6 - The March on Kampala

Summary

As a contrast to the ideal-typical portrayal of the Holy Spirit Movement in the previous chapters, this chapter addresses the conflicts and power struggles that took place not only between the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces and the NRA, but also between the HSMF and rival resistance movements and within the HSM itself. The interest here is in the variety of power relationships and the complex interplay of power and counterpower, violence and counterviolence (cf. Foucault, 1992:113ff.). The chapter will follow the chronology of events as reconstructed with the aid of reports from Holy Spirit soldiers. Since, from a local perspective, the spirits had the power and led the HSM, it will include the discourse of the spirits, who expressed themselves in words in certain situations.

On 25 May 1985, during the civil war, Alice was possessed by the spirit Lakwena and began to work as a healer and spirit medium in Opit, where she also healed wounded soldiers. Although Mike Ocan and other former Holy Spirit soldiers told me that Alice was not particularly successful at this time, she was still able to win over some of the soldiers as followers. As early as July 1985, in the luxury hotel ‘Acholi Inn’ in Gulu, she tried to offer Tito Okello, an officer of the UNLA, her services as a spirit medium to provide spiritual support for his plans to depose Obote. But Okello rejected her offer, accepting instead the services of another spirit medium (Allen, 1991:376).

On 6 August 1986, the spirit Lakwena ordered his medium Alice to cease healing, on the grounds that it was senseless, and instead to build up the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces to combat the evil in Uganda. On 19 October, she and several former UNLA soldiers, among them Dennis Okot Ochaya, a former UNLA driver, attacked Gulu (G. Watson, personal communication). They were utterly defeated and thereafter could enlist hardly any followers in the region around Gulu City, although Alice originally came from Bungatira, a village only a few miles away. As a prophet, Alice remained unrecognized in her own land (as the spirit Lakwena explained).