Peter Nyanzi
19 January 2007
Alice Auma was born in 1956 to Severino Lukoya, a catechist for the Church of Uganda in Bungatira in Gulu district, and Iberina Ayaa. She was raised as an Anglican and attended Bungatira Primary School to Primary Seven.
After leaving school, she married in Patiko but separated from her husband because she was barren. She later married Alex Okello but separated from him after three years for the same reason. She returned to her father's home in 1979 and engaged in trade in Opit where she bought flour which she sold in Pakwach. She later converted to Roman Catholicism.
According to Alice Lakwena & the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda 1986-97 by Heike Behrend, the spirit of Lakwena (messenger, disciple) took possession of Alice Auma in May 1985. It made her run amok and she could barely speak or hear. Her father took her to 11 different witchdoctors, but none could heal her. Lakwena led her to Paraa National Park to a site called Wang Jok along the River Nile where Alice disappeared for 40 days. From there, she returned to Opit and built a shrine there.
Two months later, she met former Gen. Tito Okello, the commander of the Uganda National Liberation Front, at Acholi Inn in Gulu and offered to give him her powers to fight the Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army. But Okello turned down her offer.
New mission
Her spiritual healing was generally ineffectual, and she later said that on August 6, 1985, the spirit changed the mission and ordered Alice to cease healing and to lead a war against evil in Uganda.
SAD: Lakwena's father Severino Lukoya (R) is helped by one of his catechists to dress up as he prepares to lead prayers at his church in Kony Paco in Gulu district yesterday. He reportedly failed to put on his robe after learning of his daughter's death. Photo by Charles Akena
Under unclear circumstances, Alice joined the Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA).
She was able to recruit former UNLA soldiers into this rebel outfit, but she encountered serious resistance from those who did not believe that a semi-literate woman could conduct a war.
Her soldiers knew her to be a mysterious person who was possessed by several other spirits in addition to Lakwena and who spoke through her.
Wearing her white kanzu (tunic, Alice would sit on a chair in the middle of her compound. Her soldiers, including former education minister Prof Isaac Ojok, said they never knew if they were speaking to a spirit or to a person.
The woman who became known as Alice Lakwena founded the Holy Spirit Movement, through which she is said to have helped integrate and rehabilitate a large number of Acholi soldiers who had become impure after the bloody five-year civil war with the NRA.
In a ritual she invented while in Kitgum, Alice Lakwene purified the first 150 soldiers and made them "holy." They were made to remove their charms and then sprinkled with water as they sang Catholic hymns.
Then they were made to spit in the mouth of a pig that was said to absorb all the evil into itself just as Jesus forced the devils into the swine in the New Testament.
The pig was then killed and burned, and the soldiers were then considered Holy Spirit soldiers. Before battle, the soldiers would undergo additional rituals that were a combination of traditional religion and various Christian rites. They were also made to drink herbal concoctions that were supposed to instill strength and courage in battle.
The state of purity resulting from the rituals was supposed to guarantee their invulnerability in battle. But on the battlefield, they were supposed to demonstrate their lack of sin anew. Injury or death in battle meant that they did not pass muster and were not yet holy and had thus violated the Holy Spirit Movement's 20 Safety Precautions.
Commandments
These commandments included exhortations against smoking and carrying walking sticks and admonitions to execute "the orders and only the orders of Lakwena." Those who survived in battle no longer doubted the power of God and the Holy Spirit to fight for them.
Snakes, which had the task of watching over Holy Spirit soldiers, were not supposed to be killed., and the spirit of Lakwena was said to empower bees, rocks and water to fight actively on the side of the Holy Spirit soldiers.
The spirit of Lakwena portrayed itself as having powers to pass judgment, mediate conflicts and call forth rain. It was also said to distribute new medicines and heal illness. Alice Lakwene later established Opit as the movement's permanent headquarters. Her force grew in number and was estimated at about 7,000.
Behrend writes that the rise of Alice Lakwena was a result of the belief that the Acholi were beset from all corners by a range of problems from internal disputes to external military pressure. Lakwena, through Alice, offered the troubled Acholi salvation as God's chosen people. "Giving allegiance to Lakwena enabled the Acholi to not only redeem themselves but to also begin their war to 'liberate' the world from sin," he writes.
On October 19, 1986, Alice led an attack on Gulu town, but her forces were repulsed and suffered many casualties. Nevertheless, her movement gained momentum and won several crucial battles, some said putting it on the way to taking Kampala.
The movement garnered much support from other ethnic groups that had little sympathy for Mr Museveni's new government.. In November 1987, the Holy Spirit Movement suffered its final defeat under withering artillery fire at Magamaga in Jinja. Lakwena was said to have abandoned Alice, and she fled into exile into Kenya with a few loyalists.
The majority of her fighters were killed as they tried to flee back into northern Uganda. Alice and her group were registered as refugees in Kenya by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Those of her fighters who survived joined Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, although some sought amnesty and were integrated into the Uganda People's Defence Forces. She lived a quiet life in a refugee camp in Thika for the almost a decade. In March 1995, the Kenyan government announced plans to close the Thika camp because of reports of criminal activities. Four months later, the then Uganda High Commissioner to Kenya opened negotiations with her about a possible return to Uganda.
Compensation
She reportedly demanded compensation amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, which led to the collapse of the negotiations.
The Thika camp was closed, and Alice was relocated to a camp in the Dadaab complex in northeastern Kenya near the Somali border. But because of frequent attacks on the camps by Somali militiamen and poor living conditions, she sought to revisit negotiations with the government of Uganda to enable her return home at the end of the year.
As part of his election campaign in 1996, President Museveni announced the establishment of a Lakwena Fund to compensate victims of the war. But the fund never materialized. Lakwena was later transferred to Ifo refugee camp in northeastern Kenya amidst further claims that thespirits had abandoned her. In November 2004 she was implicated in trafficking children from Gulu to the refugee camp, but no legal action was taken against her.
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