Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement

Many in the Acholi community were alarmed at the sudden loss of power when Obote was overthrown, and Alice Lakwena formed the Holy Spirit Movement to fight for the Acholi people. Despite her promises that her followers would have immunity from the bullets of the Ugandan army, they were defeated two years later, and she fled to Kenya.

Alice Auma was a spirit medium or messenger (“Lakwena”) who, according to her own accounts, channeled messages from the spirit of an Italian World War I veteran who had died at age 95 and was buried near Murchison Falls. According to Alice, after a 40-day immersion in the Nile, she was moved to advise the UPDA on its resistance operations. Daughter of a Madi father and Acholi mother, she was 28 years old when she began her career as a key resistance leader and founder of the Holy Spirit Movement.

Alice's philosophy included the conviction that Acholi never surrender and embraced the objective of regaining power in Kampala. Apparently referring to atrocities against civilians, she asserted that in Luwero the UNLA’s Acholi elements had placed a stain on the reputation of the Acholi people which required purification. She exhorted the “pure, clean Acholi youth” to redeem the Acholi people.

Alice's “Holy Spirit Safety Precautions” for her combatants reportedly included:

• rubbing their chests with shea-butter oil, to immunize themselves against the bullets of their enemies;
• never taking cover against enemy fire, but marching straight toward the enemy;
• transforming stones into exploding grenades by placing them in pails of water in which hot metal had also been immersed;
• singing Christian hymns as they march into battle;
• neither eating food nor shaking hands with non-Holy Spirit members;
• killing no bees or snakes, the allies of the Holy Spirit Movement; and
• having no more or less than two testicles.

Alice urged attendance at Sunday Christian services and adherence to the Ten Commandments, as well as obedience to her teachings and the orders of Holy Spirit commanders. Her religious ideology is rejected by conventional Christian churches.

Alice seized the opportunity of the UPDA’s demoralization in November 1986 to obtain from one of its commanders in Kitgum the services of 150 UPDA combatants and their weapons. She planned to demonstrate the effectiveness of the military approach she advocated. In November and December 1986 in her first attacks, Alice achieved two stunning victories. In Kilak Corner and in Pajule, both in southern Kitgum, her methods took the NRA by surprise, defeated its forces after sustained fighting, and captured many weapons and supplies.

Alice’s success reportedly electrified thousands of Acholi youth, who in the next months were eager to join her. Many people believed that, indeed, she had spirit power and she enjoyed strong support among the Acholi population. When her young soldiers were killed, at times in large numbers, she explained that it was because they were impure or had not followed her orders faithfully. After her first two successes, her UPDA sponsors came to collect the captured weapons.

She refused to turn them over and generally repudiated the ex-UNLA forces among them. Eventually she developed a method for purifying them and insisted that the UPDA subordinate itself to her. Alice attacked those UPDA units which refused, further demoralizing the organization which had helped to launch her movement. Though her human rights conduct with the civilian population was generally reported to be good, several sources indicated that she dealt with those who refused to support her in a brutal manner.

During 1987, however, the Holy Spirit Movement suffered increasingly serious reverses. In January, hundreds of her soldiers were killed in a battle near Kilak Corner. She withdrew to Opit in southeast Gulu and reorganized. After a respite, in July she conducted an Acholi purification campaign in the region.

By September 1987, her forces were moving south towards Kampala through ethnic Lango and Iteso areas, picking up support from local people along the way. Among her supporters at that time was Professor Isaac Newton Ojok, the Obote II Minister of Education. In November, however, her forces were surrounded and destroyed in the Bugembe Forest outside Jinja, just fifty miles from Kampala.

Alice herself escaped to Kenya, where at first she was detained and later accorded political asylum.

Joseph Kony, believed to be Lakwena's cousin, took up the battle, forming a group known as the Lord's Resistance Army or LRA. The LRA is often said to be determined to rule Uganda according to the Bible's 10 Commandments. In reality, this group has a philosophy that blends elements of Christianity, Islam and traditional Acholi beliefs into a murderous world view that has terrorized Kony's own Acholi people and set back development in the North by years if not decades.