Heike Behrend - Alice Lakwena & the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1986–97

Alice Lakwena & the Holy Spirits

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Alice Lakwena & the Holy Spirits

War in Northern Uganda Heike Behrend

forthcoming

Alice Lakwena & the Holy Spirits

War in Northern Uganda 198597

HEIKE BEHREND

Translated by Mitch Cohen

James Currey
OXFORD

Fountain Publishers
KAMPALA

EAEP
NAIROBI

Ohio University Press
ATHENS

eBook edition published 2016

Ohio University Press
www.ohioswallow.com

James Currey
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
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1 2 3 4 5 03 02 01 00 99
Originally published as
Behrend, Heike: Alice und die Geister:
Krieg im Norden Uganda
Munich: Trickster, 1993
(Uroboros; Vol. 4)

Translated with the financial support of Inter Nationes

ISBN 9970-02-197-4 (Fountain Publishers Paper)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Behrend, Heike

Alive & the spirits : war in northern Uganda, 1985-97.
(Eastern African Studies)

1. Acoli (African people) - Religion 2. Religion and politics - Uganda 3. Spiritualism - Uganda. 4. Uganda - History - 1979 - I. Title

299.69761

ISBN 0-85255-248-3 (James Currey Cloth)
ISBN 0-85255-247-5 (James Currey Paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-8214-1310-4 (Ohio University Press Cloth)
ISBN 0-8214-1311-2 (Ohio University Press Paper)

Typeset in 10/11pt Baskerville
by Long House Publishing Services, Cumbria, UK
Printed in Great Britain
by Villiers Publications, London N3

ISBN 978-1-78204-784-1 (James Currey eISBN)

ISBN 978-0-8214-4570-9 (Ohio University Press eISBN)

For Dan Mudoola

Figures & Tables

FIGURES

TABLES

Preface

JOHN MIDDLETON

On 2 January 1985, an Acholi woman from northern Uganda named Alice Auma was possessed by an alien Christian spirit known as Lakwena (Messenger in Acholi), and became known as Alice Lakwena. From this event ensued a powerful prophetic movement, the Holy Spirit Movement, and its very nearly successful military insurrection against the government of Uganda. Alice was still alive, a refugee in Kenya, when this book was published. A last report was of her sitting in a bar drinking gin and Pepsi-Cola: Lakwena had deserted her. Hers was a personal tragedy. But if we look behind her, as is done in this valuable book, we can discern a far greater tragedy, namely, the history of the many thousands of Acholi men and women who took her as their prophet and followed Lakwenas message to put right the cruel and sinful world in which they lived, a message that led them to defeat and even greater misery. Alices Holy Spirit Movement failed: yet, like many failures it transformed its countrys history.

Prophets and prophetic movements are nothing new in African history, but few prophets have been observed by outsiders. Many appeared during the colonial period in reaction to unpopular administrations; the colonial administrators considered the prophets to be rebels and tried to prevent outsiders from meeting them. A problem in studying them is that many prophetic movements have today been mythologized as national independence movements, and most of their prophets have become mythical personages. It is difficult to reconstruct events.

Many sanguine politicians expected that, after political independence, these movements would cease, but they have not done so. We should ask why these movements still appear and become strong enough to lead to overt political action. The people who take part in them are ordinary citizens and not crazed religious maniacs. Why do people follow self-proclaimed prophets, and why do they die for their beliefs? These are important questions, and this book provides some of the answers within a specific region at a specific time in history, rather than giving wholly theoretical generalizations.

Heike Behrend was not able to meet Alice Lakwena; but she had contact with many of Alices former followers, in both Uganda and elsewhere, as she tells us in her introduction. Her research was as deep as was possible in the confused conditions of the time, and she managed to find many veterans of Alices movement who were willing to tell its history as they recalled it. Behrend writes without sentimentality of Alices followers, some of whom, after suffering cruel defeat by a brutal government army, themselves degenerated into a crew of predatory brigands.