The politics of the Luweero skulls: the making of memorial heritage and post-revolutionary state legitimacy over the Luweero mass graves in Uganda

In Uganda, the 1981–1986 civil war mainly took place in the “Luweero Triangle” area where the National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M) guerrillas were based, fighting against the Obote regime’s regular army. The war resulted in an estimated 50,000–300,000 civilian deaths in this region. At the end of the war, thousands of unidentified human remains were found in the area in forms of skulls and bones. The Luweero skulls and bones would later be politically used through memorialization by the victorious NRA/M as a “scarecrow” propaganda instrument. Used from the early aftermath of the war, and especially during the 1996 elections, it aimed to mark the contrast between the terror of the previous Obote regime and the ruling NRM government, which prides itself on having brought peace and security in the country, consolidating the post-revolutionary state’s legitimacy. This article, based on archives and fieldwork interviews, explores the fate, memorial heritage making and political use of the Luweero skulls and bones in an historical perspective. It questions the political effectiveness of this instrumentalization of fear, as well as the success of the memorial heritage building to which the Luweero skulls were subjected, and finally discusses the conflicts that emerged from these policies between the central government and local Luweero residents and leaders.