The social power of religious organisation and civil society: the catholic church in uganda

Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 77-83

  Kassimir, Ronald ^a  

^a SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHURCH ROLE; CIVIL SOCIETY; POLITICAL SYSTEM; RELIGION; SOCIAL ORGANISATION;

UGANDA;

EID: 0031736738     PISSN: 03063631     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. One author rightly states that there is 'a wide gap existing between theory and concrete investigation. That is, little empirical work has been undertaken by the champions of "civil society" to substantiate or elaborate their theoretical assertions'. M.G. Ngunyi, 'Religious Institutions and Political Liberalisation in Kenya', in P. Gibbon (ed.), Markets, Civil Society and Democracy in Kenya (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1995), 122.
2. In a superb study of the political orientation and organisational power of NGOs in Kenya, S.N. Ndegwa 'treats civil society actions as the dependent variables that need to be explained rather than as the causal variables of political reform', Tlie Two Faces of Civil Society: NGOs and Politics in Africa (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1996), 110, emphasis in original.
3. J.M. Waliggo, 'The Role of Christian Churches in the Démocratisation Process in Uganda 1980-1993', in P. Gifford (ed.), The Christian Churches and the Démocratisation of Africa (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1995), 224.
4. For typical cases, see J.W. Harbeson, 'Civil Society and political Renaissance in Africa', in J.W. Harbeson, D. Rothchild and N. Chazan (eds.), Civil Society and the State in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 1-29, L. Diamond, 'Rethinking Civil Society: Toward Democratic Consolidation', Journal of Democracy, 5, 3 (1994), 4-17; and N. Chazan, 'Africa's Democratic Challenge', World Policy Journal, 9, 2 (1992), 279-308.
5. See Ndegwa's savvy discussion of the 'organisational power' of NGOs in Hie Two Faces of Civil Society, chapters 2 and.6, and M. Bratton's analysis of the relationship between organisational autonomy and organisational capacity in 'Peasant-State Relations in
6. Postcolonial Africa: Patterns of Engagement and Disengagement', in J.S. Migdal, V. Shue and A. Kohli (eds.), State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, J.994), 231-54.
7. M.W. Foley and B. Edwards, 'The Paradox of Civil Society', Journal of Democracy, 5, 3 (1996), 39.
8. Ibid., 39.
9. For example, J. Haynes, Religion and Politics in Africa (London: Zed Books, 1996), chapter 4.
10. Examples of this optimism can be found in some of the essays in P. Gifford (ed.), The Christian Churches and the Démocratisation of Africa (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995); and II. Assefa and G. Wachira (eds.), Peacemaking and Démocratisation in Africa: Theoretical Perspectives and Church Initiatives (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1996).
11. This is the title of a recently published collection of the pastoral letters of the Kenyan Episcopal conference: R. Mejia, SJ (ed.), The Conscience of Society: The Social Teaching of the Catholic Bishops of Kenya (Nairobi: Pauline Publications Africa, 1995). Interestingly, the title is taken from a speech given by Jomo Kenyatta to a gathering of East African Catholic Bishops in 1976: 'The Church is the conscience of society, and today society needs a conscience. Do not be afraid to speak.'
12. Catholic Bishops of Uganda, ttîth a New Heart and a New Spirit (Kisubi, UG: St. Paul Publications-Africa, 1986), 69, 10.
13. At a 1993 conference of East African religious leaders, Gifford reports that 'some delegates actually argued that church was Africa's "only hope for social change'". P. Gifford, 'Introduction: Démocratisation and the Churches', in Gifford (ed.), The Christian Churches and the Démocratisation of Africa, 9.
14. Ibid., 11, emphasis in original.
15. Ibid., 13.
16. Ibid., 8.
17. S. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Ithaca, NJ: Cornell University Press, 1996).
18. Gifford, 'Introduction', 6, my emphasis.
19. See Haynes, Religion and Politics in Africa; Gifford, 'Introduction'; and P. Gifford, 'Some Recent Developments in African Christianity', African Affairs, 93 (1994), 513-34.
20. Ngunyi, 'Religious Institutions and Political Liberalisation in Kenya'. The role of churches in Kenya has attracted much attention from scholars. See A.C. Abuom, 'The Churches' Involvement in the Démocratisation Process in Kenya', in H. Assefa and G. Wachira (eds.), Peacemaking and Démocratisation in Africa: Theoretical Perspectives and Church Initiatives (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1996), 95-116; M. Bratton, 'Civil Society and Political Transitions in Africa", in Harbeson, Rothchild and Chazan (eds.), Civil Society and the State in Africa, 51-81; G. Sabar-Friedman, 'Church and State in Kenya, 1986-1992: The Churches' Involvement in the "Game of Change'", African Affairs, 96 (1997), 25-52; and D. Throup, '"Render unto Caesar the Things that are Caesar's": The Politics of Church-State Conflict in Kenya, 1978-1990', in H.B. Hansen and M. Twaddle (eds.), Religion and Politics in East Africa: The Period Since Independence (London: James Currey, 1995), 143-76.
