Paper short abstract:

What kind of government structures did the UNLF create at local level around Uganda – and what did those structures do? This paper discusses what was called the District Executive Committee in Tooro, western Uganda – asking who its members were, what they sought to do, and what they achieved.

Paper long abstract:

The District Executive Committee (DEC) was the key structure of the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) in what was then called Tooro District, in western Uganda. At a national level, the UNLF government was dominated by an elite of educated men, many of them former exiles, and was characterized by factional rivalries that undermined its capacity to govern This paper asks whether local structures like the DEC were similar in their composition and also explores the concerns – and effectiveness – of district-level authority. Tooro, like other parts of Uganda, faced multiple challenges in the wake of Amin’s rule and the conflict that had ended it: among which were looting of the business centers and homes of key figures, and a chronic lack of essential commodities. Tooro also faced particular a challenge - the divisions resulting from ethnic tensions which had seen persistent unrest since the early 1960s which called for renaming the district to Kabarole. Drawing on primary material from newspapers and the archives at the Mountains of the Moon University and National Archives, as well as interviews with former DEC members and others, this paper explores how people at a local level sought to make a new future for Uganda in the brief months of UNLF rule.