‘Don’t you want us to eat?’: the moral economy of a Ugandan marketplace

Abstract

Marketplaces have long provided a context for observing the negotiation of everyday life amid broader processes of social and economic transformation. A growing scholarship has debated the relationship between markets and capitalist modes of production in Africa. However, less attention has been paid to the changing moral dimensions of economic life within popular urban marketplaces. This article examines the moral economy of a central marketplace in Kampala, Uganda, through an analysis of a rare archive: the records of the market disciplinary committee. We show that market vendors have responded to the expansion of market economy in Kampala by invoking principles derived from the past, including the obligation to ‘feed’ others. Rather than an abstracted market economy, disputes in the market were interpreted in the context of an embedded market society in which value is placed on livelihood facilitation. These findings advance the burgeoning literature on capitalism in Africa by demonstrating the ways in which neoliberal norms and values are situated within a broader moral landscape that places limits on what can be exchanged with whom.

Les marchés fournirent souvent un contexte pour témoigner de comment les réalités économiques se ‘réalisent’ au cœur de processus plus vastes de transformation sociale et économique. Des recherches toujours plus nombreuses ont débattu de la relation entre les marchés et les modes de production capitaliste en Afrique. Cependant, une attention moindre s’est portée sur les dimensions de changement moral de la vie économique au cœur des marchés urbains populaires. Cet article examine l’économie morale d’un marché du centre de Kampala en Ouganda, à travers l’analyse d’une archive rare: les documents du comité disciplinaire du marché. Nous montrons que les vendeurs sur le marché ont répondu à l’expansion de l’économie de marché de Kampala en invoquant des principes dérivés du passé y compris l’obligation de ‘nourrir’ autrui. Plutôt qu’une économie de marché abstraite, des litiges sur le marché ont été interprétés dans le contexte d’une société de marché intégré dans laquelle une valeur est attribuée à la facilitation de la subsistance. Ces découvertes font avancer la littérature capitaliste florissante sur le capitalisme en Afrique en démontrant les façons dont les normes et les valeurs néolibérales se situent dans un paysage moral plus vaste qui place des limites sur ce qui peut être échangé et avec qui.

Keywords:

• capitalism
• informal economy
• marketplace
• moral economy
• Uganda

Mots-clés:

• capitalisme
• économie informelle
• marché
• économie morale
• Ouganda

Introduction: the moral economy of the belly

Temwagala tulye?

Don’t you want us to eat?

In 2007, the Kampala City Council attempted to sell Nakasero market, one of the oldest and largest produce markets in Uganda, to a private developer. This move was driven in part by a package of policy reforms that sought to privatise urban service delivery in the city (Gore and Muwanga 2013; Lindell and Appelblad 2009). In response, thousands of market vendors organised an overnight protest during which they blockaded roads in Kampala city centre and held up signs that read ‘is this not our world?’ (‘Mutowoza ensi si jaffe?’) and ‘don’t you want us to eat?’ (‘temwagala tulye?’). These protests brought into focus the plight of market traders across the continent in the face of land speculation and spiralling costs of living. While politicians and business elites defended the sale by reproducing a formalist understanding of the market as a place in need of ‘modernisation’ and ‘competition’ (New Vision 2007), vendors in Nakasero opposed it by invoking a substantivist understanding of the market as a place fundamental to the sustenance of human life (Polanyi 1957 [1944]).

In his seminal work on the morality of markets, E.P. Thompson (1971) observed a similar clash between the ‘paternalists’ (or state officials) and the ‘crowd’ during food riots in eighteenth-century England. While the former emphasised the importance of ‘controlled markets’ and social order, the latter emphasised the importance of ‘open markets’ and sustenance. For Thompson, the riots demonstrated the moral victory of the crowd, insofar as their claim to nourishment was based upon the mobilisation of ‘traditional rights’ and ‘customs’ that drew upon public support (1971, 78). The advance of capitalist modes of production arguably brought about a ‘a de-moralizing of the theory of trade and consumption’, associated with an abstract market mechanism (1971; cited: Götz 2015, 152). However, for Thompson, the moral economy of the crowd retained ‘an ideal existence’ that was mobilised in times of emergency. In a not dissimilar way, market vendors in contemporary Uganda contested changes in political economy by drawing upon moral principles from the past.

Marketplaces have long provided a context for witnessing how economic realities get ‘done’ amid ongoing processes of social and economic transformation (Simone and Pieterse 2017, 89). This article examines the moral dimensions of economic life in Nakasero market in Kampala, Uganda, through an analysis of the records of the market disciplinary committee, an institution which came into being following the successful protests of 2007/8. The market has witnessed many of the economic disruptions of the postcolonial era in Uganda: from the Asian expulsion and the magendo (black market) of the 1970s, to the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and privatisation initiatives of the 1990s. However, rather than being passive recipients of these transformations, people have engaged in collective subjective practices to reinterpret and remake the market by ‘inventively remember[ing]’ norms and values from the past (Lonsdale 1992, 352). The case of Nakasero market thus demonstrates the value of a moral economy approach for situating neoliberal reforms within theories of value grounded in local history and culture, revealing the ways in which ‘people struggle not only for wealth and power, but also for dignity’ (Orlove 1997: cited Palomera and Vetta 2016, 224).

The following section provides a brief overview of the literature on moral economy before outlining two frameworks for studying moral economic activities in Africa, with a particular focus on Uganda. We then outline the methodological approach before presenting an analysis of the case record of the Nakasero market disciplinary committee.

