This chapter outlines the history of the conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda, using the framings of war, peace and information. It gives an overview of the conflict history, including the deep sense of betrayal that guides the LRA. An overview of previous peace attempts highlights the reasons why these had failed – some of which were going to be mirrored in the Juba Talks. Through the history of peace attempts, the chapter connects actors in the Juba Talks to previous efforts and shows how the debate on peace shifted when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for five LRA commanders. In describing how the Juba Talks came about, the chapter uses the categories of space, ideology and affiliation to explain the identity of the LRA and its political wing, the Lord’s Resistance Movement. The chapter further argues that the LRA entered the Juba Peace Talks with the understanding that it would be a forum to deal publicly with the root causes of the war. They also hoped to gain better control of the narratives that had influenced this war, with a discourse in favour of the government.

Examines the private sector response to a period of intense political violence centred on a struggle for control of the state in Kenya and South Africa respectively. In each case, key political elites at the heart of the state were implicated in this violence and this was therefore a high-risk area for business to venture into. Nonetheless, in South Africa, certain business leaders came to understand the need to confront and nudge the apartheid state towards political reform because they feared that their business interests might be wiped out in a racialised political conflict. On a practical level, the centralised and concentrated nature of South African capital also made it easier for business to organise, as did the overall nature of the institutions that structured the relationship between the country’s predominantly white political elites and its majority black population.