2 - The History & Ethnogenesis of the Acholi

Summary

The subject of this book, Alice Lakwena's Holy Spirit Movement, originated in Acholi. Although it understood itself as a supra-ethnic movement and indeed managed to cross ethnic boundaries, in many respects it was closely tied to the Acholi culture. After its defeat at Jinja in October 1987, the successor Holy Spirit Movements were limited to Acholi, and became ethnic movements. Because I shall often refer to Acholi in what follows, a short digression on the ethnogenesis and history of the Acholi seems appropriate at this point.

The Acholi did not exist in precolonial times. The ethnonym came into usage during the colonial period. Earlier, the travelogues of Emin Pasha and Samuel Baker incorrectly categorized them as Shilluk and wrongly called them shuli (Gertzel, 1974:57; Atkinson, 1989:37). According to Girling, the designation Acholi could have arisen from an-loco-li, which means ‘I am a human being’ (1960:2). It would then be a typical (ethnocentric) self-description of the kind we find among many other ethnic groups.

Like the Lango, the Acholi owe the emergence of their ethnic identity not to any kind of inner consistence, but to concrete historical experience, especially the experience of migrations, which became the determining trait of their ethnic identity today (cf. Tosh, 1978:33). Starting around 1600, the people who would later be called the Acholi came with other Lwo in several waves of migration from the southern Sudan to their present territory and to Bunyoro (Crazzolara, 1937; Atkinson, 1984). Later, in the eighteenth century, a number of Lwo migrated from Bunyoro back to Acholi and into what is now Kenya (Bere, 1947). Some Acholi clans claim to be descended from a common ancestor named Lwo, and designate themselves accordingly as Lwo (ibid). A number of these clans constituted about thirty chiefdoms in today's Acholi region; but these chiefdoms were extremely changeable, with constant splinterings and new foundings, processes perhaps corresponding to the Internal African Frontier model developed by Igor Kopytoff (Kopytoff, 1989:3ff.).