issue 1 • august 2016 THE MISR REVIEW a publication of the makerere institute of social research the misr review the misr review Copyright © 2016 The M I SR Review All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Cover & Publication Design: Aurobind Patel Editorial Services Consultant: Andrew Yale Printed in India by Prodon Enterprises, Mumbai First Printing, 2016 ISBN 978- 9970- 473- 05-2 Makerere Institute of Social Research P. O. Box 16022 Wandegeya Kampala, Uganda Tel: +256 414 532 838 | +256 414 554 582 | +256 312 132 100 Email: [email protected] www.misr.mak.ac.ug contents • issue 1 • august 2016 THE MISR REVIEW 6 : Our Mission mahmood mamdani • lyn ossome • suren pillay 10 : Contributors to this Issue 12 : The Politics of Indigeneity: Land Restitution in Burundi haydee bangerezako 44 : Justice and Peace after War: Conceptual Difficulties in the Discourses of Transition and Reform in Postwar Societies laury l. ocen 82 : What is Kenya Becoming? Dealing with Mass Violence in the Rift Valley simon omaada esibo 110 : “Kitu Kichafu Sana”: Daniel arap Moi and the Dirty Business of Dismembering Kenya’s Body Politic akoko akech 156 : Beyond Nuremberg: The Historical Significance of the Postapartheid Transition in South Africa mahmood mamdani 200 : Guidelines for Contributors 6 the misr review our mission 7 Our Mission Begun in 2012, the doctoral program in Social Studies at the Mak- can be traced to a single starting point, the reorganization of the erere Institute of Social Research (MISR) is driven by the conviction academy in late nineteenth-century Germany following its defeat that key to research is formulating the problem of research. Given by France. With the expansion of Western power, this particular in- that our objective was to transform MISR from a consultancy into stitutional form of the university has become global. Conceptually, a research unit, we summed up the difference in a sentence: in the production of social sciences and the humanities in the mod- a consultancy, the client defines the question; in a research unit, ern academy bears an unmistakable imprint of Western Enlight- the question is the prerogative and responsibility of the researcher. enment with its self-conscious homage to a Greco-Roman legacy. We argued that an adequate formulation of the research problem Higher education in the postcolonial world has a different ge- requires a double endeavor: on the one hand, a firm grasp of key nealogy, one rooted in the colonial experience. Knowledge housed debates in the area of research, and on the other, a contextual and in the university and transmitted from it is an unabashedly mod- historical understanding of the research question. ernist project. Indeed, it is a top-down secular missionary project The MISR Review signals a long-awaited step in the develop- with ready-made solutions for a whole range of problems, known ment of the program at MISR. It combines a commitment to local or not known. The colonial university is the original home of “one and indeed regional knowledge production, rooted in relevant size fits all” remedies. Except for the few who turned the colonial linguistic and disciplinary training, with a critical and disciplined experience into a vaccine rather than a lifelong malady, students reflection on the globalization of modern forms of knowledge and emerged from its doors with little capacity for creative thought. modern instruments of power. Rather than oppose the local to the The character of Lawino, a peasant woman, lamented the fate of global, we seek to relate the two, assessing each from the vantage her university graduate husband in The Song of Lawino, an epic point of the other. poem by Okot p’Bitek: The MISR Review is intended to serve a dual function. First, it Bile burns my inside! will broadcast the intellectual work undertaken at MISR, particu- I feel like vomiting! larly by advanced doctoral students, to the wider scholarly com- For all our young men munity. Second, we aim for it to energize and promote debate in Were finished in the forest the broader scholarly community. By shining a historical and the- Their manhood was finished in the classroom oretical light on the contemporary, we hope the journal will play a Their testacles role in the larger process of knowledge production. Were smashed We locate this endeavor in a particular conceptual and insti- With large books! tutional understanding of the “university.” Many have argued that Some critical thinkers like Yusufu Bala Usman have reflected on the “university” has multiple origins, in different parts of the world, the epistemological conditions under which colonial and postco- including Cairo, Fez, and Timbuktu in Africa. At the same time, lonial university education has been imparted: conceptual catego- the genealogy of the modern university, with its gated community, ries are crafted from a particular historical experience