In the previous two chapters, we have shown how DP and UPC struggled to straddle the interiority of regional politics. Catholic intellectuals in 1950s Tesoland aligned with UPC because they were concerned that DP would reinforce the authority of Baganda activists in the region. In western Uganda, UPC cultivated an alliance with Toro state-builders, both of whom associated the Catholic Church and DP with the movement for the secession of Rwenzururu. Benedicto Kiwanuka and DP in south-western Uganda were believed to be part of an emerging revolutionary republicanism throughout Rwanda and the region. In the ‘Lost Counties’ in southern Bunyoro, Benedicto Kiwanuka struggled to demonstrate that he was not a successor of an older generation of Ganda Catholics who had governed the area with contempt.

In this chapter, we wish to refocus the geographies of Ugandan nationalism by underscoring the development of sectarian politics in the northern region of Acholiland. In Uganda's nationalist historiography, Acholi politics is frequently described in terms of its proximity to the colonial military. Scholars such as Aidan Southall looked to northern Uganda to historicise the militarisation – and, in turn, destabilisation – of public life in postcolonial Uganda. In ways that do not sit comfortably with Uganda's nationalist historiography, though, we argue that there was a concerted effort among Acholi intellectuals to upend or provincialise the political and financial economies of southern and central Uganda by the late 1950s. The Acholi poet and aspiring UPC activist Okot p’Bitek used the national press, novels, and poetry to criticise Uganda's urban spaces and labour economies, particularly in Buganda and Busoga. In works such as Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, p’Bitek offered blistering critiques of the Catholic Church's influence on domesticity in Acholiland. Daudi Ocheng (Ochieng), like p’Bitek, was educated at the elite Ganda preparatory school, King's College, Budo, after which he studied at the University of Wales. His politics took a different path, however.