A History of Ethnic Violence
The background section of this report briefly described the way in which British colonial practices led to uneven economic development in Uganda, with southern Uganda becoming more prosperous than the north. This socieo-economic division hardened as a result of the ethnic violence that characterized Uganda’s post-independence decades, and that often fell out along north/south lines.At independence in 1962, northerner Milton Obote became Uganda’s first president. Obote, a northerner himself (a Langi), inherited the colonial army with its high percentage of northerners (especially Langi and Acholi). Obote’s government lasted for nine years, until Obote was overthrown by army commander Idi Amin in 1971. Amin, though a northerner like Obote, came from the West Nile region of Uganda. According to Thomas Ofcansky, a historian of the period, “Amin feared the influence of the Acholi and Langi, groups that dominated the armed forces.” A.B.K. Kasozi, the author of The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda, describes Amin’s response to this perceived threat: “Amin brutally eliminated most of . . . the Langi and Acholi” in the army. They were replaced primarily by soldiers with ethnic and cultural links to Amin. Amii Omara-Otunnu, author of Politics and the Military in Uganda, observes that “most of those who were massacred by Amin were Acholi and Langi . . . . The killing of people mostly from those two ethnic groups had the effect of dividing the country.” Amin himself was ultimately ousted by a coalition of forces that included Tanzanian government troops, supporters of former president Obote, and the followers of Yoweri Museveni, at that time a guerrilla leader. After defeating Amin in 1979, the alliance first put in place several compromise leaders, all from the south of Uganda. None of these leaders lasted for very long, and in May 1980, Milton Obote returned to the presidency. According to Kasozi and Omara-Otunno, Obote’s return to power also restored the Acholi and Langi to dominance within Uganda’s military, and heralded the beginning of another period of widespread violence. Yoweri Museveni’s guerrilla National Resistance Army (dominated by southerners and westerners) sought to topple Obote by force, and the International Committee of the Red Cross ultimately estimated that fighting in Uganda’s Luwero triangle region left several hundred thousand dead. The bulk of the dead were civilians. Already weakened by the National Resistance Army’s successes, Obote finally fell in a coup staged by Acholi army leaders. On July 27, 1985, the coup brought General Tito Lutwa Okello, an Acholi, into power as head of state. Museveni’s guerrilla National Resistance Army continued to fight the new Okello government, however, and on January 26, 1986, the National Resistance Army took Kampala, and Okello’s Acholi soldiers retreated north, to the Acholi home districts of Gulu and Kitgum. Some of the soldiers crossed the Sudanese border, to take refuge with Acholi who lived in southern Sudan.Paulinus Nyeko of Human Rights Focus observes that after Museveni’s victory, many Acholi feared that Museveni’s army would seek revenge on the Acholi ex-soldiers for their acts under previous governments. T he undisciplined actions of many National Resistance Army soldiers added to Acholi anxiety. Nyeko describes his memories of that period:National Resistance Army soldiers would do all they could to make things difficult here [in Gulu and Kitgum]. They would defecate in water supplies, and in the mouths of slaughtered animals. They would tie people’s hands behind their backs so tightly that people would be left paralyzed. They went into villages, and took guns by force. They looted Acholi cattle, and did nothing to prevent [cattle raiders from the Karamajong district] from stealing the rest. Over three million head of cattle were soon lost, and it made the people embittered.One further event sparked the beginnings of the Acholi rebellion: the National Resistance Army high command issued a directive over Radio Uganda, calling on Acholi ex-soldiers to report to Mbuya army headquarters within ten days. Nyeko observes that to many Acholi, this order was frighteningly reminiscent of the radio order that presaged one of Idi Amin’s massacres of Acholi soldiers, and it inspired many additional Acholi ex-soldiers to leave Uganda to join their comrades who had fled to Sudan: “The order was just like in Amin’s days,” says Nyeko. “The Acholi boys said to each other, ‘This time we are not going to die like chickens. Let us go to Sudan and join our brothers, and fight to save the Acholi.. he Acholi ex-soldiers in Sudan soon joined forces with others opposed to Museveni’s new government, including many Obote supporters and some of Amin’s men. A rebel alliance was formed, calling itself the Uganda People’s Defense Army (UPDA–not to be confused with the UPDF, the current name of the Ugandan government army). The UPDA made its first incursions into Uganda in August 1986. These rebel attacks focused on traditional military targets, not on civilians; indeed, the UPDA began by enjoying substantial support among the Acholi.
