GLOSSARY

Alice Lakwena was born in northern Uganda in 1956 as Alice Auma. After two childless marriages, she declared in 1986 that she had begun to be beset by a spirit named Lakwena.

Her father’s attempts to free her from these illusions with the help of healers failed. The phenomenon of being attacked by spirits was far from rare in the Acholi culture at this time. The status offered the afflicted person the chance to earn their living with the help of supposed supernatural powers and to claim a special role in the village community.

When the Ugandan president Tito Okello was deposed in 1986 and many of his supporters in the north of the country hastily fled from the capital city Kampala, Alice Auma sensed her chance. She founded the “Holy Spirit Movement” (HSM), naming it after the source of her power, the spirit Lakwena. The objective of this collective military movement of former Okello forces, led by Lakwena, was to reconquer the capital Kampala. With a variety of ceremonies involving oil and water, Lakwena promised the fighters supernatural powers and invulnerability.

With their innovative, cultish and aggressive public appearances, the HSM called into question the authority of tribal chiefs and thoughts of reconciliation, which were strongly embedded in Acholi culture. Lakwena simultaneously became a beacon of hope for the Acholi people, who feared retribution and discrimination under the new president, Yoweri Museveni.

However, the march on Kampala failed. The army of Yoweri Museveni, the NRA (National Resistance Army), had already conquered most of Uganda with the help of Tanzanian forces and lured the HMS into an ambush outside the capital. Previously, further ethnic groups from the north of Uganda had aligned themselves with Lakwena’s cult movement. Since independence, the arrival into office of a new president had always led to a raft of arrests of supporters of the former leader. After the deposition of Okello, who was an ethnic Acholi, and the defeat of the Holy Spirit Movement, it was the Acholi people in northern Uganda who had to fear marginalisation and oppression. After the death of many of her supporters, Lakwena fled to the Kenyan refugee camp Dadaab, where she died on 17 January 2007 of an unknown illness.

Many of those remaining loyal to her became allies of Joseph Kony’s LRA. Kony claimed to be Lakwena’s cousin and was set to take up the fight against President Museveni.