Populism-in-state-practice under neoliberalism: Museveni’s ad-hoc squads to ‘halt all evictions’ from land in Uganda

Populism in Africa has been studied as political rhetoric, strategy and performance, with focus on ethnicity, nationalism, mobilisation and elections. Less attention has been given to populism-in-practice, specifically populism-in-state-practice (PISP): how a populist rhetoric by an actor in power gets translated into an administrative/executive intervention, and how this fares on the ground. This paper uses the case of populist interventions of President Museveni in neoliberal Uganda to address rampant land conflicts in the 2010s – specifically his ad-hoc initiatives aimed at ‘helping the poor’ by ‘stopping’ evictions – to explore characteristics of PISP. We thus contribute to the literature through an analysis of the implementation of a populist measure under neoliberalism. Using land laws, decided court cases, government statements, and media reports, our analysis shows that although somewhat helpful in the interim, the initiatives unleashed new turmoil, extended land (tenure) insecurity, advanced a Presidentialisation of justice delivery, deepened institutional impasse and suspended institutional efforts that could advance pro-poor change. PISP did not address the root causes of the problems that it set out to tackle, and failed to alter the legal insecurities, and perilous power position of the declared beneficiaries. Yet, it enhanced political legitimacy of the President and state.