Effective History and the Beginning of the Teso Insurgency

Abstract

Wirkungsgeschichte, the effect of history, is central to this chapter on the historical background to the Teso insurgency which lasted from 1987 to 1992. In addition to analysing the local developments of the violent conflict it seeks to situate its occurrence in a wider, national context. As argued in Chapter 1, despite some relevance of the concept of ‘new wars’, the emergence of civil wars in Africa — and elsewhere — remains complex and multifaceted. In many incidences, the motivation to pick up arms is embedded in cultural, personal and historical aspects so that violent conflicts should be considered as social processes.¹ This also holds true for Uganda where social cleavages and boundaries have been shaped over time and predisposed the country to conflict. Crucial here was, in particular, the experience of British colonial rule due to which people developed alliances and antagonisms that are still of relevance today. In order to explore these developments, this chapter is split into two parts: the first provides an overview of the population groups that live in the region of Teso, the second situates the insurgency into regional and national historical developments from a Teso perspective. Since the people of Teso have never played a major role in national politics, even though they benefited from some governments more than from others, their existence has been largely ignored by historians and anthropologists, leading to a gap in the literature.