The Holy Spirit Movement
The UPDA was a coalition force made up of rebel factions with widely varying motives and histories, united only by their opposition to Museveni. In early November of 1986, Alice Lakwena, an Acholi healer and prophet, was given command of a UPDA battalion that came to be called the Holy Spirit Mobile Force. This force proved, briefly, to be a serious military threat to the National Resistance Army, and although its military potency was short-lived, it ultimately evolved into the Lord’s Resistance Army, which causes so much bloodshed today.Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement began as a peaceful group, and understanding its origins requires a brief description of religious beliefs among the Acholi. Traditional Acholi religion included a belief in jogi (singular form: jok), which is probably best translated as “power”: the jogi were the supernatural powers which could affect humanity. Jogi could be good or ill: the ancestors’ jogi could assist their descendants, but also harm them, when angered. Chiefdom jogi, worked with by legitimate chiefs, was a force that fostered the well-being of the community, but the jok worked with by witches was harmful. As anthropologist Heike Behrend notes:
In rituals different jogi were approached and appeased. . . . The different jogi cannot be understood as belonging either to the political or the religious sphere. They belong to both and have to be perceived along other lines. In Acholi thought the powers of different jogi were opposingly used in either the public or the private sphere and were regarded as being either productive, life-giving, or destructive, death-bringing. The power of a jok used for personal gain in private and for destruction constituted witchcraft, while the same power used in public for legitimate ends belonged to the chief and the priest.
As the Acholi encountered colonialism and other unfamiliar forces and events, new jok were identified: Jok Allah, the jok of “Arabness;” Jok Rumba, the jok of “Europeaness,” Jok Marin, the jok of “armyness;” Jok Rubanga, the jok causing tuberculosis of the spine, and so on. Many of these jogi generated cults of affliction, in which people sought to propitiate the jok with the power to cause those misfortunes they hoped to avoid.Christian missionaries sought to impose a Christian matrix onto the pre-existing belief system, and this led to a certain amount of confusion: not familiar with the complexity of the Acholi understanding of jogi, missionaries (rather arbitrarily, it seems) gave the Christian God the name of Jok Rubanga, which was thought by Acholi to be the jok responsible for spinal tuberculosis. As Christianity gained sway, new jogi emerged, such as Jok Jesus and the jok of the Virgin Mary, and these Christian jogi became known as tipu, the Acholi term for the ghost of a dead relative. The Holy Spirit was translated as Tipu Maleng.As Jok Rubanga became increasingly associated with the benevolent powers of the Christian god, other jogi came to be viewed as Satan’s associates, and anyone working with them was presumed to be a witch. On the other hand, someone working with or possessed by a tipu, associated with Christianity, could be a healer and a prophet. Such healer/prophets sometimes drew large followings. Their relationship with the established churches was uneasy: on the one hand, such healer/prophets often identified themselves as Christians; on the other hand, much about their practices owed little to modern Christian doctrine.Alice Lakwena began her career as a healer and a prophet. She claimed to be possessed by the lakwena from whom she took her appellation; “lakwena” means messenger, and according to Alice, the lakwena possessing her was the tipu of an Italian who had died near the source of the Nile during the First World War. With his aid, Alice began to cure people of various diseases. As a healer, she attracted a great deal of support among the Acholi.When the Acholi appeared to be threatened by Museveni’s National Resistance Army, Alice evolved from a simple healer into a military leader, and she succeeded in getting UPDA commanders to provide her with weapons and soldiers. One of her early followers explained her transformation:
The Lakwena appeared in Acholi because of the plan drawn by Y. Museveni and his government to kill all the male youths in Acholi as a revenge . . . so the Lakwena was sent to save the male youth . . . . The good Lord who 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 tomorrow. So it became an obligation on his part to stop the bloodshed before continuing his work as a doctor.
