Religious (de)politicisation in Uganda’s 2016 elections

Abstract

Religion has influenced Ugandan politics ever since colonial times. While the interrelations of religion and politics have altered since the coming to power of president Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM), religion continues to influence Ugandan public culture and formal politics in important ways. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in Kampala and Acholi, as well as analysis of media reporting and discussions in social media, this article focuses on the role of religious leaders during Uganda's 2016 parliamentary and presidential elections. We argue that the striking differences between Ugandan clerics' teaching on politics relate in part to genuine differences in religious beliefs, but also to patronage, intimidation, and ethnicity, and to the strategic calculations religious leaders make about how best to affect change in a constricted political environment. In discussion with previous research on religion and politics in Africa, and utilising analytical concepts from the study of publics, the article proposes a model of religious (de)politicisation, whereby both the politicising and depoliticising effects of religion are acknowledged. To do so, the analysis distinguishes between NGOised and enchanted planes of religion, and shows that on both planes, religion contributed simultaneously to enhancing and diminishing the space for public debate in election-time Uganda. While many religious leaders actively or silently supported the incumbent regime, religious leaders also took vocal public stands, fostered political action, and catered for vernacular imaginaries of political critique, by so doing expanding the space of public debate. However, by performing public debate that remained vague on crucial issues, and by promoting a religious narrative of peace, religious leaders participated in the enactment of a façade of political debate, in so doing legitimising the autocratic facets of Museveni's hybrid regime. Acknowledging religion as an important constituent of public culture contributes to more nuanced understandings of election dynamics in Eastern Africa.

Unravelling Church Land: Transformations in the Relations between Church, State and Community in Uganda

“…Increasingly, therefore, churches have come to be associated with money and their leaders seen as greedy, a perception enhanced by cases of public co‐optation of religious leaders into patronage relations with politicians. In the run‐up to the 2016 elections, for instance, President Museveni appeared at a mosque waving a land title, prompting the cleric in charge to insist that his followers vote for the NRM (Alava and Ssentongo, : 687). This has reduced the legitimacy of religious leaders as public authorities.…”

State regulation of religion in Uganda: Fears and dilemmas of born-again churches

“…Museveni seems to be happy and comfortable with the born-again churches, as they have helped the state to police the minds of Ugandans. Indeed, Alava and Ssentongo (2016) acknowledge that the religious and political landscape has become largely pentecostalised, as born-again pastors have helped the government to keep citizens away from being critical of the Museveni government. This attitude of the born-again Christian pastors has been evident in other countries like Brazil, Liberia, and Zambia where they have turned themselves into political clientele of the reigning governments (Bremner, 2013, p. 196;Sperber and Hern, 2018).…”

Contextualizing citizenship in Uganda

“…This kind of hybrid regime, and the many contradictions and tensions that characterize it, provide the context for citizenship practices in Uganda today, especially when it comes to political participation and state-citizen relationships. Despite the multi-party system, in practice the NRM party retains such a tight hold on power that the state and the NRM are largely inseparable in the eyes of many Ugandan citizens (Alava & Ssentongo 2016). In the following section we turn to some elements that characterize contemporary discussions on the citizenship environment in Uganda, which provide lenses for understanding the contexts of different citizenship practices, both in the vocally contested political sphere and in everyday life.…”

“…Museveni's disbanding of earlier political parties, the two biggest of which were closely connected with the Uganda's largest churches, transformed the public role of religion: the churches' direct ability to influence politics decreased, yet they maintained a notable capacity to mobilize people at the local and national levels, with religious leaders employing their highly visible positions to take part in and influence public debates (Alava & Ssentongo 2016). At the local level, alongside the activities of religious leaders, many of whom are respected as public authorities, a variety of local church groups exist to provide arenas for participation in parish decision-making and in various development initiativesexamples include parish councils, the Mother's Union of the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church's Small Christian Communities.…”