of the polity have been at the center of strong reform efforts by the NRM government. For the last twenty years, a relatively open and nonnormative definition of citizenship has been adopted in African Studies.71 It relies on empirically based, inductive approaches that take into account but also go beyond questions of legal status. Citizenship in this context is understood as the emic and plural notions that form the basis for the imagination of sovereignty, participation, and access to certain rights and belonging. This wide definition allows for the investigation of the varying ways in which people conceptualize belonging, the borders of the political community, their rights and duties and those of others, their relationship to political leaders and to the state (what do I owe to the state and what does the state owe me?). It also covers the forms and repertoires of political engagement people might have with it.72 Scholars have been analyzing who people consider to be citizens, the social and moral arguments at play in the changing definitions of who is “in” and who is not, and who is a “better” citizen and why. They have underlined the variety, richness, rootedness, and cosmopolitan character of African political thought on these subjects.73 A number of scholars have, in particular, contested clear-cut dichotomies in terms of citizens versus subjects that do not cover the “patchwork of legal statuses” in existence in Africa,74 in the past and present. Neither do such dichotomies encompass the intertwinement of claims of sovereignty and submission (the latter being far from equivalent to passivity).75 Scholars have noted the diversity of spheres of belonging or engagement, the plurality of the actual practices and the representations at play on the ground, as well as the varieties of pasts and futures people refer to.76 This book builds on this very rich literature, but insists on the fact that the study of these conceptions cannot be isolated from the mechanisms of social and political domination in which they take part.
As mentioned, the invention of a particular format of citizenship has been at the center of strong efforts by the NRM government. During the Bush War that led him to power (1981–1986), and influenced by Nyerere’s Ujamaa and Maoism, Museveni crafted the model of the “Movement democracy.” This model is grounded in a universal belonging to the NRM (seen as being equivalent to the Ugandan citizenship); regular elections based on individual merit and not party tickets;77 and the creation of participatory structures at the grassroots level, namely, the Resistance Councils (RCs).78
According to Museveni, political modernity can be reached only by annihilating the mechanisms that favor the permanence of “archaic” features, namely, ethnic and religious sectarianism. By parting with primary solidarities that cloud judgment and lead to making irrational political decisions based on identity, citizens could make choices favoring development.79 Museveni believes that “ethnicity and sectarianism [. . .] are short term problems”80 that will be overcome through commerce, education, work, and a nonpartisan form of collective mobilization.
One of the main vehicles for the emergence of this renewed society was the institutionalization of a system of “grassroots democracy,” incarnated by the Resistance Councils, today called Local Councils (LCs). The smaller units (RC1s and LC1s), which correspond to the village levels (or “zones” in urban areas), are open to anyone age eighteen and above.81 Citizenship as mediated by the RCs is based on residence,82 and transcends ethnic, party, and religious affiliations.83 The RC system was more or less successful, depending on the region.84 Whereas they were spheres of political mobilization and education during the war, they were then transferred under the authority of the Ministry of Local Government and refocused on local issues, typically managing security and public works issues. RCs also act as a channel between the government and the local populations.85 Attendance at meetings has become more uncertain with time, and RCs have not always managed to overcome older established social hierarchies.86 Despite these limitations, many have acknowledged the fact that the councils have been widely invested and appropriated by Uganda’s population, sometimes with great enthusiasm, in particular in the South of the country. Moreover, RCs saw their mandate enlarged for a few years at the beginning of the 1990s, as they were used as local arenas of mobilization and discussion of the new constitution project.87 Generally, scholars agree that they led to important mutations in people’s and local leaders’ political practices and conceptions of political legitimacy, of citizens’ roles, and of the relationships between rulers and ruled.
Generally speaking, with the advent of the Local Councils, political participation and social mobilization were strongly encouraged by the authorities to take place within the state structures, or at least according to the Movementist repertoires of mobilization.88 Nevertheless, this move toward a relatively domesticated format of political participation was not necessarily based on constraint. Women’s organizations in particular initially adhered largely to the social and political project of the NRM.89 The situation was different, however, for actors who were stigmatized by the NRM project, especially the kingdoms. In 1993, Museveni overcame his own reticence and accepted the restoration of the monarchies that had been banned by Milton Obote in 1967.90 But this was done only under certain conditions, as the kingdoms did not recover all the prerogatives they’d had at independence. According to Article 246 of the 1995 constitution, a “cultural” or “traditional” leader should not get involved in “party politics.” “Involvement” in “party politics” is difficult to delimitate precisely, but this ban is often interpreted broadly by state officials, and clearly restricts the ways in which people are allowed to be involved in the discussion of common issues. This question
