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Description of  To Speak and Be Heard: Seeking Good Government in Uganda, ca. 1500 2015 (New African Histories)

0821424432 rar A history of a political practice through which East Africans have sought to create calm, harmonious polities for five hundred years. To speak and be heard is a uniquely Ugandan approach to government that aligns power with groups of people that actively demonstrate their assent both through their physical presence and through essential gifts of goods and labor. In contrast to a parliamentary democracy, the Ugandan system requires a level of active engagement much higher than simply casting a vote in periodic elections. These political strategiesassembly, assent, and powerful giftscan be traced from before the emergence of kingship in East Africa (ca. 1500) through enslavement, colonial intervention, and anticolonial protest. They appear in the violence of the Idi Amin years and are present, sometimes in dysfunctional ways, in postcolonial politics. Ugandans insisted on the necessity of multiple voices contributing to and affirming authority, and citizens continued to believe in those principles even when colonial interference made good governance through building relationships almost impossible. Read more