but are so fee-paying students, and disciplinary organization of knowledge universalized that they claim to interpret and explain histories in 8 our mission the misr review 9 other parts of the world, the ambition being to shape a common future for all. They proceed to point out the epistemological vio- lence that must inevitably result from any self-conscious effort to universalize historically situated concepts that mine the rest of the world for raw data in order to verify or modify these so-called uni- versal categories. What should be the response of scholars around the world, including in Africa? Some have responded by turning to the preco- lonial for authentic knowledge. Others have looked for African or postcolonial modes of thinking in the contemporary world. These initiatives have given rise to a variety of tendencies ranging from the “modernist” to the “nativist.” With the publication of The MISR Review, we join this eclectic endeavor, avowing neither a “modernist” nor a “nativist” agenda. Our modest aim is to get the MISR scholarly community to engage with the contemporary and its historical antecedents from the standpoint of situating Africa in the world and understanding the world from an African vantage point. Our not-so-modest aim is to theorize the African experience with a view to underlining its par- ticular as well as more general significance. To do so is to join the innovative work of creating categories, thereby giving meaning to our experience in the world and making possible an emancipatory practice, including theory-making, that can translate and commu- nicate this experience to neighbors near and far. Mahmood Mamdani • Lyn Ossome • Suren Pillay May 1, 2016 10 the misr review contributors to this issue 11 Contributors to this Issue The papers in this issue are the work of members of the Beyond Mahmood Mamdani is professor and executive director, Makerere Criminal Justice research group at Makerere Institute of Social Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, Kampala, Ugan- Research. da, and Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University. He is the author of Citizen and Subject, When Victims Akoko Akech is a fourth-year PhD candidate, specializing in Polit- Become Killers, Saviors and Survivors and, most recently, Define and ical Studies. His doctoral research is on social movements, popular Rule: Native as Political Identity. He is the coordinator of the Beyond political action, and political change in Kenya, 1945–2015. Criminal Justice research group. Haydee Bangerezako is a fourth-year PhD student in Historical Laury L. Ocen is a fifth-year PhD student in Literary and Cultural Studies and Political Studies. Her interest is in the precolonial Studies. Ocen holds an MA in Literature from Makerere University. political and social history of the Great Lakes and its conceptual His research focuses on survivors’ justice in the context of mass aspects. violence, specifically the agency of war monuments in postwar Simon Omaada Esibo is a fourth-year PhD student in Political northern Uganda, and how the politics and poetics of these arti- Studies. Esibo is the author of Conflict between Right to Asylum and facts are interpreted by governments, NGOs, local institutions, and Security Concerns of Uganda: A Study of Asylum Seekers in the Wake of ordinary survivors of war. Global Terrorism (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011). He has writ- ten on questions of war and peace in Karamoja, and on customary land tenure in Teso. 12 the misr review The PoliTics of indigeneiTy: land ResTiTuTion in BuRundi 13 Activities of the Burundi Commission Nationale Terres et autres The Politics of Indigeneity: Biens — CNTB (National Commission of Land and other Assets) Land Restitution in Burundi were brought to a halt in March 2015, after communities living in the southern province of Makamba, bordering Tanzania, barricad- ed roads using stones and tree trunks to prevent the CNTB’s agents from implementing their decisions in favor of claimants. President Haydee Bangerezako Pierre Nkurunziza’s office supported the governor’s decision to temporarily suspend activities of the CNTB until after the 2015 elec- tions. For over two weeks, both residents (abasangwa) and repatri- This paper studies the challenges of land restitution in Bu- ates (abahungutse) stood together to oppose the CNTB, which had rundi after phases of violence. The paper traces land relations from the been revisiting land restitution cases it had previously settled. The precolonial to the colonial and postindependence periods. With sover- CNTB had previously favored the sharing of property between re- eignty shifting from body to territory in the colonial period, bodies that turnees and the residents. Abasangwa and abahungutse in Makamba had been marked as indigenous (indicating those who first cleared the land) were newly marked as ethnic.