21. R. Kassimir, 'Ambiguous Institution: The Catholic Church and Uganda's Reconstruction in the First Five Years of the NRM', in Leonardo Villalön and Philip Huxtable (eds.), The African State at a CriticalJuncture (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
22. Uganda Nevs Bulletin, 26 Aug. 1997.
23. New Vision, 18 June 1996.
24. With a New Heart and a New Spirit, 77. Elsewhere in this document, the bishops wrote that 'the leaders of the church, represented by the hierarchy and the clergy, will not identify themselves with any particular political grouping', 68.
25. Catholic Bishops of Uganda, Towards a New National Constitution (Kisubi, UG: Marianum Press, 1989), 19. They continued: 'The Church does not censure any government, of whatever form, provided that the whole governmental system is constituted in such a way that it is able to guarantee the common good, that is the respect of human rights and the welfare, both spiritual and material, of the citizens', 20, my emphasis.
26. For an argument against seeing religious identity in Uganda as 'primordial', see R. Kassimir, 'Catholics and Political Identity in Toro', in Hansen and Twaddle (eds.), Religion and Politics in East Africa, 120-40.
27. For the only detailed case study, See A.G.G. Gingyera-Pincywa, Issues in Pre-Independence Politics in Uganda: A Case Study on the Contribution of Religion to Political Debate in Uganda in the Decade 1952-62 (Kampala: East African Literatute Bureau, 1976).
28. Uganda National Council of Catholic Action, Memorandum on the Situation of the Catholic Missions in the Uganda Protectorate (1956), 7.
29. 'The Protestant approach to life, in Uganda, and its tendency to consider Protestantism as a step-stone [sic] to wealth, social superiority and power, is not alien to the spread of radicalist ideas', Uganda National Council of Catholic Action, Memorandum, 63.
30. The acronyms for the two parties were popularly satirised as religious emblems. DP became Diniya Papa (Swahili for 'Religion of the Pope') while UPC became United Protestants of Canterbury.
31. See Kassimir, 'Catholics and Political Identity'. In a sense, this is reverse of Laitin's case study of the Yoruba, where fairly well-defined and relatively stable notions of Anglican and Muslim identity did not evolve into a sense of common political interest and organisation. See D.D. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
32. Kalyvas discusses a similar process of Catholic political identity formation in nineteenthcentury Europe in The Rise of Christian Democracy, chapter 1.
33. '[T]he fact that it was originally to have been called the Christian Democratic Party indicates the analogy with European Democratic parties which guided the thinking of the founders of the DP.' C. Leys, Politicians and Policies: An Essay on Politics in Acholi, Uganda 1962-5 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967), 5-6. Even if the first part of this claim is true, it is not proof that Christian Democracy 'guided the thinking' of the DP's founders.
34. See R. Muscat (éd.), A Short History of the Democratic Party 1954-1984 (Rome: Foundation for African Development, 1984). To make matters more complicated, the volume was ghostwritten by a Makerere University History Professor who is a Protestant DP supporter.
35. In his landmark study of Christian Democracy, Michael P. Fogarty identified the DP as a Christian Democratic movement, noting in a new preface to his book 'the victory in the Uganda elections of 1961 of the Democratic Party, of primarily Catholic inspiration and with encouragement from the clergy and Catholic Action'. Christian Democracy in Western Europe, 1820-1953 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1957, 1974), xxvi. It is also true that over the years the DP has received advice and financial support from international Christian Democratic organisations, and particularly parties in Germany and Italy. Of course, these parties, and especially the latter, have become better known for machine rather than ideological politics.
36. Michael Twaddle writes: 'But had the DP really been established quite so firmly as a confessional party on the European Christian Democratic model in the early 1950s, one would expect more philosophical underpinning than just a few unfriendly remarks by one expatriate priest and just one pastoral letter ostensibly designed more tb protect Catholic interests in schools than .to foster the development of any one political party.' 'Was the Democratic Party of Uganda Purely Confessional Party?', in Edward Fashole-Luke el ai. (eds.), Christianity in Independent Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1978), 260.
37. At times, the church appeared to believe that the DP was already a Christian Democratic party. Thus, Gingyera-Pincywa is correct in referring to this as 'wishful thinking or an attempt to read into the Party's policy something it did not have'. Issues in Pre-independence Politics, 205.
38. Kathleen G. Lockard writes that most teachers, including Catholics, welcomed the nationalisation. 'In general the teachers felt that their own self-interest lay more on the side of government control, since the churches as employers had traditionally demanded high standards of Christian morality of their teachers, particularly on the question of monogamous marriage.' 'Religion and Political Development in Uganda 1962-1972' (Ph.D. Dissertation: o University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1974), 336.
39. Annual Report, Lay Apostolats in Fort Portal Diocese, 1966. A new association, set up to take the place of the Toro Catholic Council, contained wjthin its constitution: 'no Catholic Association can be tolerated or allowed in a Diocese if its aims and actions as well as its procedures disturb the peace of the Church.' For more details, see Kassimir, 'Catholics and Political Identity'.
40. See Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy, Chapters 1 and 2.
41. In his autobiography, Yoweri Museveni claims that this caused consternation for older DP leaders who felt that the influx would dilute its ability to pursue Catholic elite interests. 'Frightened by the new members, the old Catholic originals [of DP] starting talking of themselves as the only legitimate members of the party, banasang\\-aau-o, and referring to the newcomers as upstarts.' Sowing the Mustard Seed: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Uganda (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1997), 118. This is echoed even today by the Mobilisers Group, which emerged from within the party in the early 1990s to criticise the DP leadership's occasional alliances with the NRM and to purify it back to its roots (although it never framed the matter as Catholic roots.)
42. M. Louise Pirouet remarks that, under Amin, 'The churches found themselves dragged, against their will, into becoming foci of opposition, until eventually they became feared by those in power. 'Religion in Uganda Under Amin', Journal of Religion in Africa, 11, 1 (1980), 13. This is notably different from the pro-active stance taken by the mainline Kenyan churches in opposition to Moi, making it remarkable that Sabar-Friedman would state that in relation to the Kenyan churches 'It is interesting to note that, although significantly different in [their] historical background and [their] political affiliation, both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches of Uganda have taken upon themselves a similar role' under Amin and Obote. 'Church and State in Kenya', 29.
43. New Vision, 6 Aug. 1990.
44. Bishop S.B. Magambo, The Life and Mission of Lay People in Uganda (Kisubi, UG: Marianum Press,~1988), 9.
45. Bishop S.B. Magambo, 'A Critique of Ugandan Christian Education', in Proceedings of the Catholic Teacher Guild Seminar (Kinyamasika, Fort Portal Diocese, 3-12 Dec. 1988), 12, my emphasis.
46. Waliggo, 'The Role of Christian Churches', 220. Although he does not say so explicitly, Waliggo clearly implies (in ways that are consistent with my own observations) that these divisions were as pervasive within churches as they were across them. In an editorial, the independent newspaper Tlie Monitor stated that during the 1996 presidential elections, 'The Churches must face the fact that they failed to set the moral tone for the campaigns ... in the last 16 years, the Church has often seemed at sea; with sections of it hob-nobbing with the regime of the day and abandoning their duty to fight for justice, and only a few tenacious ones speaking out against wrong. At the beginning of this year, both the main Churches the Catholic and Protestant, and the Islamic leadership split in factions supporting the main presidential candidates'. 31 Dec. 1996. However, it should be noted that during the campaign, the Catholic Archbishop of Kampala, Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala, publicly criticised the behaviour of candidates 'and irregularities in the electoral system, an intervention denounced by some NRM supporters although not by Museveni himself. Still, the Cardinal's statements did not endorse the opposition or its stance of returning Uganda to a multi-party system.
47. This both in spite of, and because of, the fact that religion did emerge as the basis for political rivalry during several elections under the NRM, mostly in the two southwestern districts of Kabale and Bushenyi.
48. It should be added that there is little evidence that the DP would explicitly play the Catholic card if it was allowed to compete openly. The question is more whether old alignments would re-constitute themselves under a multi-party system that would replay the old Catholic-Protestant divide.
49. Waliggo, 'The Role of Christian Churches', 224.
50. Indeed, there is a strong sense, both among more conservative clergy and populists like Waliggo, that education - whether consciousness-raising or the more traditional forms of evangelism - leads directly to mobilisation and is thus the main mechanism to be employed in order to achieve it. In the sentence that immediately follows his call to organise the social groups he mentions, Waliggo writes: 'Civic and political education cannot be left to government agencies alone', privileging education as the primary tool for mobilisation. 'The Role of Christian Churches', 224.
51. For an account of religious identities as interest groups in Uganda, see'D.M. Mudoola, Religion, Ethnicity and Politics in Uganda (Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 1996).
52. See Kassimir, 'Catholics and Political Identity', and R. Kassimir, 'The Politics of Popular Catholicism in Uganda', in T. Spear and I. Kimambo (eds.), African Expressions of Christianity (forthcoming).