Moral economies in Africa: two frameworks

The classical literature on moral economy examines the interaction of different norms and values during transitions from ‘pre-capitalist’ economies to different forms and manifestations of ‘market capitalism’ (Scott 1976; Thompson 1971). Moral economy thus came into currency as an approach for studying the ‘total socioeconomic context within which the market operate[s]’ (Thompson 1971, 125), and the ‘systems of meanings, institutions and structures of social relations’ through which it is interpreted and understood (Palomera and Vetta 2016, 421). This approach builds upon Polanyi’s (1957 [1944]) substantivist view of economics which rejects market-oriented theories of scarcity and rational choice in favour of a broader concern with how humans make a living in interaction with their social and natural environments. On this reading, all markets are ‘embedded’ in society in one way or another, and economic values are in constant interaction with values derived from other spheres of life. Even advanced capitalist economies are interdependent with institutions and structures that establish different ideas of value (Palomera and Vetta 2016). Registers of value are thus not predetermined but ‘open-ended and internally dynamic’, providing criteria for ‘validating … new dimensions and relating them to the old’ (Guyer 1993, 253). Indeed, many of the institutions that are today considered essential features of capitalism – the fictitious commodities of land, labour, and money – have been historically present in societies categorised as ‘non-capitalist’ (Banaji 2015). Moral economies are thus in a constant state of becoming, shaped by the ‘discontinuities, ruptures and shifts in the historical process’ that cannot be simply reduced to the binary categories of ‘capitalist’ and ‘non-capitalist’ (Chakrabarty 2000, 23).

Rather than compartmentalising the world, a moral economy approach is useful precisely for its ability to bring different regimes of value under the same analytical framework in order to reveal the complex ways in which they are entangled (Palomera and Vetta 2016, 428). It therefore has much to offer to studies of socioeconomic life in Africa, which have been historically divided between sociological approaches focusing on the ‘norms of collective survival’ and materialist approaches focusing on the ‘ever-expanding market of classical economy’ (Austen 1993, 92). The following subsections trace the origins of these two literatures before exploring the ways in which they might be brought together in order to shed light on the moral dimensions of economic life in a popular Ugandan marketplace.

Relational norms and values in precolonial Buganda

For the majority of human history, people have understood value as something that is generated through relationships with other people (Elyachar 2005; Scherz 2014; Guyer 1993). For example, the concept of ‘wealth in people’ came into currency in the literature on exchange in precolonial Africa to describe the process through which people achieved prominence through the accumulation of dependants (Guyer 1993). In patrimonial societies, the assets or ‘pools of wealth’ were ‘ultimately the extraordinary people – the named heroes, virtuoso performers and craftsmen, the most deeply concentrated of spiritual adepts – whose self-realisation careers skipped around the value register’ (Guyer 1993, 253). Interdependency was thus a moral imperative, and freedom derived not from independence but ‘a plurality of opportunities’ for dependence (Ferguson 2015, 163). In the words of Bayart (1993), one could either be a ‘feeder of people’ or an ‘eater of people’, and those unable to feed others found themselves accused of a moral failing (cited Scherz 2014, 19).

The concept of wealth in people is influential in the anthropological literature on Buganda,¹ the region in which Kampala is located. For example, Holly Hanson (2003) writes that the social and political organisation of the region in the precolonial era was based around the intricate relationship between love and power. The Baganda used ties of reciprocal obligation ‘to create connections, to incorporate strangers, and to vanquish competitors’ (2003, 3). Leaders were obliged to give gifts of food and land to their followers, and accountability was provided by the ease with which followers could switch allegiance from one leader to another. This system produced a logic in which ‘those who wielded power had to appear loving in order to hold onto their followers’ by recognising their rights to subsistence (2003, 17); a logic which was invoked in the protests of 2008 (‘don’t you want us to eat?’). The idea of a disembedded market economy would have made little sense in precolonial Buganda; indeed, people were suspicious of attempts by foreign missionaries and traders to establish marketplaces in Kampala at the end of the nineteenth century (Médard 2006; Monteith 2019). Under pressure from Catholic missionaries, Kabaka Muteesa I opened the first livestock market on Palace grounds in 1884 and named it Mwanakuyeeguilira; ‘the people feed themselves’ (by buying from the market). The people responded with the phrase Kabaka akowadde (‘the Kabaka is becoming selfish’) on the basis that livestock were previously given as gifts to meet needs and cement alliances (Médard 2006: FN 92; cited from Kasirye 1954, 429).

China Scherz (2014) brings these arguments into the present through an ethnographic account of socioeconomic relations in contemporary Buganda. She argues that strategies of self-making in the region still ‘involve creating and using networks (which are often hierarchical) to secure support (which is often material)’ (2014, 2). Relationships are regulated by cultural logics of patronage and moral notions of having ‘a heart for helping’ others (omutima omuyambi). Consequently, dependence and inequality are not considered social evils in and of themselves in Buganda; rather, it is a breakdown in the practice of helping others that is a source of moral anxiety (2014, 96). These observations resonate with other studies of contemporary African economies. For example, Julia Elyachar has demonstrated that artisanal economies in Cairo are underpinned by an understanding of ‘relational value’ – the positive value attached to the creation, reproduction and extension of relationships’ (2005, 143). Similarly, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui shows how business practices among market traders in Nairobi are shaped by values such as ‘solidarity, humanity, endurance, trust and sharing’, which prioritise collaboration over individual accumulation (2019, 2), while James Ferguson argues that socioeconomic activities in Southern Africa are primarily about ‘securing distributive outcomes’ through relationships with other people (2015, 94). These studies diversify our understandings of economy beyond formal understandings of market exchange by demonstrating the influence of norms and values derived from a broad range of institutions and practices, including those originating in the precolonial era. However, they have less to say about the ways in which such norms and values have evolved in relation to the market reforms of the past four decades.

