Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits

by Behrend, Heike

• ISBN13: 9780821413111
• ISBN10: 0821413112
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-03-31
• Publisher: Ohio Univ Pr

Summary

In August 1986, Alice Auma, a young Acholi woman in northern Uganda, proclaiming herself under the orders of a Christian spirit named Lakwena, raised an army called the "Holy Spirit Mobile Forces." With it she waged a war against perceived evil, not only an external enemy represented by the National Resistance Army of the government, but internal enemies in the form of "impure" soldiers, witches, and sorcerers. She came very close to her goal of overthrowing the government but was defeated and fled to Kenya.

This book provides a unique view of Alice's movement, based on interviews with its members and including their own writings, examining their perceptions of the threat of external and internal evil. It concludes with an account of the successor movements into which Alice's forces fragmented and which are still active in the civil wars of the Sudan and Uganda.

Author Biography

Heike Behrend is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cologne

Table of Contents

Figures & Tables	viii
Preface	ix
John Middleton
Foreword	xiii
The Troubles of an Anthropologist	1	(13)
The History & Ethnogenesis of the Acholi	14	(8)
The Crisis	22	(14)
The War of the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces	36	(31)
The Holy Spirit Movement as a Regional Cult	67	(11)
The March on Kampala	78	(22)
The History of Religions in Acholi	100	(29)
Alice & the Spirits	129	(19)
The Texts of the Holy Spirit Movement	148	(24)
The War in Acholi, 1987--96	172	(19)
Epilogue	191	(8)
Bibliography	199	(7)
Index	206