For Alice, the roles of healer and military leader were inextricably bound together. In addition to leading soldiers into battle, Alice promised to cleanse the Acholi of the evil spirits and witchcraft that had caused so much trouble in the first place; this cleansing would ultimately lead to a new period of peace and prosperity. According to her followers, the Lakwena’s appearance in Acholiland was “by no means accidental . . . . [T]he Acholi. . . have been notorious for murder, raping, looting, etc. , etc. It was therefore planned by God to help the Acholi to be converted [from] the evil ways of life to Godfearing and loving people. . . . ” Alice’s soldiers had to undergo initiation rites in which they burned their old clothes and any magic charms, and swore by the Bible that they would no longer practice any form of sorcery or witchcraft. They would then be “anointed with shea oil and made holy.”
By all accounts, Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement was a genuinely popular millenarian uprising. “Alice united people,” says Alphonse Owiny-Dollo, the Minister of State for the North. “She was magnetic and charismatic, and appeared as someone who could get rid of bad elements and cure the illness in society. People supported her. ” Cathy Watson, a former BBC journalist who interviewed many of Lakwena’s followers, agrees: “Non-Acholi weren’t the only ones to blame the Acholi for the Luwero atrocities. The Acholis blamed themselves, and felt that they were sinful. Following Alice was a way to purify yourself, and become free of that. Alice inspired hope and joy, and she had these wonderful millenarian promises.” Livingstone Sewanyana, a Kampala human rights activist, says that “People believed in Alice. She had power.”Lakwena’s Holy Spirit forces inflicted violence on the civilian population as well as on National Resistance Army soldiers, but this violence was justified by her followers as part of the struggle to get the Acholi to turn from their “evil ways of life.” In particular, the Holy Spirit Movement fought against witches, sorcerers, and all others perceived to be working with spirits, for whatever ostensible purpose. As Minister Alphonse Owiny-Dollo explains it, “Lakwena’s forces killed, but her followers accepted the killings as a form of severe punishment. Wrongdoers among the Acholi were being killed. And if you were only killing witches and such like, this was not evil.” Although thousands joined Alice of their own accord, the Holy Spirit Movement’s military wing also abducted many people: but abductions, too, were justified as being for the good of the abductee. Alice promised her soldiers that when they were anointed with shea butter oil, bullets would bounce harmlessly off their chests. Her soldiers also had to obey a complicated set of rules: drinking, smoking, stealing, and quarreling were all forbidden, as was taking cover in battle. Breaking any of these rules might lead to death in battle.Inspired by Alice, the soldiers of the Holy Spirit Movement inflicted a number of embarrassing defeats on the National Resistance Army, who were at first nonplussed by the sight of thousands of poorly armed soldiers streaming forward, making no attempt to take cover. In January 1987, the Holy Spirit Movement’s soldiers made it as far south as Jinja, only sixty miles from Kampala. At this point, however, superior technology won the day: Lakwena, Owiny Dollo says dryly, “thought she could use stones against modern weapons–it didn’t work.” With countless dead, the military wing of the Holy Spirit Movement appeared to be utterly destroyed. After the defeat at Jinja, Lakwena herself fled to Kenya, where she is said to remain today. Exhausted and demoralized, many of her remaining soldiers surrendered, and those who had been abducted took the opportunity to escape. Museveni and his soldiers continued to fight against the remnants of the Holy Spirit Movement and the UPDA rebel alliance, but at the same time they offered an amnesty to any rebels who surrendered. They promised to reintegrate into the army and civil service those rebels who stopped fighting, and they kept their promise; the combination of Lakwena’s defeat and the lure of peace and a return to normal life led many rebels to leave the bush voluntarily. By early 1989, the UPDA had virtually ceased to exist.