Claiming Kabale: racial thought and urban governance in Uganda

Abstract

As Uganda's postcolonial leaders Milton Obote and Idi Amin sought to pin down Asians as legal and discursive subjects between 1969 and 1972, they invoked a contested administrative, political and social history to promote Africanisation initiatives. Traders targeted by the 1969 Trade Licensing Act in small towns such as Kabale reshaped malleable racial and legal categories in local administrative struggles over the control of urban space that did not map neatly onto policy-makers’ visions. Nevertheless, the perceived decisiveness of Milton Obote's legislation and of Idi Amin's subsequent expulsion decrees has obscured from subsequent narratives the messy politics of Uganda's urban spaces. This article draws attention to the opportunities and limits of legal claim-making at the intersection of racial thought and urban governmentality during the Trade Licensing Act's uneven implementation.