The Archival Afterlives of Prison Officers in Idi Amin’s Uganda: Writing Social Histories of the Postcolonial State

Abstract

Abstract:Africans historians have recently paid more attention to postcolonial archives, trying to locate these elusive collections as well as thinking more critically about how to use them. Uganda, in particular, has been an important site for reconsidering the role of postcolonial archives in historical research. Using the archives of Uganda Prisons Service as a case study, this article explores how official records can illuminate the social histories of public servants and the postcolonial state. Along with surveying the state of Uganda’s official archives – particularly those of the Uganda Prisons Service – it explores how these documents provide insight into the everyday experiences and concerns of prison officers after independence. Beyond its bureaucratic functions, paperwork served as a site in which officers could negotiate their responsibilities and relationships. Through the archives of the Uganda Prisons Service, we learn about the social worlds of prison officers within and beyond the prison walls, thus better understanding their experience of public service beyond narratives of corruption and brutality. Ultimately, this article demonstrates the ways in which official archives can be used to study the postcolonial state from a social history perspective.

Prisoner releases in postcolonial Uganda: Power, politics, and the public

“…The central government had the Uganda Prisons Service (UPS), which managed all those with long-term sentences as well as prisoners categorized as "White" or "Asian," reflecting the racist hierarchies created by the colonial state. Despite their association with colonial repression, prisons remained a central pillar of the penal system following independence (Bruce-Lockhart, 2018). The system became increasingly centralized in the postcolonial period and now exists solely under the Uganda Prisons Service (Martin, 2013: 77).…”

Introduction: African penal histories in global perspective

“…First, the articles by Daly, Mester, and Super reflect the increased attention to postcolonial systems of punishment (Alexander, 2013; Berridge, 2016; Bertlesen, 2011; Machava, 2011, 2019; MacDonald 2012; Bruce-Lockhart, 2018; Mbembe, 2019; Quarshie, 2021; Pfingst and Kimari, 2021) but there is still much work to be done in this area. As Bruce-Lockhart (2022) argues, scholars need to critically analyze why and how prisons and other elements of colonial penal systems persisted after independence. While scholars have shown how European colonial regimes imposed penal systems throughout empires, they have not adequately analyzed why prisons, police, and other aspects of colonial punishment not only endured in postcolonial states, but remained central to governmentality.…”

“…We would like to end by outlining some of the important new agendas and directions in this field. First, the articles by Daly, Mester, and Super reflect the increased attention to postcolonial systems of punishment (Alexander, 2013;Berridge, 2016;Bertlesen, 2011;Machava, 2011Machava, , 2019MacDonald 2012;Bruce-Lockhart, 2018;Mbembe, 2019;Quarshie, 2021;Pfingst and Kimari, 2021) but there is still much work to be done in this area. As Bruce-Lockhart (2022) argues, scholars need to critically analyze why and how prisons and other elements of colonial penal systems persisted after independence.…”

“…It has been over twenty years since the publication of Florence Bernault's edited volume Enfermement, prison et châtiments en Afrique: du 19e siècle à nos jours (1999), a first of its kind collection that helped establish the field of African penal history. 1 Since then, this field has greatly expanded (see Alexander and Kynoch, 2011; Roberts 2013; Waller, 2017) with innovative research on topics such as capital and corporal punishment (Anderson, 2005; Hynd, 2008; Gendry, 2018; Pierce, 2001; Ocobock, 2012), colonial and postcolonial prisons (Thioub, 1999; Branch 2005; Diallo 2005; Braatz 2015; Hynd 2015b; Brunet-La Ruche 2016; Konaté 2018; Machava 2019; Bruce-Lockhart 2022), prison protests (Filippi, 2012), forced and penal labour (Sene, 2004; Hynd, 2015a; Tiquet 2018), indigenous forms of punishment (Braatz 2015; Balakrishnan, 2020), political imprisonment (Alexander 2012; Branche 2014; Munochiveyi 2014; Deslaurier 2019), detention without trial (Lobban, 2021), detention, re-education or concentration camps (Elkins, 2005; McCracken, 2011; Cruz and Curto 2017, Machava, 2019), and the relationship between penal reform and prison violence (Sarkin, 2008; Gillespie, 2011). Such studies have highlighted the significant of race and ethnicity to African penal regimes, but also their gendered (Zimudzi, 2004; Bruce-Lockhart, 2014), generational (Fourchard 2011; Hynd 2018) and economic/capitalist dynamics.…”

Government work in Idi Amin's Uganda

“…Doreen Kembabazi, for example, draws from the archives of the Family Planning Association of Uganda to cast light on the medical doctors and philanthropists who expanded women's access to healthcare (Kembabazi 2020). Kate Bruce-Lockhart shows that prison warders – shaped by an inherited code of conduct – upheld standards and protected prisoners’ dignity, even in times of awful violence (Bruce-Lockhart forthcoming). Marissa Mika draws on the remarkable archives of the Uganda Cancer Institute to show how medics struggled – in times of crippling financial constraint – to provide sick and suffering people with first-class care (Mika 2021).…”