Kony 2012 Won’t Change the Lives of Ugandans
Kony 2012 Won’t Change the Lives of Ugandans
Adam Branch: Kony 2012 Won’t Change the Lives of Ugandans
Editor?s note: On Monday, Invisible Children launched a campaign in the form of a viral video, Kony 2012, now with over 55 million views on YouTube (and around 15 million on Vimeo). The video campaign, spread with the help of celebrity influence and social media, seeks to bring international accountability to Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord?s Resistance Army??a rebel group that has terrorized northern Uganda since the late 1980s,? most infamously by abducting children and forcefully conscripting them, as
Kony 2012 has attracted an unusual amount of attention, and with that attention has come much criticism?of Invisible Children, of the merits of the campaign, and of humanitarianism in Africa more generally. We asked Branch, a Senior Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala who works with Human Rights Focus, a grassroots human rights organization based in Gulu, northern Uganda, for his thoughts. (Reposted from Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa.)
From Kampala, the Kony 2012 hysteria is easy to miss. I?m not on Facebook or Twitter, and I don?t watch YouTube?but this week I have received dozens of emails from friends, colleagues, and students in the United States about the video by Invisible Children and the massive online response to it.
I have not watched the video. As someone who has worked in and done research on the war in northern Uganda for over a decade, much of it with a local human rights organization based in Gulu, the Invisible Children organization and their videos have infuriated me to no end. I remember one sleepless night after I watched their Rough Cut film for the first time with a group of students, after which I tried to explain to the audience what was wrong with the film while onstage with one of the filmmakers.
My frustration with the group has largely reflected the concerns expressed so eloquently by those individuals who have been willing to bring the fury of Invisible Children?s true believers down upon themselves in order to point out what is wrong with this group?s approach: the warmongering, the self-indulgence, the commercialization, the reductive and one-sided story it tells, its portrayal of Africans as helpless children in need of rescue by white Americans, and the fact that civilians in Uganda and Central Africa may have to pay a steep price in their own lives so that a lot of young Americans can feel good about themselves, and a few can make good money. This, of course, is sickening, and I think that Kony 2012 is a case of Invisible Children having finally gone too far. They are now facing a backlash from people of conscience who refuse to abandon their capacity to think for themselves.
But, as I said, I wouldn?t have known about Kony 2012 if it hadn?t been for the emails I?ve been receiving from the United States. I have heard nothing about Kony 2012 here in Kampala because, in a sense, it just does not matter. So, as a response to the online debate that has been going on for the last couple days, I want to explain why, from here, Kony 2012 can be ignored.
First, because Invisible Children is a symptom, not a cause. It is an excuse that the U.S. government has gladly adopted in order to help justify the expansion of its military presence in Central Africa. Invisible Children are ?useful idiots,? being used by those in the U.S. government who seek to militarize Africa, to send more and more weapons and military aid, and to build the power of military rulers who are U.S. allies. The hunt for Joseph Kony is the perfect excuse for this strategy?how often does the U.S. government find millions of young Americans pleading for it to intervene militarily in a place rich in oil and other resources? The U.S. government would be pursuing this militarization with or without Invisible Children?Kony 2012 just makes it a bit easier. Therefore, it is the militarization we need to worry about, not Invisible Children.
Second, because in northern Uganda, people?s lives will be left untouched by this campaign, even if it were to achieve its stated objectives. This is not because things have entirely improved in the years since open fighting ended, but because the very serious problems people face today have little to do with Kony. The most significant one they face is over land. Land speculators and so-called investors, many foreign, in collaboration with the Ugandan government and military, are trying to grab the land of the Acholi people, land that they were forced off of a decade ago when they were herded into camps. Another prominent problem is nodding disease?a deadly illness that has broken out among thousands of children who grew up in the government?s internment camps, subsisting on relief aid. Indeed, the problems people face today are the legacy of these camps, where over a million Acholi were forced to live, and die, for years by their own government. This is the legacy of the government?s counterinsurgency, which received full support from the U.S. government and international aid agencies.
Which brings up the question that I am constantly asked in the United States: ?What can we do?? (where ?we? tends to mean American citizens). In response, I have a few proposals. The first, perhaps not surprising from a professor, is to learn. The conflict in northern Uganda and Central Africa is complicated, yes?but not impossible to understand. For several years, I have taught an undergraduate class on the conflict, and although it takes some time and effort, the students end up well-informed and able to come to their own opinions about what can be done. I am more than happy to share the syllabus with anyone interested! In terms of activism, I think the first thing we need to do is to rethink the question: instead of asking how the United States can intervene in order to solve Africa?s conflicts, we need to ask what we are already doing to cause those conflicts in the first place. How are we, as consumers, contributing to land grabbing and to the wars ravaging this region? How are we, as American citizens, allowing our government to militarize Africa in the name of the War on Terror and securing oil resources? That is what we have to ask ourselves, because we are indeed responsible for the conflict in northern Uganda. In our desire to ameliorate suffering, we must not be complicit in making it worse.