Individualistic norms and values in ‘neoliberal’ Uganda

A growing literature warns of the transformation of social and moral visions of economic life in Africa amid the advance of neoliberal capitalism (Beresford and Cross 2015; Meagher 2007; Meagher, Mann, and Bolt 2016; Ouma 2015; Wiegratz 2016; Wiegratz, Martiniello, and Greco 2018). This work revives neo-Marxist and dependencia traditions in the study of African political economy in order to chart the ‘multifaceted neoliberal reordering of African countries’ and their impact on people’s lives and livelihoods (Wiegratz, Martiniello, and Greco 2018, 6). In contrast to the scholarship outlined above, the focus is thus on the ways in which market reforms have undermined and overwritten relational understandings of value, generating new forms of debt, exploitation, and inequality.

Uganda features prominently within this literature as a key site of capitalist transformation (Mamdani 1990; Prunier 1983; Tangri and Mwenda 2001; Wiegratz 2016). The history of capitalism in Buganda can be traced back to the arrival of the slave trade on the East African coast in the mid-nineteenth century. Traders bartered cloth for ivory and slaves, turning the region into a production zone that disrupted the ties of reciprocal obligation on which socioeconomic life had historically rested (Hanson 2003). Wage labour soon followed in the early twentieth century as colonial land reforms and poll taxes forced people to engage in forms of labour ‘outside the realm of Ganda productive activities’ (2003, 154). The British colonial authorities saw urban marketplaces as key sites of commercial dominance and revenue generation in their quest to turn Uganda into a profitable colony. Nakasero market was opened in 1927 to meet a demand generated by the presence of a prosperous, non-land- owning population of Asian and European settlers, a legacy that is still invoked in contemporary understandings of the market as a katale ka muzungu (‘market for whites’) (Monteith 2019, 253). Trade licencing and vagrancy laws were introduced in order to remove ‘unproductive’ African populations from the market; reforms that served to integrate the ‘political with the social and ethical’ while ‘subordinating all three to the requirements of production and output’ (Mbembe 2001, 31).

A further wave of market reforms followed under the tutelage of the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s – a key historical period in the literature on capitalist transformation in Uganda. Inspired by the literature on moral economy, Jörg Wiegratz (2016) argues that we should understand such periods in terms of moral transformation rather than disintegration or decline. On this reading, the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s facilitated the rise of a particular set of moral norms, including individualism, self-interest, low other-regard, and disregard for the common good, which have penetrated the moral order of markets, families, communities and the country at large (Wiegratz 2016). Such norms are thought to be particularly prevalent in Uganda’s informal economy, which has expanded at an exponential rate since the 1980s. For example, Nakanyike Musisi describes the rise of the toninyira mukange (‘don’t step in mine’) model of night marketing through which women pursue ‘aggressive mini-capitalist ventures’ by the light of paraffin lanterns to meet a demand generated by shortages of food and cooking equipment (1995, 128). Women value these markets for the income and friendships they provide but complained of the prevalence of envy, insecurity and witchcraft – traits that are present in the case record of the contemporary Nakasero market.

Seen together, these two literatures reflect two contrasting (but not contradictory) premises; that economies in Uganda are underpinned by relational, pre-capitalist norms and values, and by individualistic, capitalist norms and values, respectively. The direction of argument hinges on one’s historical starting point (precolonial, colonial or postcolonial) and methodological orientation (deductive or inductive). However, rather than totalising frameworks, these two understandings – ‘wealth in people’ and ‘wealth in things’ – may be better seen as ideal types, which have been invoked by different people at different times in order to achieve different ends. A moral economy approach thus provides a framework to observe the interaction of these two sets of norms and values within a particular context; to examine the extent to which ‘neoliberal ideas coexist with other, often contradictory ideas’ that ‘may be used to serve alternative functions’ (Ferguson 2015, 23). The remainder of this article adopts such an approach in order to examine the ways in which different norms and values are invoked, enacted and contested within a historical marketplace in Kampala, Uganda.

Researching morality in the marketplace

The location and familiarity of marketplaces have long made them attractive sites for dispute resolution in African societies, where large crowds provide legitimacy and a notion of the ‘public’ to proceedings (Bohannan and Dalton 1962; Clark 1994; Kapchan 1996). Empirical work in rural and urban markets in Africa has shown power to be dispersed across a variety of different institutional arrangements, rather than centralised in a single state or authority (Jones 2009; Lund 2006; Pietilä 2007). These institutional arrangements have taken different forms in different regions of the continent, varying according to the sources and magnitude of demand for particular commodities and ‘the political and economic circumstances under which these demands were first manifested’ (Jones 1972, 234; cited Guyer 1987, 9). For example, the precolonial history of indigenous markets in West Africa was driven by the need to feed large urban settlements through the consolidation and expansion of regional trade routes (Guyer 1987; Omobowale 2019). Markets were predominated by wealthy elites, religious and ethnic groups and women, whose participation was enabled by their ability to access a degree of mobility and financial independence, as well as the absence of more lucrative economic opportunities (Guyer 1987, 31). By contrast, markets in precolonial East Africa were largely restricted to the borders and ‘no man’s lands’ between different kingdoms, with goods generally provided on the basis of gift exchange and requisition (Médard 2006, 167).

The contemporary organisation of market institutions bears the traces of these regional histories. For example, Gracia Clark (2002) shows how processes of dispute resolution in Kumasi central market in Ghana combine nineteenth-century Asante chiefly procedures with Christian and Islamic religious practice and contemporary legal protocol, resulting in the invocation of a number of common moral principles including that of ‘something for everyone’; the idea that everyone has the right to earn a living in the market, irrelevant of their income or economic contribution (2002, 56). Similarly, in Nigeria, Nkechi Nkwankwo (2019) and Mofeyisara Omobowale (2019) demonstrate the continued influence of elder women, and in particular the figure of the iyaloja (market mother) in processes of dispute resolution; a figure whose influence has been weakened in recent years by the emergence of a technocratic class of male traders with links to the government. In Tanzania, by contrast, Aili Mari Tripp (1997) and Tuulikki Pietilä (2007) show how female traders have subverted the historical role of the state and (male) market master in the regulation of market life through strategic forms of gossip and non-compliance. Similarly, Anna Baral (2018) characterises Kisekka market in Uganda as a ‘moral laboratory’ (citing Mattingly 2014) in which traders challenge dominant social and moral principles, including those of obuntubulamu (politeness, civility) and obuyaaye (rudeness, incivility).

