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REINVENTING IMBALU AND FORCIBLE CIRCUMCISION: GISU POLITICAL IDENTITY AND THE FIGHT FOR MBALE IN LATE COLONIAL UGANDA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

PAMELA KHANAKWA
PAMELA KHANAKWA*
Affiliation:
Makerere University
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Abstract

Ugandan colonial authorities carved Bugisu and Bukedi districts out of Mbale district in 1954, isolating Mbale town as a separate entity. With ethnic tensions escalating as independence approached, Gisu and Gwere fought for Mbale's ownership. Empowered by decentralisation, Bugisu District Council pressed the colonial state to declare Mbale part of Bugisu, viewing the town as key to the region's wealth, and providing a symbolic status similar to that enjoyed by Uganda's leading ethnic groups. Gisu activists reinvented tradition as a tool of political advocacy, exerting hyper-masculine power over Mbale's non-circumcising Gwere residents through forcible circumcision. Gisu reformulation of a cultural practice within an urban struggle challenges previous categorisations of the Mbale case as merely another local obstacle to Uganda's peaceful decolonisation. Evidence analysed in this article contributes to a new understanding of East Africa's uneasy transition to self-government, and to the role of ethnic competition within late-colonial mobilisations more broadly.

Keywords

UgandaEthnicityNationalismDecolonisationMasculinityTerritory
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , November 2018 , pp. 357 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to David Schoenbrun, Rhiannon Stephens, Derek Peterson, anonymous reviewers and editors of The Journal of African History, members of University Seminar Studies in Contemporary Africa at Columbia University and co-editors of The Journal of African History and Islamic Africa during the Academic Journal Publishing workshop in Nairobi for their comments on this article. I thank the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholarship and the African Humanities Program of the American Council of Learned Societies for their support. Author's e-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]

‘In modern Uganda the idea of the Gisu as a nation of circumcised men remains as strong as ever. The biennial circumcision ceremonies act as both a focus for such sentiment and a dramatic display of its power.’1

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3 MDA, Johnson refers to this communication dated 3 Mar. 1962 in his 12 Mar. 1962 letter to Bwayo. Mbale was a township in 1954, a town council in 1959 and a municipal council in 1962. I use Mbale town for consistency.

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21 Gisu used to hold imbalu ceremonies annually, following the 1918 famine they skipped 1919. Since 1920, ceremonies have been held biennially.

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25 Note that despite missionary intervention, circumcision in public continues to this day in parts of Bugisu.

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38 La Fontaine, ‘Tribalism’, 180.

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40 Bunker, Peasants, 109; Phone interview with Mukamba Kitutu, Uganda, 6 Mar. 2011.

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56 ‘Circumcision Names (Kamengilo) and their Meanings,’ Progress Report, Imbalu Project Part III, Makerere University Inter-disciplinary Research Project on Imbalu, 1972.

57 In his letter to the PS, Ministry of Regional Administration, 12 May 1962, Johnson notes there was no circumcision dancing in Mbale prior to 1954.

58 Mayegu, ‘History’; Roscoe, The Northern, 184; Purvis, Through Uganda, 271.

59 Bunker, Peasants, 114.

60 Ibid. 42.

61 Uganda Republic, Statistical Abstracts, 1969 (Entebbe, 1970).

62 Bunker, Peasants, 111; Uganda Argus, 21 Mar. 1962; Uganda Argus, 19 July 1962.

63 Apter, The Political, 276–286.

64 Peterson, D.R., ‘States of mind: political history and the Rwenzururu Kingdom in Western Uganda’, in Peterson, and Macola, G. (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens, OH, 2009) 174Google Scholar; Apter, The Political, 299.

65 Burke, Local, 39.

66 See section 7 of the African Local Governments Ordinance and District Council Proclamations and Regulations 1949 (Entebbe, 1949).

67 Burke, Local, 39; Bunker, Peasants, 110.

68 Burke, Local, 40.

69 MDA, PC, Eastern Province, to DC, Mbale Township, 17 June 1958.

70 MDA, Administrative Secretary, G.W.N. Bwayo, Bugisu D.A to the OC Police, Mbale, [n.d. but most likely written on 20 Aug. 1964], mentions incidents of forcible circumcision in 1956 and names one local surgeon, Wagomoli as perpetrator. In an interview with Stephen Bunker in 1970, G.W. Wamimbi also confirmed incidents of forcible circumcision in 1956 in Mbale (Bunker field notes, 8 Mar. 1970). The 1956 incidents of forcible circumcision spread to Bunambutye where the Parish Chief urged Bagisu to forbid uncircumcised people to live among them. Interview by author, 26 June 2009.

71 Lukhobo Committee, 1957. Cited in Twaddle, ‘“Tribalism”’, 201.

72 MDA, PC, Eastern Province to DC, Mbale Township, 17 June 1958.

73 MDA, ‘Regulations for Control and Improvement of Bugisu Circumcision Ceremonies.’ Passed by Bugisu District Administration and General Purpose Committee on 24 June 1958. Reproduced on 26 Jan. 1962.

74 MDA, DC, Bugisu, to the PS, Ministry of Regional Administration, 12 May 1962. Johnson refers to this issue.

75 MDA, Hodges, DC, Bugisu to PC, Eastern Province, 2 Mar. 1959.

76 MDA, DC, Mbale to Secretary General Bugisu DA, 1 May 1959.

77 Ibid.

78 Bunker field notes (conversation with Wamimbi, 7–8 Mar. 1970).

79 MHRA, G.W. Wamimbi, ‘Address to the seminar on the techniques of collecting and recording local history’, Makerere University, 13-16 Dec.1965; MHRA Constitution, 1962; Mayegu, ‘History’.

80 G.W. Wamimbi, ‘History of Bamasaaba’ (unpublished manuscript, n.d.), 26. Copy in possession of author.

81 Reid, A History, 320.

82 ‘Cover letter to the Minister of Regional Administration’ (unpublished MHRA records, 5 Oct. 1962, memorandum attached) retrieved from David William Cohen collections deposited in the Herskovits Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Also see Uganda Argus, 13 Oct. 1962.

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89 On UNM, see S.R. Karugire, A Political History of Uganda (Nairobi, 1980), 167; Uganda Argus, 20 Mar. 1962. The resolutions were passed in February 1962.

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92 Ibid. 111.

93 MDA, Johnson to the PC, Eastern Province, 15 Feb. 1962.

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99 MacArthur, Cartography, 194.

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101 Peterson, ‘States’, 171–190; K. Alnaes, ‘Songs of the Rwenzururu Rebellion: The Konzo revolt against the Toro in Western Uganda’, in Gulliver (ed.) Tradition, 243–272.

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103 La Fontaine, ‘Tribalism’, 186.

104 AAMK, Bugisu District Annual Report 1962.

105 AAMK, Bukedi District Annual Report, 1962.

106 MacArthur, Cartography, 145.

107 Uganda Argus, 26 May 1962.

108 Uganda Argus, 29 May 1962.

109 During the Boundary Commission hearing, a Nyole man reported he had been denied treatment at Mbale hospital because he could not speak Lugisu. But he was not forcibly circumcised. Uganda Argus, 25 May 1962.

110 Uganda Argus, 27 July 1962. The resolution was passed earlier but was reported in the media in July.

111 MDA, DC, Bugisu to PS, Ministry of Regional Administration, 2 June 1962.

112 Uganda Argus, 5 June 1962.

113 B.W. Langlands, ‘The population geography of Bugisu and Sebei Districts’, Occasional Paper 28 (Department of Geography, Makerere University, Kampala, 1971).

114 Uganda Argus, 27 July 1962.

115 ‘Don't Balkanise Bugisu’, Uganda Argus, 28 July 1962.

116 Uganda Argus, 27 July 1962

117 Uganda Argus, 19 Sept. 1962; Phone interview with Mukamba; Bunker, Peasants, 109.

118 Interview with Mukamba.

119 Interview with Clemecia Nabushuwu, 2 Dec. 2017.

120 Bukedi District Annual Report, 1962; DC, Bugisu to PS, Ministry of Regional Administration, 2 July 1962.

121 MDA, Bugisu District Council Minutes of June 1962 were read and endorsed by Johnson who forwarded them to PS, Ministry of Regional Administration.

122 MDA, DC, Bugisu to PS, Ministry of Regional Administration, 2 July 1962.

123 Ibid.

124 MDA, ‘Regulations for Control’.

125 Mutongi, K., Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi (Chicago, 2017), 131–33Google Scholar.

126 MDA, Circumcision Calendar 1962 (n.d. but estimated to be a few days before 23 July). Emphasis added.

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128 MDA, DC, Bugisu to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Eastern Region, 23 July 1962.

129 MDA, Provincial Special Branch to DC, Bugisu, 24 July 1962.

130 Uganda Argus, 19 July 1962.

131 Ibid. 17 July 1962.

132 Ibid. 27 July 1962.

133 Ibid. 19 Sept. 1962.

134 Bukedi District Annual Report 1962, 6.

135 Ibid. 6–7.

136 Bugisu District Annual Report, 1967.