Gender and the bifurcated state: women in Uganda’s traditional authority

Abstract

This article introduces Mahmood Mamdani’s bifurcated state theory to the study of gender and power. The purpose is to unveil the structure of the state that produces conflicting experiences of elite women in Africa’s two public spheres, namely, the civil realm and the customary domain. In recent decades, privileged women have occupied political leadership positions in Uganda and Africa. However, things are different in the kingdoms and cultural institutions of the former British colony in which open despotism and the limited inclusion of women in leadership have persisted without causing much alarm. To highlight the coherence of these two seemingly contradictory situations, I extend the notion of the bifurcated state beyond the politicisation of ethnicity—for which the concept was originally formulated—to the politicisation of gender. Not only does the theory illuminate the politicisation of identity, but it also accounts for the differentiated manner in which identity is politicised in different publics.

Keywords:

• Bifurcated state
• sub-public
• civil-customary
• women’s representation
• power structure

Acknowledgment

The author presented a preliminary draft of this article at a seminar organized by Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) in 2021. The author thanks the MISR community—both faculty and students—for providing insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use interchangeably the terms kingdoms, cultural institutions, traditional institutions and ethnic institutions. In Uganda, the kingdoms are created in the name of ethnic groups. Second, the kingdoms are required to focus on the “culture” (as opposed to “politics”) of their respective ethnic groups even if not all cultural institutions have kings. Third, the kingdoms are said to be the embodiment of African “tradition” (Golooba-Mutebi 2011; Sseremba 2020).

2 I summon historical and empirical data from kingdom documents like the constitutions, magazines and websites; national newspapers; Uganda parliamentary records, among others.

3 The customary domain has nothing to do with the concept of the ‘hidden public’ that Linda Beck (2003, p. 149) formulates to mean a system of patronage networks that lead to an uneven, male-privileging contest in the open public. Rather, the customary domain is itself an open public existing alongside the civil sphere.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yahya Sseremba

Yahya Sseremba is a research fellow at Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University. His research focuses on political thought, political identity, and political violence. His latest book is America and the Production of Islamic Truth in Uganda.