Conflicts over the management of urban marketplaces in Uganda have intensified in recent years as a result of land speculation and the rise of entrepreneurial modes of municipal governance (Hansen, Little, and Lynne Milgram 2013; Lindell, Ampaire, and Byerley 2019). Starting in the 1990s, politicians and investors have sought to privatise and redevelop central markets under the guise of ‘world-class’ city making, displacing vendors to facilities on the outskirts of the city, where custom is often scarce and rents prohibitive (Baral 2018; Lindell, Ampaire, and Byerley 2019). Market vendors have responded by staging protests (such as that described in the introduction), registering their own associations as limited companies (mirroring the legal form taken by businesses involved in the leasing of city markets) and making appeals to influential patrons. A group of traders incorporated as Nakasero Sitting Traders, and Vendors Limited (NMSVT) wrote directly to the Ugandan President in 2007 to request assistance. President Museveni subsequently overturned the sale, declaring: ‘Markets should be for the vendors’, reflecting the broader phenomenon of politicians reversing policy decisions in order to cultivate vote banks in competitive urban constituencies (Goodfellow and Titeca 2012; Lindell 2010).

NMSVT eventually signed a 49-year sublease agreement for Nakasero market in 2010, agreeing to pay an annual ground rent of USh45 million (US$ 18,000). However, vendors’ ownership rights were subject to a five-year probationary period during which NMSVT was required to pay a one-off premium of USh 1.8billion (USD$ 720,000) in order to redevelop the site into a ‘modern market’ that met ‘universally acceptable standards’. A new era of vendor-led market management was ushered in, albeit one that indebted the vendors to the municipal authority and required them to demonstrate ‘modern’ forms of management in keeping with the city’s ‘world-class’ aspirations.

Nakasero is a market comprised of approximately 10,000 vendors, traders and service providers. In purely material terms, people’s status in the market is defined by (i) the type of space that they operate in (improvised ‘pitches’, market stalls or lock-up shops), (ii) their contractual relationship to this space (owner or renter) and (iii) their employment status (employee, employer or self-employed) (Young 2021). Those generating the largest profits in the market tended to be owners of lock-up shops (with average daily profits of approximately 150,000 USh / US$ 41) and those generating the smallest were renters of improvised spaces (23,000 USh / US$ 6).² While the former were often described as ‘high earners’ in the market, the latter were described as ‘low earners’; categories that are loosely analogous to socioeconomic class. NMSVT was established by a group of 187 shareholders (99 men and 88 women), of which the majority were stall leaseholders from the Buganda region in which Kampala is located. The new leadership of the market was elected from this group, with priority given to those who were seen to be educated, to ‘speak well’ and to be supporters of the ruling party in order to ensure the continued sympathies of the Ugandan president. Godfrey Kakooza, a long-term stall leaseholder with a legal qualification was declared the new chairman of the market, reflecting the broader influx of a technocratic class of men into the management of urban markets across the continent (Nkwankwo 2019; Omobowale 2019).

NMSTV began its tenure by creating a series of new committees that centralised historical features of market life, such as discipline and sanitation, which had previously been left at the discretion of individual areas and leaders. The new disciplinary committee comprised 13 members – 9 men and 4 women – all of whom were ‘high earning’ stall tenants and owners, of reasonable age (40 plus) with experience of handling disputes in their particular areas of the market. The committee members all had names originating from the Buganda region of Uganda in which Kampala is located, compared to 73% of traders in the market more broadly (author’s survey, 2014). This article analyses the records of the committee, which sat between 2009 and 2012. These records comprise case proceedings, witness statements, formal decisions, and letters outlining punishments and apologies, the existence of which represented an attempt by the leadership to demonstrate its legitimacy as a ‘modern’ market authority through analogy to the bureaucratic procedures of the state. The first author obtained access to these records towards the end of a twelve-month period of ethnographic fieldwork in the market (see Monteith 2017). A group of leaders and former committee members agreed to share the records on the condition that we preserve the anonymity of all those involved.

The records contain 67 cases seen by the committee, reduced down to 55 complete cases with documented start and end points.³ This is not a large number of cases for a market of 10,000 people. Indeed, most problems and disputes in the market continued to be resolved at lower levels through the ad hoc intervention of leaders within particular commodity chains (e.g. tomatoes, butchery, poultry) selected for their patronage, charisma, and demonstrated ability to resolve conflicts in the market. The new committee was a place for the hearing of significant disputes that could not be resolved at lower levels – for example, those involving multiple parties, powerful actors and/or particularly serious transgressions. The methodological implications of this are that disputes involving less influential actors in the market (often young people and new arrivals) are largely omitted from the analysis, although the details of such disputes were captured through semi-structured interviews and conversations conducted as part of the ethnography (see Monteith 2018).

When we asked vendors why they generally elected to report important cases to the market disciplinary committee rather than the police, they emphasised that the police were ‘corrupt’ (obukenuzi) and inefficient. Police investigations demanded considerable time and resources from plaintiffs, often requiring them to build the case themselves, including the facilitation of key witnesses. Furthermore, there was no guarantee of a favourable outcome. Indeed, imprisoning a debtor – the modus operandi of the Kampala police – was seen as counterproductive insofar as it prevented the accused from repaying their debt. Consequently, court cases were seen to be more expensive and riskier for both sides of a dispute. In contrast, the market disciplinary committee was expedient and had the capacity to enforce a broader range of judgements that were sensitive to the position of both the plaintiff and the defendant, preserving the flow of trade in the market. Committee leaders were able to locate and summon witnesses more effectively than the police but were also accused of self-interest at times (some of the most severe punishments were reserved for those accused of ‘disrespecting’ market leaders).

Table 1 provides an overview of the types of cases brought to the committee during its lifespan. The case record is dominated by verbal and physical disputes over space and debt. A typical case is one in which someone in the market is perceived to have encroached on a neighbour’s space – often by moving goods across a boundary – or failed to repay a debt accrued when purchasing items on credit. In response, the other party confiscates or destroys the offending items, leading to the outbreak of an argument (‘quarrelling’) that could then escalate into a physical confrontation (‘fighting’). Cases involving women tended to involve accusations of moral transgression (e.g. of witchcraft and adultery) which served to facilitate the social isolation of a rival in the market, while cases involving men often involved more direct threats of physical violence. Women were almost twice as likely to be accused of a transgression than men, reflecting the gendered makeup of both the committee and the norms and values which it sought to uphold (explored below).

Table 1. Market cases and accused persons, 2009–2012^a.

Cases		Accused persons
Type of charge	Frequency	Male	Female
Quarrelling (verbal)	13	8	19
Non-payment of debt	13	8	6
Use of bad/abusive language	12	5	19
Fighting (physical)	9	9	5
Neglect of leadership duties	9	11	3
Rumour mongering	7	0	17
Disrespecting market leaders	5	2	10
Use of threatening language	5	6	2
Domestic dispute	4	3	3
Obtaining or selling by false pretences	4	3	1
Use of witchcraft	1	0	7
Theft of property	1	1	0
TOTAL	83	56	92

^a The ‘types of charge’ described here are taken directly from the language of the meeting minutes, with the exception of ‘domestic dispute’ and ‘obtaining or selling by false pretences’. A single case often involved multiple charges and multiple accused persons; for example, seven women were accused in the single case of witchcraft. Of the 67 cases, 28 were reported by men, 25 by women and 14 by unspecified members of the disciplinary committee.

The following sections examine these cases in further detail, with a particular focus on three themes that emerged from the case record: property, debt and livelihood. These themes are loosely analogous to the three ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, money and labour which Polanyi (1957 [1944]) associated with the expansion of market economy, enabling us to explore the connections between the case records and broader processes of socioeconomic transformation in Uganda. Following Thompson (1971), we place emphasis on both the experiences of people involved in each case and the web of norms, values, and obligations in which they are entangled.

Disciplining the market

Property

A number of cases brought before the disciplinary committee concerned the issue of property, or more specifically, ownership of space in the market. The commoditisation of land in Kampala can be traced back to the 1900 Buganda Agreement, which divided crown (British) from mailo (Baganda) land, enforcing private tenure over vast swathes of communal land. Nakasero market was constructed by the British colonial authorities on ‘crown’ land, which was subsequently transferred into the ownership of the Kampala City Council (KCC) following Uganda’s independence in 1962. Shops and stalls in Nakasero market were sold on 49-year leasehold agreements in the 1960s as part of a process of economic nationalisation designed to create a new class of Ugandan business owners in urban centres. Rather than sold at market rates, many were given as gifts to civil servants and their families; for example, one of the leaders of the contemporary market inherited his stall from his father, who had been given four stalls while working for the Kampala City Council in the 1960s, reflecting the broader phenomenon of the hoarding of market stalls by the urban middle classes (Lindell, Ampaire, and Byerley 2019; Omobowale 2019). Today over two-thirds of people operating from shops and stalls rent their spaces from a leaseholder (author’s survey, 2014). The long-term leasing of stalls created a rentier class in the market, which continues to dominate institutions such as the disciplinary committee. However, ownership arrangements are complex and individual units frequently (sub)rented, sold and gifted. For example, an elder witness was called before the committee to clarify the ownership status of a shop behind the market office:

The place behind the office first belonged to Mirundi⁴ since the time of Bbosa [former market chairman]. After this, Mirundi rented it to Joseph [Mukasa’s brother] who then took responsibility. Before Mirundi, it belonged to Kyegera, whose aunt Nalumu, gave it to Mirundi.

Case 15, 24/03/2010

Such cases invoked a principle of private property. However, rather than an abstract right, this principle was contextualised in relation to the lineage of different leaders and families in the market. For example, the above case was settled not by the production of an impersonal document such as a deed of ownership but through the testimonies of elder vendors who were able to historicise the ownership of particular spaces in the market. In this way, property was understood to be embedded in social relationships in Nakasero, and gifts of property used to ‘to create connections’ and cement alliances; in this case between the families of Kyegera and Mirundi (Hanson 2003, 3).

A large number of the fights and quarrels in the case record (Table 1) were the result of boundary disputes between tenants:

Nalongo had a misunderstanding with Betty related to the space where they work from. Each accused the other of encroaching on their space. Nalongo reports that Betty uses her space and when she tries to talk to her she just abuses her and uses bad language, accusing her of being a witch (omulogo). Betty tells the committee that when the landlord gave her the shop, he showed her the boundaries and she has never exceeded them. She said even the landlord of shop 34 [Nalongo’s shop] agreed to these boundaries. Betty accepted that she had quarrelled with Nalongo … but she said that Nalongo told her that she had aborted many children. The committee concluded that both parties had abused the other and told them not to quarrel again in the market. Members of the committee visited the disputed space and told Berry to move a box of phones to clear the path to Nalongo’s shop. They also told Nalongo not to block the path outside Betty’s shop. Both parties agreed.

