Karamoja in drama to end vote rigging

Mandela Forum Theatre Group in Nakapiripirit, north eastern Uganda - photo by Vibeke Quaade

“Don’t you think we’re committing suicide as a country by selling our vote?” asks the impassioned director of a roomful of aspiring actors.

This is not a political rally but a scene from an unusual drama school, in a grimy hotel in Nakapiripirit on the eastern fringe of restless Karamoja region.

Twenty-four actors, aged 18 to 60, have come from all over Nakapiripirit to be part of an experiment in Uganda’s democratisation process.
Since July 2008, they have engaged in Forum Theatre, a method of showcasing communal problems on stage and then solving them as a community. This style uses untrained actors from local communities to work on shoe-string budgets, without props, lighting, or salaries.

But the world is its stage, and here, amidst the heat, billowing red dust, manyattas and vast herds of cattle, ringed by rugged Mount Kadam, you can almost believe it.

But what does democracy mean to these actors, whose tribesmen are often caricatured as trigger-happy cattle rustlers and uncompromising traditionalists?
“To me, democracy helps to shape the behaviours, the manners of any person that lives in a particular community,” says Charles Eko, an unemployed 23-year-old who trained to be a school teacher.
“Democracy helps to sustain a living. If democratically we don’t practise certain things, we shall end up being in a total mess.”
One might argue that Karamoja is already a mess. Just 11% of the population is literate, there are no tarmac roads, no electricity, no running water; and chronic drought is threatening widespread famine. It is even messier for women in this fiercely patriarchal society, for they bear the brunt of decisions made exclusively by men.
Mary Namwayi, a peasant farmer, believes “democracy means working together in a community and sharing ideas.”

She expects Forum Theatre to promote a culture of shared responsibility between the sexes.
“It can benefit us, because some of our people don’t know what democracy is. Since we are going now to take all these skills to them, some of them will wake up [and learn that rather] than just sitting and begging, you work together in your community.”

Her co-actor, 18-year-old student, Lilly Lopua, states: “I support democracy because … it will improve our status, the way people live. This issue of democracy will help the people, especially those who are still ignorant, to evaluate, to know the good part of it and then the bad part.”
She added: “And in case of corruption, democracy will help to evaluate that.”

It seems odd to bring democratic ideas rather than business opportunities to this struggling district, but changing the way people think about their own lives is central to Forum Theatre and to its proponents in Nakapiripirit. Organised by the International Anti-Corruption Theatre Movement (IATM), the programme is coordinated by the Uganda chapter of the Association for World Education (AWE) with support from MS Uganda (Danish Association for International Co-operation). IATM trains local actors in Forum Theatre techniques so that they can transmit basic messages about democratic living back to their communities. It also encourages them to discuss ideas of nationhood and solidarity, helping to pin-point impediments to growth in their own societies.

In this way, “you can draw in the population to understand that actually they have rights, that some people misuse the offices they have, and that sometimes, the community itself is cheated,” explains John Kakaire Menya, IATM’s Executive Secretary and an accomplished actor himself.
In Nakapiripirit, actors identified two burning problems: ‘undemocratic families’ and ‘undemocratic elections’. Actors were taught how to capture and dramatise the essence of these problems, and to improvise scenes, dialogue and scripts around them.
While the plays highlight a problem, they offer no solution. Rather they invite the audience to discuss what it has seen and to suggest resolutions where all the interested parties can leave without feeling aggrieved.

Commenting on the choice of issues, IATM’s Programme Officer, Fred Musisi Munagomba, says “people treat opposition as enmity in this country. That’s the trouble we have. But what we don’t practise in our own lives, we can’t expect our government to practise.”

His sentiments resonated with pupils of Nakapiripirit Senior Secondary School where the actors showcased their newly acquired skills. Their play - about an undemocratic family where the unschooled pastoralist son receives the lion’s share of his father’s love and financial support, while the daughter is denied an education and stays home catering to every need of her family - was familiar to the young audience.

Mary Amodoi Lomongin, AWE’s Progamme Officer in Nakapiripirit, feels the programme is working.
“There are certain things that happen in society that people just ignore and feel ‘this is the way life is’. But when they look at Forum Theatre, people realise that some of the things that happen in their families, the things they have believed in, are really in the community and have to be corrected.”

Local leaders were certainly fleet-footed when actors set up stage under the shade of an acacia tree in Nakapiripirit market, and enacted a typical scene of vote rigging before the gathered crowd.
Lilly Lopua played a politician offering change through good legislation. However, she lost to ‘Mr. Aisu Ben’ the incumbent, whose supporters chanted “our man, no change!”, as he bought their vote for Shs 400 each, the equivalent of a cup of kwete, a local brew.

Town councillors watched apprehensively but slipped away before the audience could point out who they believed to be responsible for this situation.
“Many people don’t know their rights and our culture has been to not challenge those in authority,” Mr. Kakaire observes.
 
“We believe that by providing an opportunity for [them] to know their rights, you may be creating a mass movement where people can be able to wake up and say, ‘we demand that this is done correctly’.”
The crowd was, in fact, waking up. Elders cursed the actors and shook their sticks at them for making fun of those in power. Several people confused the play for the real thing and were disappointed. Others felt they traded poverty for a cup of kwete every five years, and looked genuinely ashamed of their own complicity.

devapriyo_das@yahoo.co.