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History in Africa 34 (2007) 421-426

The Tricksters of Karamoja
Mustafa Kemal Mirzeler
Western Michigan University

I

Karamojong oral tradition provides several trickster characters such as the rabbit, the self-appointed moral guard. This rabbit pretends to defend the weak and the powerless, yet secretly steals from them, but in the end gets exposed for what it really is. Then there is the clever fox, which skilfully tricks people with its clever manipulations, convincing them that it is honest and upright, not unlike the rabbit, but then it too gets caught stealing. Napeikisina, the one-breasted villain trickster, the symbol of humanity's penchant for evil, masquerades her insatiable cannibalistic propensities and desire for recognition, but her penchant for evil eventually becomes apparent, thus frightening people, and like all the other tricksters she too gets caught.

Ben Knighton seems to possess some of the attributes of some of these tricksters. With amazing legerdemain, he skilfully manages to conjure up oral and written texts in an attempt to persuade people to believe that what they read is authentic, in order to offer himself as the paramount authority on all matters Karamoja. But he too ends up getting caught, like all the Karamojong tricksters.

II

Luckily, there are lessons to be learned from Knighton's otherwise inexplicable departure from accepted editorial norms. These are not limited to the violation of certain principles that govern intellectual disagreement, fairness, and justice, but also the integrity of the historical record.1 By his [End Page 421] distortions—which can only be purposeful—of both oral and written texts, his silent inattention to details, and his repeated departures from editorial norms, Knighton creates not only a fictionalized MY2000, but also a fictionalized Karamoja.

Knighton cannot simply claim that he put inverted commas to "five sentences" with an intention of checking with the original article and that for some obscure reason his "intention was never executed." Anyone reading chapter 5 of Knighton's work, which is the most important chapter of his book since all the reviewers refer to it, would realize that his main arguments have been derived from a version of my work which he has mangled virtually beyond recognition, forcing my texts to say things that I clearly neither said nor implied.

III

Knighton's assertion regarding the voice of Amuk is no less flawed, since Amuk's statement refers neither to the Teso district nor to the Seredo sorghum. At the same time, his labored definition and discussion of warlord-vs-war-leader merely protracts a moot argument of no obvious significance. While he extensively disputes that Nakapor was and is a firemaker, he claims that he had sadly forgotten to ask "Lodoc [sic] about fire-maker" when he interviewed him on 14 October 2005. Knighton has been so fixated for the last several years with Nakapor not being the firemaker that he has challenged that fact in all his various publications in ways that portray me as a fabricator of stories, yet he asks readers to believe that he forgot to ask Lodoch about this fact when he interviewed him in 2005?! Moreover, Knighton did not ask that burning question to Nakapor himself, even though he lives next door to Lodoch. It is not a rhetorical question to wonder how Knighton could not know who the firemaker is, since this is common knowledge among people who live in the area, and since Nakapor has been an important politico-religious functionary of the Jie people for many years—and lives next to one of his chief informants. Nor is this knowledge arcane, nor confined to the Karamoja. For instance, in narrating her memory of Nakapor, Sr. Camilla Roach states that:

It is in connection with sorghum that I remember the man Nakapor, the firemaker. When I was in Kotido I did hear of this man and that he was a very important person. I got to see him on an occasion when I was invited to attend a sorghum ritual. I was part of a group going to this celebration. I...

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