Case 55, 04/10/2011

The committee sought to resolve such blockages insofar as they impeded the mobility of customers and flows of trade in the market, but also the livelihoods of the traders (see below). Such cases were often embellished by gendered accusations of moral transgression; for example, of witchcraft, adultery, and abortion. Accusations of witchcraft in Nakasero served to place limits on individual accumulation, functioning as what Geschiere (1997) terms the ‘shadow side’ of kinship – or the stick enforcing the redistributive ethic of omutima omuyambi (‘a heart for helping’ others) (Scherz 2014). In making her case before the committee, Betty referenced a boundary that had been agreed by the ‘landlords’ (leaseholders) of the two shops, which was subsequently upheld by the committee. However, boundaries in other areas of the market were more difficult to establish:

Namagoye has been quarrelling with her neighbour Kiyabo for three months. The reason for this is that Kiyabo puts his produce in her space, and when she complains he abuses her. She also throws away his things when she finds them in her space. The last time they fought, Kiyabo had placed passion fruits on her space and she stood on them. Kiyabo then took some of Namagoye’s mangoes. When she tried to take them back, he twisted her arm and grabbed her neck.

Case 47, 12/07/2011

The above case is illustrative of the spatial dimensions of property in the market through which the placement of goods in someone else’s space was likely to result in their destruction and/or removal. Such cases were particularly prominent in the open areas of the market, where vendors pay a daily ‘pitch’ fee to the market association rather than a monthly rent to a landlord (Monteith 2018, 21). In the absence of material infrastructure, boundaries in this area of the market are largely the result of jostling and negotiation, expanding and contracting through everyday practices of socialisation and exchange. In contrast to shops and stalls, ‘pitches’ could not be bought and sold as capital goods, only rented from the market association and expanded in line with one’s social relationships in the market. ‘Newcomers’ (bapya) entering this area of the market without prior connections found it difficult to defend the boundaries of their pitch. In the above case, Namagoye and Kiyabo were instructed to apologise to each other (‘both accepted to forgive the other and pledged not to have misunderstandings again’) and write letters of apology to the committee.⁵

Success in Nakasero market, as in any marketplace, required access to commercial space. We have shown in this section that the disciplinary committee upheld a principle of private property insofar as it applied to the ownership of shops and stalls in the market, thus defending the interests of a rentier class and reproducing inequalities between leaseholders and renters. However, at the same time, stalls and shops were often gifted in ways that were suggestive of a system of personal patronage rather than impersonal market exchange. Furthermore, the complexity of ownership arrangements in the open areas of the market betrayed the binaries of owner/renter and landlord/tenant. Instead, claims over space were established via a process of day-to-day jostling and negotiation which necessitated an investment in social relationships in the market. In such areas, the disciplinary committee sought to resolve conflicts and remove blockages in order to facilitate trade and defend livelihoods, demonstrating an understanding of the market as a social as much as an economic space.

Debt

Claims to property often preceded claims to rent in the market, and both landlords and tenants used the disciplinary committee to resolve disputes around rent and debt. For example, the following case was brought to the committee by the tenant of a market stall in April 2011:

Ms. Ttonda reports that she was paying rent to Ms. Kisozi for 200,000 USh [per month]. However, Ttonda’s children became sick and she couldn’t work or pay rent for four months [800,000 USh / US$ 218]. When she returned, Kisozi did not let her continue in the place. Ttonda asked Kisozi to let her work so she could pay off the debt, but she refused … Kisozi told her to get a new place and refused to let her collect her items.

Case 41, 12/04/2011

Ms. Kisozi tells the committee that she wants Ms. Ttonda to pay some of the rent so that she can return her belongings and then write a commitment letter outlining how she will pay the remainder of the debt. Ms. Ttonda accepts to pay 200,000 now and the balance once her belongings have been returned. Kisozi says she will return all Ttonda’s items apart from the fridge. She says she will reduce the remaining debt from 600,000 to 400,000. The committee comments that it is ‘not fair’ to withhold the fridge.

Case 41, 10/05/2011

Ms. Ttonda comes to the DC with the balance of 400,000. All items that were confiscated by Ms. Kisozi (listed) have now been returned. Both parties sign.

Case 41, 13/03/2012

This case, which was a fairly standard case of rent default in Nakasero, complicates market-oriented understandings of debt in several ways: (i) the debt accrued by Ms. Ttonda was paid off over a relatively long period of time (11 months), (ii) the debt was reduced rather than increased over this time period, and (iii) it was deemed ‘unfair’ for the creditor to withhold productive goods (including the fridge) as collateral. Ultimately, one quarter of Ms Tamale’s debt (USh 200,000) was forgiven on account of her ill health. This debt was negotiated and amended in line with what she could reasonably afford to pay – a calculation was shaped by her health and ability to feed her family, as well as her income in the market.⁶ Indeed, the committee began many such cases by asking the debtor what monthly payments they could reasonably afford to make before establishing a repayment schedule based on this amount, enshrined in a ‘commitment letter’ signed by the debtor. This approach was generally supported by creditors and debtors insofar as it enabled the former to claim a significant proportion of the debt while protecting the latter from extortion. In short, the protocols of the disciplinary committee were designed to recover as much as possible of the landlord’s rent without destroying the livelihood of the tenant, upholding principles of affordability and ‘something for everyone’ in order to limit instances of exit and ruination (Clark 2002, 56).⁷

In this sense, the rental agreement was not interpreted in the context of an abstracted market economy (as ‘capital debt’ accruing interest), but in the context of an embedded market society, in which people possess diverse constraints and obligations outside of the formal rules of market exchange. While the committee upheld the principle of private property and rent in favour of the landlord, this principle was not absolute, but rather interpreted in the context of the socioeconomic circumstances of the tenant, including the welfare of their dependants. Economistic understandings of value were thus tempered by a concern for relational value – the positive value attached to the ‘creation, reproduction and extension of relationships’ (Elyachar 2005, 143).

