Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits. Heike Behrend
an aspect of the theological meaning of crisis also shines through in the metaphor of the courtroom. For this court is, in a certain sense, a preliminary Last Judgment which also contains a promise of salvation.
Thus, the story of the journey to Paraa provides some of the local topics and images to which Alice had recourse in interpreting the crisis in Acholi. These images – rather than scientific categories – should guide the interpretation of the Holy Spirit Movement (cf., for example, Fernandez, 1979:40).
Political History
Uganda’s postcolonial history is one of violence and counterviolence. With the militarization of politics that had already begun under Obote in the 1960s, the state, which according to Hobbes ought to limit violence, has increasingly itself become an instrument of violent retaliation. Whoever took over state power was not only able to gain wealth, but also to take revenge – against members of other ethnic groups or religions – as in times before the existence of the state. The war of the Holy Spirit Movement must also be seen in this context.
After the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) toppled Idi Amin’s government with the help of Tanzanian troops and Obote returned to power – allegedly by means of rigged elections – a brutal civil war broke out in Uganda. The Acholi fought primarily on the side of the government army (UNLA) against the National Resistance Army (NRA), led by Yoweri Museveni. In this period of civil war, in which the Acholi suffered great losses, the spirit Lakwena appeared in Acholi on 2 January 1985, taking possession of Alice Auma, a young woman of Gulu.
Rivalries within the UNLA – Acholi soldiers suspected Obote of sacrificing them in battle to no purpose, while filling leadership positions with members of his own ethnic group, the Langi – led to a coup against Obote. Under the command of the Acholi Bazilio Okello, predominantly Acholi soldiers, together with some from the West Nile District and Sudan who had served under Idi Amin and whom Bazilio had won over, took Lira and then, in July 1985, Kampala. When they reached Kampala, Obote had already left the city and fled to Tanzania. Tito Okello, also an Acholi, became the new President. This was the first time in the history of Uganda that Acholi had achieved state power, which they used, like others before them, to amass wealth and wreak vengeance (on the Langi, for example). After this victory, the UNLA disintegrated into marauding bands who divided Kampala among themselves and plundered wherever they went.
Although the Okellos had concluded a peace agreement with the NRA in Nairobi in December 1985 – to this day the Acholi refer to these peace talks as ‘peace jokes’ – the NRA marched on Kampala as early as January, and, with the UNLA no longer able to put up effective resistance, brought down the Okellos on 26 January 1986. The Acholi had lost power again, and thousands of Acholi soldiers fled north to their home villages or across the border to Sudan.
After this defeat, Bazilio Okello tried to organize resistance in Gulu and Kitgum. The populace, including girls and women, were issued with rifles taken from the armouries of the barracks in Gulu. Former soldiers of the UNLA gave them makeshift military instruction and, together with soldiers from the West Nile District, the Acholi were able to slow the NRA’s advance northward. At Karuma and Kamdini, the government troops encountered bitter resistance, but the Acholi suffered catastrophic losses and were forced to withdraw. In March 1986, the NRA took Gulu and Kitgum. After this defeat, Acholi resistance appeared to have been finally broken.
The former soldiers returned to their home villages, hid their weapons, and tried to live as peasants. But few were able to do so. During the civil war, they had lived by plundering and had learned to despise the peasant way of life. The soldiers wanted the high life, I was told. Like returned emigrant workers, they had become internal strangers3 (Werbner, 1989:239), and their return caused unrest and violence. Some of them began stealing and plundering in the villages and terrorizing those they did not like. The elders tried to enforce their own authority over the soldiers by referring to ‘Acholi tradition’ (Acholi macon), but they seldom prevailed in the ensuing power struggle.
After the NRA had established itself as the occupying power, tensions, conflicts, denunciations, and acts of revenge continued to increase among the Acholi. Many of them used the presence of the NRA to settle old scores. They denounced former adversaries to the NRA or paid NRA soldiers to eliminate a rival.
A new NRA battalion of former Federal Democratic Movement of Uganda (FEDEMU) soldiers, who had allied with the NRA against Obote’s UNLA and had fought against the Acholi in the civil war, mostly in Luwero, was stationed in Acholi. These soldiers exploited the opportunity to avenge themselves upon their former opponents by plundering, murdering, torturing, and raping. Some Acholi former soldiers took their weapons out of hiding and joined the resistance movement, the Uganda People’s Democratic Army (UPDA), which had meanwhile been founded in Sudan. Many Acholi took the behaviour of the NRA as evidence that the new government had decided to kill all male Acholi, and their fear of revenge by the NRA was heightened by radio broadcasts from Kampala, which called the Acholi primitive and reviled them as criminals and murderers.4 When the NRA went so far as to order the general disarming of the Acholi, this recalled two traumatic events already mentioned in their history: first, the disarmament enforced by the colonial administration, which led to the Lamogi rebellion, and the murder of thousands of Acholi soldiers by Amin. While searching for weapons, some NRA soldiers began torturing Acholi by the notorious ‘three piece method’.5 And many were interned in so-called politicization camps,6 which resembled concentration camps. Thus threatened, more and more Acholi joined the UPDA.
Meanwhile, the UPDA, organized in a number of brigades under the supreme command of Odong Latek, began a guerrilla war. In contrast to the NRA, they knew the terrain and, at least in the beginning, were supported by the local population. They were thus able to force the NRA to withdraw from the countryside and to retreat to the cities of Gulu and Kitgum. But Odong Latek was unable to control the many UPDA groups, which operated more or less independently. Some of them began plundering and terrorizing the populace. If the peasants were unwilling to provide them with food, they more and more frequently took by force what was not handed over voluntarily. When it turned out that, despite initial successes, victory over the NRA would not come rapidly, many UPDA soldiers deserted and returned to their villages. But there, too, they created unrest and committed acts of violence.
On 6 August 1986, in this situation of extreme internal and external threat, the spirit Lakwena ordered his medium Alice to cease healing, since that was senseless, and to build up the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (HSMF) instead, in order to wage war against Evil.
The good Lord who had sent the Lakwena decided to change his work from that of a doctor to that of a military commander for one simple reason: it is useless to cure a man today only that he be killed the next day. So it became an obligation on his part to stop the bloodshed before continuing his work as a doctor. (From a report that Holy Spirit members provided to missionaries in June 1987).
Still in Opit,7 Alice was able to win over about 80 soldiers of the former UNLA and to train them in the Holy Spirit Tactics. With these soldiers, under the leadership of Dennis Okot Ochaya, a former driver in the UNLA, Alice attacked Gulu on 19 October 1986 (Catherine Watson, personal communication). They were driven off and suffered high losses.
After this defeat, on orders from the spirit, Alice moved to Kitgum to unite the guerrilla groups of the UPDA under her leadership. On 28 October 1986, she reached Awere, and a few days later, arrived at the UPDA headquarters near Patongo, where she negotiated with the commander of the 70th brigade of the UPDA, Lt.-Col. Stephen Odyek, called Ojukwu, who put 150 soldiers under her command. With these 150 soldiers, she began rebuilding the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces to conduct war against the NRA in the North.
Her success enabled her to recruit a large number of former soldiers who had become internal strangers. In this sense, the HSM can be interpreted as an attempt to solve the dilemma posed by the return of the soldiers: to discipline, reintegrate, and rehabilitate them.
The Internal Enemy
Various forms of witchcraft and sorcery existed and exist in Acholi, each with its own history (see Chapter 7.). The currently predominant forms, I was told, are first, poisoning,8