53. 'Small Christian Communities: 20 Years Later', AMECEA Documentation Service, 472 (1997), 15.
54. R.D. Putnam with R. Leonardi and R.Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
55. J. Aduta, 'The Laity and Small Christian Communities', Fort Portal Synod, Position Paper No. 7, (1989), 2.
56. He finally succeeded in 1994, when the parish of Kyarusozi was erected by the bishop who 'officially handed it over to the congregation of the Holy Cross'. Reported in Pact Bulletin [a publication of Fort Portal Diocese], October 1994.
57. See J. Burdick, Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Church in Urban Brazils Religious Arena (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); D.H. Levine, Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); and C. Smith, Tlie Emergence of Liberation neology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
58. 'Small Christian Communities', 16, 14.
59. Ibid., 11.
60. ïïïth a New Heart and a New Spirit, 57, my emphasis.
61. 'Small Christian Communities', 14.
62. See, for example, A. Fowler, 'The Role of NGOs in Changing State-Society Relations: Perspectives from Eastern and Southern Africa', Development Policy Review, 9, 1 (1991), 53-84.
63. 'Small Christian Communities', 15.
64. nith a New Heart and A New Spirit, 52.
65. 'Small Christian Communities, 17.
66. Waliggo, 'The Role of Christian Churches', 224.
67. Kassimir, 'The Politics of Popular Catholicism'.
68. C. Monga, The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996), 140.
69. Kassimir, 'The Politics of Popular Catholicism'.
70. While not discussing witchcraft, Mikael Karlström makes a very persuasive case for the connection between local conceptions of civility with order, and even hierarchy, in Buganda. 'Imagining Democracy: Political Culture and Démocratisation in Buganda', Africa, 66, 4 (1996), 485-505.
71. See P. Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1997).
72. Thus, while Fatten is correct in bringing concerns about witchcraft into the discussion of civil society, he misses the connection between witchcraft eradication and popular notions of what might be called civility, focusing instead on the allegedly 'obscurantist' nature of such practices. 'Witchcraft and counter-witchcraft rituals are deeply embedded in the private practices of daily existence; they are personal remedies to the overwhelming presence of evil, and they pervade civil society with.a supernatural aura. Civil society is thus not all enlightenment, it is also the domain of profoundly inegalitarian and obscurantist institutions and lifestyles. Nor does its opposition to the state automatically spell freedom, as "witches" - self-seeking predatory rulers and aspirants - can easily subvert it into corrupt and cruel ends.' R. Fatton, 'Africa in the Age of Democratization: The Civic Limitations of Civil Society', African Studies Revieiv, 38,2 (1995), 76-7.1 cannot imagine anyone who believes o in the 'reality' of witchcraft disagreeing with this last sentence, but it confuses the point, which is that it is 'witch-cleansing' that can spell freedom, or, at minimum, order.
73. New Vision, 17 June, 1997. In interviews conducted in June 1997, several church leaders stated that Bisaaka had forged ties with the NRM, and that some of the regime's officials were now followers of his movement.
74. Interview with Kasaija, 1 July 1997.
75. In Fr. Raphael, 'Driving Away Evil Spirits', Leadership, 357 (1996), 17.
76. Ibid.
77. 'The Guild is and remains an official movement of the Diocese, and, as is usual in the Catholic Church in such circumstances, no official pronouncement is made on the out-of-theordinary side-shows of the movement as long as what they teach is not heretical.' Note that the danger is what is taught, not what is practised. Ibid.
78. The term is from J.A. Coleman, 'Raison d'Eglise: Organizational Imperatives of the Church in the Political Order', in J.K. Hadden and A. Shupe (eds.), Secularization and Fundamentalism Reconsidered: Religion and the Political Order Volume 111 (New York: Paragon House, 1989).
79. Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle have coded Uganda as a 'blocked' and 'managed' political transition in their recent comparative study: Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
80. See M. Mamdani, 'Pluralism and the Right of Association', in M. Mamdani and J. OlokaOnyango (eds.), Uganda: Studies in Living Conditions, Popular Movements, and Constitutionalism (Vienna: JEP Books, 1994), 519-63. Mamdani points out that the NRM did not create these restrictions, which have been in place since the colonial period, but have not acted to remove them.
81. See Ndegwa, The Two Faces of Civil Society; and Foley and Edwards, 'The Paradox of Civil Society'.
82. D. Tutu, 'Identity Crisis', in Paul Gifford (ed.), The Christian Churches and the Démocratisation of Africa (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 96, my emphasis.
83. For the latter, see C.A. Drogus, 'Review Article: The Rise and Decline of Liberation Theology: Churches, Faith, and Political Change in Latin America', Comparative Politics, 27,4 (1995), 465-77.