The committee treated other forms of debt in similar ways. For example, there was a general understanding that suppliers took on a proportion of the risk when extending lines of credit to vendors in the market:

Mr. Katuntu sold Mr. Samula 98kg of beef worth USh 343,000 on 24/12/2010 on credit. Mr. Samula [subsequently] told him that the beef had not sold well and said that he would sell it over the Christmas season. After three days, Katuntu came back to collect his money but was told by Samula that he had failed to sell 20kg. Katuntu asked his friend Amoni to weigh the remaining beef for him, and Amoni guessed that there was 30kg remaining. Katuntu is now requesting payment for 68kg of beef. Samula testified that Katuntu had delivered more than he had expected and so some of the extra beef went bad [spoiled]. After listening to both sides, the committee decided that the loss of 98kg should be shared by both sides, so Mr. Samula owes Mr. Katuntu USh 171,500. The first payment is to be paid on 07/03/2011, followed by the balance on 22/3/2011.

Case 39, 22/02/2011

The case record contained a number of similar examples relating to the sale of watermelons (case 56), tomatoes (59) and mangoes (61), all of which spoiled after purchase. In each case, the committee divided financial responsibility for the loss between the buyer and seller. In this way, it served to collectivise debt rather than impose it on one particular party, reducing the risk of ruination and exit among petty traders. Debt was thus not understood as individualised and absolute, but rather relational and contingent and thus subject to negotiation and change. Traders’ interactions were understood to generate obligations to others outside of those defined by formal market economy, including an obligation to transact again in the future. These findings draw parallels with Kinyanjui’s (2019, 119) discussion of ‘solidarity entrepreneurism’ through which market vendors in Nairobi collaborate via collective allegiances in order to share spaces and transaction costs while deciding together ‘which risks to take and which to avoid’.

However, not all debts were considered equal. One financial commitment that was more difficult to negotiate in the market was that relating to the health and education of one’s children and a number of vendors asked the disciplinary committee to enforce school fee payments on their (ex-)spouses in the market:

Ms. Nsozi separated from her husband Mulira in 1996, and since then he has not been supporting their children. One of them is in Senior 3 and another in Senior 5.⁸ She says she is struggling to look after them, which is why she has come to the committee. The committee decided that Mulira should provide the committee with receipts of their school fees which they will keep in their files.

Case 66, 20/03/2012

In three out of four such cases (‘domestic disputes’), absent fathers were reported to the committee by their (ex-)wives and reprimanded for not contributing sufficiently towards the health and education of their children.⁹ In another example, a man accused of abandoning a woman in the market after fathering her child was ordered to gift her two kilograms of sugar and facilitate her transport to her home village. Such debts were understood to be more serious and less negotiable than the forms of debt examined above for two reasons. Firstly, unpaid school and medical fees directly impinged on the education and health of the children of market vendors and were thus seen to carry a more immediate social cost than debts owed to landlords or suppliers; a finding that is supported by the fact that moneylenders in the market charged lower interest rates for school fee loans in spite of the fact that these loans entailed higher levels of financial risk (see Monteith 2018). Secondly and relatedly, such debts suggested the subversion of a valued social role in the market – that of the male provider and ‘feeder’ of people (Scherz 2014, 19). Debts were thus interpreted and negotiated in the context of a market society in which success was measured not only in terms of economic assets but also ‘how people treat others and conduct themselves socially’, including a concern for the care and education of one’s dependants (Kinyanjui 2019, 121).

Livelihood

We have seen that ideas of property and debt were upheld by the committee not as universal laws, but moral principles which had to be weighed against other principles in circulation in the market. One such principle was that of the right to a living, and some of the committee’s most severe punishments were reserved for cases in which this principle was thought to have been violated:

Kyaluzi Benjamin reports that Ntabaala Jane tried to block the cleaners from passing while they were doing their work. He saw people making noise when the cleaners were trying to remove the dirt. Ntabaala refused to leave the area and wanted to beat them … She has been suspended from the market for one month for blocking the work of the people who were cleaning the market and for using a tongue which disrespected the leaders.

Case 9, 15/01/2010

The above case was reported by a leader in the chicken department of Nakasero market. The accusation was that Ntabaala had obstructed ‘the work of the people who were cleaning the market’, thus disrupting the livelihoods of said persons, disregarding the instructions of market leaders and endangering the cleanliness of the market. Vendors are expected to employ cleaners to remove dirt and spoiled produce from around their stalls for a daily sum of between USh 1000–2000 (US $0.26–0.52). Those engaged in this task are usually young men who arrive in Kampala without the contacts or capital required to enter more profitable sectors of the market – people that continue to be ⁠arrested and displaced from Nakasero under the colonial Vagrancy Act. When we asked why vendors employ these young men to clean their stalls rather than doing it themselves, they often invoked the moral principle of ‘something for everyone’ (Clark 2002, 56), emphasising that ‘these people, they are trying to survive’. At the same time, the young men provided a service that enabled wealthier members of the market to avoid forms of work that were understood to be dirty and degrading.

The case record contains two other examples of livelihood obstruction, or people being ‘chased’ from the market. In one case, Farida, a chicken vendor, returned from maternity leave to discover that one of her employees had set up her own business in the market. She phoned her former employee to tell her to ‘leave the market, because she has taken [my] customers’ and encouraged other people to do the same (case 25, 31/08/2010). Both women were instructed to write letters of apology to the committee. Farida’s letter reads: ‘I am writing for forgiveness for the mistakes I made that diverted me from the reason I am in the market. I hated on the following ladies … For the above reasons, I thank the committee for settling the matter and bringing us back to friendship’ (31/08/2010). In the second case, a female vendor paid USh 200,000 (US$ 55) to a group of people in the watermelon department ‘to chase away a lady called Sylvia’. Again, she was instructed to write a letter of apology.

