MAWAZO

Volume 12, No. 1 & 2

Published December 31, 2017

Articles

  1. J. Oloka-Onyango (Author)

    From expulsion to exclusion: revisiting race, citizenship and the ethnicity conundrum in contemporary Uganda

    Post-independence Uganda history is pock-marked with the expulsion of  both citizen and non-citizen minority and migrant communities. While the best known of  such was the Asian expulsion of  the early-1970s, large numbers of Kenyan Jaluo and Rwandese indigenous and migrant communities suffered a similar fate. Although the phenomenon of  expulsion has ceased to be deployed as a tool of  government policy and action since accession to power by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government in 1986, this article argues that various forms of  exclusionary practice have been subtly deployed as a means to achieve similar objectives, that is, the marginalization and discriminatory treatment of  communities who allegedly have no claim to indigeneity. Such exclusion is manifest in the very manner in which a citizen of  Uganda was defined in the 1995 Constitution and its relevant schedules as well as in recent developments around the recognition of  dual citizenship, the treatment of long-term refugees, and the law and practice on national identity cards.

  2. Andrew Ellias State, Sabiti Makara (Author)

    The contested role of civil society in the democratization of Uganda: are state and civil society organizations bedfellows?

    Civil society organizations (CSOs) have played key roles in bringing about democratization in several countries in the world. Civil society organizations in Uganda largely operate around social spaces such as markets, churches, cooperative societies, common resources, and other social forms of  organizations mainly because the formal economic sector is small. Civil society-state engagement in Uganda in the area of  democratization is characterized by complacency and cohabitation. Like in many parts of  Africa, authoritarian tendencies of  the state have forced civil society to operate underground, further weakening this timid and feeble sector. A close examination of  civil society in Uganda indicates that it has been active, championing the cause for the democratization process by engaging and monitoring state institutions. Nevertheless, CSOs-state relations remain unclear, suspicious and many times, antagonistic.

  3. Fred Henry Bateganya, Teddy Nabwire Chimulwa (Author)

    Double identity clients: reality of non-disclosure and its implications for HIV and AIDS treatment in Uganda

    Uganda, ravaged by HIV and AIDS started administering Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) in public health facilities in 2004. Being a new phenomenon, several things were not known about ART in resource limited settings. This paper presents challenges and implications of  inaccurate identity and addresses of  ART clients to different HIV care and treatment interventions in the country. Specifically it presents a challenge of  tracing ART clients in their homes when they miss their scheduled clinic appointments, especially in the early days after enrolling on ART or when they finally drop out of  care. Using a longitudinal study design, most data used in this paper was collected using exit interview schedules (at baseline in October 2008) and in-depth interviews (administered twice in 2011 and 2013) with one hundred ART clients. Supplementary data used included document reviews and key informant interviews conducted in 2016. The study participants were ART clients accessing treatment from Mbarara regional referral and Iganga district hospitals. Findings show that twenty five of  the one hundred clients could not traced. It turns out that these twenty clients were “double identity clients”. Existence of double identity clients is not only a recipe for disharmony between sexual partners but could also lead to sub- optimal or non- adherence if  doses are missed. The study arrived at the conclusion that stigma and discrimination of  HIV+ individuals still exists thirty five years into the epidemic. Double identity ART clients casts some doubt on the accuracy of  national ART figures.

  4. Temesgen T. Beyan (Author)

    Peasantry and self-reliance in Eritrea: state management of labour and land

    In the aftermath of  thirty years of  war for independence, the Eritrean state has pursued self-reliance strategy of  development that relies on national resources, human and natural. It has disregarded international capital due to the risks it comprises. Instead it has put land and labour, the two major national resources, under full management of  the state. Focusing on the current peasantry mode of production, the objective of  this article is to analyse the impacts of  self-reliance strategy on rural agriculture. Using qualitative data gathered between January and April 2017 through ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, the article concludes that state management of  labour and land exhibits mixed outcomes. To begin with, the land policy has circumvented the development of  land market; two, it has saved peasants from capitalist dispossession; three, it has eradicated the historical inequality created by the imbalanced land ownership. On the other hand, the labour policy has drained labour from agriculture; and secondly, it has increased rural-urban and international migrations. In a nutshell, the policy has introduced new non-capitalist social configurations in the rural area, and has converted the state into a major force of  depeasantization of  rural labour.