Leaders of Alur Kingdom and Cultural Practices

I will try to catch up on a bit of the recent work by the Gender Based Shelter here. It involves interactions with something called the cultural leaders of Uganda. It took me a while to understand their roles.  I think a good way of contextualizing it is to say that there exist three types of leaders here. The first one are the political, or administrative, leaders. These includes both national and local government. The second type is the religious leaders. Priests (both catholic and protestant), Imams and the different leaders within the religious organizations. Although they might not have a lot of formal power their influence on people is probably big. They have a lot of soft power. The third type is the cultural leaders. They consists of village elders and chiefs. They should not be confused with the local government. The cultural leaders are not part of the official government structure of Uganda but they are an important part of society. As opposed to religious leaders they do not only have soft power, i.e. it is not only a question of the ideas and values they articulate. Their power seems to be more concrete. The way I understand it, the cultural leaders often act as a sort of local judges in disputes between individuals and for many people here, especially in the rural parts of Uganda, it is more natural to consult the cultural leaders when you have a problem than to consult representatives of the local government or the police.

Now, the main ethnic group, or tribe, that populates Nebbi and the region surrounding it is called Alur. The law of Alur kingdom, which I have written about previously, is part of the cultural power. It is not officially written down but it is a set of principles upheld and administered by this network of chiefs and village elders. Moreover, at the top of this network of chiefs and village elders, at the top of the cultural leaders of the Nebbi region, there is the cabinet of Alur Kingdom. It has a king, ministers, an executive secretary and even a parliament. The first time I met representatives of Alur Kingdom was in a meeting that Carol from the Action Aid office took me to. The meeting was organized by the Alur Kingdom and I think their purpose was to brief the NGO’s in the Nebbi region about the status of the kingdom. Apparently, the king recently disbanded his cabinet and at this meeting he outlined the plans of the kingdom for the future. Apart from setting up proper offices and performing a coronation ceremony for the new cabinet, they are drafting a strategic plan and a set of statutes. And this last bit is the interesting part. It means a lot of the laws of Alur Kingdom, i.e. the principles used by the village elders and chiefs, will finally be written down in an organized manner.

I have previously written about the Alur way of handling witch craft accusations. When a person is accused of bewitching somebody he or she should prove himself/herself innocent. This is done by consulting three witch doctors. This system is problematic in so many ways. First of all, the burden of proof is on the accused. The accuser don’t need to present any concrete evidence at all, while the accused has to go through a very costly process which he/she has no control over. As an example there is a case where a woman was accused and had to pay the witch doctors three goats and her whole cassava harvest for the consultations (by the way, she was proclaimed innocent by the witch doctors but was unable to stay in her home because of the stigma associated with the accusations). Moreover, the prizes and details of the procedure are not regulated. The accused don’t know beforehand what the cost will be and is extremely vulnerable to extortion in every step of the process. Finally, the facts that determine the outcome of the process, i.e. the statements of the witch doctors, are completely useless in court. This means a case can’t travel upward in the legal system. Now, whether or not this principle of having the accused consult three witch doctors is written down in the statutes of Alur Kingdom probably has great significance for people working with gender issues here. If it is written down, not only does it enforce and institutionalize a flawed system which is not compatible with the national justice system of Uganda, it also sends a message to chiefs and village elders, and, by extension, to the whole population of the region, that accusing somebody of witch craft without concrete proofs, and even evicting them from their home, is acceptable and lawful behavior.

During the previous two weeks Matilda organized three meetings with leaders of Alur kingdom. The first one was a meeting with religious and cultural leaders of the Nebbi region. Here, apart from the leaders of Alur Kingdom, there were representatives of the Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths. The second meeting consisted of leaders of Alur Kingdom together with the so called sub county coalition. The sub county coalition is a network of people which, the way I understand it, is held together by Action Aid. It consists of people with leadership positions in the municipal governments in the Nebbi region. Some of their job titles are subcounty chiefs, local council chairmen, community development officers etc. The idea is that they should all be somehow educated, vocal and interested in gender based issues. The third meeting consisted of leaders of Alur Kingdom together with the district coalition, which is a network similar to the subcounty coalition but with positions higher up in the hierarchy.

I think the original reason for Matilda to call these meetings was to address the issues with the Alur way of handling witch craft accusations, but the scope of the meetings was broader. The agenda of the meetings was to identify cultural practices that leads to gender based problems and suggest ways to deal with them. And I want to stress what a change I think these meetings caused. They covered a lot of topics, from women’s property rights to the length and form of Keny, a feast connected to the payment of bride price, but I will focus on the principles on handling witch craft accusations since they seem to be the most controversial. In the beginning of the first meeting the representative from Alur Kingdom that was most vocal, the speaker of their parliament, was very careful on this. He would suggest small changes to the policy, like having the person accusing somebody share the cost with the accused (instead of the current system where the accused bears the whole cost). But the meeting really turned around. It was inspiring to see the religious leaders, together with Matilda and Grace, unite on the message to Alur Kingdom that this policy of consulting three witch doctors should not be put in the statutes at all. In the end several of the leaders of Alur Kingdom agreed on this. Moreover, I didn’t attend the third meeting but I heard it was very successful and last Friday I talked briefly to the minister of gender in Alur kingdom while having lunch (he was involved in another Action Aid activity) and he then seemed to be pretty settled on not putting the policy of consulting three witch doctors in the statutes. Instead, he advocated a policy on witch craft close to the one articulated by the religious leaders.

 Participant in the meeting with religious leaders

A vocal police officer

Matilda, using her mobile phone to untangle different parts of the constitution

I think this is a good example of how development work should be done. The focus should be on changing the underlying structures that hold development back. And NGO’s should not act alone. Instead of acting alone they should act in broad coalitions like this. The advantage of this is that even if Alur Kingdom puts the policy of three witch doctor consultations in their statutes, i.e. institutionalizes it, the meetings will still have opened a communication channel between the Alur Kingdom leaders and the other participants in the three meetings (the religious leaders and the subcounty and district coalitions). I think this can be valuable. The leaders of Alur Kingdom are native Alur, but many of them have international experience. The minister of gender got part of his education in US, the king spent a lot of his upbringing in UK (his father was exiled during the Idi Amin years) and the executive secretary of the Kingdom has a background in humanitarian work in south Sudan. So I’m sure they are all aware of the dangers of negative cultural practices. On the other hand, they represent and govern a system of strong traditions, and this system can be very hard to change, so in their efforts to merge this system with modern values they probably need all the support (and all the pressure) they can get.