11:30 - 13:00
Oral session
Room: Muirhead – Room 121
Stream: Slavery and Marriage in African Societies
Chair/s:
Boniface Ojok
Moo marriage, native marriage, and forced marriage in Lango Society, northern Uganda
Eunice Apio
University of Birmingham, Birmingham

On 14 July 2013, Obua Elisa, a seventy eight year old clan leader of the Alira in Ilera village (Apii) of Ayer sub county (Kole district, northern Uganda) whose maternal grand-mother Atoke Rhodia was a trophy woman from Bunyoro, explained that Rhodia was a moo of his grandfather Olol who had fought in Bunyoro. In Lango, captured individuals were referred to as moo, so that a warrior would say, this is my moo (man moo na). This paper compares ‘moo’ marriages between Lango men and women considered war trophies in pre-colonial and early colonial times with the more recent case of forced marriages between girls from Lango and men in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The comparison is contextualized in the analysis of the changing pattern of marriage in Lango, and it focuses specifically on the role and status of women in these different types of marriage. Even though in both moo and LRA marriages women were forced into relations they had not sought, Lango culture today has separate notions for these unions. In the first case, the Lango considered ‘moo’ wives outsiders; by contrast, the girls abducted from Lango villages and turned into ‘bush wives’ by LRA militants were insiders: they were the daughters, sisters and wives of Lango men, who ‘legitimised’ moo with daughters of ‘outsiders’, and frowned on the LRA for practicing the same with their (Lango) daughters. At the same time, the LRA used ideas of marriage in northern Uganda (and Lango) to cultivate and sustain conjugal relationships with these girls. This paper explores critically the nature of these relations and aims to explain what accounts for their different conceptualization in Lango culture.


Reference:
Tu-A39 Slavery-P-001
Presenter/s:
Eunice Apio
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Muirhead – Room 121
Chair/s:
Boniface Ojok
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
11:30 - 11:45
Session times:
11:30 - 13:00