Alice Auma - Biography

Biography

Alice Auma was born in 1956. Remaining childless after two marriages, she moved away from her hometown. She eventually converted to Catholicism but, on 25 May 1985, she reportedly went ‘insane’, unable to either hear or speak, later claiming to have been possessed by a spirit, Lakwena. Her father took her to eleven different witches but none alleviated her condition. Alice claimed Lakwena then guided her to Paraa National Park, where she disappeared for 40 days and returned a spirit-medium, a traditional ethnic religious role.

Prior to the defeat of Tito Okello, Alice Auma was one of many spirit-mediums working near the town of Gulu as a minor oracle and spiritual healer. In the midst of the chaos of the anti-NRA insurgency of the Uganda People's Democratic Army and the increasingly brutal counterinsurgency of the National Resistance Army, it is claimed that on 6 August 1986 Lakwena ordered Alice to stop her work as a diviner and healer, which was pointless in the midst of war, and create a Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) to fight evil and end the bloodshed. Through this divine mission that coincidentally required the retaking of the capital of Kampala, the Acholi would redeem themselves from the violence they had collectively done to the civilians of the Luwero triangle and initiate a paradise on earth. An explanation was given in a letter given to local missionaries:

The good Lord who had 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 the next. So it became an obligation on his part to stop the bloodshed before continuing his work as a doctor.

This came in the midst of a perceived local spiritual crisis that coincided with the threat posed by the occupying southern forces. The increased level of societal tension and number of deaths was attributed to witchcraft. Simultaneously, the soldiers fleeing back into Acholi from the defeat at Kampala often refused traditional purification ceremonies that were said to protect the community from the vengeful spirits of the people they had killed, and the elders found that they no longer had the authority to force compliance.

Alice Auma claimed that the possessing spirit Lakwena required that Alice be possessed by numerous other spirits to achieve its aims, which was unusual in the context of Acholi spirit-behavior. After a series of spectacular victories, Alice led the Holy Spirit Movement south out of Acholiland towards Kampala, where she garnered much support from other ethnic groups that had grievances with the Museveni government. However, subsequent military setbacks suffered by the HSM prompted some followers to accuse Alice of being a witch using spirits for destructive ends. As the HSM suffered its final defeat under withering artillery fire in the forests near Kampala, Alice fled, and claimed Lakwena had left her.

Alice Auma lived in the Ifo refugee camp near Dadaab in northern Kenya for the remainder of her life, and claimed to have been abandoned by the spirits. In November 2004, she was implicated in child trafficking from Gulu to the refugee camp. In 2006, she claimed to have discovered a cure for HIV/AIDS. Auma died on 17 January 2007, after having been sick for about a week with an unknown illness which people claimed was HIV/AIDS.