James Ferguson argues that the work of ‘surviving’ in Southern Africa ‘is in large measure about accessing or making claims on the resources of others’ (2015, 94). Similarly, in Buganda, we have seen that institutions such as the Nakasero market disciplinary committee play an important role in mediating and legitimising such claims by punishing people who were seen to have neglected their obligation to feed others by obstructing or denying their work in the market. Jane (case 9, above) was handed a one-month suspension from the market, a serious punishment that was itself a form of livelihood obstruction. She brought this point to the attention of the committee in a carefully constructed letter of apology:

I apologise and I ask for forgiveness so that I can work again. I ask the leaders of the market for forgiveness for everything that I did, I have learnt, and I swear, my bosses (bakama bange) not to do it again … I request that you allow me to work again because I have a sick mother who can’t manage herself. I also look after my brother’s children who are orphans, in addition to my own, and the landlord is chasing us out of the house. So, if I am not working, the children will be without food for day and night, and my mother will die because she will not get treatment. My bosses, help me to return to my job and look for money (noonya ekikumi; literally ‘look for one hundred’ shillings).

Letter of apology, 19/01/2010

In her work in markets in Kilimanjaro, Tuulikki Pietilä (2007) observes that many women claimed to be trading in order to ‘feed their children’, a phrase which was understood to encompass the act of provisioning for all of one’s dependants. In a similar vein, Jane’s letter provides a moving account of the ways in which the various inequities of the market economy in Kampala restricted her ability to fulfil a moral duty to provide for her dependant family members. By connecting her work in the market to the welfare of her mother and (adopted) children, she invoked a relational understanding of value which brought into question the moral legitimacy of the committee’s verdict in a way that is reminiscent of the 2008 protests (‘don’t you want us to eat?’). Her punishment was subsequently reduced to a two-week suspension.

Conclusions

The classical literature on moral economy demonstrates the ways in which people in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England responded to the advance of market economy by drawing upon customs and traditions from the past (Thompson 1971). This process of struggle or ‘double movement’ (Polanyi 1957 [1944]) refused the separation of economy and society, subordinating the former to a broad range of social, moral and political principles beyond the realm of formal market exchange. In a not dissimilar way, we have shown that market vendors in twenty-first century Uganda responded to attempts to privatise the ownership of marketplaces by invoking principles derived from the past, including the moral obligation to feed others, which has a long history in the Buganda region (Hanson 2003; Scherz 2014). However, rather than invoked to ensure sustenance through the gifts of local chiefs, this principle was deployed to defend livelihoods through appeals to influential politicians and market leaders. In other words, the obligation to feed others was mobilised in order to gain access to the means of a livelihood (a space in the market), rather than its ends (the direct provision of food or capital).¹⁰ There are parallels here with the moral economies of post-war welfare states, which placed great moral emphasis on the right to work. However, vendors in Nakasero defended their livelihoods not through appeals to individual rights but collective obligations; for example, by listing their dependants. Economistic understandings of value were thus tempered by a concern for relational value, or the positive value attached to the ‘creation, reproduction and extension of relationships’ (Elyachar 2005, 143).

One of the key contributions of the classical literature on moral economy is the observation that all economic markets must be embedded in social institutions and communities in order to survive; even early capitalists recognised that ‘social peace was more important than absolute property rights or, rather, profit rights’ (Thompson 1993, 293). Rather than a uniform representative of the state, crowd, or capitalist class in Kampala, the Nakasero market disciplinary committee was an intermediary institution that represented the interests of a rentier class of predominantly male market vendors who were the primary beneficiaries of the policy to lease out market stalls in the early postcolonial period. The work of the committee largely involved reconciliating different interests in the market in order to preserve the flow of trade without challenging broader structural inequalities; for example, by recovering as much as possible of the landlord’s rent without destroying the livelihood of the tenant; by enforcing the credit of the supplier without bankrupting the petty trader. The work of the committee thus served to legitimise rather than confront stark material inequalities in the market. However, it placed these inequalities in the context of a market society in which wealth is understood to entail obligations to others. It is this moral principle – the obligation to feed others – that vendors continue to return to amid broader processes of privatisation and displacement in Kampala.

Statement of Ethics

Ethical approval was obtained from the ethics committee at UEA. Permission to conduct the interviews for the purposes of this research was obtained from each community leader/local authority. All respondents were fully informed about the purposes of this research and how their responses would be used and stored. The research was conducted with approval from UEA. All interviewees have been anonymised and gave consent to be interviewed for the purposes of this research.

Acknowledgements

This article was made possible by the trust and friendship of the people of Nakasero market. Mwebale nnyo. We are grateful to Ben Jones, Daniel Wroe Jörg Wiegratz, Cristiano Lanzano, Tijo Salverda and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions. All shortcomings remain our own.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Buganda is the name of the region, Baganda the people and Kiganda the culture (often shortened to ‘Ganda’).

2 Self-reported incomes from authors’ survey conducted in 2014.

3 The disciplinary records contain a mix of Luganda and English – most of the notes were written in Luganda, while official correspondence was often in English.

4 All names have been changed in order to preserve anonymity.

5 The predominance of the letter of apology within the case record illustrates both the importance of reputation in the market and the attempt by the (new) market leadership to reproduce its legitimacy.

6 In another example, a woman who owed money to a savings round had her debt reduced and repayment schedule extended after she contracted an eye problem (case 54).

7 A similar logic is visible in the formal economy, where creditors often accept reduced debts – or assets sold at auction – rather than risk forcing debtors into bankruptcy.

8 The Ugandan education system is divided between seven years of primary education (P1–P7) and six years of secondary education (S1–S6).

9 At the same time, female plaintiffs were often reprimanded by the committee for disrespecting their (absent) husbands and instructed to ‘be humble and start to respect [them]’ (case 30). It is for this reason that they are also listed accused persons in Table 1.

10 For example, it could not be invoked in order to claim access to property in the form of shops or stalls.