Belief in guns and warlords: freeing Karamojong identity from Africanist theory

Abstract

As with other nomadic pastoralists, it has been asserted that ‘the Karamoja problem’ is merely a projection of colonial violence or the side‐effects of the breakdown of the African state in the neo‐colonial age. Deductive approaches infer warlords from the presence of guns and conflict, which appear to locate contemporary culture in global commerce, thus eroding its whole traditional base. An historical approach shows the Karamojong coming to terms with various firearms and differing demands of the state for more than a century by exploiting new opportunities instrumentally to the promotion of their core values and beliefs, not to their destruction. Closer analysis of the social fabric reveals that the proliferation of small arms has had significant effect neither on authority structures and the recurrence of violent conflict, nor on the desire and strategies to maintain ethnic autonomy in spite of state claims. In the light of the recent attempt of the Uganda People's Defence Force to replace guns with the ‘decency’ of shirts and trousers using sanctions of violence, it is more likely that the forcible removal of guns would, if successful, precipitate unprecedented crises in culture and identity.