Former rebel chief Lakwena is dead
Jan 18, 2007
ALICE Auma alias Lakwena, the leader of the defunct Holy Spirit Movement, died yesterday morning in a refugee camp in Kenya. Lakwena, in her fifties, passed away at about 4:00am on Wednesday morning in Ifo camp, about 600km northeast of Nairobi.
By Emmy Allio,
Arthur Okot
and Cyprian Musoke
ALICE Auma alias Lakwena, the leader of the defunct Holy Spirit Movement, died yesterday morning in a refugee camp in Kenya. Lakwena, in her fifties, passed away at about 4:00am on Wednesday morning in Ifo camp, about 600km northeast of Nairobi. The cause of her death is unknown.
Lakwena fled to Kenya in November 1987, when the then National Resistance Army routed her ragtag militia at Magamaga, on the Jinja-Iganga highway, as she was leading her troops, armed with sticks and stones, across the River Nile in an attempt to capture power in Kampala.
Lakwena’s father, Severino Lukoya, who made an unsuccessful attempt to take over her Holy Spirit Movement, appealed to the Government to bring her body home for burial.
“It is good she has died as it was promised by the Lord. But her body should be brought back and pass through the church she started,†Severino said yesterday. He added that he last spoke to her in 2004.
Lakwena is the cousin of Joseph Kony, who claimed he had inherited her spiritual powers and later turned her movement into the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Deputy LRA commander Vincent Otti mourned his “comrade-in-arms†and said it was a test case for democracy in Uganda.
“If the Ugandan government is really democratic, it should receive her dead body and allow her to be buried in her village in northern Uganda,†he said.
The Government has said it is ready to assist. “If the family requests for some assistance, the Government can consider their demands,†information minister Kirunda Kivejinja said.
According to Gulu RDC, Col. Walter Ochora, arrangements are being made to bury Lakwena in Bungatira subcounty, Aswa county, in Gulu district. He said the Ugandan High Commission in Nairobi was involved in the organisation of the burial.
Lakwena, born in 1956, had two failed marriages in which she proved to be infertile. On January 2, 1985 she was purportedly possessed by an alien Christian spirit, known as Lakwena (‘messenger’ in Acholi). She went ‘insane’, unable to hear or speak. Her father took her to 11 different witch-doctors but they could not cure her. The legend goes that the Spirit guided her to Paraa in Murchison National Park where she disappeared for 40 days in the waters of the Nile and resurfaced as a “spirit-medium.†She worked for some time as a spiritual healer near the town of Gulu.
According to historian, James Currey, author of Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits, Lakwena claims to have been ordered by a spirit to stop her work as a healer and form the Holy Spirit Movement in order to bring salvation to the troubled Acholi people. She fought several crucial battles against the NRA.
She advised her followers to protect themselves against bullets by smearing oil on their skin and told them that stones, thrown at government troops, would turn into grenades. But her mystic failed to work and her soldiers were killed in droves as they marched into the battle field, cheering and clapping.
By the time of her defeat as a rebel leader, her personal assistant was Prof. Isaac Newton Ojok, a former Makerere University lecturer and education minister in the Obote II government.
In Kenya, she settled as a “guest of the state.†An aid worker, who was close to her, said she continued to inspire devotion in the camp and was still referred to as “Your Holiness.â€
“Up to now, she still believed that she could cure AIDS, make the blind see, the deaf hear and the dumb speak. She believed that God gave her so much power to save mankind,†the aid worker said.
In April 2006, Lakwena snubbed a government proposal to repatriate her. As a precondition to return home, she demanded sh312m in compensation for the loss of her 3,000 head of cattle and the destruction of her houses by the LRA.
Earlier, in May 2004, the Government had given her US$50,000 (about sh90m) as inducement to come home. At the time, she told The New Vision that she used the money to set up an ‘AIDS drug’ industry and a hospital for AIDS patients. She claimed she had produced a drug that could cure AIDS.
Arthur Okot
and Cyprian Musoke
ALICE Auma alias Lakwena, the leader of the defunct Holy Spirit Movement, died yesterday morning in a refugee camp in Kenya. Lakwena, in her fifties, passed away at about 4:00am on Wednesday morning in Ifo camp, about 600km northeast of Nairobi. The cause of her death is unknown.
Lakwena fled to Kenya in November 1987, when the then National Resistance Army routed her ragtag militia at Magamaga, on the Jinja-Iganga highway, as she was leading her troops, armed with sticks and stones, across the River Nile in an attempt to capture power in Kampala.
Lakwena’s father, Severino Lukoya, who made an unsuccessful attempt to take over her Holy Spirit Movement, appealed to the Government to bring her body home for burial.
“It is good she has died as it was promised by the Lord. But her body should be brought back and pass through the church she started,†Severino said yesterday. He added that he last spoke to her in 2004.
Lakwena is the cousin of Joseph Kony, who claimed he had inherited her spiritual powers and later turned her movement into the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Deputy LRA commander Vincent Otti mourned his “comrade-in-arms†and said it was a test case for democracy in Uganda.
“If the Ugandan government is really democratic, it should receive her dead body and allow her to be buried in her village in northern Uganda,†he said.
The Government has said it is ready to assist. “If the family requests for some assistance, the Government can consider their demands,†information minister Kirunda Kivejinja said.
According to Gulu RDC, Col. Walter Ochora, arrangements are being made to bury Lakwena in Bungatira subcounty, Aswa county, in Gulu district. He said the Ugandan High Commission in Nairobi was involved in the organisation of the burial.
Lakwena, born in 1956, had two failed marriages in which she proved to be infertile. On January 2, 1985 she was purportedly possessed by an alien Christian spirit, known as Lakwena (‘messenger’ in Acholi). She went ‘insane’, unable to hear or speak. Her father took her to 11 different witch-doctors but they could not cure her. The legend goes that the Spirit guided her to Paraa in Murchison National Park where she disappeared for 40 days in the waters of the Nile and resurfaced as a “spirit-medium.†She worked for some time as a spiritual healer near the town of Gulu.
According to historian, James Currey, author of Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits, Lakwena claims to have been ordered by a spirit to stop her work as a healer and form the Holy Spirit Movement in order to bring salvation to the troubled Acholi people. She fought several crucial battles against the NRA.
She advised her followers to protect themselves against bullets by smearing oil on their skin and told them that stones, thrown at government troops, would turn into grenades. But her mystic failed to work and her soldiers were killed in droves as they marched into the battle field, cheering and clapping.
By the time of her defeat as a rebel leader, her personal assistant was Prof. Isaac Newton Ojok, a former Makerere University lecturer and education minister in the Obote II government.
In Kenya, she settled as a “guest of the state.†An aid worker, who was close to her, said she continued to inspire devotion in the camp and was still referred to as “Your Holiness.â€
“Up to now, she still believed that she could cure AIDS, make the blind see, the deaf hear and the dumb speak. She believed that God gave her so much power to save mankind,†the aid worker said.
In April 2006, Lakwena snubbed a government proposal to repatriate her. As a precondition to return home, she demanded sh312m in compensation for the loss of her 3,000 head of cattle and the destruction of her houses by the LRA.
Earlier, in May 2004, the Government had given her US$50,000 (about sh90m) as inducement to come home. At the time, she told The New Vision that she used the money to set up an ‘AIDS drug’ industry and a hospital for AIDS patients. She claimed she had produced a drug that could cure AIDS.