Guerrillas and Fish in Uganda

Abstract

On 29 January 1986, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was sworn in as President of the Republic of Uganda and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) and National Resistance Army (NRA) became the first guerrilla force to successfully overthrow a government in postcolonial Africa. Some thirty years after the NRM?s bush war was won, the Ugandan military, with President Museveni still at the helm, began officially waging what it calls a guerrilla war against its own citizens. The goal of Museveni?s second guerrilla war was not to bring forth yet another anti-imperial democratic revolution. It was instead designed to sustainably develop fisheries production in Lake Victoria, a task Museveni claims exclusive abilities to successfully steward for the benefit the Ugandan nation as a whole. Transformations in Lake Victoria?s fisheries ecology that predated the NRM?s rise to power, and indeed, predated the formal independence of the Ugandan state were shaped by and shape managerial logics that continue to justify violence against fishworkers in order to enact conventional conceptions of sustainability. Memories of tragedy and success bound up in national narratives of the 1981?1986 war for anti-imperial democratic revolution work to maintain managerial logics and regulatory regimes imposed by the former British colonial state.