Crossing the line: 100 years of the North-West Uganda/South Sudan border

Abstract

This article looks at the complex history of the border area between what is now North-West Uganda, the Equatoria region of South Sudan, and the North-East Democratic Republic of Congo, over pre-colonial, colonial and post colonial periods. In the early colonial period, international borders changed several times, and local people found themselves successively part of King Leopold's Belgian Congo, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Sudan, and the Uganda Protectorate. Cross-border movements included European adventurers, slave armies and ivory poachers, who periodically terrorised local populations. As “West Nile” district, colonial North-West Uganda was systematically underdeveloped, and became a labour reserve and a major source of army recruitment (epitomised by the characteristic local figure of Idi Amin). In the post-colonial era, movement over the borders has been characterised by large-scale cross-border informal trade, refugee movements, armed rebel groups, and the region's continued marginalisation from more economically developed and politically powerful parts of the three countries. The article explores changes and continuities in the salience of these borders over the past century and a half.

Keywords:

• borderlands
• Uganda
• Sudan
• Congo
• migration
• conflict

Acknowledgements

Fieldwork and archival research were carried out between 1994- and 2000, as part of my doctoral research at the University of Oxford Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, under the supervision of Professor Wendy James. Much of this material is placed in a wider context in Leopold, Inside West Nile, which also contains relevant acknowledgements. To these, I add my thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the present article.

Notes

1. Fieldwork and archival research were carried out between 1994 and 2000, as part of my doctoral research at the University of Oxford Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, under the supervision of Professor Wendy James. Much of this material is placed in a wider context in Leopold, Inside West Nile, which also contains relevant acknowledgements. To these, I add my thanks to the anonymous reviewers of the present article.

2. Stigand, Equatoria, 4.

3. Moyse-Bartlett, King's African Rifles, 50.

4. On the Nubi, see Leopold, “Legacies of Slavery.” See also Furley, “Sudanese Troops”; Soghayroun, Sudanese Muslim Factor; Johnson, “Structure of a Legacy”; Hansen, “Pre-Colonial Immigrants.”

5. Smith, Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, 53.

6. The role of the Nubi during the “Scramble for Africa” is discussed in many works of diplomatic history, including Taylor, “Prelude to Fashoda”; Collins, “Anglo-Congolese Negotiations”; Collins, The Southern Sudan 1883–1898; Collins, King Leopold, England and the Upper Nile; Sanderson, “Origins and Significance.”

7. See the correspondence between Leopold's emissary Van Etvelde and the British Ambassador in Brussels, Sir Francis Plunkett, June 1894, in UK National Archives: FO 403.201 Inclosure in No.135. The major push against the Mahdists began in 1896, and their headquarters, the town of Rejaf, was taken in Fenruary 1897.

8. The process is described in detail, as stories reached Wingate's intelligence service, in the Sudan Intelligence Reports (a part set is in Rhodes House Library, Oxford). A brief outline of events is in the 1904 “Military Report on the Congo Free State” pp. 181–4, in the UK National Archives WO 33/316.

9. Sudan Intelligence Reports 69 (April 10, 1900–May 9, 1900) Appendix A, 5.

10. The various stages of this are outlined in Sudan Intelligence Report no. 73 (August 6, 1900–September 7, 1900), 2; Sudan Intelligence Report no. 78 (January 9, 1901–February 8, 1901), 2.

11. Collins, King Leopold, 122.

12. This may explain why a book such as Adam Hochschild's popular account King Leopold's Ghost, which argues that Leopold's motivations were exclusively commercial, does not mention the Lado Enclave at all.

13. Collins. King Leopold, 125.

14. Collins. King Leopold, 135.

15. Rhodes House Oxford, mss.Afr.s.1350 “Notes on the Early History of West Nile District,” by David Harris (Assistant District Commissioner of West Nile 1957–59).

16. Middleton, The Lugbara of Uganda, 4.

17. Middleton “Some Effects of Colonial Rule,” 15.

18. Quoted in Collins, King Leopold, 305.

19. Interview with Mr Nahor Oya, February 6, 1997.

20. See Leopold, “Why Are We Cursed,” 220–2.

21. Middleton, “Some Effects,” 13.

22. Collins, “Ivory Poaching,” 217–18; Collins, King Leopold, 289–305.

23. MacKenzie, Empire of Nature, 164.

24. See Beachey, “East African Ivory Trade,” 286; Collins, “Ivory Poaching,” 219.

25. By 1907, according to Collins, “they held only five stations scattered along the road running from the Congo-Nile watershed through the centre of the Enclave to the Nile” (“Ivory Poaching,” 217). Under the 1906 Agreement, the Enclave ran from the Nile/Congo watershed (the present Congo/Uganda border) on the west to the thalweg (deepest channel) of the Nile on the east.

26. Collins, “Ivory Poaching,” 218.

27. Collins, “Ivory Poaching,” 219.

28. Collins, “Ivory Poaching,” 222.

29. Moore, Ivory, 174.

30. Collins, “Sudan–Uganda Boundary,” 140–1.

31. Stigand, Administration.

32. Stigand, Equatoria, 25–6.

33. Stigand, Equatoria, 78.

34. Collins, “Sudan–Uganda Boundary,” 144.

35. Chief Secretary to the Governor, to the Secretary, Uganda Planters’ Association, January 19, 1926, Uganda National Archives.

36. W.B.H. Duke, District Commissioner In Charge, Madi Moyo. Northern Province Annual Report, 1960. Uganda National Archives.

37. See Leopold, Inside West Nile, 58.

38. Virmani, “Resettlement of Ugandan Refugees,” 343.

39. See, for example, the authorial details on the dust covers of Taban, Eating Chiefs; Taban, Another Nigger; Taban, Meditations.

40. Amaza, Museveni's Long March, xiv.

41. Woodward, “Uganda and Southern Sudan,” 234.

42. A missionary writing in the Uganda Church Association Newsletter noted that “we thank God that Zaire and Sudan were so near otherwise the slaughter might have been much greater than it was” (quoted in Pirouet, “Refugees in and from Uganda,” 248).

43. From the splendidly titled conference paper by Taban Lo-Liyong, “How to maintain refugees in your midst for the love of humanity whilst the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees looks out over Khyber Pass and doles out goodies to Afghan and Vietnamese expatriates: a Spirited Diatribe.” Paper presented at the symposium “Assistance to Refugees, Alternative Viewpoints,” March 1984, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre library, RSC Conf. box ALT1984.

44. See, e.g., Crisp, “Ugandan Refugees”; Harrell-Bond Imposing Aid; Pirouet, “Refugees In and from Uganda”; Allen, Social and Economic Aspects; Virmani, “Resettlement of Ugandan Refugees.”

45. Allen, Social and Economic Aspects, 222.

46. See Johnson, Root Causes, 205.

47. Leopold, Inside West Nile, 4.

48. See the website at http://www.npi-news.dk/.

49. See, e.g., Green, “Magendo”; Prunier, “Le Magendo.”

50. Meagher, “The Hidden Economy,” MacGaffey, The Real Economy.

51. Leopold, Inside West Nile, 40; a more extensive analysis is Titeca, “Les OPEC Boys.”

52. See, e.g., Clark, African Stakes.

53. Leopold, InsideWest Nile, 42.

54. See also Titeca “Les OPEC Boys.”

55. Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists.